Day 3: Not Paris: Provins

This late post is brought to you by Study Abroad Boot Camp: Exhausting Students since 2011 :D

Yeah, so far my ideal for everyday blogging has been broken to bits by the fact the our professor is trying to kill us. I think he's well on his way to succeeding, but nonetheless, the city that we visited, Provins was quite lovely. The city is full of little quaint houses. The streets are narrow cobblestones, lovely to look at but not very fun to walk on, especially not for a few hours, but the nicest thing is all the flower gardens and roses. Flowers, roses to be specific, seem to be one of the calling points of the little town seeing as there are only a bazillion of them around, not to mention all the stores selling rose things, which truly makes it a "ville fleurie" or flowery village.




The medieval city which was once the center of trade, a crossroads where many vendors would come and sell their wares in bi-annual fairs. it's now a living breathing museum exhibit, with all the old buildings preserved and untouched by any modern touches thanks to the fact that it was abandoned sometime during the 13th century.

Perhaps because it was filled with creepers?

The long history, plus the fact that they have one of the few ancient refrigerators (a long system of cool underground tunnels) enabled them to get the title of Unesco World Heritage site and prevent anything new being added to the city. But it's rather fascinating because you can certainly see the new stuff trying. On the edges of the town are square modern buildings , that my teacher not so affectionate dubbed "lego buildings", trying to encroach in on the unsuspecting provincial town.

Which is where this comes in handy

The wall was built apparently because at one point one of the rulers of the city decided to play both sides of the political game and ended up not knowing who was here to say hello and hand him a fruit basket, or say hello and stab him. Since this is one of those things that are rather important to know, the wall seemed like a prudent way to keep everyone out with a resounding F.U.

Doesn't stop the tourist nowadays though, so HA.