Jours 3 & 4...

        Yesterday was an excursion day through the Loire valley to the Abbaye de Fontevraud and to eat lunch in a troglodyte restaurant.
    
       The countryside was just as beautiful as the abbey in my opinion. There were fields upon fields of grapes and ripe sunflowers. One thing that I learned on the road was that the highway systems here are private, which means we passed through probably two toll booths.

The history of the place was overwhelming. First constructed in 1105, the complex has several architectural styles: primarily Romanesque but some Spanish and other styles had been constructed later. Napoleon had the place converted into a prison, and it remained one until the mid 20th century. It has since been refurbished and there was no sign that it had once been a prison. The humorous part of the tour came when we were walking through the garden and found several different plants once used by the people there, one of which was Canabis Sativa (for it's useful fiber of course..)

After the abbey, we drove to the troglodyte. 

        A troglodyte is a restaurant inside of a cave. In this specific region there were many limestone quarries that people had turned into either houses, or they used them for growing mushrooms (champignon) and snails (escargot).

        Our meal consisted of mostly mushrooms served in several ways, pulled pork, bread with ham and melted cheese, oysters, salad, and an amazing apple tart for desert!

Today was Sunday, which meant that everything was closed! So a group of us decided to picnic out at the Lac de Maine. We ate and got into the lake! In the lake we splashed around and categorized each other by drink.. I was obviously Long Island Iced Tea. ;) Afterwards, we sat by the river and talked. It was a pretty laid back day (like every day here), but no less interesting.

Kevin