The Day The Namesake Died

Things I learned reading The Namesake.

1. Nothing
2. The French don't drink cafe creme in the afternoon
3. Don't read The Namesake


Recap!

1. Brandon is still sick
2. I finished The Namesake
3. Claire is still reading


The weather here has not been great, meaning its 45 and rainy... blah! Really hard to do anything in that, but after three stationary days due to illness and books, I was dying. Weather.com said that there was going to be a three hour window of "partly cloudy" from 1-3pm in Perouges, the ancient village that we were supposed to go to on the weekend. It is supposedly one of the most beautiful villages in France.

So, in the rain, we went.

At the train station, trying to buy a ticket, Claire's bank card, for some still unknown reason, didn't work. We also didn't have our Carte 12-25, which give us a discount on train tickets, so we couldn't go on the 12h12 train.

Back home we went... to read... until the next train.

Finally, 3h12 rolled around, we bought our tickets at the counter, with our discount card, which turned out to give us a 50% discount from 28 euros to 14 euros....yes!

And we were off. Here is the escalator that we had gotten stuck on the day before. All clear of Russians!

Me on the train. I look like I am wearing a wig in every picture. My hair looks detached from my face, however, I think that it is a small improvement from the Bon Jovi mullet that my hair had morphed into earlier when we went to the post office.

 The train was really nice. Super new. I am thinking, thanks to Claire, that the Rhone-Alps region has a bit more cash than the Languedoc-Roussillon region where Montpellier is.

 Shocking! Look what Claire is doing!

It took about a half hour to get to Meximieux. This is the gare there. From here you have to walk one town over to Perouges. Notice how nice the weather is. In about 30 seconds, it is going to start to rain and gusts of wind will start to blow.

And the walk begins. It's about 2km.

Up a hill, and then we find it!

Perouges is a medieval village, so it makes sense, that it would be on top of a hill.

In about two minutes, Claire and I have gone from freezing to sweating. Really glad I had some water in my purse.

It was really cool. Felt like a movie. But one thing was weird! It was about 4pm on a Tuesday and everything was closed and deserted! So bizarre. Oh well, we moved on. He is a picture of the front entrance.

Walking around looked like this. You could really see how people lived, and it's cool, because people still do live here. It's a real town,except I guess on Tuesday afternoons at 4, then all the people disappear.

So at this point, we are really, really, cold. I am wearing a t-shirt, wool sweater, fleece hoodie, and a leather jacket, but I literally am chilled to the bone! And then we finally make it to the "Centre Commercial!"

And we find a tea room! Well, actually it was Michelin starred restaurant that serves tea, coffee, and a type of galette that comes from here. Of course, we go inside.

Right as we go in, it starts to pour outside. Perfect timing! Here is the galette. This one was basically a huge pizza dough, that they cooked and then covered in sugar and then bruleed it on top! It was cool because they made them in these huge pies and then you just bought them by the slice.

 They were really good, plus we were starving!

The inside of the place. It was really cute.

 And the menu.

Our complete snack. We also ordered some raspberries which were nice. Altogether, we had two slices of galette each, a grand cafe, and the raspberries. We stayed here for about an hour.. and read!

 The rain did stop and the sun came out! There was all this corn hanging which I thought was a bit bizzare.

More town.

 The view from the town.

The church.... of course. Have you ever been to a city in France, no matter how small, that had no church! I wonder what they do with all of them these days.

 This is the entrance. You can see the cool old gate!

And then this sign was funny. It says, "What you must see: The whole city!"

See, people actually do live here. It was funny, because you have all of these incredibly old buildings, and the someones car parked.

Door knockers for Milds! Mom, I have never seen these in the US, perhaps we could import them!

We left the village around six, and then found some cows and sheep.

 Pretty bushes....

This is an homage to anyone name Fred. Specifically, Claire's dad and her friend Fred.

 Oh my gosh, we have been trying to remember the English word for "groseille" for days! Finally, it pops into Claire's head. Red Currant! That has been killing me. So of course, we need to buy the Red Currant lollipop to commemorate. After several attempts at gummies the last few days, he have moved onto lollipops. I eat about four a day.

We get to the train station on time for our train... and its 25 minutes late. What is the deal with the trains these days, always late! So weird. So we wait. At this point, we are really, really cold. We have been rained on, caught in the wind, it's cold, we've been walking... we look like we've been through the ringer! Train come quickly.



He we are composting our tickets. Honestly, we have no clue why you need to do this. No clue. But you do, so we do it.

This was really cool. So this train platform is literally a concrete slab next to some tracks. And not all trains stop at this station. A lot of the time, trains just come rushing by... really, really, fast. Well, we are waiting for our train, and then one comes a few minutes before ours and doesn't stop. Claire and I were really close to the tracks, not too close, but like two feet from the edge, when the train came by. Let me tell you, that was a rush! It comes by so fast, and there is so much wind and noise! We just started laughing because it was so crazy!

 Back on the train, and Claire is reading!

 We make it home! Oh my god we are cold. And, of course, the building has turned to heat off already because winter is supposedly over, so we have no heat! Haha, love it!

 Our food was really good though. We had these mini french raviolis, and a sauce of the leftover peas, sliced pork, and some red basil sauce Claire had. Topped with cheese of course. Both of us were too tired to go out and get a baguette.

So yeah, that was that day. It was really fun and neat to go to that village. The weather here is not great for the end of the week so we'll see what we end us doing. Maybe we'll go see a movie or something.

As for me, I am now repicking up On the Road. The Namesake is over....yes! But Claire is still in the middle of Mockingjay!