Vichy, France

Continuing the stories from the after travels....

On June 2, we left Switzerland and head up towards Paris. On the way to Paris we stopped in a little town called Vichy. The train ride was interesting. We didn't have reserved seats and I ended up sitting with the luggage on an in-between car spot. Right next to the WC. And the door wouldn't stay shut. So every time it slammed back and forth, people kept glaring at me. But it was fun! We did switch things up a bit and finally managed to grab seats as people got off. When we got to Vichy, we were hoping to spend just a couple hours exploring the town, but when we got there we discovered that the next train to Paris didn't leave for several more hours. We had a great adventure attempting to find a place to leave our luggage, since there wasn't any place at the train station. It took us a while, but we found a cafe that would let us leave stuff there for a while, and after that a presbytery. At the presbytery, one of the ladies kept calling us the "Obama girls". Finally, we developed a great plan where Hannah and I would wait in the park with the stuff while Jenny and Courtney went and explored. Then we switched.

When Hannah and I went exploring, we came across a really neat church that was decorated in the "art deco" style. It was super cool. Hannah was able to read me the various names of the saints, and we followed the passion story around the church. There was even a giant picture of Jesus that has something like sequins on it! And for whatever reason, the main alter has the crucifix with a serpent on it.

We also managed to find a beautiful park, one that made me really wish we had such things back home. We also attempted to find the natural mineral springs, but failed in the short amount of time that we had. We did find the main theater and proceeded to drool over the AMAZING program they had listed - orchestral works, jazz, blues, ballet, and a variety of others!

After eating our dinner of sandwiches and oranges in the train stop, we headed out to Paris!