The Chateau de l'Empiri is a fairly small castle, built in the 10th century, lived in by various royalty, and now houses a military history museum. Unfortunately it was closed that afternoon, but the courtyard afforded some pretty amazing views in all directions, I especially liked the one looking out towards the mountains. Photo album link is at the the end, of course, but here is a picture of the castle from the courtyard, French flag flying from the tower:
Thanks to the bird's-eye-view, we were able to pick out several other impressive buildings in the city, and set off to find them up close. Just below the castle was a small 12th century church called Eglise Saint-Michel, which had very simplistic architecture but was beautiful in the sense that it blended so well with the surrounding buildings and had a fruit stand in front of it, like it was part of daily life in the city. There was a historical site marker next to it that explained how much of the church's congregation had moved to the Saint-Laurent Cathedral, which did not entirely surprise me when we found it later. Here's a picture:
Gorgeous, and while we were standing outside, the bells in the tower started ringing (you can see this in the picture if you look closely)! As we walked around the front, the doors were standing open and it appeared that a service had just ended, since there were people standing around in the parking lot chatting and only a few were left inside, taking pictures at the front of the church after what appeared to have been a baptism. Since apparently photography was allowed, we took a couple pictures of the impressive interior as well. We walked around the city for a while longer taking in the scenery, and though I could have spent all day exploring, the guys decided that there wasn't much else to see and it was time to go. Grrr... but rather than drag them around, I agreed to go back since I needed to take a nap before working a mid anyway.24-hour operations began at 8pm last night, with a weather balloon launch every 12 hours and observations every hour. The other observer, Scott, worked 8pm to midnight and then I took over from midnight to noon. It was just a little bit creepy being all by myself in the middle of the night in a warehouse on a deserted French air base, but it actually wasn't bad at all. As an observer, my only function is to take a weather observation once an hour. Taking an ob takes 15 minutes at the absolute most, so there is obviously a lot of downtime to fill. The warehouse has wifi, so I brought my laptop and blared music while surfing Facebook and catching up with friends and family on G-chat. Not too bad, huh? :) All I had to do was set my phone alarm to remind me to take an ob at the required times. Also, one of the team members brought a case of DVDs, so I was set for 12 hours.
The original plan was to sightsee more after my shift, but I had to compromise and push that off until tomorrow when I will have more successfully adjusted my sleep schedule - I was ready to crash after not sleeping a whole lot yesterday afternoon. Launch is tomorrow at 8:28pm local, so that gives me a good 8-hour block after shift to go explore, take a nap, and come back for launch. Assuming everything goes well (which is the current forecast), we will then be done with ops and I can sleep like a normal person tomorrow night. My flight back is Tuesday evening, so I may even get another chance to see something that day. France is nice, but I will be ready to come back to England... I miss it and my house and my weather flight. Almost time to head to work, so here's the photo album link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=341572&id=701905001&l=babccbdc9c
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