If any of you have Facebook, you have already had the pleasure of feasting your eyes on my AWESOME yellow jeans that I recently acquired from a store here in Nice! And, over the weekend, I wore these awesome yellow jeans which created an awesome day! When deciding to study abroad, I went through a program called CEA... essentially the program takes care of everything for you including; my apartment, roommates, university, insurance... etc! One thing that they also include is CEA excursions, in which they take all the students different places that are somewhat close, which gives us an opportunity to travel without having any of the worry. This weekend was our big trip to the Provence region of France. We left very early Saturday morning (7:30am), taking a very nice bus to all our destinations. My program includes about 15 students... including my roommates! We took the bus to our first destination Arles, France. Here we took a tour of the city seeing two major Roman ruins from over 2,000 years ago! It was awesome to hear the history of these ruins, as well as be able to see how great the engineers were even when they didn't have all the equipment they have now! On our tour, we saw some of the sights that Vincent Van Gogh painted in his time living in Arles. We saw the hospital where he was brought to after cutting off his ear, and many of the spots where his famous paintings were inspired! After our short time in Arles, we got back on the bus and headed to another ruin, this time of a very large Castle. The castle was almost completely dismantled because the people around used the rock to build their homes/the revolution of France/ wars! So there was very little of the castle left, but the history still remains, as there are some parts still standing. We were at the Castle for quite some time, so a few of us decided to take a bunch of funny pictures, planking (which is laying on something and taking a picture; quite stupid if you ask me, but it was very fun at the time), owling (where one crouches on something, and looks sort of like an owl; also quite stupid if you ask me, but once again, very fun at the time)... we also took pictures standing on the castle (and if we lost our balance, would probably fall to our death because it was so high up), which was very fun as well! The time at the castle was just spontaneous fun, and I had a fabulous time! We then got on the bus, and headed to our last destination for the day, Avignon. Here is where we would be staying for the night a hotel. We each had a partner to room with for the night, (mine was an awesome friend, Erica) and headed to our rooms to drop our stuff off before exploring the town. We then walked around the town, going into the different shops, and what not before we headed to dinner. Our CEA advisor had planned dinner at a restaurant for us, and we had delicious stew, salad, and desert! It was a very fun dinner with everyone! After dinner, a few of us went to an Irish pub where we watch a few Soccer games, before heading back to the hotel. After a long day, almost all of us were in pretty early, catching good sleep before the next big day. Sunday morning, we woke up around 7:30am again, grabbed some breakfast from the hotel lobby, and headed to the bus again. It took us a short ride to the Pope's Palace in Avignon. If any of you know any kind of history of the Pope, a few of the Pope's actually lived in Avignon from 1309 to 1377 because there was lots of corruption going on in Rome during this time. The palace was beautiful... unfortunately, a lot of the original paintings throughout the palace are no longer there, as it was used for a military barack. But the palace preserved all of it's history (unlike most historical things in France, in which were either destroyed or dismantled during the revolution). After our tour of the huge palace, we got back on the bus and head to the water duct that brought water to Nimes from the mountains. This beautiful duct is called the Port du Gard. It was used in the Roman times, and is very old... it is the largest part left of an aqueduct system left in the world. The duct looks like a bridge, because it crosses over a large river! There we had a picnic lunch, and relaxed for a while before jumping back on the bus to head to the winery. The Cote du Rhone region of wine (where we went), is most known for red wines. The particular winery we went to was at a beautiful castle, and had fields and FIELDS of grapes! We went inside the shop for some wine tasting, where we tasted three different wines; one white and two reds. They were very delicious! After tasting, we took a short tour of how they make the wine, and what kind of process it takes to make the wine! After our tour, we were able to buy some of the wines we tasted, or even some of their other wines! The winery was VERY fun for all of us... but it was time to head back to Antibes as it was getting quite late! The bus ride was about three hours long, but had beautiful scenery!
The weekend overall was a great success!!! I had a splendid time in my yellow jeans with all of my friends, and can't wait to wear them again!!!
Love to all my family and friends ... and Happy 21st Birthday to my awesome brother, Nick!
The Pope's Palace in Avignon with my roommates McKenzie (left) and Kallie (right)!
Standing in the fireplace in the banquette hall of the Palace with Erica, Kim (roommate), and Eliza!
My yellow jeans (of course) ... and an example of our spontaneous fun! I have no idea what I'm doing, but it was very fun!!!
An example of me standing on the Castle... holding a cloud!!!
This is what planking looks like (kind of)... don't expect to see any more of these photos however, I think it's really dumb plank!!! HAHAHA
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