France: Part 2

Sorry it's taken a while to get all of this up - for those of you who don't know, Jeff has been working on his CFA competition, which he has made it past the first round and will be heading to Canada for the second of three total rounds.  There have been countless late nights, but he's loving the project and is doing so well with it!  I have so much respect for his dedication to the competition and putting in every effort that he has to get the best result.  But anyway, that's not what this post is about (although I'm EXTREMELY proud of him!) and I finally have a computer to use...briefly. :)

The second part of our trip was up north in Sedan.  We stayed at the Fort de Sedan which is a massive castle (the biggest one in Europe, in fact).  It was in an old city which was so fun to look at... in the car (outside it was drizzling/raining the whole time we were there which isn't too pleasant, but we had to explore so we endured).

Here are a couple pictures of the castle we were in:

 

The pictures don't really capture how big it is, but this thing is seven stories high - built in the mid-1400's with improvements throughout the years.  I love that so much of the history we came across in France existed before America was even discovered by Columbus! It's amazing that they've stood the test of time and that the history has been guarded and preserved like it has!  There apparently was a tour that we missed out on while we were there, but we were too busy exploring the city surrounding.  It was really cool to stay in such an awesome place though.

As mentioned before our beds' walls were always "decorated" with... interesting pieces.  Here, we got a battleground painting:

Nice, huh?  Especially since the fellow by the tree looks like he forgot his pants... I'm just glad it was a painting, because my pillow is the one right below him.... haha

Here are a few pictures from the city.  It was so miserable to be outside that we didn't look too much at what we were taking pictures of, we pointed the camera, clicked, and moved on...

This was their college - I love the look of it!

See how every building is unique, and gorgeous with detail???

This was a river. haha I don't know which river it is, but it was massive, and something cool was that Jeff noticed a pathway that walked across the river when the water level was lower.

I LOVED the old city vibe and the architecture of these buildings. I really wish that the weather wasn't as bad as it was the day we had here.  But, don't worry!  We didn't stay at a castle without doing a little bit of exploring first!!!

You can't see it very well, but there were still cannons lining the walls!

Jeff decided that he wanted to attempt climbing the wall like in the "olden" battle days - Luckily they had a practice area for him.

Haha, off to a great start, right?

And off he goes!

Victorious! (not really though.. haha the wall was built very well, although I'm sure Jeff would say that the rain just made it too slippery...)

This was at the very top, but they wouldn't let us go up and see the view :(

And then I threw him into the pit! haha not that it would be too hard to get out...

Here are a few more pictures from inside the castle - I know that the painting just left you wanting more!

The back wall of the room was the actual castle wall - which was really fun, but then the noise level wasn't too buffered and it got pretty cold.  Still cool though!

The halls had the stone lining as well, and had motion sensor lights, so it was really creepy when the elevator door opens and it's a dark hallway like this:

(We took a picture right as the light was coming on, but you get the point...)

And here's our restaurant, where they finally had good meat at night and fruit and croissants in the morning!!!

It was a really beautiful place, and like I said before, I really wish we had had better weather or more time to  really enjoy it!

Things we learned about France during this segment:

-Wi-Fi is SO much better in America!  (The French call theirs "Wee-Fee", which sounds wimpier, too, but it's fun to say like a French person!)

-The French don't season their meat, but they DO cook it extremely well, I had great turkey, and Jeff had filet mignon, but they put their vegetables in nut sauce... which yes, smells as gross as it sounds! I think the win would have to go to America - where our meat is seasoned and our vegetables are VEGETABLES.

-Subway restaurant - yes, we ate Subway (I needed normal veggies!) France wins! For two foot-long meals we paid 8 bucks. Yep, and because of my deficiency in eating up until this point in the trip, that was the best Subway sandwich I've ever had, but I might be biased...

-Windshield wipers - weird category, I know, but worth noting! - France wins! Their cars have sensors in their windshields so that the wipers aren't going crazy or not fast enough - they move when they need to AUTOMATICALLY! haha some of you are probably thinking... so? But I was AMAZED! I couldn't stop talking about it! haha

-GPS systems - America wins! We had a GPS unit and it required to know the city BEFORE you entered the address (seems simple enough) ONLY NO FRENCH PERSON COULD EVER TELL US WHAT CITY WE WERE GOING TO! We would tell them exactly where we were going, they would look it up, and they still didn't understand the concept of a city, and the directions that they printed out didn't either! Why do the French GPS units require cities, when NO ONE in the country can give you a city (okay, at least the four people we talked to throughout the trip - in the hotels/airport - but you would think that they of all people would be able to know that!)

Next stop: PARIS!!!  And on our way there, we saw this cool windmill on the side of the highway :)