Day 15 - Versaille, treaty or not - we're going to the King's bedchamber!

It seems like months ago we left on this trip, and we are ready to come home. Looking back I can't believe all of the things we have done and seen in 2 weeks. If I hadn't kept this blog, I never would have remembered half the details! The beauty is in the details, and there are so many details that have not been mentioned, some will be forgotten, and some yet will be unforgettable.

Today we had a lazy AM sleeping in and lazing around until we checked out of our hotel after 10AM. We loaded our stuff in the car (which was parked in front of the Chateau of Versaille) and started our tour. We had these cool headsets that audio in English for a self guided tour. Every room, and hallway or gallery, has a number unique to it. You punch that number into your digital player and press play. Pretty cool!

What can I say about the Chateau of the former Kings of France? These guys knew how to live. Everything was ornate x 10 and it seems every subsequent King gilded the lily more and more until it was over the top. So we walked through the small Opera house the King had in his house (nowadays we call it Home Theatre), and checked out his bedroom and things. Interesting, his wife had her own bedroom, and they both had "apartments" separate for themselves and families presumeably.

I am totally ignorant of French hiostory, but both Joanna and I would like to read a little about it now that we have been inspired by some of the sights of France.

We also visited the estate of Marie Antoinette and her "Garden of Follies" which include the original "Grotto" which Playboy mansion has made it's own version famous.

All walked out, we bailed and pointed it toward the Hilton at the airport where we dropped our bags then returned the car with 3735kms on it. We spent our last evening indoors at the beautiful room in the Hilton enjoying Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin Champagne and several games of cribbage. Veuve, means "widow" and it was widow Cliquot who started the business in Reims in the 1700s where it stands today, and where we bought the Champagne. Very nice champagne, very nice trip to France.

For an outrageous sum I have wifi "wee-fee" tonight, so I'm going to do a little updating (and catching up on advrider.com since I'm riding in Mexico in 3 weeks). We have a 10:30am flight Sat AM, and arrive many many hours later Saturday evening at 5:00PM.

Bon chance, bon voyage, et bon soir! Merci!

Many pics to be added soon.

Day 14 - "dessous" means underneath I think...

After a great breakfast our congenial hosts offered us a tour of their cellar/cave of fossils. Was I not ready for what we were about to see next. This cave has been dug by Mr. Legrand by hand (power tools too) over the last 10 years. He is schooled in winemaking etc. but his hobby and passion are archeology/geology or some ology. The whole Champagne region was an inland sea 20 million years ago or so, maybe less, but anyways, the ground is very chalky from the crustaceans that once were on the seafloor. The cave which was started as a wine cellar but quickly uncovered tons of fossils in every shovelful. This was an amateur fossil hounds dream.

So we enter this cave and the whole ceiling is quickly all fossils. If yu carved it out a teaspoon at a time, you would have a fossil in every scoop. But they didn't look like fossils as we normally see them. They were so well preserved in the chalk, they looked like you had just picked them up at the beach. There were clam shells and snail shells principally, but some huge unicorn-horn looking snail shells as well.

This hand carved tunnel ran 200 meters into the side of the hill, under the road I believe at one point, with a few offshoots and rooms. Totally amazing undertaking. We spent almost 20 minutes to 30 minutes in the cave and both were totally blown away by what we saw. The intention is to make this a tourist attraction in concert with a champagne cellar tour that culminates in a beautiful tasting room, that has a remarkable fossil display upstairs. The fossils upstairs included a jawbone and teeth from a mastadon along with trilobites and many other amazing finds.

It was then that I really wished that I had more French to explain to him how "wow-ed" we were. We will definitely go back there in a few years and see how his project is progressing.

We had said our goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Belgian (never did get their names) before or tour, and we said our goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Legrand afterward. We hit the road to Reims and found the tourist info booth by 11:00am. A bunch of the Champagne houses had already finished their tours for the day by 11:00. Taiittinger (spelling?) was one that had tours until 12:00 so we set off on foot ALL HE WAY ACROSS REIMS hehe to the Cave des Taittenger. The last English language tour of the day had just left before us, so we quickly made our way through the caves to the group and resumed the tour with them.

I loved the caverns of Taitenenger which were built on the site of an old Abbye, and some of the cave were part of a chalk mine that was over 2000 years old. Truly awe inspiring stuff. Plus all the neat Champagne bottle evrywhere. And dusty, damp, dark, 8 deg celcius, wayy cool. The guide led us through the caverns and the amount of champagne there was staggering. In one "room" off of a gallerie (hallway) there was 96000 bottles…

Great tour, and I managed to get some cool photos, and it was wrapped up of course with a glass of their Brut Champagne. We met some people from Switzerland on our tour and a gal from Quebec who comes to France every 4 or 5 years and stays mostly in Paris with small trips thown in like this one. She marvelled at how much ground we ha e covered. We got spoiled speaking english for 20 minutes or so, and then were submerged back in to the Francophone world.

