It's Raining, It's PAU-ring

Well, I've been "living"/wandering/mooching/drinking in France for what will soon be three weeks, and I haven't started my strenious 12 hour work weeks yet. Therefore it seemed that I needed to do the French thing, and take a vaccation. Fortunately for me, Evan agreed and we decided to head south east, into the Pyrenees-Atlantique department of Aquitaine to check out the City of Pau.

We hoped we would avoid the bad weather in Bordeaux by going south, but that didn't entirely work out. But the views of the mountains were still incredible. So Tuesday we headed out to Pau, which is about 2 hours by train, and for the most part a fairly boring trip through pine forests and corn fields. But the closer to Pau, the prettier the scenery becomes.

When we arrived in Pau, we met up with another English assistant who will be living there, and we decided to check out the Chateau, which housed Henri IV, who is probably my favorite French king. So we took the tour, in French- which was kind of fun, even if I didn't neccisarily follow it entirely. After which we parted ways and Evan and I tried to find the hotel we had reservations at.... this is where it gets fun....

So, we get a bus map, and decide to take one of the ones that goes to the north side of town, where our discount 30 E hotel is located. We hop on the bus and promptly take it to the extreme south- get off- miss the next bus then wait for half an hour for the following one.

Finally headed in the right direction, we go the entire route north of town- and try to locate the hotel on foot. We must have taken the wrong bus to the north because we walked for nearly an hour until we located it (with some help). Well, at least the hotel itself sucked.

Lets see, it closed its gates at 10, it had an amazingly disgusting communal bathroom, no complementary internet, and no food anywhere nearby unless you took the bus (which of course stopped running at 8)--- this killed any chances of doing anything that evening. We got our revenge though, as we tracked a days worth of suburban hiking through our room with vigour. So, we checked out a day early and found a more expensive but well worth it, hotel in the center of town, and started fresh the next day.

(I should also mention we ordered a 5 cheese pizza, delivered- it was good- it had brie- sweet)

So, with one day to do Pau, I basically did what I was doing in Bordeaux, wandering. Stopping. Eating. Wandering.

I did get some really good Basque chocholates though- that was fun. Unfortunately the clouds never did let up completely, but that did create a nice effect, if difficult to reproduce photographically. We wen't out that night with Kate to get something to drink, ended up with a bottle of the local red wine, which was pretty good. I'm going to try to make a point of sampling the local stuff whereever I go, that'd be cool I think.

Unable to find the must see sights after the chateau and the Av. des Pyrenees, we decided to head out a bit earlier than scheduled. Back to Bordeaux- and then me back to La Reole. Its strange how quickly a completely foreign place becomes home so quickly. If only I could speak my neighbors language, eh? Eventually.

Next up, Back to Bordeaux again. May as well live it up before orientation on Wend. Then... the job actually starts on the 7th.