Part IV: France and the usual antics

Remember my roommate, Amelia, and our spontaneous weekend adventures? Well, we went to Paris for 4 days during July and we had insane fun.

We stayed in this tiny hostel in the 6th arrondissement, which was walking distance from Notre Dame, Les Jardins de Luxembourg, and La Sorbonne, so I made her walk until she gave me the silent treatment.

She forgave me only after a few (bags of) authentic chocolate rochers.

 

Anyway, our hostel was old, with thick wooden doors and old fashioned keys that stuck easily. On our last night, we returned at an absurdly late hour of the night only to find that we couldn’t turn the key. In my greatest feat of strength ever, I actually managed to break it in half.

 

Amelia thought it was hilarious that I had to dig the other part of the key out of the lock and snapchatted the entire thing.

Anyway, when I visited again in August, I was with my mother, who knows about my predisposition for breaking things.

 

We actually stayed in the same area to visit her old college stomping grounds at La Sorbonne.

We walked, we ate heartily, and we got caught in the rain outside Notre Dame.

She actually insisted I bring that poncho to college with me, it's hanging on my door as I write this.

We also visited that bridge that everyone loves to share things on Facebook about. You know, where couples go and write their names on a lock and throw the key into the river and live happily ever after, yada, yada...

Just a single lady in a world made for two.
 

Things got really interesting, though, when we visited a friend of my mother’s in Amboise, about a 4 hour train ride from Paris.

When she told me he lived in a 16th century castle, I had a lot of things in mind. None of them involved a 16th century castle that had not been renovated since the 16th century.

This “castle” was a crumbling building built into the side of a cliff, overlooking the rest of town.

Oh yeah, The cliff? Not a cliff. The house was actually built into caves that dated as far back to prehistoric times.

Apparently Leonardo Da Vinci lived and grew old in this house, but this was honestly the creepiest place ever, chalked full of dusty medieval relics.

Note how the ceiling bows down, as if it's about to fall...

 

The basement, which was too dark to take quality photos, had these statues built into the walls carrying out orgies and murder scenes, there were spiders everywhere, and the plumbing was haphazard to say the least.

In order to flush the toilet, we had to pull these ropes that attached to the toilet basin...which was hanging on the wall overhead. I’m not sure which was more likely to tumble down, the toilet or the house.

I also swore to my mother that I would remain awake all night before touching the nasty, crumbling wall that was so full of bugs and so near my face.

She set out to catch me at a moment of weakness, in the throes of sleep, a bit too close for comfort.