(7 Pillars)^3=343 meters of Awesomeness

So Annick and I were invited to dinner at one of her friends houses. If there is one thing I've learned is how gracious hosts the French are. Highlight of the night was that she had a piano: after some persuasion I dusted off 3 months of dust and somehow made it though some songs. Just as we were leaving, her son (Antoine) was coming home. After our 30 second conversation, he invited me out for a drink the next day which I jumped to take him up on. I met him and a friend for dinner on Monday. After an hour of them obviously talking slowly for me, I asked them to speak normally. Trying to loose the silly American, they talked in rapid, highly slanged French and were very surprised when I followed (or at least so they thought: a well placed guess goes a long way). They settled into what seemed like a normal pace and I was very pleased that I could be a productive member of the conversation.

So with cheating the SNCF out of so many days on my rail pass I realize I hardly have enough days to use all of them. With Debbie doing such an excellent job showing us the area, there was hardly anything else I wanted to see. Then I remembered something that I learned about in French class:
Le Viaduc de Millau. Ill include explanations from several sources:
French Book: One of the greatest architectural works of the new millennium and a great source of national pride for the French.
Debbie: Something in the region that is way to tall to consider visiting much less driving on.
Annick: A really useful bridge out in the middle of nowhere that helps me get to my sisters house
Bruno: What? [After showing him a picture] Is that in France?
After the overwhelmingly positive response from the French, I looked into getting there.
Here's the timetable I worked out that the lady at the tourism office called "inconceivably possible" (quick note here: I wasnt sure if this was a testament to how perfectly these times matched up or how crazy it would be to try it. I decided to go with the former):
Class ends 11h30, Leave Montpellier 11h57, Get into Millau at 15h03, Tour bus leaves at 15h30, gets back 17:30, Train leaves Millau 17:46, get back into Montpellier 20:35.
Readers will kindly consider two factoids: The train station and bus station are .5km apart, the next train back to Montpellier left Millau at 5:40AM (so we would have gotten back for class, but not happily).
I asked the rest of the group if they wanted to come. In hindsight it was probably stupid to ask a group of 16 girls if they wanted to spend 6 hours on a train to see a big bridge or go to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I got 1 taker.
Katie and I executed the timetable perfectly (and even found time for some lunch). The trip was made much better by our musical exchange (which approximatly doubled my iTunes collection).
When we finally got to Millau, the air was light: light enough to easily take the deep, greedy breaths that make us realize how little of our lungs we actually use (que all readers taking a deep breath) (much like the breaths after a 2k except slower and much more enjoyable). The city seemed nice enough, and our tour guide was awesome, "Welcome aboard the tour bus for the Eiffel Tower....no?" and the bridge was totally worth the 6 hours on the train. It measures 2.5 km long, 35m across, 343m tall (cool number trick: # of pillars=7. ^3= 343) and is thus the tallest bridge in the world.