Tautavel Cave, France

Tautavel was one of my favorite places on my Europe trip (I feel like I say that about every place).  This was what really got me thinking about majoring in Anthropology in college (of course I changed my mind 1038945 times before settling on that).   The morning was spent on the bus and one of the girls smuggled some extra croissants from breakfast because they didn't feed us on the bus.

The day at Tautavel started with a brief lesson about mammals and bones.  After the brief lesson we headed up to the cave where archeologist were digging.   We were told what the archeologist were digging for and learned a little big about techniques used in digging.  The view from the cave was incredible and we were given ample time to take photos.

After the cave, we were given some free time to eat lunch and swim.  I don't remember this but apparently me and two other people did not like the lunch (tomatoes and mayonnaise, eewww) so we went to the bus to get some pringles and the bus driver was not happy that we woke him up.  After lunch we decided to join in with the people who were jumping in off of a rope swing across the river - got to cross that one off my bucket list.

After our break we split up into groups again and learned about the evolution of humans (which I would go on to study in college) and were taken on a short hike before getting on the bus and making the 4 hour drive to Barcelona.

(some photos are mine and some are from my friend Kara ... her camera took way better photos).

Carcassone, France

We sadly had to leave our homestay families behind this day, but our next stop was super fun!  When we left that morning we headed to Nimes, France for all of maybe an hour.  I only have one photo (the first photo below) and in my journal I said it was a pointless stop and I wish we could have had that time with our homestay family.  So, I guess I didn't think that highly of Nimes.

Our next stop was to the Pont du Gard roman aqueducts..   Most of our time here was spent playing volleyball and relaxing for a bit before making our way to Carcassone.  We arrived in Carcassone in time for dinner then went right to our hotel where a few people went out for a bit and a few of us stayed in.  About an hour after a few of them left, one of the girls ran into our room yelling that Sting was putting on a concert up at the castle, so of course we all run up to see it!  We couldn't really see anything since we didn't have tickets but we did hear it and it was pretty awesome.

The next day consisted mostly of touring the castle, which I loved!  There is a photo below of my friend Kris and it looks like she's standing in Diagon Alley!  After touring the castle, we got to choose where we went for lunch which was great and then headed to the new area of Carcassone which pretty much had nothing, so we went to McDonalds of all places, but we were all craving it!  We also ordered pizza to our hotel room when we got back because everyone wanted pizza.  Carcassone was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip because I feel like we got a lot closer as a group while we were there.  The awesome castle didn't hurt either ;)

*Fun Fact: Carcassone was used in the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.