Home, but heads still in France

We've actually been home for a couple of weeks, but since the DVD and album of the trip are done, I've had some chance to choose some highlights.
1. In the Alsace the highlight would have to be the discovery of Eguisheim - where has it been hiding all these years. Of course going in the fall is cheating because with the amazing floral displays everywhere, it would be hard to beat this town.

2. In the south, our highlight would have to be Collioure - not that this was our first time here, but this is a really beautiful Mediterranean town.

3. In the Loire, the highlight would probably be the last day, when we discovered some amazing local chateaux - all privately owned and therefore closed to the public, but a treat nevertheless.

4. And then there's Paris. The highlight this time was having amazing weather in which to wander about.

Last day in Paris & France

Monday October 8, 2007

How fortunate to have three of the best weather days of our trip in Paris, at a time when it should have been cool and rainy! Today we walked A LOT! Jackie’s pedometer said 20 km, but I’d be more inclined to believe it was closer to 15. In any case, all of us had pretty sore feet by the end of the day.

We started our walk by going the short distance from our hotel to Notre Dame. We had not yet walked through this trip, so without the crowds of yesterday or even Saturday, we found that much more relaxing. We’ve seen many extraordinary cathedrals on this trip, but Notre Dame still ranks right up there, with its elaborately ornate choir and beautifully original stain glass rose windows. From there we walked along the Seine to the Louvre. Although we didn’t go in, we did descend into the glass pyramid and browse the wonderful museum shops. Returning to the surface by the Carousel du Louvre, we walked through the Tullieres garden to discover a huge ferris wheel erected right beside the Place de la Concorde. This was one of the many extras in Paris especially for the World Rugby Championships, which were to continue for another week and a half. The next extra we found was a huge rugby ball inflation in the centre of the Eiffel Tower.

Nobody but me had ever been to the top of the tower, so everybody, especially the girls gathered up their courage for a ride to the top. To our misfortune – maybe – access to top was suspended while we waited in line for tickets due to overcrowding, so we were limited to a trip to the second stage. On this smog hazy day, this was probably not a great disappointment, due to the restricted visibility from even the second level. Also, the girls felt they’d gone quite high enough.

After a fairly tacky lunch on the tower, we descended and continued our walk down the Champs de Mars – the green area below the tower - and along to rue Montparnasse. Here I found a shop where I got some new jeans, because apparently those I’d been wearing were too baggy. We continued back to the hotel via the Luxembourg Gardens, another first in Paris for all of us.

Because our feet were complaining, we chose to dine close to our hotel in a restaurant on the Seine called la Bouteille d’Or. We all enjoyed this meal and it would have been very positive except for the miscalculation in the bill that took forever and a bit of heated conversation to clear up – you know who got heated up.

So this concludes our 2007 trip to France. As we packed this evening we felt very content to go home and very fortunate to have had so many marvelous experiences. Some of them seem so long ago now. Although we still really love Peter & Margaret’s Mas de Viales in Cavillargues, we were pleased with our new accommodations, although both had sites that required a lot of travel to see highlights of the areas. We are presently very undecided about what our next trip to France – for indeed there will be another – should include. We’ll let some time pass to work that one out. So in the meantime, La Vie est Belle!

Paris

Sunday October 7, 2007

Today, along with the rest of the world it appeared, we enjoyed a beautiful October Sunday in Paris. We started off with a walk down Rue Mouffetarde to check out its many specialty food shops and market. This was mainly brousing today, since we can buy very little more to take home and there’s only so much food we can consume in a day and we’re doing a very nice job of consuming more than we should already. We finished the morning by going to St. Sulpice, which none of us had seen before. This is the church featured prominently in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code fiction. Of course he did such a good job of convincing us that there might be a fair bit of truth to his story, that the church had some nicely posted disclaimer signs reminding us that Brown’s “rose line” that’s runs through the church was never called that and in fact is a meridian line only. Also the P & S on the stain glass windows have nothing to do with the Priory of Sion, but rather stand for Peter & Simon. As well, there was never an ancient church built on this site that has maintained some cult following. I don’t know, but methinks they protest too much. One thing for sure – the line that runs obliquely across the altar and ends up in an obelisk in one corner of the north transept is pretty strange.

Following a pique nique lunch in Jackie & Tony’s room – they have a balcony with chairs and table – we’d took the metro to Montmartre. Once again the throngs followed us and ate up the view of Sacre Coeur – the amazing white on blue contrast of church and sky that today’s fabulous weather afforded us. We sat for a while at a café immediately below the church to have a drink and continue to soak up the ambiance. Our metro ride back to the hotel was “super sardine city”. Every time we thought no one else would fit, 5 or 6 more people crammed in. In the evening, at the recommendation of our weekend desk manager at the hotel, we ate at le Petit Zinc, just off Blvd. St. Germain. We all had fabulous meals and once again ate too much. We would readily return here for future meals, if it were not for the remaining hundreds of Parisan restaurants that we have yet to frequent.

