I Should Have Gone With the Duck...

So today marks the one month anniversary of my arrival in France! Hooray! I feel like I've barely done anything though. I think my paperwork is done though (for now): OFII dossier (folder) sent in and received; Social Security and Mutuelle paperwork handed in, completed, and received my (French) SS number in the mail; CAF dossier sent in and should be complete once I give them my French SS. Whew. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it felt like a lot of stuff (and a lot of waiting for stuff to get done).

Yesterday I went on a bus tour to a winery in Jurançon and to the castle of Henry IV in Pau. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting in a town like Dax (basically the Florida of France due to the supposed "healing power" of the thermal springs in the area), but I was definitely the youngest person on the tour by a good 40-some years.

In the morning we stopped at the winery (wine tasting on a Sunday morning?? Yes, please!). After a tour of the winery (which was set up a lot more like a museum than a functioning place) we got to taste 3 different white wines (which are the specialty of the region). I decided not to buy any although they were really well priced because I actually haven't been drinking that much wine here (a CRIME, I know!). But the wines were pretty fantastic, and the winery itself was actually quite gorgeous.

Cave du Jurançon (Winery of Jurançon) and the Pyrenees in the background

A little obsessed with the mountains

Mosaics found in the area from the 4th century (yes, like 1700 years ago...)

(If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. I LOVE ancient stuff)

Collection of wines old enough to not even still be potable

The cards they use to mark which wine is in which shiny metal tower

THAT IS A LOT OF WINE

Boxes for shipping/storing wine

EVEN MORE WINE (yes, this stuff is all aging in this gorgeous museum-like setup)

An oak barrel that's aging some white wine

The beginning of the tasting

The three wines we tasted (the one in the middle was the best)

After the wine tasting, we headed into the city of Pau to get lunch before going on a guided tour of the castle. This is where disaster struck. So, it's like 12:30 at this point. I left my house at 8am to catch the bus and only had a bit of baguette and a peach before I left. So I'm starving. I ended up sitting at a table with 3 very nice ladies who I obviously didn't know. After debating between a plate of ham or a salade Béarnaise (Bearnaise salad) and between cuisse de canard (duck thigh) and ris d'agneau (which I now know means "Lamb sweetbreads" but didn't know anything other than lamb at the time). I finally decided on the salad and the lamb (having heard of Bearnaise sauce before, and getting a lot of duck at school).

When the salad finally comes it is practically SMOTHERED in meat. Mostly on the rare side, but also with pieces of what I assume was ham that they attempted to make into croutons or something (the worst possible combination of tough and chewy). So I mostly scraped the meat to the side and ate the lettuce and tomatoes. Then the main course comes out. I have a HEAPING plate of what, at the time, I could only assume were pieces of brain (grey, vein-y, sort of rubbery, etc). I'm kind of kicking myself for not taking a picture, but I'll just let you go ahead and google "sweetmeats" for yourself.

Still hungry, I decide to dig anyway. Because what's the alternative? Send it back untouched? Order another entrée (there wasn't enough time for that anyway)? I ate a good half of the meat that was there. A combination of hunger and a stubborn streak kept me eating for that long--plus some fried potato slices that masked the texture/taste of the meat. Once I ran out of potatoes, I ran out of willpower to keep eating the meat. I finished the vegetables that they put on the side of the plate and just gave up and decided I would go hungry. What I did eat did keep me reasonably full until I got home that night, so that's something.

When I got home, I immediately googled a translation for "ris d'agneau". Apparently it is "lamb sweetmeats". To wikipedia I went... Gullet and/or pancreas. My brain is still trying to decide whether these are better or worse than the prospect of lamb brains. All I can say (with 20/20 hindsight) is that I really should have gone with the duck...

The visit to Henry IV's castle was LONG (2 hours--I don't think we even spent that long in Versailles). But the castle itself was pretty beautiful and the history behind it was really interesting (at least what I could understand anyway--the tour guide talked REALLY fast). Apparently, after the French revolution of 1789, the castle was ransacked for stuff and all that was left were 2 forks and a tortoise shell (all 3 still on display in the castle).

In the city of Pau

The castle entrance

I'm not obsessed with the mountains...

...really, I'm not...

...at all...

detail on the gate/archway into the castle

the two forks left in the castle

The dining room table. It's only, you know, about twice the length of my entire house...

Playing around with my camera (but the tapestries here are some of the best in the world)

Gorgeous lighting

This is meant for travel... (you put up the desk bit and it latches and is supposed to be like a suitcase)

That looks like a couch. It is actually a bathtub. (I am not even joking--you lift up the cushions and it's a tub.)

The tortoise shell--possibly used as a crib for Henry IV (thus the elaborate imagining of the crib)

Mountains?

What mountains?

Found this little guy hanging out on the way back to the bus. Favorite book ever.

So all-in-all it was an extremely good day (food fiasco aside). And between last night and today I got my trip for the end of October planned out. I'll be heading out for a week and visiting Amsterdam and Brussels. I had to cut out Reims due to lack of affordable hotels. :( I was also hoping to couchsurf, but with such short notice, I was worried about not being able to find anything and then not being able to find a hotel either. Couchsurfing will have to wait for the December or February vacations since I've got more time to plan for those.

Not sure what I'm going to get up to in the next week or so (though starting this weekend I'll hopefully be taking some mini-trips until I head to Amsterdam on the 25th), but I'm sure you'll read about it eventually. As always, thanks for reading. (Oh, and DFTBA.)