French Friday

Okay, okay, fine. I won’t be one of those people with the themed day of the week posts. Mostly because I’m not disciplined enough to post consistently on certain days of the week, plus, what if I want to write about something else next Friday?

Anyway, it’s time for a stroll down memory lane. The first time I visited France was with my French class in 2005. It started out with a few-days long tour of the Loire valley, including 2 or 3 castles, and then I had a week-long homestay with my French family, finished up with a day or two in Paris. My memory (of how many days things took and such) is really hazy! Must be getting old.

Here is a very young Staci in front of my favorite castle, Chenonceau. It’s hard to pick a favorite castle because… well… they are castles, and by definition, awesome. I really liked Versailles too, of course… isn’t that technically a palace? So Chenonceau is my favorite castle and Versailles is my favorite palace. Speaking of Versailles, note below: the hall of mirrors. Very blurry (my trusty old 2004/2005 fujifilm camera did not have image stabilization, but overall seems to have done okay). Also, the tops of my host family’s heads.

This is Da Vinci’s house. Very cool!! Filled with art and cool furniture. I saw the bed where he died! The grounds were filled with cool Da Vinci inventions, like this one (below) created for battle. It spun inside with a mechanism like Disney’s tea cup ride. Note my wallet chain. I was extremely cool (and thin, apparently!) in high school.

Aha, here is a shot of the Eiffel Tower. I climbed it to get the full experience, even though it was cold and windy and I was wearing high heels. We were dressed nicely because we had dinner in the fancy Eiffel Tower restaurant! That thing you see attached to the front of it says “Paris 2012.” Paris was trying to get chosen to host the 2012 Olympics, which at the time seemed EXTREMELY far in the future!

Well, that was fun. I’m also a little worried because the CD these pictures are on did not have any photos of Chambord, another castle I saw, or the inside of the Louvre. Maybe I didn’t take any? What was my 17 year old self thinking!

Another fun fact about the trip: I bought my first iPod for the overseas flight. A white one with no color screen or video capabilities. We have come so far.