Strasbourg! La plus belle ville du monde...

This is ridiculously overdue, but what can I say? It's been pretty busy this month.

For the weekend of May 13-16, also known in the Christian calendar as the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, I went to Strasbourg, France with Inga and Rebecca, two American friends also studying French at CIDEF. First of all, thank goodness I go to school at a Catholic university that feels obligated to give us time off to go to church/be with our families/get one last vacation in. We left on Thursday morning and came back on Saturday afternoon.

Angers is in the west of France and Strasbourg is so far east that it's practically Germany (more on that later) so it was really interesting to watch the landscape change during the train ride to and from Strasbourg. Angers is part of the Loire Valley, so it's flat and green, but almost a bright, colored-printer-paper green. If you've seen any aerial photos of the classic chateaux of France, that's what we're dealing with. It's also very immaculately kept, for the most part--all gardens are neatly trimmed, etc. By the time we got to Strasbourg, the trees and grass had become wet (because of the rain, but the colors struck me as "wet") and the green had become a deep evergreen. It actually reminded me a lot of Southern VA/Northern TN/West Virginia. It was a very pretty train ride.

Unfortunately, it rained for the first day, and it was very, very cold. My fingers were numb when I held my umbrella. Our hotel was kind of a dump, but that didn't matter too much because a) it was cheap and b) I'm a college student. I've always, always seen worse. But the TV didn't work and the shower head was crazy with practically no partition to keep the water from spraying everywhere. The internet also didn't work in our room, and we had to pay to use the computer downstairs.

The food, though. Glorious! I've been subsisting on mostly fruit and yogurt lately, so I wanted to eat some MEAT. From about 1870 to 1919, Alsace and Lorraine were a part of Germany (or Prussia, at that time). Napolean III had picked a fight with Bismarck, and the French army was absolutely destroyed. Typical. The Prussians took the two departments in retaliation because they are so rich in carbon. As a result, "French" children went to German-style schools, spoke German as a first or second language, and basically became full-blooded German citizens. In the rest of France, maps showed Alsace and Lorraine shaded in black, and the country was literally in "mourning" for their lost brethren. It became this deep wound on the French psyche, and is one of the reasons that France jumped so quickly into WWI at the height of nationalistic sentiment in Europe. At the end of WWI, Alsace and Lorraine returned to France, which was confusing to everyone by that point. Even today, Strasbourg and the rest of the area retains a lot of it's German heritage. Strasbourg is even right on the border of Germany. There's a line on the city map, like: FRANCE / GERMANY.



The moral of this story is that there is a lot of fantastic food in Strasbourg. For lunch, we had Flammekuchen, which is a really crispy, thin pizza with creme fraiche and mushrooms and bacon. We also saw a bunch of the little pastries and breads that are unique to the region. But the best was the dinner on Friday night, when we all had regional specialities. The image above is what I ate: Baeckeoffe. It's basically three meats, potatoes, and carrots cooked with white wine and cooked in a "terrine." I loved the terrine so much that I picked one up for myself to take home. Honestly, it was a little dry, but I'm sure that's something I can learn to adjust. I was seriously jealous of Inga's pork knuckle with sauerkraut. Mmm. It looked delicious. I noticed that many restaurants in this area had what I can only describe as "family" seating. I'm very used to very small tables that only seat two people, four at the most. However, at two restaurants in three days, we were seated at one end of a long table that sat anywhere between six and ten people. I watched hostesses seat two different parties at the same table. It was interesting. I kind of liked it. It fit with the cozy atmosphere of the region. We also ate lunch one day at a sushi restaurant that had a conveyor belt that moved all of the dishes around the room. It was really cool, actually. And one of the cheapest meals I've eaten all semester!





We also visited the cathedral, which is huge and beautiful and will probably always stick in my mind. It's very gothic and mysterious looking because it's made out of sandstone. Inside, I lit a memory candle for my grandfather, whose mother was from Germany and who was Catholic. Never let it be said that I am not thoughtful. Also, Petite France was absolutely stunning and basically straight out of a children's book. The buildings are all timber framed and white with steeply sloping roofs. Interestingly enough, it's called "la Petite France" because it used to be the area where all of the french prostitutes did their business. Now it just sounds (and looks) like it should be a part of Disneyland. It was in this area that I was able to get my pretty terrine for only 25 euro!