Off to Versailles & Paris

Saturday October 6, 2007

We departed for Paris this morning, once again amidst the mist and fog. However, by the time we hit the autoroute, the sun had won out and the rest of the day was glorious with temps hitting the mid 20’s. It took us longer then anticipated, but by noon we were at Versailles – the ultimate chateau or should I say palace. Because it was Saturday and a beautiful day, the place was crawling with tourists and it took us an hour of ticket line and then entrance line before we made it inside. From my perspective, it was hard to appreciate the grandeur of Versailles, mainly because it is so over-the-top, but also because there were just way too many people. When we finally made it through the interior, we found the expansiveness of the grounds very impressive. The gardens were waning a little due to the season and it wasn’t like Villandry, but they were pretty cool.

We then made our way to the heart of Paris, always a little daunting for the driver –me – but I love it. We found lots of people and road congestion here as well. Our hotel, College de France is as we remember it and it was nice to park Renee away in a nice safe car-park for a couple of days of no driving. After a little refresher in our room we set out on foot for Notre Dame. This is the first time we can remember since the late 70’s that almost all of the scaffolding is gone and you get a really good look at this amazing cathedral. After numerous pictures – you’d think we’d never seen the place before – we settled on a restaurant we’d been to in the past just up from the hotel, called Coupe Chou. We cashed it in fairly early, at least by Paris standards and rested up for a big day on foot tomorrow. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been here. This is a really exciting city!

A Day in the Countryside around Barrou

Friday October 5, 2007

In 2 ½ hours and 100 kilometres today, we saw 8 chateaux, 3 ancient churches and 1 5000 year old dolmen. Today is also Tony & Jackie’s 17th wedding anniversary. Bonus! It was amazing to us the number and size of these chateaux in this small area. Most chateaux were privately owned, so inaccessible, but for most of them the façade is the key element anyway. For this entry, I will guide you through the pics I’ve entered for today.

The first castle we saw was in a little town south-west of us called La Guerche. It was a large edifice on the Creuse river, which rolls through our valley. Rather than a pic of the castle I’ve chosen a shot of the town around the chateau from the bridge over the Creuse.

Next was the castle we were most excited about in Le Chatalier. This castle had all the classic elements going for it: water filled moat; operating drawbridge and spiked gate that closes off the main entrance. This privately owned place had been beautifully restored – somebody had some money!

The third highlight was Betz le Chateau, not so much for the chateau as the surrounding fields of cosmos daisies.

The chateau in Boussay had a grand entrance and was attached to a very ancient authentic village.

In Charnizay, we found an ancient dolmen, obscurely located off a farm track. They think this one was a funeral site, but from our past readings about these dolmen, they could be also shepherd’s shelters or primitive huts.

The final chateau we found was Rouvray, another private one with a very cool treed entrance.

Following this circuit, we finally got to the restaurant in Barrou for lunch. They had only one dish – today blanquette of veal – preceded by a nice choice of salads and then followed by a cheese course and one of two chocolate desserts and as much red wine as you could drink. The price was also right. So, that was it for our Loire exploring, as we spent the afternoon at the Mill and did some packing for tomorrow’s departure to Paris. The skies have never cleared since our first day here – C’est la vie! With the weather, you get what you get!

Amboise

Thursday October 4, 2007

The first picture is Chaumont, peeking out through the mist. The others are at the Chateau Royal in Amboise.

So much for rained out skies! This morning it was misty and overcast, but we headed out for Amboise anyway. We decided to start at Chaumont sur Loire, just for a peek. And that’s all we got, because it was still pretty dismal by the time we arrived. This castle is one of the few owned by the French government, but we stopped only for a quick pic and then moved down the river to Amboise. This was a destination previously visited by us with Jessie & Aaron in 1993. It was as vital and impressive now as then. With all the recent rain, the river was severely swollen, but there are two important tour destinations here – the chateau and da Vinci’s house 400m up the road, and we went to both of them. The chateau allowed no interior pictures, but we got lots of exterior shots, illustrating this chateau’s impressive location. We then walked up to the last home of Leonardo da Vinci before he died. Apparently he arrived at this home with a number of prize possessions that included the Mona Lisa, which he sold to the king of France, ensuring that the Mona Lisa would end up in a French rather than Italian museum. IBM has created working models here of many of da Vinci’s revolutionary plans, like his airplane, tank and automobile – a good 400 years ahead of their time.

No pique nique today due to cool and overcast conditions, so we had lunch at a nice Spanish-style café on the river. Following that, we headed home via the autoroute and quickly found ourselves back in Barrou where we had another great meal to finish up the day.

