Thursday, December 16, 2010

Je ne sais pas francais!

Mer. That's how I'm feeling right now. Also, I miss Mont Saint Michel.

We drove to Tours today. Left MSM without a hitch, got on the road and just cruised. Have I mentioned that the countryside is beautiful? Because it is BEAUTIFUL!! Today it was even rainy and cloudy, but it was still gorgeous. I can't even imagine what it must be like in the spring and summer when the weather is nice.....crowded that's what. Mom and I have decided we are happy to trade the warm weather for less people. There are enough people here without the hordes off tourists that come for the summer months. Pass.

So we drive, and we love it. Then we get to Tours, and I don't know why but for some reason I was expecting kind of a smaller, touristy town. WRONG. This is basically like a mini-Paris. Busy, crowded, and even less English. Perfect. Fortunately, we will spend most of the day tomorrow on our guided tour of the castles (Yay!) and then we will just have Saturday to look around and see what we want to see. But yet again, we were both overwhelmed upon arrival, and this time we had a car to find a park for too. Oy.

Fortunately, once we parked the car and got some food in us (awful as the food was, and I'm not being a pansy this time. We both ordered steak, "medium", and it came out almost entirely raw and I think I heard a couple of "moo's" out of mine...it was pretty gross. But our waitress spoke like 3 words of english so I didn't think it was worth trying to send it back...oh well.) we felt a lot better. We walked around a little bit, bought some chocolate, and we're still a little confused about where we are in the grand scheme of this place but we're getting there. Now we're back at our hotel safe and sound. Exhausted, but better.

I think I've realized why the french get the reputation of being rude, because most of the people we have come across have been very nice and willing to work with us even though we speak very little french. I think it's because they are totally and completely unaware of anything that is going on around them. They are just entirely oblivious to anyone or anything outside of themselves. Now this usually isn't in a rude, selfish, or egotistical way (I mean sometimes obviously) but they're just plain oblivious. And when someone is oblivious to you, it is easy to think they're just being rude. Oh and french people are just as loud and noisy as Americans. Done.

Not too many funny stories today, sorry folks. It was a pretty run of the mill day, no hysterics or wreaking havoc amongst the throngs of people. Although we did stop to buy some fruit at a super market on our drive, but we didn't realize that we had to print off the little sticker with the bar code on it whilst we were in the produce section. So we brought our bags of fruit to the counter, hoping to just hand it to the woman, pay, and leave with as little communication as possible since it was a small town and we assumed they spoke zero english. However, since we didn't print off this sticker, she starts talking to us in french at a zillion miles an hour and we just have "deer-in-the-headlights" face on, and my mom is able to sputter out "je ne sais pas francais!"(I don't know french) And then the woman's like "OOOOOH d'accord" (ok) and then runs off to the produce aisle to print the little stickers for us. PHEW! That was a terrifying 5 seconds...so that was a good time. :)

Also, there are cows everywhere here. I mean they're in the pasture, it's not like India where they're all just run amuck around the road and such. But you can't go 10 minutes without seeing another small herd of cattle, and they're HUGE!! I'm convinced that french cows are way bigger than American cows, which I find to be ironic. You'd think that if the American people are generally physically larger than French people, than American cows would be bigger to feed all the big American people. Apparently not. I probably ate one of those fat cows for dinner tonight, maybe they caught one that we saw on the way into town. That explains why they didn't have time to cook it! ZING!

Oh and one little funny moment from last night at dinner. When we asked for water to drink, the waitress asked "Gas or no gas?" In my head I was like "Really? That's how we're gonna do this? Ok then..." "NO GAS!" As soon as she left our table mom and I broke into guffaws. Thus far we've had the epic "bubbles, or no bubbles?" "flat or fizzy?" and now "gas or no gas?" I think the later is now fighting for first place on the leader board of hilarity, but "bubbles or no bubbles" in a french accent still takes the cake. That was amazing..

Ahh well, beaucoup de Chateaux demain! A bientot!

1 comment:

  1. For those of us who don't speak french ...Thank God for Google translator :) Thanks, too, for the laugh :)

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