We also went to a few gardens, but other than that, we just wandered around. I loved it, though. Strasbourg is definitely a city I would love to come back to. Only about 10 days left in France! It's a weird feeling, but more on that later.

Spring Break, Part I

I had two weeks of vacation for spring break, from April 9-26, and ended up spending the bulk of it with my mom. I was up at 5:30 the Saturday after classes let out, and on my way to Paris by 6:45. Her plane from Atlanta was a couple of ours late, but that was fine because I actually love hanging out in airports. So I had some breakfast--an espresso (they grow on you) and a croissant--and I read my new edition of Better Homes and Gardens from cover to cover. All in all, a good morning. When she finally exited the terminal, it wasn't a huge hysterical crying affair, luckily. I think that if we haden't been skyping each other religiously since February, it would have been worse. But we got our museum passes (which I highly recommend) and took the RER into Paris, which cost 9 euros for each of us! Ridiculous.

Our hotel was in the Latin Quarter, the oldest area of Paris after the little islands, and just a few blocks from the Sorbonne, only of the oldest colleges/universities in France. The rooms were soundproofed, which was great because Paris in general is very loud. I had a great time showing mom the typical Parisian vacation: the Louvre, the Orsay museum, and all of the other typical stuff. I have to say that anything less than five days in Paris is not enough if you want to see everything. At the end of each day, we curled up and watched International CNN and BBC World.




We spent an entire day at Versailles. The chateau itself is overwhelmingly and obscenely decorated and packed with rude tourists and tour guides. But afterward, we wandered in the gardents and ate lunch there, too. We both had the bruschetta at one of the little restaurants located on the grounds, and it was absolutely delicious. The bread wasn't too dry or hard, the cheese was only slightly melted, the halved cherry tomatoes were so sweet and warm, and the surprise of the spinach, pesto, and balsamic vinaigrette really made it perfect. I'm pretty sure they made my pear crumble from scratch, too. Yummy. It was one of the best meals I've had in France. Next, we headed to Marie Antoinette's getaways: the Petit Trianon and her hamlet all the way at the edge of the property. The Trianon was much more of my style--it had more of a Regency English feel, and unlike Versailles, they actually followed the caveat of "less is more." The hamlet was stunning. It was really interesting, coming from the tightly controlled and immaculately trimmed gardens of Versailles, to wander around rolling hills filled with winding paths, creeks, wild flowers, a grotto, and an open-air music room. The hamlet was a little farm where Marie Antoinette and her close friends dressed in simpler clothes, raises animals, and kept vegetable gardens. There are still sheep, goats, rabbits, cows, and even a few peacocks. I seriously wish I could impart how beautiful and serene it was. I wanted to just lay on a hillside and watch the swans in the lake and take a nap.

A few other things I would recommend to anyone thinking about taking a vacation to Paris: a boat tour of the Seine; a visit to the archeological crypt below Notre Dame; attending a Sunday afternoon organ concert at Notre Dame (free); and spending an afternoon at the Luxembourg Garden, making sure to take a little tour of the statues of the various women of French history that are in a semi-circle around the fountain.

During this whole time, the train conductors were on strike. This meant massive delays and cancellations. Mom and I found out that our train to Aix-en-Provence was cancelled, and that morning when we got up, I just happened to check online and saw that a train was scheduled to depart that morning...in half an hour. We were very lucky that it was still early morning, that the train station was close by, and that we had a wonderful taxi driver. We got there with 5 minutes to spare, and off we went! The Lyon train station is much bigger than I had thought, and I almost killed mom running to catch the train (sorry!), but we made it! After a quick conversation with an employee on the platform ("Our train was cancelled. We're getting on this one." "Okay."), we were good to go! The train was blissfuly empty and mom was able to nap a bit but also be awake enough to appreciate the scenery. The South is so beautiful and diverse. Cezanne lived in Aix and his Mont St. Victoire paintings do more than enough justice to the landscape. I spent a week with Emilie Dayan and her grandparents in Fos-sur-mer a few years ago and we covered a lot of ground in her car--mountains, islands, marshes, and the seaside! As breathtaking as the green hills of the Loire Valley are, they all look the same after a while.





Our time in Aix was nice and relaxing. We mostely ate, wandered, and did some shopping. Unfortunately, our hotel was further out this time around, and we had to take the bus to get into centre ville. But there was a market that first day where I bought my first real souvenir from France! (Sidenote: "souvenir" is a French verb that means "to remember." The more you know!) Mom and I went halfsies on four placemates and four napkins in a traditional Provençal print. The colors match my plates, so I'm really excited, and they weren't even horribly expensive! This is a photo from the internet, but it's the same colors and pattern:





We also went to the Cathedrale St. Sauver, which is famous for its cloister which was constructed in the first century using stones from the Roman forum that used to stand in Aix. We went on a little tour of the cloister that was all in French and explained the engravings on the columns, so I got to impress mom with my French --> English translation skillz. There were two Australians there though that got their noses out of joint that the tour guide couldn't do it in English, too. Aix is not Paris! Anyway, it was really nice to just wander around in a different, slower city, and to sleep in and read. This hotel didn't have English TV channels, so I think it got on Mom's nerves a bit, but it was good for me to listen to French while on break and to keep up with world events too. (Like volcanoes.)

We thought our train back to Paris had been cancelled, but there was just an error on the website. So, luckily, Mom and I had seats! The hallways between the cars and the stairwells between the two levels were full of people. Other than that, though, the train ride was fairly uneventful. Unfortunately, amidst my discussion (in French!) about the nuclear summit in DC with our taxi driver on the way to the hotel, we discovered that Charles de Gaulle Airport was closed, so both of our flights for the next day were cancelled...

Cliffhanger! And my fingers are hurting and I have class soon.

So there was this beach in Normandy, and one day in June the Americans kicked some ass on it.

Okay, well that's not quite true because the Americans actually didn't get as far up the beaches as the British and the Canadians, but whatever; my American pride chooses to ignore these minor details.

I had to be at the university gates at 6:15 that morning (last Saturday) which meant leaving the foyer at 6:00, which meant getting up at 5:25. When my alarm went off I definitely flailed around in bed for a minute or two, simultaneously trying to figure out why my alarm was going off so early and also turn it off really fast so that I wouldn't wake up any of the other girls on my floor. These walls are really, really thin. After having gotten dressed, I went to the kitchen to get some fruit out of my mini fridge and one of the entrances was LOCKED. Luckily, the other one wasn't, but I was still a bit annoyed. It's kind of like when they lock up the cabinet with all of the dishes and glasses for a weekend--how am I supposed to eat now? I guess my thing is, if you're going to give us a kitchen with our own mini fridges and stuff, why would you lock part of it up?

I digress. I did make it to the buses and everything on time, except Monsieur Melin didn't ride with us. He's also on my list of things I'll miss. He's so amicable all the time, and provides really funny commentary. I kind of feel bad for the students with a lower comprehension level of French because they're really missing out. But another teacher rode with us and I was pretty impressed by him for reasons I'll explain later. This time, the whole gang was together: Inga, Becca, Katie, Nolan, and myself and it was a general good time, except the Notre Dame kids all holed up right behind us and chattered away at 6:45 in the morning. It really got on everybody's nerves and I may have been a bit snappy when I tried to lean my seat back and the guy behind me was like "uh your bumping into my knees" and my response was "well, I'm sorry but I've been trying to go to sleep and it's been a bit difficult!" The only consolation is that he sounds EXACTLY like Tim Gunn. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear him say "make it work!"

We finally got to the D-Day memorial around 10ish and went in. This photo is blown up to EPIC proportions in the lobby, with two captions:

The first is to the left, and it's more like a source caption, but it says, "June 6, 1944, Omaha Beach (Saint Laurent-sur-mer). 7:30 AM. Photo US Army." To the right, in larger font, is "On June 6, 1944, on the beaches of Normandy, more than 10,000 young men fell for our liberty." Yeah, I might have gotten chills. The rest of the memorial is dedicated to the progression towards WWII starting with the Treaty of Versailles, then describing the huge depression in Europe, the rise of Hitler, Nazi and fascist propoganda, the outbreak of WWII, Vichy France, the resistance movements, the general badassery of Charles de Gaulle and eventually the Normandy operations from June to August, 1944.

And there are photos--lots and lots of photos, most of which were shown during the two short films that I watched. I had no idea that photographers and video cameras followed both Allied and Nazi forces around, but it was pretty impressive. The first film was a split screen with the left side showing video reels of Allied commanding officers going over maps and weather reports and resistance reports, then the soldiers loading up onto the boats and getting ready. The right side was the Vichy France/Nazi/Resistance activities, so soldiers looking out over the channel, resistance participants cutting telephone and telegraph wires so the Nazis couldn't communicate, derailing entire trains loaded down with Axis equipment and so on. And then the next morning where the Allies started moving, and there are some pretty impressive shots of the entire fleet of ships moving across the channel with the planes flying just above them. On the right side of the screen, the Nazis finally see them and get all freaked out and start scrambling to their stations and so on. Finally the two screens merge into one and it's just a bunch of shelling and explosions and shots of the men crawling up onto the beach and Rangers basically scaling the side of a cliff because they're, you know, RANGERS.

So the first film was mostly the actual D Day operations and the next was more of the general Normany liberation operations. There were lots of photos of french women crying and clutching soldiers and soldiers carrying kids and animals out of the rubble and frenchies sewing American flags and stuff like that. Again, chills. There were also a lot of photos of dead soldiers and decimated cities. I've wondered why a lot of cities that we've driven through have these huge ugly General Steel-type buildings but now I know that it's because a lot of the country side and cities were absolutely destroyed by the fight between the Allies and the Nazis. Our teacher told us that they basically would go from Nazi stronghold to Nazi stronghold and shell the hell out of it until the Nazis didn't have anywhere to hide and had to surrender or retreat. I'm certainly in no position to judge, but it doesn't seem like that's the most logical way to save a country--I mean, where are all these newly liberated people going to live if all their larger cities are nothing but rubble. And when I say rubble, I mean RUBBLE. There were photos of groups of people (french citizens and soldiers alike) just standing around in the middle of heaps of razed cities with barely, if any, buildings standing. And I'm just such an academic and history freak that I can't stand the thought of destroying centuries of history.

But all of the frenchies seemed pretty ecstatic in the photos, so I guess that's what counts the most.




Thennn we went to the American Cemetary which was pretty humbling, especially after watching those films and discussing them over lunch. The Cemetary is actually on American soil, so I went to America just last week! And by bus! The Cemetary reminds me a lot of the cemetary in Arlington, but on a smaller scale. There about 10,000 men buried there, and there's a small chapel on the grounds, as well as a wall inscribed with the names of all the men that died on during the operations. Every cross (or Star of David) is marked with the name and hometown of the soldier, as well as their division. I definitely teared up a bit at least once. And felt really proud too. My patriotism has grown a lot since being here in France--not necessarily that I think we're the most legislatively efficient country or that we don't have any problems, but that I love America, and we have a good history save for a few significant hiccups (our horrid treatment of the Native Americans and Japanese-American citizens, along with McCarthyism and segregation, mainly) and I think I could even stomach an American history class now just because I want to learn more about my own country. I used to HATE American history.



Anyway. Next we went to the Pointe de Hoc, which is where the Rangers scaled up the sides of a cliff like the monkeys they are and kicked the Germans around for some fun. All in a days work. But the whole point of Pointe de Hoc is that it hasn't been cleaned up, so the holes are still in the ground from where shells hit and the concrete buildings are still all crumbly. It was kind of fun to run around in them, especially with all of the heavy stuff that we'd dealt with earlier. Also, leaving Pointe de Hoc, there was a road named after Bedford, Virginia, where my maternal grandmother's side of the family is from, so I kind of freaked out a bit in the bus.

The final stop was the German cemetary, which I really don't have a lot to say about. I mean, it was pretty, but after learning about and seeing photos of all of the Americans that were killed by these men...I didn't really want to stick around and admire their bravery or anything. Of course, they were probably just doing their job and wanted to go home as soon as the rubber hit the road, but it was a bit difficult to be there.

On the way home our teacher-guide person put a bunch of songs on that were written or sung by french people about the War, along with the english version of one: "The Partisan" by Leonard Cohen. (BTW I listened to Leonard Cohen's live in London concert CD and I might be hooked. I'm definitely buying it when I get back to the States.) I really liked listening to his commentary, from an aesthetic point of view. I like it when french people are very careful with their prononciation and enunciation; I appreciate it from a french-as-a-second-language point of view but also I think it just sounds better in general like that. When frenchies talk really fast I think the beauty is a bit lost. I kind of wanted to record it so that when I get frustrated, I could listen to it and be like "ahhh, THIS is what french can sound like!!" He also passed out a paper that had all of these photos of like, camembert cheese and cows and apples and cidre and so on and was explaining how these are all distinctly Norman products.

So that was my excursion run-down...my last excursion of the semester! (I can't believe I'm going to be home so soon...it's kind of crazy!)

I can't believe people used to live here.

On Saturday, I went on an excursion with CIDEF. We didn't even have an entire bus of people, so it was pretty nice and low key. We still lost someone though. I'll talk about that later though. I had to be at the university at 7:15 AM, and when my alarm went off at 6:00 AM, I just stared at it trying to figure out why I was getting up so early. I had legitimately forgotten. But luckily I remembered and I dragged myself out of bed and got there. There were some other Americans and some Asians, but I predominately stuck with Inga and Becca for the trip. The three of us made a good group. The bus ride was about 3 hours out, and we slept for most of it. The rocking was actually quite soothing. The first chateaux was Amboise, in the city of Tours:




This is also the burial place of Leonardo da Vinci, who designed the chateau, so it was really, really cool to see that. But he just has a marble slab, as you can see in the photos, so it was kind of a let down I guess. I mean, he's one of the greatest minds in all of Western history and there's not much to his final resting place at all. There's not even a legit barrier keeping people from walking all over him. Oh well; it was about the same with Jacques Cartier's burial place in St. Malo.

Amboise itself was pretty generic as chateaux go. I mean, that sounds kind of harsh, but it's basically a big stone house. There wasn't much there (other than da Vinci's bones) to distinguish it from the other chateaux I've seen. There was a real fire going in one of the fireplaces, which was nice because it was actually quite cold. I will admit that the garden was amazing. The bushes are all trimmed into spheres and there is a bust of da Vinci. There are also some arabic-themed motifs there, I haven't figured out why yet. But other than that, there wasn't much ambiance. Kind of like with Mont St. Michel: after a while, all the big, empty stone rooms start to look the same.



Next, we walked a little bit aways to da Vinci's house, Clos Lucé. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, which was a shame because there were some really nice looking reproductions of his work. A bunch of his quotations were etched in glass and framed on the walls, so we spent some time just looking at those and discussing them. They were all in french though. It's interesting, because it's pretty easy to translate them, and I've read the english versions enough, but it's almost like there is a difference sense with the french versions. It's like when I read The Stranger for the first time in french, and I realized that the english and french versions are basically two completely different books. (Not really, of course, but there is so much that is lost in translation.) Next, we did a brief tour of his garden, but there really wasn't much to see since nothing has budded out yet. From the Terrace we could see Amboise, and apparently da Vinci liked to sit outside and "gaze upon" his masterpeice. Not exactly my idea of the best way to pass time, but then again I haven't constructed a huge chateau that's lasted a couple of centuries.

The three of us then got some lunch--I had the most amazing pizza with goat cheese, oregano, semi-cooked bacon, creme fraice, and HONEY. I'm going to have to find a recipe or something because it was pretty spectacular. We didn't realize it until later, but somewhere in Tours we lost a member of the excursion. I saw her today at UCO, so I know she got back, but, yeah. I can't believe that happened. I think the head count got screwed up or something.




Next, we went to the Chateau of Blois, which was significantly more interesting than Amboise. It's been constructed over four different time periods, and I couldn't get all of them into one photo. The courtyard is mostly white stone, and there is a single white tree, and Becca and I were going crazy over the Lord of the Rings implications. There is a photo of me staring up into said tree, pondering my fate in Middle Earth. The interior was much more intricately detailed than Amboise--the majority of the rooms had hardwood floors and handpainted wall paper. I thought it was wallpaper at first, but then I was like "silly Porter, they didn't have wallpaper then. Someone did this all by hand!" There were also radiators throughout, which was very nice as it was pretty chilly outside. The former royal apartments have been trasformed into a small museum with some statues and paintings, mostly portraits. All in all it was a very good visit.




Finally, my favorite!! They were clearly saving the best for last. Cheverny is most definitely the most "modern." It's still used as a private residence by the family that's owned it for at least a century. I'm pretty sure it falls into the "hunting lodge" category since they still raise hunting dogs and do the traditional hunt during the season with the horses and the red coats. The inside has been updated, and I really, really liked it. I could see myself living there, to be honest. The decor and the general layout of the house reminds me a lot of legitimate American colonial style homes. I loved all of the tulips and crystal and china and I ended up taking some kind of artsy perspective photos.