The picture following this was taken on the outskirts of Barrou, illustrating the greeness of the land.

Vouvray & Tours

Wednesday October 3, 2007

So, today, after almost a week, I finally posted my blog, adding the pictures that Blogger wouldn’t allow me to enter when I last posted in Narbonne. I mentioned yesterday that the posting was courtesy of the Tourism Office in a very quaint village over the valley from us called le Grand Pressigny. They rented space on their computer for 2 euros an hour for non-residents like me and I just unplugged their computer and plugged in mine and I was off to the races. In a country where everyone has a cell phone, I’m finding this lack of public Internet accessibility a little strange.

When I returned to le Vieux Moulin de Noix it was around 11:00 and we started the day’s journey, which was a visit to Vouvray and then Tours. We got to Vouvray around lunch, amidst some drizzle, so quickly settled on a nice place to eat called le Brasserrie des Charlands, right on the main intersection of the village. Tony and I finally had a local specialty called rillettes that is basically a pulled pork pate, coarse in nature, but very tasty. Tony also had poulet noir - another specialty of the area. We had a great white Vouvray, made from chenin blanc from top producer Huet that we all really enjoyed. Following lunch, we went to a cave next door and tried their Vouvray, which none of us liked. Even though we’re purposely keeping to the dry ones, the wine from this area is not a hit so far, with the exception of the reds from Chinon.

Next, we were off to Tours for a tour. How clever! Tours is a large city, but we focused on the old town near the Loire River and found it quite interesting, especially the ancient, leaning, half-timbered houses which differed from those in the Alsace or Brittany in that the space between timbers is bricked rather than stuccoed. The longer we stayed in Tours, the more the sky turned blue, but despite our optimism, we returned to Barrou in gray overcast skies. The hillside is certainly green and the rivers are seriously swollen. Maybe the skies are all rained out?

Blois

Tuesday October 2, 2007

I'll start today by mentionning that all pics and entries up to Tuesday are now up to date thanks to the Tourism office of le Grand Pressigny. All pics above were taken in Blois.

Was I talking about the weather Gods yesterday? Today we chose a day in Blois which is about 1 ½ hours away and shortly after departing Barrou it started to rain and then pour and then come down torrentially. We had visions of inundations the like of those we’d experienced in the south in years gone by. But by the time we got to Blois, the rain had abated and we had a great day touring the town with NO RAIN.
We spent the morning touring the old town and found some great walking shopping streets for the girls (aka Jackie). We stopped for lunch at the Hotel Monarque, a very nice mid range restaurant. The girls had moules while the boys had lapin. I’ll let you translate. Following lunch we headed out to the biblioteque so I could post my blog. No luck! Without hotel internet, France is a tough spot to get a blog posted. We can only hope for tomorrow.
In the afternoon we toured the chateau, at one point in the late 1800’s the home of the court of France. The decoration in these places boggles the mind. They sure had a lot of incredibly talented artisans in the old days. We could never come close to reproducing these works today. Following the chateau, we headed out for Barrou and guess what? The rain began again. The landscape sure is green! It looks more like spring than fall.
Despite being very close today to the largest chateau in the Loire – Chambord – we opted not to visit it, because from our past experience, Chambord is a never ending tour on a less than impressive site and also - we chose to just focus on Blois today.

Back in Barrou, the skies again cleared and we BBQ’d lamb in the courtyard, drank some more great wine and had another great meal – boy are we spoiled!

Chinon, Usse, Azay & Villandry

Monday October 1, 2007

For our second full day in the Loire region the weather Gods were with us. We started out in the rain, for a tour of what are considered the most picturesque chateaux in the area, just west of Tours. By the time we reached our first destination, Chinon, the skies had cleared and the temperature was on the rise. Chinon, on the banks of the Vienne, was mostly under reparation, so we passed through after a few quick pics. Our first stop was Usse, a large castle that inspired the Sleeping Beauty story and standing back looking at it, you could almost see Prince Charming riding through the gates to save the fair maiden.

On our way to the next chateau, Azay le Rideau we stopped for a pique nique amid a grove of mistletoe laden trees. When we got to Azay, it was closed for lunch so we cruised town and had a coffee before we decided we wouldn’t tour the chateau and opted for Villandry and its magnificent gardens instead. This was not a disappointment! Villandry has easily the most spectacularly laid out gardens we have ever seen. They were best viewed from either a belvedere that surrounded the grounds or from the tower of the keep. The chateau itself has been in the same family for many years and is a wonderful example of a nobleman’s versus a royal residence. Our drive home via the autoroute was a quick hour where we arrived in rain that we had eluded all day. Thanks to a stop at Chinon’s E. LeClerc supermarket and their current wine fair, we had some fine wines of the region to explore in the comfort of the Walnut Mill along with steak hache for dinner.
The first pic is at the Sleeping Beauty castle Usse and the other 3 are at Villandry.

