7. How to make snails appetizing? Smother them in garlic and butter

This week we had our second long excursion. We started early busing to Colmar, a beautiful little town in France. In Colmar we visited the Unterlinden Museum to see the Isenheim altar, which is this beautifully painted altar that shows the relevance of medicine, one of the scenes had such realistic depictions of herbs that historians/botanists could identify all of them. Then we headed to Beaune, another small town. There we had a delicious meal including, you guessed it, snails. They actually were really tasty. We met the owner of the restaurant and he told us thanks for coming and taught us a song that French people sing when they’ve had a really good meal, it was pretty funny. The next morning we went to the Hotel Dieu, which showed how sick people of different social classes were cared for. There was also a large apothecary, and most pharmacists of the time were women! Then we were off to Paris. We had dinner at an amazing creperie that our guide Julien took us to. French people pronounce crepe as “crap” though so it was a little confusing at first, Julien said we were going to go down “crap” street, but he meant crepe, it took me a second to catch on, I just thought he had really strong feelings about that street. Wednesday night we went to the Eiffel tower and went all the way to the top, it was gorgeous all lit up at night and the view of Paris at night was lovely. Thursday was one of my favorite days, we started at the Louvre. We saw the Mona Lisa, it was a lot smaller than I thought and a little underwhelming but still cool. Some of my favorites were the sculptures. After the Louvre we grabbed lunch and then Katie and I went to see Monet’s water lilies at the Museum de l’Orangerie, they also had a lot of other impressionist artists, Renoir, Derain, and Matissse. Then we headed to Museum d’Orsay. We saw Picasso and more Renoir and Manet. My mom was an art teacher and always had books with prints of impressionist artists work so I had grown up seeing them, it was really amazing to see them in person! Some other highlights were seeing the Notre Dame and on the last day visiting the Palace of Versailles. The gardens of the palace were gorgeous, and we had an amazing picnic, all the food was authentic French food, we tried different cheeses, meats, liver, fruits and vegetables, wine and desert, it was delicious. Our time in France was over and we headed to the airport for spring break!