When I finally roused myself enough to get up, on the day that should have been our Nigloland visit, it was already like 6 pm. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger was getting consoling texts from the friends she'd dared tell. (We wouldn't tell our parents until we got back home.) About all there would be left to do is take a walk --- bunnyhugger was not going to abandon her daily task even for this --- and find dinner. For the walk we wondered if we were allowed into the Parc du Chateau, past the gate behind the hotel. I said I'd seen people going in earlier in the day and as I watched again some more folks went in, so we would follow.
This let us have some time exploring the grounds of the hotel which, as mentioned, used to be a working windmill, on a small river. There were a couple buildings that looked like they were probably once the mill owner's home and maybe a guest house. There was also a fence blocking off fields and other houses, we assume from land being sold to other owners. But the parc itself was this pleasant garden, a chance for us to walk around in mostly shaded paths on a none-too-hot evening, looking at the water and this little boat dock(?) underneath a shelter so you went into a tunnel to get down to the water surface, like some fantasy novel. Also a couple large decorative pools with the water turned off, unfortunately, as they looked great. Some statues, classical stuff like cherubs and Venus and the like. We also could see people dining outside, overlooking the water wheel (fixed in place, as far as we could tell) and the river (changing).
For dinner we had two choices, hunger or the hotel. There wasn't even a convenience store in town. So I put on one of the shirts I wear to work, and figured to wear to the conference, while bunnyhugger put on the blazer she figured to present in and got extremely nervous about dropping food on herself. It turns out the restaurant, though offering two- and three-course meals that looked like what you expect from a fancy French restaurant was much more generally chill than that. We saw people there in if not jeans and a t-shirt and least not much more dressed than that. (Those were outliers, though, and most people were at least dressed up a little bit.) We didn't need to worry, possibly because anyone in town who didn't want to drive to eat out was coming here.
The one serious drawback to the meal was it wasn't vegetarian. There were individual vegetarian pieces --- including the Avocado Toast appetizer --- but for the main course it was something an animal had to die for, and we accepted that, resolving not to tell anyone at the conference this. (Not that anyone asked or would be likely to.) I had my first meat-based sausage in years and in a sauce so creamy that I'm still tasting it three weeks on. And then dessert was more wonderful yet. bunnyhugger got an ice cream, but served within some sort of bread shell that soaked it up spongelike without overwhelming the taste or feel of the melting ice cream. Me, I went for the more basic plate of local cheeses, and I wouldn't be sad to have a plate of cheeses for every dessert. Or main course. Really you could pretty well sum up me by just putting up a sign, ``Bit more cheese''.
After a good while including after-dinner coffee they ... didn't seem to be bringing us a bill, which, sure, is the non-American-restaurant way. I had noticed several other people leaving simply by departing the table so figured that was the thing to do; there wasn't tipping and they knew what room to charge it to, so there. So after some assurances that we weren't dining-and-dashing we got up and walked slowly back to our room and then had some worries that we had done the wrong thing.
Well, on the hotel bill there was a charge for about what we estimated the dinner would cost, although it wasn't billed anything obvious like ``dinner'' or ``meals'' or ``restaurant''. It instead had a name of something like ``floor charge'', and google translations managed to make the purpose of that charge even more vague and ill-defined. It's been a couple weeks now, though, and we haven't heard any trouble, and they certainly have our e-mail and credit card information so we probably got away with it all right.
After dinner ... you know, strange as it may sound, I wasn't quite ready to go to bed. I got my camera out. I wanted to walk some, and alone, and I ended up taking by night the walk we'd hoped to do that morning down to Nigloland, to look at the gate and just ... be alone with my thoughts about this accident.
I would not stay alone. While walking along the long fence of the park someone stopped his car to ask if I needed anything. I told him no, I was fine, we just had come for the amusement park and found it closed and I needed to be sad. This he understand, but he did tell me the park would be open Saturday, which, yes, but I'd be gone by Saturday. I thanked him and he left. (We spoke in English, after the first sentence or two. I had actually thought out ahead of time what I might say if someone stopped by me, and I think I had the basics of it ready, except that in my mind I was saying dimanche [ Sunday ] instead of samedi [ Saturday ].)
The second time this happened I had basically the same conversation, and I guess it says something about the population of Dolancourt that a person taking a walk at like 10 pm on a Monday [ lundi ] might draw two cars stopping to ask if I needed a lift.
And that's how the day that should have seen us at Nigloland ended.
Now in photos let's look again at the Calhoun County Fair, as the day was ending but there was still plenty of Fair left ... we thought.
Here's the Wiggle Worm, which I believe was a junior caterpillar ride. Also there should be grown-up caterpillar rides again.
First picture of the carousel, and you can see bunnyhugger getting snaps for her 2025 calendar.
Somehow this angle makes the canopy lights look like there's more than there are, and arranged more randomly than their actually strongly-symmetric arrangement were.
Hey, Sea Ray was a fun pinball game, I didn't know they turned it into a swinging ship ride!
Turning around again to face the carousel and at least a couple horses with the distressed/wide-open mouths meant to suggest they're straining for their speed (which at like five rpm is respectable).
Some of the landscaping the rides operator puts up to give the place the impression of a more permanent park. Which suggests they pick up this mulch after the week is over and bring it to the next fair.
Trivia: Mexico City has more than five hundred streets named after Emiliano Zapata. Source: The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, Dierdre Mask.
Currently Reading: Mission to Jupiter: A History of the Galileo Project, Michael Meltzer. NASA SP-2007-4231.
