So the first leg of my mini-European tour was France. I stayed with a friend in a little village called L'isle Jourdain, which reminded me in a lot of ways of Neuerburg, except that it had more of a village feel to it, which made it better somehow. Neuerburg has the same sort of mentality, but thinks its more of a town than it actually is.
Neuerburg is a pretty, pretty town, but L'isle Jourdain wins this round. Especially since the weather was awesome as well. Check this out.
This is it from the viaduct. Its probably best to view this full size in a new tab or whatever, I think they've been a little compressed. Its also worth noting that none of the viaduct pictures actually do its height justice, it was fucking enormous.
See, its all pretty like.
This is the street I stayed on, pretty typical of the entire village. The house was the one on the left with the white shutters. Apparently in Frogland its considered very unusual for a house not to have shutters on the windows. And if you don't lock them all up when you leave the house, and you then get broken into, it can affect your insurance claim. This was news to me.
It also has a load of old buildings like this, which I absolutely bum. The house I was in was standing when old Louis was still on the throne. Shitload of history and unaltered shops and cafes in this village.
I took this while Alex went to the bank. I guess I was fascinated by the three wheeled approach to this lady's little trolley thing. I still can't figure out how it works.
This is Alex looking a little glazed after we looked round a church.
But this is the best bit! Apparently, because L'isle Jourdain has a great big viaduct, a market has opened for people who want to bungee jump. You just ring up a bloke, tell him you want to jump off a 100 foot high bridge attached to a piece of elastic et voila! He gives you a date and a time. I only found out that it works this way because I was sorely tempted to give it a go myself on the day. Like, for real. But as I say, you have to book, so I took jealous pictures of this guy instead.
I think my favourite bit was when they finished swinging about up and down and were just kind of hanging there by their legs. Some poor french guy had to sit in a rowing boat underneath the viaduct to retrieve the people that jumped. He can be seen in this photo, near the pillar on the right, wearing a white shirt. The man with the crappest of jobs.
Again, view full size. You get a better idea of scale in this one as well.
We also visited a place called Montmorillon, which was awesome. It had all the pretty and quaint and picturesque aspects of L'isle Jourdain and Neuerburg, but certainly qualified as a town as opposed to a glorified village. Those pics will be on facebook, as they take a while to upload on here. I'll leave you with one of my faves from France though.
This was in the window of the tourist office. It seems that, in a sleepy little village in central France, somebody has lost their wallaby, Harry Hopper. Aside from the fact that a family is worried sick because their pet is missing, everything about this is hilarious.
