Part Deux

Last Saturday, my program took us on our second excursion to St. Remy and Les Baux. We hopped on a bus at 10am and headed for the mountains! kind of. Anyways, our first stop was to the ancient Roman ruins that used to be the entrance to the city back in the Roman days. Those were pretty neat, but we quickly walked over to the tiny, tiny, village of St. Remy. Besides being the cutest place on earth, its famous because Van Gogh stayed at the mental institution there for a period of time when he was on his way to crazy town. It had all kinds of information about Van Gogh and what modern psychologists believe he was suffering from, and how those things affected his work. If you are not familiar with the life of Van Gogh, he painted Starry, Starry Night in 1889 while living in St. Remy. So the answer is yes, I've been in Starry Starry Night. ummmmm YEAH.

The Ruins

St. Remy Hopital

After touring the hospital and seeing the room Van Gogh stayed in, we got back on the bus and drove over to Les Baux. This place is amazing. It's a tiny village literally carved out of a mountain, which an ancient Medieval castle perched on top. We drove so high up that our ears were popping, and then still had to walk up the steepest hills ever to get to the village. We got some free time to explore and find lunch, which was great because pretty much every corner of this place has an amazing view across the south of France.

The view....

When we met back up, we headed up to Le Chateau des Baux. Its obviously in ruins because its so old, but I loved being able to climb all over everything and go to the highest spot we could find to get some awesome pictures. It was SOOOOO windy up there. You have no idea what wind is until you go to the south of France and then climb to the top of a castle on the top of a mountain. It was so windy that I couldn't even open my eyes sometimes! Of course it was hilarious trying to take pictures and not have everything we own blown off the mountain, and I had so much fun climbing on everything. I was sad to leave this gorgeous little village, its just so unique.

amazing

looking down onto the village

That night, because my host was gone, I invited over some of my friends to make dinner. One of my friends, Alyssa, is a vegan, so we found some vegan recipes and got all the ingredients we needed at the store. It felt so good to be cooking for myself again. I didn't realized how much I miss being able to make whatever I want for dinner and spending a lot of time to prepare really delicious food. We made samosas, vegan pesto pasta, and a vegan chocolate tart. It was more than enough food, and we stuffed ourselves to the brim. And it was awesome! Next stop: Amsterdam!!