Une Randonnée et Avignon

Friday morning was class as normal, but then after class we went on a hike with Patrick to the house he's house sitting to have a barbecue. Now... this was a two hour hike. If you remember the previous hike I wrote about, the one that I thought I was going to fall down the mountain and die a slow and painful death.... Well this one was nothing like that. It had a wide path at all times and wasn't all that strenuous. It was a pretty hike and we managed to get to the house.

At the house the first thing all the other girls did was swarm the apple tree... later there were jokes about the Garden of Eve. I was entranced by the pond and the lily pads... hence the 40+ pictures I took of it. We had a nice little barbecue, though it was at about 5 pm... which is just a little odd for dinner here (since we never eat before 8). After that we hung around for a while and talked. A little thunder storm started just as we finished eating dinner. After getting home I got my stuff prepared for Saturday.

Saturday start off early. The bus left at 7:30 and we were the last group to be picked up for the excursion. From our program there was Megan, Ryan, Caroline, and me. We drove for 2 hours, stopped at a rest stop for 30-45 minutes (bathroom and most ppl got coffee), then drove for another 2 hours (tons of traffic because of the Tour of France was in the area), and then we arrived in Orange. We visited and ancient roman theater there and grabbed lunch. I thought that the ancient theater we saw in Greece was more impressive.

After lunch (don't ever get a milkshake in France... two of the girls decided to since it was the first time we saw them (there's a reason for that) and it was hilarious. The vanilla milkshake was milk, a tiny bit of ice cream, and an ice cube. Mind you the milk might not have been cold to start with and was poured out of what looked like a box we get corn flour from... The chocolate milkshake, got a tiny bit of vanilla ice cream, milk, an ice cube, and ... nutella... Be wary of the milk shakes). So after lunch we got back on the bus for about another hour and then arrived in Avignon. We visited Le Palais de Papes and le Pont d'Avignon.

Then we chose to do the optional part of the trip and go to le Pont du Gard (which is what I thought was le Pont d'Avignon, and the reason I chose to go on the trip). Le Pont du Grad was really cool. It's an aqueduct/bridge. I have a few cool pictures of it. We tried to use the timer function on my camera to do a jumping picture in front of it, but of course failed. We did get a few cool photos, but not a successful jump pic. When heading out of Pont du Guard (and had I known I could have brought my swimsuit and gone swimming there! I'll just have to do that next time) we stopped by an ATM so Megan could withdraw some money... and the machine ate her debit card! And no, we couldn't get it back, but her card should be sent back to her bank in the US (she leaves on Saturday morning so she's not debit cardless for too long while abroad).

We managed to get through the fiasco and back to Avignon to try to grab a quick dinner. Dinners in restaurants aren't quick... so we barely managed. But we had a good little dinner and then Megan payed with her credit card and we all gave her cash for our parts. Once back on the bus... we had a 2h30-3h drive ahead of us with a rest stop. Aiming to get back to Grenoble between... 1h30 and 2 am... That bus trip was long... I didn't sleep much. I got home safe and sound.

Today, like last Sunday has been a very laid back day full of massive amounts of homework... I've thought that I was going to go crazy multiple times today... I've done 5-6 hours of studying, my break was to get lunch in downtown... This is my last week here... I can't believe it ... I really can't, it went by so fast...