Blogger Decided to Load in French Today.

I can't figure out why, but blogger has decided to load in French. I'll see how far I can get before it drives me crazy, or I accidentally delete something.

On Saturday, I did laundry first thing in the morning, then headed out for the day. First, I walked to the main downtown area, Place de Jaude. There's a big empty (paved) square, with tons and tons of restaurants, shops, a movie theater, a mall. I still don't think I couldn't have driven there, but my sense of direction seems better on foot these days (more time to make decisions!). This picture was taken on the way to Place de Jaude. I was almost tempted...

But no, the pastries didn't tempt me. The purses and shoes did, though!!! When I walk into the shops, they salespeople try to help me, and I say I don't speak French, and then they're either really helpful or really suspicious, and keep trying to help me in French. I walked around for a long time and made a couple of purchases.

I took the tram back to the hotel, since there's a stop directly in front of the hotel. I won't say I mastered the system -- I got a ticket and got on, so I was legit. But I think you're supposed to get your ticket validated when you get on by inserting it in this machine when you get on, but I couldn't get it to print anything. Oh well -- that's for next time.

After I got back, I decided to drive up to the top of Puy de Dome. I probably should have had a more extensive map, but it was ok just following signs. Of course, on the way back, there weren't signs saying "you came from this way," so that was a little more challenging.

So I am driving up this mountain and the car beeps at me. (My first thought -- what did I hit?) Turns out it's FREEZING cold and insanely windy up there. The car tried to give me some message that I interpreted as "it's cold and there's a chance of ice." The views were gorgeous. A little hazy, as you can see in the pictures. I had to go back to the car to change rolls of film, because my fingers were freezing. I wasn't thinking about it being so cold up there, so I hadn't brought my coat or gloves. All I had was the light corduroy jacket I was wearing when it was 60 degrees back in town.

It was funny to see the snow. Since it's so cold and windy, you could see on the branches of trees of trees that the side of the branch that got sun were clear; the other half was covered with ice. I've also never seen such wind-blown ice as on the photo of the fence.

I got a couple of quick pictures of Clermont-Ferrand from above at a pull off on the way back down the hill into town. That's Clermont with the big black church in the middle of it.

Now, I'm trying to work on a midterm for an MBA class. It's about the last thing I want to be doing on a Sunday afternoon in France. Needless to say, it's going very slowly. It's got to be in on Tuesday night.