Medieval city, six course meal, and...falconry?

So today was a GREAT day. NYU was sponsoring a trip to Provins, France. This is a medieval city about 80 miles from Paris. We had to meet at a metro stop at EIGHT in the morning. SO early. Unfortunately, it was the metro stop almost at the opposite end of the line where I live. So I got up at 6:10am, got dressed, ate some breakfast and then hopped on the nine line. I sat on that metro for almost 40 minutes. Goodness. It took so long. I listened to my ipod, so it wasn't horrible. We all got on the buses and we left at about 8:15. I rode next to Aubrey and slept for about an hour of the trip, which took about an hour and a half total.

We pulled up into Provins and it was really pretty. It was surrounded on all sides by a wall and it just looked so medieval. Imagine that. We split up into groups of about 10 to go around on different tours. There was a really cool tower that we were able to go up. From the top, you could see all of the inside of the walls of Provins and then off into the countryside. I really enjoyed it, but it reminded me of Browns Summit and Lillington, NC. Gotta love big open fields.

The other big part of the tour was the main square where they used to have markets where people would come from all around to sell stuff. It was pretty neat.

After the tour is where the real fun began. NYU treated (well, probably not, I assume we/our parents paid for it in our tuition, but that's besides the point) to an absolutely AMAZING lunch. They brought us down into this beautiful dungeon-like dimly lit stone room where there were a bunch of tables set.

First, they served us this drink as l’apéritif which for those of yall that don't know, is supposed to prepare your stomach for the rest of the meal. It was decent, but I wouldn't go out of my way to have it again. Right after serving this they served something akin to bruschetta. It was delicious! We each got our own serving of this tomato/onion/spice thing to dip pieces of bread in. Delicious.

aperatif: kir

They then brought out this salad with this mixture of FOIE GRAS and pork. By the way, foie gras is made from the liver of duck/goose. As disgusting as that sounds, it was amazing. It all had the texture of meat loaf, but much much better tasting. This could have legitimately been a whole meal, however....there were still a ton more courses to come.

YUM

The MAIN course, as if we hadn't already had way more than enough, was duck! Woo! With this duck was some type of potato concoction and a broccoli and cheese mini quiche. I wasn't very fond of the sauce the duck was in, but I ate a few bites. The quiche and the potato thing were so tasty. Mmmmm.

Moving on, we were then served brie. This is probably my second favorite type of cheese, next to camembert, of course. It was amazing because it was again very legit and not the store bought kind that the starving students buy.

Don't think we were done just yet. Onto DESSERT. Yum. It was this pyramid of chocolate and vanilla mousse. I cannot even explain how delicious that was. I was in heaven.

Salivating NOW.

Finally, we had some small doughy things that I really don't know what they were. They were pretty good, but we were all STUFFED beyond belief at this point.

Then we had espresso. Perfect ending to a perfect meal. Don't worry, I do not eat this much food on a regular basis. All of this food is probably more than I eat in one day here. Yikes! But it sure was delicious. I can't even explain.

After lunch, we went to a medieval falconry show! It was so lame and ridiculous that it was actually fun. The first five rows were filled up with kids probably in middle school...and then there were the college kids! We felt really mature, obviously.

All in all, Provins was a solid trip.