Coffee or Tea: Fete Renaissance du Roi de l'oiseaux

Fete du Roi de l'Oiseaux

Well, this weekend might have been one of the coolest weekends of my life. One of my French friends, Romain, here in CF has a knack for finding spunkier sides of France.

So this weekend he told me about a Renaissance festival the celebrated the Bird king, thus Fete du roi de l'oiseaux, and of course I accepted. Most people at the festival were dressed up in medieval clothing...but I had the notice a little late, so I borrow this:

This festival is hosted every year in a small town called Puy-en-Velay, here in the region of Auvergne, two hours from where I live. The region is know for several scattered church and buildings built up on little mini-mountains if you will, and the city is in a valley! It's quite a unique place.

So saturday morning we hopped on a train, and headed to join the afternoon festivities. The city was scattered with shows, music, jesters, food and all other types of Medieval fun. We first stopped to get a bite of a medieval tartine, and it might have been my favorite meal in France so far!

We walked from show to show, my favorite being a redone version of Montey Python and the holy grail in French. It brough back great memories of my middle school years being only allowed to watch pg movies.

Anyways, the shows were funny, entertaining, and well a little bit inspiring. The afternoon made me realize how grateful I am for this experience in France, and also to have met some cool people to explore the world with. I got a little choked up during the flag dance, that's probably why I took 800000 pictures of it.

He had 6 flags going at once!!

There is a giant Virgin Mary, Notre dame, statue located on one of the many hills, so after a while, we took a hike up the hill.

notre dame

After a wonderful day, I was planning on heading back on the 8:00 train to CF, and Romain was going to meet some friends in Lyon on the 8:20 train. We both headed to the station, but when we got there, there was no activity. We asked around, and finally found a janitor who said there weren't gonna be any trains tonight, at all....What?

Crisis/panic Mode: For the festival, all the hotels in the city were booked. Uh oh. We were going to have to sleep in a park, or make some friends fast. Luckily, Romain knew some other people attending the festival so we called them up, and they said sure, we've got room....little did we know that that meant that they had extra space in their car where we could sleep. My parents will probably be mortified, but I guess if you come to Europe, you have to take home some great stories, and this weekend was one of them.

my bed

We slept, well, fitfully, I was sleeping in the trunk of the equivalent to nissan-something-tiny car, so well, I'm little but this was kinda like sleeping in a suitcase. But at least it was warm, and dry.

Words cannot really express the experience this weekend. It was a truly authentic French experience. I was surround not by american tourists, but rather regional locals, plus people from Italy and germany. It's a very famous event in Europe, and I'm pretty sure it's one of the most unique things I've done in France. So while i'm lacking for words, here are some pictures from the awesome weekend.