Une autre grand excursion

So EAP outdid themselves again and we got a super cool excursion yesterday!! All I knew going into it was that there were grottes (caves) involved, but it was actually a full day. We met up at 830 in the morning (yikes) and drove for about an hour until we got to the little village of Cerdon. Once we arrived, we had about a 5-10 minute walk through this BEAUTIFUL little town.. seriously, if it had been a sunny day, it would have been Beauty and the Beast status...it was like that! Unfortunately, it had just rained so it was cloudy and wet. Anyway, we ended at a Cuiverie, or copper mill.

We had a tour of the different rooms where cuivre, or copper is made...It was pretty interesting, most of the machinery they use seems really outdated. I wonder if that's because it was such a quaint little factory, or if that's how all copper products are produced nowadays. I'm not exactly a copper expert, soo...Haha. In all honesty, this part of the day was a little boring, but parts of it were still kind of cool.





Afterward, we walked to a little restaurant looking place and tasted some wine slash cider slash champagne sort of drink, with some snacks that came with a pâté that looked like tuna but tasted like chicken! After that, we walked to ANOTHER restaurant that served us a huge meal, just like in Beaujolais...except this time, I made sure not to over-eat! We started off with a salad topped with salmon, then had what we thought was scalloped potatoes and chicken but ended up being some other kind of bird...then, we had fromage blanc with crème (the waitress made a point to tell us that it wasn't exactly good for the régime, or diet, haha) AND an ice cream sorbet sort of thing, all topped off with some delicious café!


Man, these monthly delicious meals that we get from EAP sure are good...makes up for the crappy meals I make at my apartment, although I'm becoming quite the ham and cheese omelette conoisseur, and my bread-cheese-salami lunches are to die for! After lunch, we got back on the bus and drove to the grottes, where we took a little tram to the entrance of the cave. Now, for any one who has ever seen a million year old cave, I guess you could say that the grottes de cerdon were just your run-of-the-mill caves. However, I had never seen million year old stalagtites and stalagmites in person, so it was pretty amazing for me! Unfortunately my camera battery ran out right after our meal, so I stole some pictures from a buddy to post. At the end of the cave, there was a staircase that led to a freaking fantastic panoramic view of the Cerdon Valley!




Time to hit the sack...back to the grind tomorrow. Have a good week!