Home Sweet Limoges, Tour de France & Bastille Day!

So finally I arrive in Limoges. The very first thing we did after arriving was rush off to see the Tour de France. I expected it to be a mob scene and that maybe we had left too late to avoid being crammed against sweaty bodies trying to sneak a peak. But actually Limoges is pretty small and we only had to squeeze a little bit to sit ride on the curb of the road and watch the police blow whistles at anyone who tried to cross the street. It was pretty entertaining. Only a few people would turn around and go back when the police blew their whistle a few people would just turn their back and waltz across pretending they couldn't hear the whistle. One guy just blatantly walked across and when he was halfway just said "Well I'm already across now aren't I?" (french, translated by my brother of course)

Here we are waiting for everything to start. (Eric wearing a nifty cap we caught flying through the air at us.) And of course this is before this is before the whistle was blown at us for having our feet in the street. Which is actually a good idea to move because the cyclists come pretty close to the edge of the sidewalk. 

Here are the poor people who are strapped on to the floats with harnesses and are forced to do clever dances to make you look at their advertisements. In situations like this I always wonder, what was the person doing when he fell off and caused all future float dancers to wear harnesses?

I'm glad we didn't go out of our way to see the Tour de France. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty cool, but its over in like 3 seconds. Whoosh! Gone. I honestly don't feel like I saw it because I just held down the shutter button the entire time, so the only reason I even know I saw the Tour de France is that I have pictures to prove it to myself. 

The best part was the parade of sponsors who threw stuff at us. I was sad I didn't catch any candy or anything useful but here's a picture of everything we did catch. 

This one flew right into my brother's hand. No scooping it out from under some little kids, he got this one fair and square.

I thought this lady was awesome because she bought every Tour de France thing they were selling and was still looking for more.

Oh also I apologize for the giant picture of Lance Armstrong's plastic backside. I think this was passing as we arrived and it was the best I could do. But I feel like the sponsor created image of Lance is important because I don't actually believe we saw him in the race. If anyone can identify him in my pictures, please let me know because I think they let him sleep in one of the buses and then pull him out for the more high publicity cities. 

And here they come!

As much as in my mind, I would like to believe this is an awesome picture of Lance, I just don't think it is. Let me know if you can spot anyone I should take note of.

And there they go!

And now for a quick tour of Limoges...

This picture taken from the bridge near where we stay.

And this is a picture of the awesome bridge from the other awesome bridge. By the way cobblestone everywhere does not equal good for me who is a fan of paper-thin flip flops.In the picture below, do you see that castle-y looking thing in the upper right corner? Yeah, that's where I freakin' live! I'm that awesome. I'm not joking. It was built to be a home for retired priests, but now it is divided into thirds, the priests live in the middle, high school students live in one third (we don't know why they don't live at home) and translated, we live in the "Hall of the Young Workers" section. It's pretty awesome, it's what we all dreamed about in college. Living in a dorm without actually having to go to class. Well, everyone but me has to go to work, but I spend my time in the library/McDonald's blogging to you! It's great because there are tons of young people around to be friends with and most nights we can get together and all cook dinner in the central kitchen.

Limoges is famous for its porcelain/enamel dishes. Here it is called émail. 

Pronounced pretty much; e-mail. 

But what then do they call e-mail? Answer: Mail. 

But what do they call mail? Post. 

Eric and I viewing some Limoges porcelain.

Does anyone know how I can register for dishes in another country, for a wedding that is not actually happening? I found my pattern. 

So cathedrals, kind of a big deal in Europe, but round sculptures are new and awesome to me! Please note how tan I am, this will probably never happen again in my life, so relish it people.

And last but not least Bastille Day! Just a few pictures of fireworks. I also left the shutter open for a few of the pictures and got some crazy shots. Enjoy!

You might need to turn your sound down to watch this video of the fire works. I have to say I think they are the most awesome fireworks I've ever seen, and they even got all my friends to stop talking on my videos because the fireworks were too amazing to ignore.

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Up next: An entire blog devoted to what went down on my birthday in France!