Super behind on my blogging... ulgh.

So... before I finish this week, I just realized I never mentioned our first excursion.

Last weekend, we had our first group excursion to Les Baux de Provence, about an hour/45 minutes from Avignon. The weather was wonderful, and the view from the Chateau/Ruins at the top of the mountain was gorgeous. The village itself is super touristy, but really charming. I've decided that super touristy here and super touristy in the US are completely different. Here, it means lots of shopping and "historic" things. In the USA... you get the main strip of Gatlinburg, which gives me a headache and makes me consider everything that's wrong with American society. Though, the mountains/nature surrounding that eyesore of a street are gorgeous.

Anyways, here are some photos of the general landscape surrounding Les Baux. The big joke with my cousin when we hung out that night when I got back to Avignon was "Ils était beaux, les baux?" (It was pretty, Les Baux). He and Rémy thought they were being very clever with the whole "those words sound the same" thing. They're pretty amusing.


A view from the top of Les Baux de Provence. It was breathtakingly gorgeous. Unfortunately, it was super windy and FREEZING, thanks the the Mistral. We actually wished we'd brought winter gloves.


Throughout the day, they give live demonstrations at the Château des Baux of the catapults that they have (see photo, obviously). In fact, the catapult in the back is the largest Trebuchet (evidently not just a font name, go figure) in Europe. In this photo, you can see that Rachel, Grace, Kristin, and Erica were the volunteers for our day.


Another view from the top of the Château des Beaux. In this photo you can see some of the fields of oliviers (olive trees) and, I think, some of the vignobles as well.


Carolyn, me and Caitlin at the Château des Baux. Again, vignobles and oliviers in the background. We took this photo specifically at the request of our lovely assistant dean, Mama Jan, who wanted a photo of us for the college.

A view of the terrain at the top of the Château des Baux. As you can see... it's hilly and super rocky and evidently super fun in my ballet flats. Oh well.


Me, fighting the Mistral at the top of the Baux

Also, after our official visit to Les Baux, we walked about a quarter of a mile (at most) from the village to visit the Cathédral d'Images (As usual, click on the British flag for English). It's an old rock quarry carved out of the side of the mountain. It has now been turned into a museum of sorts as, inside the interior cavern, they now project different exhibitions. We were lucky enough to catch the exhibit of Van Gogh. Inside, they projected many of his paintings, letters, photographs etc in time to well-chosen classical music. It was an incredible experience, probably the most moving thing I've seen here so far. I managed to take a few photos/videos, so I'll put them up as well, but, they don't even remotely do it justice. The cavern was incredibly large and every surface—even the floor—had artwork projected on it. Anyways, I was also particularly happy because one of the songs they chose to coordinate the images to was the Prelude to Bach's First Unaccompanied Cello Suite... which, as most of you know, if probably my favorite piece of classical music that I know.


A View of the exterior of the Cathedral d'Images


Inside the Cathédral d'Images with Carolyn, Grace, Kendall and Kristin F.