Wow, where do I begin? Lacosté is amazing, absolutely amazing. There is the castle ruins of Marquis de Sade, which look insane when lit up at night, and I walked in the mote and all around what's left of it! The hills are extremely steep, though! I had imagined them steep...but this is ridiculous! I will be in fabulous shape by the time I'm done here.
A brief overview- My journey from the United States to France first. Last night was an exploration of Lacosté and it's quaint little self and today was a brief trip to Apt, the nearest actual city (with wonderful open-air market), and Bonnieux, the village that was often warring with Lacosté (in medieval times) and is about an hour's hike away.
The journey:
Yes I brought peanut butter and grape nuts, or at least intended to, mostly for protein (since they mostly serve meat as their source of protein and, well...being vegetarian makes that a little difficult) but it made my luggage too heavy to check- thus you get a picture of me right before security with my abandoned American comfort food.
What I see when I first exit the airport in Marseille! Quick trip (not really.) Sadly, I didn't have time to capture any pictures of the in-between because my flight from O'hare to Munich, Germany was late so I had just enough time to navagate (into the wrong terminal) the Munich airport and find my gate...and sit down. Then we "boarded" a bus to take us to our parked plane in a big plane parking lot (I swear that's what it looked like!) and from there board the plane the old fashioned way- up the stairs and directly onto the plane!
On the right, one of my awesome roommates Lindsy, and on the left my awesome friend Chris. We're waiting for the bus to pick us up from the airport and take us to Lacosté!
I'm sorry, but French police cars look so much cooler than American ones! A few other people were taking pictures too and the policemen were just laughing and smiled for us. Sadly I shot this right after they turned away, but I know they found us "silly American tourists" amusing.Lacosté:
Lacosté from afar!
Getting off the bus at Lacosté! Very tired but excited.
Chris again, and the one of the really cool trees and a house that they have in Lacosté.
A really cool view of houses and vineyards looking over a ledge in Lacosté.
My dorm, Renard!!
Renard Lower- where the boys stay. Renard is a girls only dorm...with 9 people, and we share a bathroom up a crazy tiny spiral staircase.
The spiral staircase. It's dinky and quite crammed...it was fun getting our luggage up. My duffel was nearly the width of one of the stairs!
My dorm window and my two roommates!!
My bed...before I brought my duffel bag up. It's very low to the ground, haha.
The view(s) from the dorm door (the one in the picture somewhere above).
This place is just awesome!Apt:
Well, sadly I forgot that I had brought my camera to the open air market, but I got to buy a scarf and speak some French to the locals! Some of them barely spoke English..but most of them saw my confused look when they tried to speak to me in French and changed into English.
After our trip to the market, we ate lunch on a 2,000 year old Roman bridge about 3 kilometers from Lacosté! The food is so much better than Scafe (Cafe SCAD). Sadly it was very, very windy and started to sprinkle...and I was freezing the whole time, but still- I was on a Roman bridge! Having studied Latin for four years, I was quite excited.
The bridge...and people standing in that hole- I'm guessing the climbed up, but they had a very hard time getting back down.Bonneiux:
This is Bonnieux! Bonnieux and Lacosté used to war with each other (sorry if I've already said this) but Bonnieux is a larger village than Lacosté. They have a functional church and a bell tower at the very top, which you can barely see in this. So once we ate lunch on the bridge and got back, 16 of us decided to hike over to this lovely village. Finding the "path" was more difficult than we thought. We kept walking down extremely long driveways and accidentally ending up in peoples' backyard or on the edge of a cliff...so we decided to take the road. 
You are now LEAVING Lacoste!...so they cross it out. On the other side of this was a sign saying Lacoste without the cross through it but rather a bright red border around it...I guess that's how they say you're leaving.
Vineyards along the way.
All sixteen of us with Lacosté in the background! : )
Getting closer to Bonnieux!...and tiny vineyards! I love how they look.
Almost there!
Bonnieux! We made it!...and my feet were so soar!
Bonnieux.
I don't know about you, but I thought this was hilarious. (mind you I didn't realize that the "V" was a "U"...)
I love the artistic plant life in this town! I want the front entrance of my house to look like this!
Lacosté from the bell tower at Bonnieux!
There were some interesting trees here...with some interesting pine cones!
And lastly, the beautiful view from Bonnieux! I absolutely love it here and I still feel like this is a dream- its hard to convince myself every day that I'm actually here, in France.The next blog update might not be so in depth...as much as I really love doing this, I spent at least 5 hours on this one alone...so we'll see.
A tout a l'heure!!
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