Year Abroad #5

This is my final instalment in my Year Abroad series. My time in France is officially over! I am actually back in England at the moment, and have been for about a week. I actually cut my Year Abroad short by a couple of weeks to go to Parklife. I had already finished uni and was just chilling out and enjoying France, but I hadn't planned to come back to England until the end of June. After my exams, I made sure that I really made the most of the time that I had left, and luckily, the weather was pretty amazing, so I got to have a couple of days out, and spent most of my free time in Place Plumereau drinking lager with peach syrup in it (It's actually really nice, you should definitely order a demi-pêche next time you're in France!). You can have different flavour syrups - strawberry is popular - but peach is the best.

Since my last update, I have been a busy girl! My friend and I cycled to the Château de Chenonceau and looked around the castle. It's always nice to cycle around the French countryside, and I managed to take us a off the recommended Loire à Vélo course, so we really went off the beaten track! The whole journey went along the River Cher, so you can imagine how beautiful it was. The Château itself was really gorgeous, and so were the grounds, but unfortunately I took all of my photos on a film camera and I haven't finished that roll of film yet, so I'll upload them as soon as I can. Hopefully they've turned out alright!

A couple of days after, we went to Zooparc de Beauval. If you've been keeping up to date with my time in France, you'll know that I've already been there. I went there for my birthday with Ant, but my friend said she'd never been to the zoo and I will never tire of looking at animals, so I jumped at the chance of going again. It was just as good second time around, maybe even better as there were so many baby animals! 

For my last weekend we decided on a whim to go to La Rochelle. La Rochelle is a city on the Atlantic coast, a couple of hours north of Bordeaux. It has a rich maritime history, and is also the capital of Protestantism in France which is all very interesting, but we really just wanted to go to the beach!! We didn't manage to get a boat trip to l'Ile de Ré, which apparently has nicer beaches, so we just went to La Plage de la Concurrence which is in the town. The old town and port are really beautiful and they are guarded by three medieval towers, Tour de St-Nicolas, Tour de la Chaîne and Tour de la Lanterne. When we went, there was a big fair in the old port, and also a parade on both of the days we were there. I'm not entirely sure what was going on, but we seemed to pick a good weekend to go!

Tour de St-Nicolas and Tour de la Chaîne

Le Vieux Port

So that's it...I find it so weird that it's over. I'm starting to think that a dreamt the whole thing! I'm definitely a different person now I'm back, I'm more sure of myself, I'm less of a worrier and now I really want to travel more than ever. Don't get me wrong, I've seen a lot of the world, but now I want to go and see everywhere else! I'm planning a trip to Barcelona during Summer...but I kind of want to go to Marrakech as well....if you hear of any bank robberies over the next few weeks it definitely wasn't me...