Dancing French ... Medieval Style

We had our second and last excursion planned by the California Center today.

Out of a group of 60 or so Californians, there were about 25 of us who went to L'Abbaye Sauve-Majeure (The Sauve-Majeure Abbey), which is in ruins, and Château Médiéval de Langoiran(Medieval Castle of Langoiran). Out of the 25, there were only 3 boys - me, Joe, and Ben.

So this morning, we all met up at Quinconces and we took a bus to the abbey which is in Entre Deux Mer (Between Two Seas) with the two seas being the Garonne River and the Dordogne River. The Abbey was really beautiful even in its ruin state. Grass grew inside the church and it was really peaceful. There was even a dog that came along with us for the tour. It was a little black poodle.

After, the abbey we went to the castle. We were greeted by a man dressed in medieval garb. From his entrance, I knew we were in for a little treat. Then, when we passed through the gates, there was a woman dressed also in a medieval outfit. She welcomed us by yelling us to come closer to her and she said she wouldn't eat us...yet.

Then, we met another man also dressed in a similar way. He spoke to us about the medieval days and explained how people lived within the castle. Well, afterwards, we climbed the stairs and we learned how to say thank you in medieval French thanks to a Californian saying merci. Well when she said merci, the man turned her around and put, ever so carefully, a knife to her throat telling us that they used to say "grace." (Later in the night, I realized that "grace" makes sense, since in Spanish thank you is "gracias" and in Italian "grazie." I wonder when the switch to merci happened.)

When we got to the upper lawn, pictured above, they talked more about some some medieval French words. Then we went inside the have lunch. We had an apéritif, a st. jacques salad (which is a seafood salad, particular scallops), pork filet mignon with potato cakes, then cheese with salad, and for dessert an apple tarte (which I wasn't able to finish, since we interrupted to do some medieval dances. But before I get into the dancing, the 3 medievally dressed people did little performances for us between courses. Most of the activities required participation from the crowed and since the medieval ages was hight male dominant, most participants had to be guys. Well there were only three of us, so we all took turns participating.

For one of the activities, they did a trick which required me to pay attention to a dice. One of the French men asked me if I had good vision and I responsed, well I wear glasses (je porte des lunettes), which everyone laughed at. haha, it was quite funny. Then, the next thing I had to participate in was when they demonstrated medieval weapons. To say the least, I found myself in the ground with a pitchfork shaped weapon around my neck. The man was really careful, but it was still a bit nerving especially since he had his foot on my stomach. I gave a rather loud gasp when he stepped on me. Then for the last thing, they demonstrated who made the medieval French court. I was king, April was queen, Ben was a marchand (merchant), Wendy was another character (I can't remember who she was, but I picked her for it since I was king, haha), Nicole was the peasant (haha, perfect role since she's so small), and our bus driver was the priest.

Well after our 3 or so hour lunch, we went outside to work off what we had just eaten. We did several dances and it was really fun. The weather was beautiful and it was an excellent way to end the stay at the castle. I find doing medieval dances quite fun.