When former Sun Associate Arts Editor Rebecca Weiss ’09 sent me a text message last spring asking me if I wanted to go on an “all expenses paid trip to France,” I promptly ignored her.

Those of you who read her Weiss-a-roni column last year might have seen the silly language and ridiculous ideas and guessed, as I did, that it was just another of Rebecca’s practical jokes. But two weeks later, when Rebecca called to ask why I hadn’t gotten back to her, I realized she was serious.

It turns out, she’d previously gone on a press trip sponsored by the French Tourism Board, and they’d invited her back — sadly the trip was to take place during senior week, and Rebecca was graduating. Apparently, the tourism boards in many countries routinely invite members of the press to tour their countries in exchange for free publicity. So within a few weeks, I was signed up for a press trip for young journalists sponsored by the Tourism Board of Montpellier.

Although it’s over 1,000 years old, Montpellier — whose population is about 50 percent students — is a relatively small city. Our tour guide passed several people she knew while taking us through the downtown, pointing out ancient churches and monuments. Despite its size, Montpellier looks like a typical European city: car-free streets, an abundance of gelaterias, craft stands and outdoor cafés.

Eating at these cafés is everything stereotypes say it will be; there was plenty of cheese, several courses (know that in France, “entree” means “appetizer”) and dinners that stretched four hours long. Unfortunately, my options were mainly limited to salmon since I eat vegetarian. I hardly noticed what I was eating, though, because in France the question isn’t, “Would you like some wine with your meal?” but rather, “Rouge ou blanc?” (red or white?).

On the “Frenchiest” day of the trip, we rode rented bikes through the city’s bike paths to an old castle/winery. After a tour of the mansion’s 400-year-old rooms, we settled down to eat a lunch of cheese, baguettes and wine we had purchased from a local market.

That afternoon, we went to the FISE, a French acronym that stands for the International Extreme Sports Festival, which is held each year on the banks of the Lez River. There we saw BMX bikers from all over the world ride (and crash) over half-pipes.

To make us feel that we were truly getting the feel of extreme sports, we spent the rest of the trip kite-surfing (kind of like waterskiing on a snowboard), kayaking and doing via ferrata, which is a combination of hiking and rock-climbing, with a little bit of zip-line thrown in. My fellow travelers were kind enough to leave out the fact that there were bats in some of the caves until after we had left them.

After four days, I couldn’t tell if I was worn out from all the adventures we’d been on or from trying to expand my vocabulary beyond “bonjour” and “merci,” but I knew Weiss-a-roni would be proud of my adventures in France.