Ville de Troyes

Continuing on from the previous post about Troyes, here's the lake we went to after leaving Nigloland.

Lac d'Orient (click to see larger version)

I don't have that many good photos of the lake...most are about the same. Most of the others played ball in the water...they are in the panoramic view if you can find them :P

That night we stayed up quite late playing a game where each person was supposed to count up (the first person says "one", the second says "two", ...), and the one who reaches twenty-one has to drink. Seems quite straightforward...except that if you saw two numbers in a row (instead of only one), that reverses the direction of play, and if you say three numbers, it skips the next person's turn. And if you say something wrong, you drink and the round starts again.

And...to make it even more interesting, the person who reaches twenty-one replaces a number of his choice by another word and/or gesture, and the future rounds take this into account. Which means that in the end, there were hardly any numbers left...

I had played about the same kind of game when we did that gathering in Rouen, but I think there were only three numbers which we repeated over and over (one, two, three, one, two, three...) and I don't think there was any drinking. Though I can't remember whether there was any "punishment" for getting the number wrong. I remember that we replaced the numbers by names...I remember especially that Adrian chose Alvin's name :P

We didn't all play in Troyes...some people joined in the middle, and some, like me, just watched and exploded in laughter at how they mixed up the words :P

And after playing, we went out to walk around a bit in town...so as to make noise in the streets instead of making noise in Julien's place and disturb his neighbours :P

the bridge above the train tracks (the train station is on the right)
We have to cross this bridge to get from Julien's place to the town centre.

a small square (I'm not sure whether it's actually considered a square)
I took a photo just because there were coloured lights.

slanted buildings...I didn't notice it then, but later on Julien pointed out several other slanted buildings to us...it seems to be a speciality of Troyes

a don't-know-what tower

in front of that tower

Camille taking over as photographer
I like this photo...the heads make a nice "curve"! Haha...

the town hall

opposite the town hall

After that we went back...it was about 4am, I think. The next day we woke up around 11am or noon and went out after lunch to visit the rest of the town (what we could before leaving).

I like this view ^_^

zoom on the fountain

We saw Popeye's driving school. Hey...I didn't know Popeye could drive :P

something in town...

just a street

See how the buildings slant?

a church

the church's name :P

Group photo!
Sitting, from left: Alex, Sabrina, Marion, Antoine, yours truly, Wenxiang, Yi, Camille
The two Egyptians (or Egyptian-wannabes :P ), from left: Damien and Julien
Photographer: Julie

a nice house with flowers

another one...it's summer, after all

the cathedral (under construction, as usual...)

another street

some building

After walking around town, we went to the train station to see off Antoine and Wenxiang...and then Camille and those of us who came from Lyon left by car. Damien and Julie stayed on a bit...but as for what they did I can no longer say because I wasn't there :P

All in all, a nice but tiring weekend..the heat didn't help! But it didn't rain, which was lucky for us, otherwise we would have had to find other plans...

Adventure in Nigloland

Okay, I have decided to put up some recent photos among the older ones. ('Cos otherwise everything will be posted too late)

Two weeks ago a group of us went to visit Julien in Troyes for the weekend. Since we're all doing our internship in various parts of France, we went there after work on Friday, either by train or by car. From Lyon there were five of us going, so we went by car. Alex drove (why do I always seem to manage to be driven by an Alex? :P )...the journey took a little less than 4 hours.

(Troyes is read "trua", like the number 3 (trois) in French)

I didn't take any photos the first night, only started on Saturday...this was before breakfast on Saturday, I believe Yi was in the bathroom an Marion wasn't up yet (of course she was awake with us making noise and moving around, but since there was only one bathroom anyway...why get up earlier than necessary?)

Wenxiang and Julien ready for breakfast

Antoine reading a comic (not those kids' ones like Doraemon :P) recommended by Julien

With the seven of us (did you manage to count the seven? :P ) there were four others...two couples who decided to get a hotel room instead of squeezing into Julien's place with us. They joined us for breakfast (the night before we had decided on 9am, I believe), and after breakfast we set off for Nigloland.

There were eleven of us so we had to go in three cars (the seat-belt rule is highly reinforced in France). Yi and I went with Alex and Sabrina (like from Lyon), while Marion who also came from Lyon with us went with Damien and Julie, the other couple, and Julien (the host if you've forgotten), and the other three were in Camille's car.