Chateaus Loche & Chennonceau

Sunday September 30, 2007

We were lucky to wake up to clear skies this morning and made out for the market in Descartes, a short 7 km north of Barrou. The market was still setting up as we arrived, but we cruised its length and found some nice additions for lunch as well as roasted chicken and potatoes for dinner. Following Descartes, named after the famous philospher and mathematician who was born here, we headed to our first Loire Chateau – Loche. The medieval chateau and the keep here rise above the ancient town. We walked around the site but chose not to tour the interior, opting rather for some of the more prominent chateaux that we planned to tour later in our journeys. We drove from here along the Indre river and found a nice spot for a pique nique at Reignac, before we made our way to Chenonceau, easily one of the Loire gems.
The day had warmed nicely and the blue skies prevailed as we started our tour amid the Sunday throngs. This castle built for Diane Poitiers, the mistress of Henry ll, sits across the Cher River and has numerous picturesque angles. The gardens and extensive grounds provide a good opportunity for an afternoon’s stroll. The interior is also wonderfully preserved with much of the original furnishings and decoration still on display.
We took a circuitous route home via Montrichard and Dawn remembered on the way that a town called Montresor near our route was voted one of the most beautiful villages in France. So, we made a further detour and were glad that we did since Montresor totally lived up to its reputation. We had a delightful walk through town snapping way too many pictures, but it was hard to know where to stop. The rest of the drive back to Barrou took us past many historical sites and across verdant wooded hills where, after 3 deer crossed the road in front of us, we kept a sharp eye out for other creatures that are obviously in presence by virtue of the large group of hunters that we passed. Back at our well-equipped house, we enjoyed our market purchases for dinner and then it took me forever to catalogue the day’s pictures and finally complete this entry. We definitely had a very full and rewarding first day in the Loire!
The first two pics here are the Loche, the next two at Chenonceau and the final one in the beautiful village of Montresor.

Trip north to the Loire

Saturday September 29, 2007

We departed the south this morning. Prior to that, I found the mother of all scorpians – as we’ve found them anyway – early in the morning on the wall. After a pic I set it free outside. How environmentally friendly! We thought we’d stop in Sigean at McDonalds for breakfast – sorry no breakfast at McD’s in France. So off we went on the autoroute to the north. Fortunately there are Autogrills on the highway that have amazing French breakfasts & coffee. Our drive today was a good 6 hours without stops, but we made several, so about 7 hours later we arrived in our new home for a week at Barrou. This home is right on the highway along the Creuse River running from the south to Tours. As facilities go, this is the largest we’ve had yet, with all rooms very large and decorated. We had the foresight, despite lack of room in Renee, to stop at the Champion 20 minutes from our destination for dinner and breakfast foods. Good choice, because once we got here, we were content to stay put, have some good wine and a nice meal. The pic here is our accomodations for the next week at the Old Walnut Mill in Barrou.

Fortress de la Salses & Tautavel

Friday September 28, 2007

Last evening was a little brisk, so we set a roaring fire to soothe the savage beast. We actually got out the space heaters to take off some of the chill. The 2 foot thick walls do a nice job of keeping in either heat or cool. But, by this morning the wind had disappeared and the temperature was on the rise. So after breakfast, we headed out for the market at Sigean – apparently not to be missed. It actually only took up one small square in Sigean, but there was enough for Jackie to find an outfit. Following market, we headed south for Fortress de Salses – a really well preserved Spanish fort, built when this part of the world was Spain. Like many French monuments, we were obliged to take a guided tour in French. Fortunately our guide here spoke impeccably slow and precise French that we could follow.
After our fort tour, we headed off into the hills and found a spectacular pique nique spot overlooking the Pyrenees. On this sunny and warm day this was a nice treat considering the rotten pique nique weather we’ve had in the past few days. Our journeys down the valley took us to Tautavel where they found the 450 000 year old man. Of course we arrived over the lunch hour and failed to get entry, but did peek in the windows and see everything for free.
From Tautavel, we pretty much headed home and arrived for some terrace time in the sun. This is the first time in two weeks that we’ve actually enjoyed the afternoon here in Fraisse and we leave tomorrow, so how fortunate we were to have this day. We did some packing for tomorrow’s departure and loaded the precariously perched Renee ( that’s our Renault) who had some difficulty getting into place today. Then we had a wonderful final meal in the south. The weather has been a little uncertain here but it’s been more good than bad, so we are content to now make our way to the Loire Valley.

Pics

1. Narbonne canal
2. Gruissan stilt houses
3. Bages

Pics

1. in Carcassonne
2. the Canal du Midi
3. walking on the 200BC Roman road Via Domitia