Le Mont Dore

Hello! Sorry, I've apparently (according to father) been quite slack, blog-wise, so here I am, making you all happy again :)

Okay, so yesterday Koly and Francoise took me on a little road trip (well, a 2 hour drive, anyway) to the Puy de Dome, which is this massive extinct volcano in my region, Massif Central. It was gorgeous, though it was a fairly cloudy day (c'est dommage), so we couldn't actually see the entire thing. It's been really sunny here for the last couple of days (I'm even wearing a t-shirt today... it's 15°C), but the Puy de Dome and the surrounding mountains were still covered in snow. There was even a huge lake, completely frozen! It was beautfiul.

My favourite thing about driving through the mountains, were all the little, medieval towns that we came across. They were everywhere, just these small, crumbling villages, each with their own rustic chapel, a patisserie, rolling hills full of grazing cattle, and, in a few, a castle! In fact, yesterday I saw a total of 6 chateaux. They are all so beautiful and interesting, each in their own way. I wouldve loved to have actually visited one, but only a few are open to the public.

After driving around the mountains for a while, we reached this cute, not too little, town called Mont Dore. I think it is my favourite place taht I have visited in France so far. It just felt so incredibly French! It was a ski resort style village, so it was extremely busy, and full of cute little Frenchies all rugged up in coloured 90's style ski suits. After finding a park (it took forever!!) we went to the local creperie for, you guessed it, crepes. I ordered one calle 'La Parisienne'. It came with this delisciously gritty vanilla bean icecream and thick melted dark chocolate. It was fabulous. Afterwards, we went for a stroll through the town. There were little outoor stalls everywhere, selling various local cheeses and dried meats and jams. We stopped at one, and Koly explained to the little toothless cheese selling man, that I was Australian. For some reason whenever French people hear that, they get super excited, so he exclaimed "Australienne! J'adore Australie!!" or something like that, and started cutting off all these bits of cheese and shoving them at me, saying "Gout!! Taste!! Gout! C'est bon? Oui, oui, c'est bon!" It was very nice and very cute and, despite my general loathing of cheese, a lot of them were actually very good... they were like that nice strong "number 5 only" cheddar cheese that Grandpa always buys.

Anyway, it started to snow, so Koly rushed us back to the car.. I think he was scared we'd get snowed in or something, and we went home. It was a great day. I really loved Mont Dore. I want to go back and see it all in the summer. It will be gorgeous, and you can probably take little peddle boats or something out on the lake :)

Tata et aurevoir,

Jess

PS. There are photos below!!