A Different View of France

Andrew has been off of school this past week for the Tousaint's (All Saint's) holiday. We spent the first part of the week making Halloween crafts, fall goodies like caramel apples and halloween sugar cookies and veggin' around the house. Anthony took the last couple of days off so we headed out to see a different region of France. We trained from Paris to Nancy (in the Lorraine region), about 1 1/2 hour ride, and rented a car to go from there. We started at the village of Domremy-la-Pucelle which was the birthplace of Joan of Arc. Even being a history major, I knew very little about her so had bought and read a biography before we came. This certainly helped us understand and appreciate what we were seeing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving through the countryside of Lorraine. We found it very peaceful and pastoral. We would be just driving along and then you would see a little French village in a valley, always surrounding a church, cathedral, monastary or abbey. The culture is very different from Texas in that Texans choose to live out on their land and go into town while the French live in town and go out to their land. The structures are all quite old and weathered with tons of personality and the fall foliage was just beautiful in all its autumn colors.