Journée de Patrimoine

12 - 16 septembre

This has been a strange, but overall awesome weekend. But let's start with Wednesday night. The three of us went out to meet Dee's host-sister. We went to a bar with her friend who wanted to practice his English. After a round of drinks it got cold, so we went to another bar to be inside. Two more guys joined us for another round of drinks. After a few minutes one left to meet one of his friends. So a little while later the six of us went to a rhumerie to meet up with him and three or four other people. Finally around 1am we convinced everyone that we had to leave (just the three of us) because we had class at 9am.

The next night, Thursday, Dee and I met up with two of the guys from the night before, and we were going to go to a club for a soirée d'integration for our university. Before we got them we played Kings and managed to kill a bottle of champagne between the two of us. We brought them over for another game of kings...and then another...until we decided that it was too late to go to the club.

Friday night the three of us went out with those two guys and Dee's host-sister. They love bar-hopping here. After 2 (our group had grown to about 10) everyone wanted to go to the discothèque. But alas, my loser-self came back and I went home to sleep instead.

Ok. The weekend finally. This weekend was the journée de patrimoine, not just in France, but I guess all over Europe. This means that museums and parks and the mikes are either free or very cheap. you'd think we'd go to Paris, but since every thing's free we knew there would be horrible lines everywhere. So we decided to stay closer.

Saturday we started out around noon, and walked up towards the centre commercial. First we went to the Maison de Jean d'Arc. Not really her house, but where she stayed while she was in Orléans. In one room they had models of key events and an audio track to tell the story, plus corny fanfare music. It was nice.

Our next adventure was to find the Musée des Sciences Naturals. We went were we thought if should be, and didn't see it or any signs. Then, in a moment of pure intellectualism, I saw a building with letters on top that read 'Museum'. Halfway there Kay made the realization the 'Museum' is English...in French it's 'musée'. But we found it.

So we walk in, which is kind of awkward because there's a desk with people there where you would normally go to pay, but it was free. At the desk I saw 'spiky hair', a guy that lives on my floor.

The museum has three floors. Well as you walk into the room on the bottom level, you are faced with an ass, standing in a box, staring at you. It's not alive, but it definitely was at some point. Next to it is a once-alive sheep, peeing. I believe the first thought for all three of us was, 'what the fuck is this'. Next to each animal is a post, and at the top is a ? on a piece of rubber. You lift it up and it gives a French idiom involving the animal and whatever the animal is doing. Then it explains it. For example, there's a baby elephant walking on porcelein plates and dishes. The idiom is 'comme un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelein.' I believe we have something similar in English to mean clumsy. I have pictures of my favorite ones.

The first floor had insects, amphibians, snakes and fish. There were a lot of alive things on this floor, and some once-alives. There was a huge lobster that was almost as tall as me. Above that on the wall was a really big crab-like thing that scared the crap out of me, and then I in turn scared Kay and Dee. They also had the grossest looking frogs I have ever seen. They're white and look bloated and we thought they were dead at first but then one moved a little. They just floated like they were suspended in gel. The fish were fun. I kinda felt like a little kid, and I took a lot of pics.

The second floor was mammals. Taxidermied mammals to be exact. We didn't get to spend too much time there because they were closing.

The next day we had planned to take a bike ride around the paths on the island in the middle of the Loire. So we got up early, packed a picnic bag, and headed towards the nearest bike station. I think there are about 20 in Orléans, and each station has 10-15 bikes that you can rent for a little while, a week, or a month, or possibly longer. When we got there we found out that you have to subscribe to it and pay a 150€ deposit. It was Sunday though, so even if we had wanted to subscribe we couldn't. Back to the residence. We all changed out of our scrub clothes, ate something quick and decided to go to the train station. How about Tours? Sound good? Pourquoi pas. Off to the train station, and this is how it went: