Day 66: Provins

Hello again,
This weekend was unfortunatly my last free weekend in Paris (all the rest I will either be traveling or have visiters), so I spent a lot of it in my room doing the tons and tons of homework that was either due this week or will be due at the end of the semester. I did have some fun adventures on Friday however, when I went to Provins (a medieval city about an hour and a half out of Paris) with IES. Its not a huge tourist attraction, and the trip wasn't as "must see" as the other IES trip I went on (Normandy), but it was still lots of fun and it was really nice to be out of the city in a small town in the country :) The day started with a tour of the medieval walls around the city, which were of course how it defended itself. It was really cool, and we got to go inside the walls and look at the ramparts and such which was neat. Apparently the concept that in the middel ages they would drop boiling oil on invaiding armies is not accurate, because oil was too expensive and too precious. Instead they would boil pears down into a sauce and dump that on invaiding armies, tasty and deadly! Anyways, from the walls we went to a guard tower on a hill near the middle of the city, so on the way there we got to see most of the city which was really beautiful and looked almost exactly like the town where Belle lives in Beauty and the Beast. The tower was awesome, it was my favorite part of the whole day. We got to go inside and look around and than go up to the top where we had an amazing view of the countryside. France really does have the most beautiful countryside of anyplace that I have every been. After the tower we had a yummy french lunch at a restaurant and than went down bellow the city to take a tour of the deserted chalk mines/caves that run bellow the entire city. They were really cool, and apparently when you buy a house in Provins you purchase the rights to the caves bellow your house so people will use them as a sitting room, or formal dining room or something. After the caves, we went to see the city's church which was interesting in that it is not like any church you would see in Paris. It was never finished because the city ran out of money, so it is an impressive building but at the same time it had a very rough and obviously unfinished quality to it. After the church we got on the bus back to Paris. About 20 mins outside of the actual city (in the subburbs) the bus got pulled over! Apparently the cops saw the bus driver looking at his phone (even though he wasn't placing a call) and pulled him over. This whole ordeal took about 15 mins to sort out, during which time I was more amused at the french peoples inefficiency than anything. The bus driver took a 5 min smoke break on the side of the freeway where our bus was parked while the police tried to figure stuff out, which I just found absolutly hillarious...oh how french. That was the only exciting stuff that happened to me this weekend, but on Monday I had another play to go to for my theater class and unfortunatly I read the schedule wrong saying what time it was and thought it was an hour later than it really was! Thankfully I have fallen into the habit of arriving about 30 mins in advance when I have to be someplace using the metro, and the time we are supposed to meet for the plays is 30 mins before the play starts, so I managed to get there only about 2 mins late and only missed the first few lines of the play. It was really good though, I would say my second favorite play that I have seen here (after of course L'Avare at La comedie francaise). Tomorrow is the begining of fall break, so tonight I am getting on a train and tomorrow I will wake up in Italy :) I am going to Florence for Wednesday and Thursday and than on Friday morning we are going down to Rome until Sunday afternoon when we get on a train back to Paris. I am excited because a)its Italy, where I have never been and b) I will be visiting a friend from Tulane who is studying in Florence and she will come down to Rome with us :) One more class and than I am on my way to Italy!!!!