Vache

 - cow, because the spotting of one never made me this excited until now.

Right, so if you remember from a couple weeks ago, I posted a picture of a colorful vache and said there was a bit of a story behind it. Well, here it is. When we, the UC students, explored downtown Bordeaux for the first time, we were amused to see a life-sized, artistically decorated vache right next to this gorgeous cathedral. This vache, in fact:

Then as we continued to explore Bordeaux, we saw another one... and another one. It turns out that Bordeaux was in the middle of hosting what is called the Cow Parade, which is an art/charity event that has happened in several cities since 1999. The idea behind the event is that they distribute these ginormous cows to local artists, the artists decorate the cows however they want, and the city displays the cows in public places for a few weeks before they are auctioned off to raise money for charity. Apparently they've raised a ton of money for charity this way, so it seems like a good, if eccentric, fundraiser.

However as newcomers to Bordeaux, we saw the vaches as a source of fun and entertainment. Since the vaches were in public places, they were clearly going to be in places that we were going to visit! Therefore, I made it my mission to take a picture of every vache that I saw, with the faint hope of getting all 60 before they were taken down. Well I didn't get all 60, but here are some of my favorites!

Four Seasons Vache

(spring and winter are on the other side)

California Vache

Vache on stilts

And my absolute favorite...

Drowning Vache

I didn't manage to get all 60, but I'm pretty sure I have pictures of over thirty of these, and there were about five or so that I failed to get a picture of for some reason or another. All of them were creative and unique, so it was difficult to pick just four favorites! But if you want to my stash of vache pictures, just let me know. :)