There is a dog run out back with about 40 large hunting dogs. There's a huge sign that says "do not excite the animals" and when you realize that these dogs hunt down foxes and other woodland creatures, you really don't want to! There was kind of an awkward/bad moment when a small child, maybe 5 years old, started running up and down the side of the dog run and the dogs got all riled up and started chasing him! I was just glad that there was a fence between them...they're definitely not domesticated dogs. I actually felt kind of bad for them, because I just wanted to give them all baths and take them for a little walk around the garden because it seems like they just spend all of their time in that concrete floored dog run.

It was on our way home from this chateau that we realized that we hadn't seen Liz since Amboise. But I guess everything worked out alright? I don't want to talk to her and be like "sooo, did we accidently leave you?" Other than that hiccup, it was a pretty successful day and I'm really glad I went.

In a couple of days I'll be in Paris with Margaux and Sara, and then Normandy beaches the next week! I hope to post another blog just rambling about whats great/horrible about France so far and so on. I took some photos of the neighborhood where I live so I can talk about that some. I hope you're all doing well and I can't wait to see you soon!!

Oh, and all of the pictures of the Chateaux are in this album. I need to do a massive upload for facebook too; I haven't uploaded any pictures the whole time I've been here!

un verre du rouge, s'il vous plait.

Sunday (Feb 21) I went on a smaller excursion to some caves around the area. Unlike Saturday, though, I was more on my own for this one. There was a huge group from Kyoto and a group from another US university that stayed pretty cliqued up the whole time, so I just kept to myself.

All in all, this was not the most fanastic trip I've ever taken, but it was kind of cool to see a different kind of achitecture. We first stopped at an old farming village, which was abandoned around the 1930s and has been refurbished to look like it used to. The caves served as stables, bedrooms, kitchens, etc. There were also storage areas, and instead of hen houses, the chickens roosted in niches carved into the rock. Above the caves were the fields that they tended to.

It's not letting me upload any photos right now...the Mont St. Michel post might have overloaded it. But the album is here if you want to see the photos.

Next we went to the winery of Langlois-Chateau, which actually does a very tasty rosé that Sara and I had a week or two ago. This one was cooler...the guide gave us a lesson on how exactly wine is made. He says that all you need are the grapes; there is no need to add anything (i.e., sugar) if you're doing it right. Both white grapes and black grapes have "white" juice, but it is the skins of the black grapes that add color to the varieties of red wine. The longer the skins are allowed to break down into the juice, the more tannin is released from the skins. The tannin is what is "good" for the heart. So, 3-4 hours gives us rosé, about a day gives us a medium red color, and 2-3 days gives us the deep, dark reds that have the most tannin. (I think these are the correct numbers...but basically longer stewing time = darker color = more heart-healthy compounds)

Then the wine is drained from the vats and put into bottles with bottle caps, not corks, then they are stored in the caves for at least TWO YEARS. The guide showed us the storage area...walls and walls of dust-covered bottles. Before he even mentioned it, I noticed a whitish sediment sitting at the bottom of the bottles. (It shows up in some of the photos) Over the course of storage, that sediment builds up and of course has to be removed before they are sold. After the two years (or more) of storage, the bottles are turned on their ends so that the sediment can slide down to the mouth of the bottle. They are put on these huge machines that look like cubes and are rotated a quarter turn every day for two weeks. At the end, the tops are taken off, the sediment scraped out, corks put in, and labels slapped on. Hopefully some wine person isn't reading this and going "NO, THERE'S MORE TO IT THAN THAT!" and I'm sure there is; he probably gave us an abridged version.

Then we had a wine tasting of four different wines: a white, a rosé, a red, and a red that had the consistency and fizziness of champagne. Our guide said that, in short, it is champagne, but because it's not made in the region of Champagne, France, they can't call it champage. But aren't there American champagnes? I didn't ask...wikipedia will tell me all I need to know.

In the end, I bought a bottle of the fizzy red, which is sweeter than reds I've had. I haven't opened it yet because once I pop the cork out, I can't put it back in. Plus, I don't really know how to even open it (it's got the champagne knobby thing), so Sara is going to have to do it for me, haha. I smell a movie night in our future...perhaps Mad Men? I would think that True Blood and french champagne wouldn't mix too well.

So this makes two posts in one day...I think I'm going to take a nap now. I wish my bed and pillow were more comfortable. And that three blankets and two sheets would keep me warm. I think I just miss my big american comforter. Oh well: Spring approacheth anyways.