Waiting for Godot

It's 6 PM Thursday evening as I write this and as I didn't have work today, I've been home basically the whole day other than picking up some groceries and going for a run. I did not plan much since I thought Herve, would be coming today in the early afternoon. However, hitchhiking is not a mode of transportation that has its strength in promptness or reliability, so Herve is currently stuck on a road in Dunkerque, at least three hours from Lille, experiencing bad luck for what I feel is the first time. I, meanwhile, have been astonishingly unproductive today and am thinking that I didn't realize how lucky I was that the last time I went through this I was running around sunny Barcelona with Lauren and Raven, delirious from fatigue and jet lag, and then had Herve show up 2 hours early. In any case, I might as well make myself useful and write about my absolutely fabulous day in Amiens yesterday. I thought that yesterday would be a very long and intense work day since we were going to another city to "see the neuroscience lab, meet a neuropsychologist, et quelques autres choses." Silly me. Muriel and Pascal, my boss and the computer programmer respectively, had a few errands to run in Amiens so they decided to take the opportunity to bring Christabel and me to Amiens for a lovely day trip. Pascal picked us up in the morning: I was 5 minutes early, Christabel was 5 minutes late, and Pascal was 20 minutes late, per usual. From the office, we drove to Muriel's house and then took the long trip out to Amiens. I watched with interest for a while as the French countryside rolled by, but at one point I fell asleep and woke up in Amiens. Amiens is astonishingly beautiful. It's an extremely old city and you can immediately sense that the city has only mildly progressed in the last hundred years. The small brick buildings line Venice-like canals as creperies, bistros, and small shops roll on and on through the city. We stopped at a beautiful creperie along the Somme river and had a perfectly lovely lunch there. The city is famous for their huge gothic cathedral, but before we even reached it, I saw three other beautiful old churches that I thought might be the Cathedrale d'Amiens. We did indeed reach it after lunch, however, and it was absolutely breathtaking. I think I waste my words when I try to describe cathedrals like Notre Dame, Amiens, or Sacre Coeur, so I'll just end with saying I was impressed. After leaving the cathedral, Muriel and Pascal got lost around the city which gave me the perfect opportunity to explore. I'll write more later because I've procrastinated enough that now Herve is already in Lille!