Sunday 23rd March

Got up late this morning. Didn’t sleep to well - I never do in strange beds. Had a breakfast of brioche with a sugar crust and pear jam. The jam was lovely, but I still haven’t worked out how the french eat so much sugar and fat and hardly ever get fat themselves. Then after a shower and a check of emails - I have finally learnt how to get the third symbol on a key. You have to press alt. €€€ - we had a lovely easter lunch of tuna casserole, rice, bread, cheese, and mushrooms followed by a chocolate fondue and fruit. I haven’t eaten that much in all the time i’ve been in Rouen and I was so full. Anne also gave us some easter chocolate - I got a chocolate chicken. In the afternoon we went to Château du Chamerolles. It is a very beautiful but small castle. It looked like it had come out of a fairytale. Inside was a history of perfume, with how they were made, the intruments used, the changes throughout time and finished with a collection of perfume bottles and posters advertising them. Some were very beautiful. Outside was a moat, a little lake, a mini maze, a well with no water, a vegetable garden, a beautiful iron gate, and an arch of roses which I imagine would be amazing in couple of months. After we got back we went straight out again. Anne and Didier were going to supper at some friends and were going to drop me and Ségoléne in to town to go to the cinema. The film didn’t start till 7.30 so we had an hour and a half to wander around. Ségoléne showed me the Cathedral, the old town, the river where we saw a really old boat, and the main shopping street. Then we got a bit cold so we went for a drink in a pub called L’Hendrix Pub. It was really nice, with pictures of Jimmy Hendrix and other famous musicians and singers on the walls, the cocktails all had names like ‘The AC-DC’ and ‘The Joni Mitchell’ and the music was a selection of oldie stuff from Jeff Buckley to Blondie. If only it was in Rouen! At 7.15 we headed to the cinema. It was tiny, and really old looking and suprisingly, twice the price as the one in Rouen. I really like the screen room though. It was long and thin and gave the feeling of sitting in a tunnel with the screen far away at the end. We saw ‘Autumn Rush’ in french. I understood the story but of course didn’t understand most of the dialogue but I really enjoyed the film. Definitely one to see in english. The only bad thing was my tooth started to hurt, and by hurt I mean really hurt so I was in pain for most of the film, but took some paracetamol and by the end it had calmed down a bit. After the film we went to get some food at a lovely restaurant with purple and red chairs. We had to run though because the rain had arrived. I had a gorgeous pizza with parma ham and which was gigantic. Even bigger than Pizza Express pizza’s. Had to eat it really carefully though, only chewing on the right side of my mouth in case I made my tooth worse. And Ségoléne taught me how to ask for the bill. When we came out of the restaurant, it was raining, but really big drops and as we walked it slowly turned to snow. Soon we looked like snowmen and we called Anne to come and pick us up. There was no way we could have walked home.