in which i pretend i am eleanor of aquitaine.

You all should go vote for Wesleying. My roommate of the fantastic name was one of the girls who started it. It is awesome. Vote for them.

This afternoon I had no classes, and though the soldes have started, I avoided them. (The soldes are the big sales in all the stores, which happen in, I think, January and July, and they're pretty nuts. People were lining up outside the stores when I was walking to class at 8:30. I mean, H&M was 50% off. Considering that a shirt at H&M is like, six dollars, what do they do during the soldes? Shove clothes at you when you walk in the door? Maybe I should stop by.) The only thing I want is a pair of boots -- every French woman ever born seem to have a great pair of boots -- but I just don't think it's worth elbowing my way through gigantic crows of rabid frothing shoppers. Maybe in Paris.

Instead, I went over to the Cathedrale St. Andre, the church where Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis the whateverth, her first husband. (I am mildly obsessed with her because of the movie The Lion in Winter, though the husband in that movie is more of the Henry Plantagenet than Louis.) It is so big. I don't think I can possibly convey to you how big it is. It's really easy to get into cathedral overload -- this has happened every time I've been to Europe, where all the cathedrals start to look the same -- and maybe it's because this is the first one I've seen this trip, but it was stunning.

And after, I went to a used bookstore and bought a bunch of ridiculous old postcards.

The tower here to the left is the Tour Pey-Berland, not the church, which is to the right. I don't really know what the tower is. It's just kind of there.

But this is the church again.

Seriously, they're talking about the soldes on TV. They're having some kind of interview in which the interviewee says such profound things as "They went very well! There were very deep discounts, and the shoppers were very satisfied."