Once upon a time in a land not that far away...

This weekend was, um, how do you say? Pretty amazing.

A few friends and I decided, somewhat randomly, to go to Normandy, or, in French, Normandie. This is probably the region with the most history of all France. It's like someone decided I think France needs to have like a historyland, because it doesn't have enough history already (note the sarcasm). Seriously: the castle of William the Conquerer (disons, Guillaume le Conquerant), the famous (or infamous) Cathedral Notre Dame de Rouen, the only center of apple distilleries in the world, the beaches of the Allied invasion from WWII...I mean, what more could you ask for?

In any case, I'll try to do the rundown, but who knows how well I'll do. The five of us (myself, Jenny, Nikki, Parilee, and Killeen...yes, I was the only guy) got to our train station at the appointed meeting time of 12h30, only to be greeted by the do-do do-do-do of the SNCF announcer, and the now familiar announcement "Mesdames et messieurs: aujourd'hui, le 27 Octobre, 2006, un mouvement social a deroule tous les trains au depart du Gare St-Lazare. Veuillez consulter les centres d'acceuil pour vous renseigner." Or something along those lines. Basically, for you non-French speakers out there (which admittedly are shrinking and shrinking as a proportion of the people I know), our train (and all trains departing from that station) was cancelled due to a strike or, really, a "social movement." I, personally, was excited to be experiencing my first French social movement, something which some of you may or may not know to be commonplace around here. Just a part of le quotidien en Frane.

So anyway, we finally got out of Paris. We stayed in a hotel in Caen called the Etap hotels. They were like amazing. They're these cheap hotels that are sort of like hostels but owned by Accor, so they're everywhere. I like to refer to them as the do-it-yourself hotel. It was great fun! Hehe. And Caen was amazing, with the chateau de Guillaume le Conquerant. And Bayeux was great, as were the Norman beaches. Everything in that area looks alot like England, and there were British flags everywhere because we ended up going to Allomanches (the beaches that the British landed at during D-day). Food was fun, of course. I got a bottle of calvados to enjoy at some later point as well. In any case, all of it was great, and I have a ton of new memories and new photos on facebook (including the new fall catalogue). It was great.

I guess the thing that was best about the whole experience, though, was getting out of Paris. I mean, Paris is an amazing city, but, like with any place where you live for an extended period of time, it can get tedious and monotonous. You have to get out to remind yourself how amazing it is. The same applies to Stanford, to Orange County, to anywhere...and the key to being thankful for the places you come from and the places that characterize and define you is to escape from them and to come back. Normandie this weekend was great. It was like stepping out of the city and right into a scene from Rumpelstiltzkin (sp?) or any other fairy tale. Now it's back to the real world, with classes, and papers and tests and everything else. It was escapism if ever I've experienced it.