La Discothèque

So the past two weekends I have become well acquainted with a certain Discothèque in Angers called Le Dome. Last weekend a few of my friends and I just decided to go for fun. A few of us had never been to a nightclub before and decided it was time since we have been here for a few months and our weekends are running out.
Friday night we had a bit of a gathering at a friends house and headed to the club around 1. It was a lot of fun we all just danced until around 330 in the morning and caught a cab home and were back home by around 4.
The atmosphere was a lot of fun and it was just fun to dance. I am pretty sure the last time I really danced was my senior prom - so it was time!
This past Friday was one of our friends, Nicole's, birthday. We all met up at the bars around 11pm and headed to the Le Dome around 1 or 130. This time there was a group of about twenty of us all ready to celebrate Nicole's 21st.

The nice thing about Le Dome is there is a shuttle that takes you from downtown Angers to the outskirts where the club is. It is cheaper than a cab as it only costs a Euro each way. So all twenty of us pile into the bus and are ready to head out. We are loud and excited of course and the security guard on the bus just gave us that look and said "vous êtes tous américains?" (You are all American?) with a quizzical brow....yea he caught us. Then he said "Américains boivent beaucoup" (Americans drink a lot)...a generalization that isn't entirely false. But we all used our best french and convinced him that not all of us were drunk and so he gave the bus driver the OK and we were on our way!
The night was a ton of fun, everyone danced and had a great time. This time we stayed a little later and took the 5am shuttle back to Angers. Jayne and I had our bikes locked up downtown so we unlocked our bikes and started our chilly 530 am journey back home. The sun was definitely starting to peak its head out around 6 when we made it home. We were hungry, as we usually are, and our host mom already had breakfast out so we had some delicious bread and butter and crawled into bed.
Unfortunately our sleep time was limited due to an excursion we had saturday afternoon which I might as well talk about now.
Yesterday we had a tour of the Cointreau factory in Angers. Cointreau is an orange flavored alcohol, much like triple sec, that has been produced in Angers since 1849. The distillery has always been located in Angers and even with the high demand for the liqueur the distillery has remained here in Angers. We toured the facilities and I have never smelled anything so good in all of my life. Cointreau is made from both bitter and sweet orange peels and the whole factory smelled like delicious oranges. We saw where the distillation takes place, where it is bottled, and all of the advertisement campaigns over the years. One interesting thing about advertisement in France is that they are not allowed to have a picture of a man or woman holding the alcohol in the advertisement. It has to be advertised in another way. When they do make adds like that it is for other countries like the United States.
After the tour we had a tasting which was very involved and really interesting. We had a bartender and he had us first try it neat, then with ice, and then in two different cocktails. The first was called CointreauBubbles which is cointreau, sparkling water, and a little lime. The second one was a CointreauPolitan which is a cosmopolitan with cointreau and without the vodka, because our bartender informed us that the French do not like strong cocktails.

After the cointreau museum Jayne and I returned home and attempted to rest up for another night out for our friend Tyler's birthday. We got home, both probably looking like zombies, and our host mom just looked at us and laughed. We had told her on friday about all of the parties we were going to this weekend and she simply said "profitez bien pendant que vous êtes jeunes" (Enjoy it while you are young). After we rested a little we were ready for round two and Annick wished us "Bonne Chance" (good luck) on the way out. We both got home in the late morning again this morning. We are tired but we are enjoying it while we are young and in France.