At The Farm!

I'm currently hanging out with Kelli at her friend's farm, Magot (pronounced mag-oh, not maggot, as I first thought when I saw the sign). It is freaking gorgeous here. The farm is about 2 hours northeast of Toulouse, close to a little town called Vabre. The river Gijout is right nearby and crosses on the farm land. Kelli has been working here and using it as her base for travel for the past almost three months. Tomorrow we are leaving here together to go to Barcelona for almost a week.

It took 7 hours of travel (one train and 2 buses) to get here from Carcassonne. It was not particularly difficult travel, except the part where I had to sit next to a not-so-attractively unwashed and unshaven musician on the bus from Toulouse to Castres for 2 hours. He was quite.. fragrent... and overly familiar in the personal space area. But other than that, the trains and buses were comfortable and it was quite enjoyable to stop in every small French town along the way and get to see a little of the countryside.

I was greeted at the farm with a lovely home cooked meal as well, so that was pretty awesome. Shared the Blanquette de Limoux with the girls over a game of crazy crazy rummy rummy, which made for a pretty enjoyable evening.

Today we woke and went for a hike into Vabre (about an hour), where I battled both my fear of ticks (there are A LOT here). I also woke with a cold and sore throat so this morning, and also had to battle both my sluggish lifestyle of the past year and my congested lungs on the LONG and very uphill walk home.

Tonight Kelli is making pasta (yay!) for dinner and I definitely have plans to drink some of their expired liquor products they got on sale from a friend that owns a restaurant in the area. I think my favorite is Panache' (pronounced Pan-ah-shay) (that I can't stop calling Pin-oh-shay for some reason) that is basically sprite with 1% beer. It tastes strangely reminiscent to me of the Cactus Cooler that my mom used to drink). So good times.

Next stop Barcelona!