Day 31- Friday 8 July, written on the 12th

Right, so we met a bit after nine at the RER of the Gare du Nord to catch a train to Chantilly, a small town just north of Paris known, of course, for its whipped cream, as its name is apparently eponymous, but also for its horses. Here is a small orchestra [lack of jargon] I saw at Chatlet, not at all abnormal, I've just stopped bothering to mention every time a guy with an accordion hijacks metro cars:

We went to visit the resident chateau, which used to be a hunting lodge of the royal family, and first came upon a large building that we thought was the chateau:

But were told was just the stables. This is the chateau:

and its private collection and library, no skulls or taxidermied animals here, sorry:

First we had a lunch break, actually, as the train had taken over an hour and we'd walked maybe twenty minutes to get to our destination, and I sat on a wall overlooking the gardens with my ravioli, and we sang Happy Tenure Day [though, with the time difference, I don't know if we got it right] to the tune of Happy Birthday to our French professor who'd recently been informed she'd been tenured [which is a big deal]. Then we toured the chateau, again with our sagacious leaders [who pointed out the lion skin nailed to the wall and the deer skulls hanging everywhere, over a hundred in the few rooms we saw, probably], then walked the grounds a bit:

Then about half decided to stop at the chateau's cafe for chantilly [cream, whipped cream] with raspberries while the other half [including me] went into town in search. Stopping at a very strange cafe:

Most of us got chocolat viennois [hot chocolate with the cream on top] and yep, we sat about making pleasant conversation:

By the time we walked back to the train station it was around four, and everyone else happened to be there, too, somehow, and it was another hour back to the city. Making pasta for dinner, I set out that evening for MK2 bibliotheque, a movie theater complex, where I got my Paris Cinema Festival pass and had then planned on crossing the river to see an indie French thing that took place in Venice [a winning combination, imo] but ran into a group composed of Leyana, Helen, Lauren and Layne, people from class, and they were going to the French premiere of, I guess it was a comedy, called The Trip, so I just went to that instead and ended up thinking about death, but a lot of parts made everyone laugh out loud, this is an unusually long run-on for me. In summary, good movie, and I walked along the Seine back to the apartment very happy.

and this is the fish I made for dinner the night before, why not: