So, Where Was I?

I didn't mean for that title to be a pun, but I guess it kind of is. Anyway, I really need to catch up on blog entries so I figured I'd do a rundown of a bunch of cities.

No pictures (yet); my ipad is still being a princess about charging properly. It appears that it will only charge at a snail's pace, and even then it will only do so if it is completely turned off and left to its own devices.  I'm telling you--princess. Hopefully once I get it charged to an acceptable level (and really, I'm not being picky at this point; 40% will feel downright extravagant) I can come back and pop some photos in here for those of you who hate words and prefer (pretty?) pictures.

So, here is a very brief breakdown of what I was up to one or two weeks ago.

Montpellier (May 12-15)
A vacation from my vacation--awesome! I stayed with my cousin Nick and hung out with him, my Aunt Linda, Uncle Ed, cousin Chris, and his girlfriend Stephanie. I did not have to plan anything, find anything, or do any sort of errands. It. Was. Awesome.

We had some great dinners, explored Montpellier, and did a really interesting wine tour in the Pic St Loup region. I learned a lot about wine, and I re-learned that my alcohol tolerance is laughably low. (I am the very lightest of the lightweights, and after a quarter of a glass of wine I look like I've got a bad sunburn all over my face.) But the tour was accompanied by a fantastic dinner, the guide was really friendly and knowledgeable, and there were like ten different varieties of wine to try. (I'm even starting to like red wine, everyone!)

Finished out my sojourn in the south by doing some shopping, and by some stroke of luck I FINALLY found a pair of black Oxford heels that didn't look like they were created with the cast of Pretty Woman in mind. Carrying them home would prove difficult, however, so I shipped them, along with some other souvenirs I picked up. Packing everything took some doing, as I refused to buy a shipping box (I had a perfectly good shoe box right there!), but I eventually managed it. Granted, Chris did have to hold the lid on for me while I taped, and all parties involved (except for me) were extremely skeptical that the box would ever make it out of the post office. (Bets were placed at 90-10 odds.)

The happy ending/epilogue to this story is that the package arrived in the US this week, apparently unscathed. Ha-HA! (That was my triumphant laugh of victory.)

Tours and Chateau Chenonceau (May 15-17)
Left Montpellier just as the rain was blowing in, and managed through the magic of the TGV (France's high-speed train) to mostly outrun it. Arrived in Tours feeling tired and sort of blah, but had a pretty awesome hotel (not hostel!) room.

Went to Chenonceau (a castle on the River Cher) the next day, and had all sorts of plans to write a very historically informative and hilarious blog post about it, but now that it's been two weeks I've sort of forgotten my angle and am too lazy to be bothered. Sorry, everyone. But eventually there will be pretty pictures to make up for it!

Rennes (May 17-18)
I had zero attachment to Rennes--it was mostly a convenient stop-off for seeing Mont St. Michel the next day. So, as often happens with these things, Rennes ended up being a fantastic stop. It started with the cleanest, most efficient subway system I've ever seen and continued with an open-air book fair. The hostel room had only one other bed, so I had a pretty fair amount of privacy, which was nice.

Ate a late lunch at Creperie Sainte Anne, in the medieval heart of Rennes, among timber-framed houses and other outdoor cafés. It was delicious and I had a mug of cider (which is a thing in Brittany--hurray for my favorite variety of booze!) and just sat and people-watched and did some writing. Not having any particular points of interest to check out was quite relaxing. Less relaxing were my attempts to download the season finale of Elementary from itunes, which were thwarted at every turn. They remained thwarted for the next 4-5 days, so that was sort of a bummer.

Mont St. Michel (May 18)
This is going to get its own entry. Eventually. I mean, a couple of these points might get fleshed out in future posts, but I'm not going to bother getting into Mont St. Michel right now.

Paris (May 18-20)
Ditto for Paris, which was a series of unfortunate events from start to almost-finish. There's a happy ending (sort of)!

Inverness/Loch Ness (May 21-23)
Inverness is located in the Scottish highlands on Loch Ness. In the course of the day and a half that I was there, the weather went back and forth between rain and sun at least five times a day, and occasionally there were high winds, hail, and rainbows (three! Complete rainbows, too--all the colors and a full semi-circle) thrown in for good measure. (Also, the morning I left, it snowed in the Highlands.) I did a Loch Ness boat tour in the afternoon but was otherwise pretty lazy, since I didn't feel well at the beginning of my stay. And then I accidentally ate meat (I think...either that or it was the most convincing fake sausage I've ever tasted). And then there were, um, blog issues.

Inverness was a perfectly nice city in general but a pretty weird experience for me personally, let's just leave it there.

Edinburgh (May 23-25)
Edinburgh is such a crazy, morbid, messed-up, awesome city that it deserves an entry all to itself. Prepare yourself for all manner of miscellany, from Harry Potter to body-snatching to more accidental ingestion of meat (possibly? It's unclear. Either way, I ended up leaving a lot of meals uneaten north of the border.).

The Peak District (May 25-28)
A.k.a the site of my technological downfall. This is going to get its own entry as well...I hope.

And that about brings us up to the present! I realize that I did very little in the way of actually updating things and much more in the way of "Hey guys, remember how I haven't written the stuff I was supposed to write? Here's me not-writing it some more!" But you'll just have to accept it as it's all I can manage at this point. Sorry.

Between that and the "no pictures" thing, you're probably feeling pretty cheated with the "new" post. So here is a picture of a cat hugging a kitten. Happy Thursday, y'all.