And somehow our host ditched us ( :P ) after giving each driver the address of Nigloland. And we ended up turning around in little village lanes...and with the help of a GPS and some iPhones (I think) we managed to find the park...it was tucked somewhere in the little villages. While looking for the place, at one time there was absolutely no phone signal in the area...when one of the others (in the car that didn't get "lost") tried to call us, she ended up on each of our voice mails...

Anyway, the reason we had to go turning around was probably because we took the wrong exit out of the highway...it seems that there was another exit further on that had easier access to the park.

(By the way, when I said our host ditched us, it was just that he was in the car that didn't get lost :P )

the other car when we were at the toll

So finally we reached Nigloland (it's a family theme park, you will see), just a few minutes later than the others, actually.

Nigloland!

inside the entrance

souvenir shops (a restaurant is just beside it, on the left)

the train station to take the mini train for a tour around the park
(it's just opposite the souvenir shop)

posing time (I guess some of them were posing...I gave them sufficient warning)
By the way, the green thing is a dustbin, I had to include it to have the station nicely framed :P

The train arrives!

A warning for us to sit still in the train...which we didn't exactly follow...

Camille taking photos...

...of me taking photos

our carriage

racing cars...okay, "racing" cars :P

some floating thing, I believe

There were even deer ^_^

outside

Those were taken from the mini-train...the following were from when we were walking around afterwards.

The Canadian village...the park is actually divided into a few villages, but the only village name we kept coming across was the Canadian one.

wigwams...with ponies going around it (mechanical ones...you can see one in the photo)

the pirate ship

In a fit of craziness I decided to get on it (after checking that it didn't turn people upside-down). But it was still too much for me...I am never doing that again :s

Then there was the Canadian river (why on earth do they call it a Canadian river? What do we call it in M'sia? It's that thing where you get into a sort of boat and slide down a water slide, landing with a splash at the bottom) where we got absolutely wet (and cooled down a bit in the hot day), and where Camille decided to incur my wrath by splashing water on me. He will never forget it to his dying day... >:E (okay that smiley is supposed to be a devil baring fangs but I'm not sure whether most people can see it...)


This was the only place in Nigloland where we took an actual group photo...with one person missing each time (since we need a cameraman, eh?)

From left: Alex, Sabrina, Julien, Marion, Camille (in front), Antoine, Yi, Julie, Damien and Wenxiang
And yours truly the photographer this time.

And the main attraction of the park (a rather recent one, I think), which they call the Grizzli, illustrated with the grizzly bear in the middle.

It went up to the end, came down...

...went over this bump, and did about the same thing on the other side.

I didn't dare to go on it (especially after the pirate ship, even though later they said this one was less scary), so I took photos of the others instead.

Maybe you can spot the two other people who didn't go onto this attraction either (with some help from the group photo :P )

Some of the others wanted to play bumper cars...but it was only for those between 0.9m and 1.4m tall. We went there anyway...we couldn't play but we spotted some interesting seats.

Cars? Seats? Carseats?

another one

It even has a number plate!

my turn :P

And there was this attraction that seemed awfully harmless...until I sat down in one of those "apples".


So I escaped while I could...and stayed on land to take photos of the others instead. -_-



Then we went to the ferris wheel. It went higher, but it was safer...I mean, you're inside a cage!

from the ferris wheel

another one...

The bluish thing going round and round is the bobsleigh...I didn't go on that one either. It was because right after the bumper car place (I think) we went to an attraction called Spatiale Experience (a lame attempt at using an English name) which was a kind of Space Mountain, and which shook me all over the place (I felt shaky when I got out). The worst about it was that it was inside a huge tall building, and we had no idea what was inside. It was pitch-black inside, so we never knew what was coming next. If I had known I doubt that I'd have done it...

Anyway, the space mountain thing was one of the few attractions where those under 1.4 metres tall had to be accompanied by an adult. After the scare in there, when I saw that the bobsleigh had the same rule, I decided against doing it...

Okay, after that little digression, here are the others in the ferris wheel (there were eleven of us, so we had to take two cabins...)


By the way, I just realised while writing this post that I didn't take a photo of the ferris wheel from afar :/

There were also some fake animals in the park (as opposed to the live deer).

Elephants on an island. I liked these...they could move! They were part of the safari attraction, I think.

T-Rex!
(This was taken through the fence of the park...we didn't go to that part of the park, just passed it while walking between the car park and the entrance.)

So that was Nigloland...we didn't do all the attractions, after that we went to a lake somewhere between Nigloland and Troyes (I can't remember how long we took to get to Nigloland...maybe 45 minutes?) But that's for another post...as well as the visit of Troyes' town centre that night and the next day.