Wine Cellars and Other Things French

February 28th: Yesterday two of the teachers from my school took me and another assistant to see the Loire Valley region. It was a beautiful, warm day (probably 65 degrees!) and the river was impeccable. The idea was to visit two castles, one in Saumur and another in Montreuil, but when we arrived they were both closed till later this Spring. In fact, the Montreuil chateau opens TODAY, March 1st, which was rather disappointing, as you may divine. We couldn't have imagined a nicer day in February, albeit the end of February; I was even in a t-shirt for half the time! We walked, climbed, and hiked all afternoon and I finally saw some of the famous Loire Valley region that I've heard so much about.
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March 11th: This past weekend was my most French weekend yet! You won't believe what I ate on Friday with Katrin and her roommates:

some of his friends...

and some of his!

And the funny thing is: I liked it all! In my defense, there were plenty of spices and sauces to go along with the, eh, meat.
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The morning after my marvelous experience with French cuisine I had the opportunity to visit two vineyards with Marjerie, her sister Roxane, and her grandfather. M. Seigneurin grew up on his father's vineyard, then ran his own for quite a while before he retired a few years back. Needless to say, he knows EVERYTHING about French wine. This was my first real wine-tasting and it was so much fun. We tried 8 white wines, ranging from dry to sugary dessert wines at the first vineyard. That afternoon we tasted 11 wines, red, rose, and white, at the second vineyard (color, scent, taste, after-taste). The owner came out and talked to us for awhile because he is an old friend of Marjerie's grand-dad. I was introduced as "our American friend" all day long; many people we talked to were surprised to see an American in the outskirts of Angers visiting a tiny cave, the French word for wine cellar. "I thought Americans don't drink wine!" I heard several times. It's funny the things I've heard Americans supposedly do and don't do during this trip!