Voyage in the Vosges: Up on the hill...

Hey everyone,
Its between cleaning my stove or posting a new blog.... guess I'm going with the latter...

So here is the story of what I did in Poitiers, or part of it anyway.. (there's too much to cover in one blog post) we arrived late at night this past saturday and 7 of us passed out in my friend Krissy's bedroom... that was an interesting night. Anyway, the next day we woke up and decided to see some of the town. Here are some pictures of the square with the Hotel de Ville, known as "Town Hall" in English.

And then we decided to visit this really big beautiful park that was not to far from my friend's apartment. So here it is the park....

Statue of English people... probably because the English conquered Poitiers at one point in time during the 100 years war I believe.

An insect farm... remind me to NEVER get one of these in my backyard...

Birds everywhere!

I loved the frog fountain... just had to take a picture.

Anyone seen black swan? Well I saw this one anways... he/she was a bitch (pardon my french)... attacked every other bird in the pond when any of them managed to get their beaks on a mound of bread. One awesome little duck almost managed to outswim this thing with a giant piece of bread in his mouth.. but he chickened out and gave it up :-(

Where babies come from...

The three stooges...

I thought this little ducky was sooo cute... look at her pose... yes its a her I've officially decided.

Welcome to parrot central... they were pretty cool though...

Lord of the Rings much?

Gotta love a cat that sleeps on top of a bird cage.... thought this was hilarious!

And what park/zoo wouldn't be complete without a random guinea pig section?

My friend peter, stealing a really strange piece of fruit off a tree...

Section of the park that reminded me of Japan or something...

Stroll through this cool little area...

View of the city...

My friends wondering where the hell I went in the background there...

WW2 Memorial... Quote from Charles de Gaulle that says " The flame of the French resistance must not go out, and it will not go out"

Goats!

Back inside the centre ville...

Old palace...

Tiny old streets of poitiers!

Cathedral built in the 10th century, remodeled in the 12th century... super old.. the roof reminded me a bit of a gingerbread house. My grandmother would have loved this.

I wonder if the heads fell off from age, or if they were purposely damaged like what happened in one of the churches in Angers... only in France do you have people who knock heads off of statues when they get angry at the church...

Inside...

Mary holding the ancient (and I mean the actual ancient) keys to the city.

You can see the keys hanging just to the left of her, there's this whole legend about how they were stolen and lost and eventually turned up in the church... with some ghost saints who scared awy all the people that were looking for the keys ... anyway now she just holds them.

All the walls of the church are painted...

Stained glass, it came out blurry but if you look at the first gray bar that goes across at the bottom you can make out " Joan of Arc at Poitiers"

Heading to another cathedral... with a pretty view of the moon as it rises!

The cathedral... my camera can not for the life of itself figure out how to take a photo at twilight so sorry for the blurriness.

I took a picture of these two scary gargoyles just before my friends decided it would be a good idea to sneak in to a really large creepy giant gothic cathedral in the dead of night. No there were no lights inside... just a computer that started playing choir music halfway through our tour.