Last day in Beaucaire and we're all forced to blog so here's mine.
Venice was a spectacular place; so many canals and on a lovely day, it makes the experience a lot better. We were split up in groups and told to find the Rialto Bridge. Some of us got sidetracked and went to buy souvenirs instead.
The 'Most Expensive Item in the Square' game was pretty fun. Luke eventually won that with a 100.000,00€ gold necklace. On the way off the boat we managed to lose the nut of the wheelchair again, but some Good Samaritan found one in a construction site nearby which was the exactly perfect size for the chair. Bless his Soul.
The train to Dijon wasn't as cramped as I thought it would be. We ended up playing Shnaps (a game where you guess which famous person is stuck to your forehead). Apparently we transited through Schweiz which was nice.
We had a lovely morning walk in Dijon (because we can) and finally got a French pain au chocolat.
The town of Beaucaire seemed to be really clean, in stark contrast to Naples.
Our hotel is even better, since they actually served us snails (which didn't taste bad at all).
The dinner, in the past few days, were really awesome and they served up a few specialities from the region.
We found out that there was a fair in Beaucaire so later the first evening we walked along the French roads to Champs des Foires and checked out the fair. It involved many people trying to grab onto the tails of bulls which were running past. Yesterday, we went to see the fireworks after dinner and they were much better than anything I've seen in NZ (and it was difficult trying to hold up an iPod for 13 minutes…)
A couple of highlights on the minivan trips was the tale of Tim's chair, the fact that we got lost in Avignon, the wait in Arles we endured before everyone else miraculously found us at the amphitheatre jumping up and down between a few cars. Others include Mr Skeen's and Mr Simento's vans blasting music, and pretty much everyone was sleeping on the way back from a certain place.
One day we had a massive thunderstorm and everyone was talking about it. That was probably the first time the Weather Channel was ever correct up to 1 hour.
We went to the Pont du Gard and had a great swim in the river. Some of us got told off for jumping from the cliff face into the river. Others were trowing stones and seeing how far it would bounce. Others didn't participate in any of the festivities of the river.
Nîmes was a pretty nice town, much like Beaucaire.
I especially liked the castles of Beaucaire and Tarascon. It seemed weird that the two towns both had mythical monsters from the same river. Maybe they're friends I don't know. The two towns are just 1km away from each other, this denoted on road signs 'Beaucaire - Tarascon'.
Carrefour was absolutely brilliant. So many bargains; I could literally spend the whole day trying to find and get the best deal. I mean, how could you turn down a Smart Cover for 10€?!
Today's excursion to Orange (no not the fruit there are too many) involved Henry and Mr B singing down near the orchestra pit and people clapping for them (because we wanted to observe the 'acoustics' of a Roman theatre).
Free time was from 2:45pm onwards, the earliest so far in the trip. Leisure activities included spectating table tennis matches, playing table tennis, cannonballing into the pool, amongst other more sophisticated activities such as diary writing and reading The Great Gatsby in French.
A bientôt
Jason Xu
