Taking Flight: France-day 12: Blues festival

So today was a pretty interesting day. In the morning I got up and went down to talk to my mom, who was in what we call "the meadow" which is pretty much a large garden and yard the my grandparents own across the road from them (seriously, they have a crazy amount of land!) When we walked back up to the house my grandma came rushing outside with a coin purse and urgently told me I had to bike up to the little village that i just up the road, so I could buy bread for lunch before it closed in twenty minutes. It was a nice bike ride, and super pretty. I love the view from my grandparents house, it is on a quiet country road along the river. It is in a valley, and there is a chateau (castle) on both of the surrounding hills. It is lovely, and makes for a really nice bike ride. At that point the heat had not reached its peak either, so the weather was pleasant (it later got blisteringly hot though).

Then I helped my aunt in cleaning the glass house area thing (its like a conservatory) for the party tomorrow. After that I went in and had some lunch, before settling down to read A Game of Thrones for a bit. I didn't get to read for long though, before my mom and I went down to the meadow to pick some fresh raspberries for the dessert I am making tomorrow. When we got back up to the house I did a few practice runs in cooking tuiles so that I could figure out the technique to shape them, which is quite challenging because it has to be perfectly timed.

At about five my aunt and uncle dropped me off in town. I walked around and shopped for a bit. Then I walked up to a bakery and got this lovely raspberry cream cake thing, as well as a croissant.I sat on a bench and ate those.

Then, I walked down to another bakery/ cafe. I wanted to sit for awhile, so I bought some pineapple juice and a small strawberry tart and sat down and read for about an hour. When the bakery was getting ready to close I started walking again. I crossed a huge open square (there is actually a parking lot and some roman ruins hidden under the square. It is a funny story actually, because as they were originally digging out the area to put the parking garage in, they found a huge area of roman ruins. It turned into this huge controversy on whether they should destroy the ruins or conserve them. In the end, they conserved a small area, and went forward with the plans for the -slightly smaller- parking garage). On the other side of the square I found a cute little park with a fountain. I continued to read on a bench for awhile, but the park closed and I found another bench. Eventually the time came for me to meet up with my family.

We all went to a restaurant for dinner. I had the classic meal of steak and fries. I got the steak medium rare, and normally I like that, but this one was badly cooked. The center of the meat wasn't even warm, and it was almost impossible to cut, let alone chew. I finished it though, and other than the one bite that took me almost three minutes to chew and left me feeling nauseous, it was still pretty good. I also drank a lot of water. The water is tasty in France, well, at least in the restaurants.

There was a huge blues festival in town tonight, so there were people and music everywhere. We spent some time walking around and it was nice.

On the way home my grandpa started a fight. i actually thought it was funny because he sounded like a complete idiot and I argued very well. I actually got him to shut up at one point. it was hilarious.