tenlittlebullets | Montreuil-sur-Mer, day 2

toi_marguerite and I more or less have a plot for the Les Mis/Temeraire crossover by now, God help us. We tend to talk about it while doing really nerdy things that are... really nerdy, but not conversation topics. Like sampling the local beers named after Valjean and Cosette. (The Cosette beer is a 'blanche,' very light, smells almost fruity, has a hops-and-lavender aftertaste, kinda watery but good for people like us who don't like beer. The Valjean beer is darker and bitterer and I would've liked it more if I hadn't had it right after the Cosette one.) Talking cracktastic crossover is easier when you're slightly inebriated, especially when the entire crossover is a pretext for "Enjolras riding a dragon." And we are going to try to get the beer reimbursed as a trip expense--we were imbibing the cultural patrimony! Literature is so intoxicating. Etc.

Today doesn't seem quite as eventful as yesterday, probably because it didn't start out at 6am with a train trip. We wandered around a local open-air market and got the first strawberries of the season, had a picnic on the ramparts (very cold), and stopped by the tourist office. Once the woman there figured out we were Hugo nerds, she loaded us down with loot: free programs and posters from the Spectacle Son et Lumière, and an issue of Montreuil's historical society magazine that was all about Hugo and Les Mis and Montreuil in the 1830s. (Hugo's visit was in 1837, so the reasearch is skewed towards a slightly later date than the setting of the novel.) We also went to the citadel and took an audio tour, which was mostly about medieval defensive warfare, and took a lap through the tiny local museum.

Tomorrow I am going to try to get up at 8am and take a bazillion photos before we go back in the afternoon.