Saturdays in the Park

On this beautiful Saturday afternoon, Dawn, Cathy and I took a little walk to the farmer's market in Montpellier. Unfortunately, we were a bit too late for everything and got to see them packing up the place. I guess next week we should try to get there before 1:30pm. However, the trip was not a total loss as we visited a local wine cave and got to sample some wines of the region. The first red wine was probably the best we had all day. We chatted up the wine cave girl and then it became a little too awkward because we wanted to go and couldn't figure out a good way to exit since we were done tasting wines and done talking to her. There weren't any other people in the cave so it was hard for us to just kinda take off. Eventually, we managed to skate out of there after Cathy got 2 bottles of wine.

While taking the bus home from the failed attempt to see a French farmer's market, a very entertaining and quite bizarre thing happened to us. As Dawn, Cathy and I were nearing our stop, we commented on a shoe store we saw on the street. For some random reason, this older woman sitting next to us on the bus said that we need to not buy shoes from there since they come from China. Apparently, there have been reports that some of the packets of the silica gel they put in shoes has been causing horrible allergic reactions. I guess this French lunatic felt the need to tell us all about it. Then when we mercifully got off the bus at the next stop 30 seconds later, she got off the bus too. She then proceeded to say that she was happy that Obama got elected and wasn't it wonderful for the country. I said, thank you. What a mistake. She got in my face (she was a close talker) and I was literally leaning backwards to not be on top of her and within kissing range. I thought she was going to kiss me or spit on me or whatever. Anyway, she felt the need to tell me that Bush was a puppet of the church and he was a drunk. Obama was going to change the world in 5 years with a tsunami of change. Thankfully, she finally stopped talking and we could escape. That was the freaking most bizarre moment of being in France so far.

Below are some pictures I took with my new Hello Kitty phone of Montpellier's downtown. It was super busy and crowded. I guess it was a beautiful day and everyone and their mother felt the need to be out. It was a bit hellacious to even walk around downtown and enjoy the park.

They have a huge chess setup in the park downtown as you can see below. The guy with the striped shirt on the left was one of the guys playing and he was really funny to watch. He was running back and forth on the board like crazy and racing to hit the little clock after every move. Dawn and I watched this game for at least 20 minutes. Behind the players, some teenagers were practicing their breakdancing moves on the steps of a museum and that was really entertaining to watch too. I would be really interested in seeing more of that.
After watching the chess and breakdancers, Dawn and I met up with 2 other British assistants for tea. We went to this AWESOME tea shop with a TON of selections of types and flavors of tea. I think they boasted over 100 teas in the place. The whole back wall was lined with canisters of flavored tea. We each got a whole pot of tea when we ordered. That equalled about 4 or 5 cups of tea I think. It was super cheap in my opinion for as much tea as I got. I love this place and will return a ton! I am so happy that one of the girls knew this place and took us there. I can't wait to go back. I had a lovely fruity tea with like 4 red berries or something like that. It was sweet and tasty. Dawn got a lemon meringue type of tea. I thought it was tasty and a bit different. Dawn didn't like it. She is much more of a traditionalist and hasn't yet found a flavored tea she likes. I told her not to fear. We can certainly find her something in the shop. And, it gives me an excuse to go back there all the time. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Your British word lesson of the day: can of juice = can of soda. In a sentence: I can't believe I paid 3 Euros for this can of juice. (It should be noted that they also say just: a can. So you could also say something like, how come they don't sell cans here at all? I really wanted a Coke.)