livin' it up in sarlat, alright?!

[top: brynn, sam, beautiful boy, whitney. bottom: tiff, hailey, holly. best picnic group eva eva.]

last wednesday, we woke up and took off for sarlat, france.

apparently sarlat is known for being one of those famous towns that movies are filmed in. but i've never heard that before, so....

anyways, when we got there, we went straight to the marché en plein air, which is basically like a farmer's market. but muuuch better than the ones in santa monica that i used to go to, of course, because it's france. duh.

["photographie de saucisson"<--was whispered as i took this picture from an old french guy behind me, and then he laughed his butt off. and i couldn't stop saying it for the rest of the day in my best french accent, which truly is the best out there. it doesn't sound like a down syndrome man at all.]

[dear candy, get in my belly, love fat girl michelle. actually this candy doesn't look really appealing to me at all....i'm more of a chocolate girl. but it thought it looked festive, so why not post it on the blog! arribaaaaa!<--mexico. not to be confused with france.]

[mmmm i love me some sarlat farmer's market.]

me, sam, and tiff were walking about the market when we ran into brynn, hailey, whitney, and holly and decided to have a little make-shift picnic. we all bought some things at met up for a feast. obviously it was very hard to decide what to get, because there were so many cool things to choose from! there were tons of meats, cheeses, fruits, veggies, spreads, breads, oils, butters. you name it, it was there. somehow we decided.

[my smile sucks lately. i think since i've taken so many pictures that i've forgotten how to smile. it's like this lame fake one now....maybe i should go practice in front of a mirror...that's what she said. oh my gosh.]

[brynn being my hand model. sam being my foot model.]

we decided on strawberries [no joke, tasted like fruit snacks. soooo good.], 3 different kinds of tapenade [made from olives, garlic, spices, almost the consistancy of hummus but better], bread, nectarines, grapes, and my personal favorite, nut cake.

[first off, brinn, don't laugh at my nail polish. second off, this picture doesn't do this cake justice. i wish i could've just shoved the camera into that cake so you guys could get the full effect. okay, that made alot more sense in my head, but you know what i mean. it was kind of vanilla-y and nutty and just perfect.]

after our little market escapade, we checked into our hotel and went off to this museum about pre-historic women and civilization. wasn't as boring as the rosetta stone one, but let's just say i had a lot of doodles on my paper while i was supposed to be taking notes. what does that tell ya? the best part was when they showed us a wood carving of a bison licking itself and my director interrupted the tour guide and told us how cool this was that the bison was licking itself....? i don't know why, but i thought it was the funniest thing ever. maybe because i had almost died from boredom. i don't know what it is, but museums are just not my forte.

 after this little ditty, we got to go to the lascaux caves. i had never heard of these, but apparently they're super cool and interesting. i guess that inside of them is the first art that had ever been discovered, or the oldest art. they were discovered years ago by these boys and their dog, robert. sounds alittle boring, but it was really interesting to go down in the cave and see them [wasn't technically the real caves because they had to close them up years ago, but the fake one was still cool.] also, our tour guide was really funny and kept saying the funniest words.

and for some reason, daryl [our director] thought we would hate the caves, so he promised us all ice cream later on that night. double score. although it wasn't a bison licking itself. because that's obviously a triple score.
for some reason, i was tooootally craving pasta by the time we got back in town. luckily a couple other girls were as well, and daryl recommended this bar down the road for us to go to. first off, what kind of byu study abroad director recommends a bar? second off, we were the only ones in there because it was like 7 o'clock and apparently that's "really early" and "uncool" and we weren't allowed to sit on the "really cool stools. okay, i'm totally done with the quotes. "for now".

anyways, the the recommendation was a crock because the only pasta that the bar carried was spaghetti carbanara [we all remember how much i adored that.....nawwwt.] and spaghetti bolognaise. so naturally, i chose the latter. and this is what they brought to me.

[forgive the weird lighting, but that's what you have to deal with when you eat dinner in a bar with rainbow lights all over the walls.]

yeah. it was kinda one of those times that you don't want to eat it because you know it won't be good, but you're starving. so you eat it anyways. almost all of it. and it wasn't too bad. it just kind of reminded me of a grandma. is that weird? or a cafeteria lunch. so note to self: never eat in a bar again. i should've learned my lesson from the first night when i had that gosh awful salad with the cold pickled asparagus that still haunts my dreams.
but you gotta try as much as possible out here, so even though i'll be scarred for life, at least i learned from it.
and that's the way the cookie crumbles [bruce almighty, you betchaaa.]
now i just really want to watch a movie.
and eat a cookie.
gosh dang it, self.