Day trip to Provins, etc

Thursday night Anne and I went to Syphax Cafe, a bar I walk by almost every single day. It' usually packed, with people spilling out onto the streets, because they have drinks for 1.5 euro every day. Legit. I finally got to check it out, and it was okay. There were some cool people but there was this 60 year old man that kept hitting on both of us. He was carrying a flag to protest American capitalists taking over his farm or some shit like that, and kept waving it in our faces, on purpose. And he would not stop talking to us. We ran away from him a few times, and he kept following us and invited us home to his house in Bretagne. EW. We finally just left because he would not leave us alone, and it was raining.


Friday I had to be up at 6:45am to leave for Provins. I slept the whole bus ride there, and when we arrived, it was so much colder than I expected it to be. I did not layer enough at all especially because I was so hot the whole day before. It was cold and windy, and it kept looking like it was going to rain, so walking around and touring medieval castles and buildings was not exactly what I wanted to be doing at that moment...but nevertheless I suffered through it.

Provins was this old trading center, almost as big as Paris, in the Middle Ages. So they built the fortress and church and stuff to show off their wealth to the king. The church and stuff was pretty cool, but I think I was just way too cold, hungry, and miserable to appreciate any of it. All I wanted to do was be inside somewhere warm, with some alcohol to warm up my blood and some delish food.

But my wish was granted! At noon, the approximately 100 NYU students on this trip met up at the banquet hall in the town, which was the old hospital/place for poor people, etc. Apparently the town only opens it a few times a year now, like only for special occasions. Like us.

We started with a delish aperatif, a red wine with cassis: 

And of course, we kept pouring copious amounts of wine throughout the meal. I ran to steal a bottle from an empty table:

And then they delivered these flaky breadsticks with tomato dipping sauce, almost like French bruschetta? One of them had ham in it, but I ate in anyways.

 The next course was salad with meat covered in a flaky crust...we thought this was our main course, the duck that we ordered. 

But no, halfway through, one of the program leaders comes over and tells us that according to the menu, this is course 2 of 5, and it's actually foie gras??? And then someone later tells us no, it was actually pork. Haha woops. Still not my favorite meat by a longshot, but whatever. I didn't die.


The next course was our duck, with some sort of sauce? Haha. And a potato pastry and a broccoli quiche type thing on the side.

If that wasn't enough already, they brought out a brie plate next. And then came our dessert: this amazing chocolate mousse thing with some sort of crust, maybe nougat? It had an orange sauce all over it and random fruit on the side. Amazing. And then, if that wasn't enough, they brought out little cakes and meringues. And then coffee...and finally our meal was complete. Good work NYU, getting us drunk and stuffed on a day trip. For free. (Or I guess, included in the insane tuition.)

After a meeting about upcoming cultural activities, we were taken to a falconry show. SO RANDOM. There was some sort of medieval plotline going on that no one could understand, so we basically watched big ass birds fly around crazily over our heads for an hour. It was kind of cool.

After the show, we had an hour or so to walk around Provins and explore. And the SUN came out. So much better.

Then, finally, it was time for the bus ride home. I fell asleep the whole way home, too. I was supposed to go to my cousin's house for Shabbat dinner, but I was too tired and wanted to go out. So after resting a little longer, I met up with Ali on Rue Princesse. The night was a little weird and essentially uneventful for me, but other people met up with us. It started raining too, ugh. But there was this weird bottle of alcohol with a snake inside:

And I took these delicious caramel shots at The Frog and The Princess! A pitcher of beer and 4 shots for 26 euro. So good. Def going back to that bar soon.