Parc Asterix

A couple weeks ago, when it was still hot an sunny but starting to cool down, I went to Parc Asterix with a couple friends from the lab. It is a theme park based on some comic book characters called Asterix and Obelix. The stories are set in 50 BC and they tell the tales of these two warriors as the travel throughout Europe and North Africa, revealing a lot of tongue-in-cheek caricatures of cultural stereotypes. The humor is typically French, but has found a broad audience through translation into Spanish, Italian, and, to a very limited extent, English. In fact, Disney bought the rights to distribution of a few of the Asterix and Obelix movies, but I think it will take a genius to make French humor translatable to Americans, who have a whole different set of stereotypes about Europeans. Anyway, I had a really fun day, even though I wasn't converted into being a fan of the characters. The most fun parts were 1. Spending time with my friends, 2. The roller coaster, although reminded me that I'm getting old because I didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I did when I was a teenager, and 3. The Dolphin Show, because dolphins are so beautiful, although of course I don't feel good about dolphins in captivity.