Snails

This weekend I was lucky enough to go on another excursion with my program. We are only supposed to go on 2 each, and since I did both in June, I thought I was done. But there was room on the bus and it was a new place so I went!  On Friday we went to Saint Malo which is a beautiful town surrounded by a giant wall and the ocean. We got a tour of part of the island and our tour guide explained that those tides were the strongest tides in all of Europe. So the beach could be 40 feet away from the the wall sometimes, and half way up the wall another time. And it moves fast. She also said that during a bad storm, the waves go over the wall so all the houses are a good distance away from it so they don't flood.  The town is so cute everything is beachy themed and there were sail boats all over.

 This was the pink unicorn place my friends and I ate lunch at. We sat outside and all got crepes and I think I got an egg, ham and cheese one. Yum! We heard that crepes and sea food were Saint Malo's specialty.

 This is the view from the taaaaaaall wall that protects the city from the ocean when the tide is high. On the right, the sand is still visible and by the time we walked to the other side of the island where we could still see that view, the sand was completely covered by water! The tides move fast.

 The man who discovered Quebec was from Saint Malo and this area is dedicated to him.

 We heard a story about real pirates! And there were realistic pirates dressed up and all over the town. This store reminded me of my friend Melyssa who is working in a pirate store in Disney World! So I had to take a picture.

 Sooooo dinner that night was an experience. Trying escargot was on my list of things to do in France, and since sea food was supposedly their specialty I thought why not. So me and my friend Jennifer picked something on the menu with a few words that we couldn't translate. A giant plate of ice came out covered with crab, shrimp, crawfish and two different types of snails. Everything with eyes still had their eyes. I had a whole set of special silverware and it looked kind of scary like I was going to perform surgery. The first thing I tried was a big snail. The "meat" part wasn't very big and you are supposed to eat the whole thing at once. It honestly didn't taste bad. It was kind of chewy and slimy. The first few bites were fine but when I bit all the way through it, I hit a big pocket of sand. Sand. I hate going the dentist for one reason. Because when they polish my teeth, they have a spinny thing that they dip into a cup of sand-like stuff and fill my mouth with sand! I absolutely hate it. And this snail was exactly like when I'm the dentist. I might as well put a handful of dirt in my mouth in either occasion. Ugh. My friends are all seafood experts so they helped me with the rest of the food. They told me what parts to eat or not. The picture above was my plate after the whole meal. I got ice cream after because I was starving. I'm really glad I tried everything though. But now I can honestly say that I do not like seafood. Except for shrimp :)

The next day, we got up and walked 4 miles across the bay to Mont Saint Michel. We were barefoot which was really cool and walked through lots of sand, mud, and water almost up to my hip bone. There was real quicksand that we got to jump on and it jiggled a little and then we all started to sink! People got stuck and needed help from others around to get out. We had a guide who really knew what he was talking about. It looked like we were in a desert and we could see the Mont Saint Michel far away in the distance. I really liked the mud. It was so slippery though I'm glad I didn't fall!

This is Mont Saint Michel in the distance. I took this picture when we were about 30 minutes away.

Mud was everywhere.

This is the view of where we started out. 

 I went to this island a few weekends ago, so after the 3 hour walk, me and Jennifer decided to walk around to the places we liked from last time and take fun pictures. For lunch, I got 4 cheese pizza and it had bleu cheese on it and it smelled so bad. I felt bad for having to scrape the it off, but I just couldn't eat it. 

Jen and I found a tiny short cut to the main street! So tiny.

 This is the closest thing I have found to a nautilus shell (my sorority's symbol) in real life. But it was just another damn snail.

For photography on Thursday we walked around to a part of Paris that ended up being really close to my apartment and took pictures along the way. Here are some of my favorite pictures I took!

 My favorite flowers. I took too many pictures of flowers but this was my favorite one!

 This one with the man reading the newspaper is my favorite picture of the day! 

 This is my friend Nicole who is also in photography. It was the 4th of July so this was my patriotic outfit.

We walked around to different street markets going on and there are a lot of people trying to get you to buy whatever they're selling. This girl was yelling "un euro, un euro" over and over again. I don't think yelling at someone the price of your flowers makes them want to buy your flowers. But I thought she was interesting so I snapped a picture real fast. We ended up getting something to eat at the market and sitting down on the ledge that's behind her in the picture but a couple feet to the right. And we're just eating and chatting then all of a sudden she does a snot rocket on to the concrete. O I almost threw up.