After grabbing some lunch and sitting across from the huge Notre Dame cathedral in Reims (it's vry similar to the Notre Dame in Paris) to eat. Which by the way is also the location of the cleanest public toilet in Europe so far. We then packed up and headed for Versaille.

Versaille is the the last tourist attraction we can squeeze into this trip. We are getting quite expert at following the roads, exits, autoroutes, peages etc.. We stopped at and "Aire de xxxxx de Nord" which is a Rest area with a gas station to gas up, have a coffee, and then dung out the car a little. We gave our 6 pack of 7-Up and 4 Belgian Trappist beers to a young Fernch couple travelling around France themselves who were stopped there as well.

We finally made it to Versaille and pciked pretty much the most convenient (and therefore most expensive) hotel we could find. The palace of Versaille is across the street from us! We had an agreeable meal after calling the kids (we haven't had a phone for a few days) then retired back to the room to relax. We're both a little beat, and I know now what a little homesickness feels like. We both really miss the kids and can't wait to be home. This trip was probably a few days too long, but we are taking away some terrific memories. I'm hopefully going to get the blog caught up tonight a little bit since we have wee fee (wifi) here.

Tomorrow is the Versaille palace stables, then the chateau tour etc after lunch. Finally we will get to the airport where we have a hotel room reserved for the night. Bon nuit.

Day 13 - Champagne!

We are quite conscious that our trip is drawing to a close, so our final days here we are wrapping up our unofficial "to-do" list we have created since we started this trip. Our plans to see Musee d'Orsay in Paris where the impressionist masters like Monet and Guagin etc.. Are displayed will happen Friday, along with a visit to Versaille to see the Palace there.

We had a leisurely breakfast at our B&B at eight AM and then had an equally leisurely drive towards Reims. We stopped at a smll village and bought some pastries and fruit for lunch. We also bought some table wine. White - in juice boxes like the kid's apple juice (I was a little disappointed there was no straw). 3 boxes for $2.00 and it wasn't bad. I also bought a litre of table red for $2.00, which I haven't tasted yet, maybe for tomorrow's lunch.

We drove a little further then found a shady picnic spot, which there seems to be plenty of, and enjoyed our lunch roadside. The whole country pretty much shuts down for a 2 hour lunch. The highways empty into the many rest areas and everyone has their lunch and a little nap. It's a good system compared the "sprint to the finish" way of life in Canada. I like it anyway.

There is no drive thru culture here yet (although the McDonalds are springing up), and there is no facility for "eating on the go". There is one cup holder in the car, and it placed where it could be best used by a passenger in the back seat. People look at us funny when we immediately open our bags and start eating as we're walking. Mon Dieu! Sit down and enjoy your food! How much of a rush can you be in?

It took us almost 10 days to get into the French eating habits, and it is still a struggle. We DO stop at lunchtime and eat OUTSIDE the car - crazy, I know.

We starting hearing our clock ticking, and the tiny country roads weren't cutting it, so we hopped over to the big Autoroute (130km/h) and cooked on up to Reims (pr. Rance) which is the big city in Champagne region where the heavy hitters of the Champagne biz have their houses (Moet is the biggest). We planned to tour them tomorrow, today we were hitting the "Champagne Trail" as it were that leads through the country villages and vineyards where the bubbly is actually produced.

We managed to find a tourism office and a place to stay in a village called Fleury la Rivieres. The old farmhouse converted to B&B in the middle of town was restored by the current owner, Mr. Legrand. His wife runs it, while they also make champagne in the next village over. The room was really nice and was tucked up in the former loft of the barn with exposed beams and sloping ceilings.

We cleaned up and prepared to walk around the village looking for food, but on our way out were invited to sit with them and 2 of their guests to try their champagne. It turns out that the 2 guests were friends of theirs from Belgium. One of the Belgians spoke English, which helped explain the parts of the conversation that we were missing. Our hosts didn't speak English at all, which was OK too. This is France after all. I find I'm getting better at following the conversations, and that when I asked Madame Legrand to speak to me more slowly I could understand her better.

A bottle and a half of champagne later (the second one was rose for the girls) we had been invited to join the Belgians in the next town (Hauteville) at the restaurant in front of the Abbey where Dom Perignon was a monk. Cool. The restaurant was haute cuisine, which we have learned in France means great meat with hashbrowns. I am a total foie gras convert. Never in a zillion years could you have convinced me I would like goose liver, but it is probably 4x as tasty the best bacon. It's good. ;) Joanna had the veal and I had filet Mignon which is actually called something else here. Prices were reasonable and we had very pleasant company. We shared some travel stories, and Madame is involved with the "over 40 olympics" which took her to Japan recently. She's a dentist, while he restores old Mercedes.

We had followed them to the restaurant which was in the town we had just come from, so we decided we would follow them back as well now that it was dark. He made a left when I knew we should be going right so I figured he was taking us on another route back via his GPS. After winding our way down the hillside in the pitch black through a vineyard, we finally came to a stop and Madame comes back and says, "oops, we're lost". I volunteer to lead us back to town and luckily (or skilfully) achieve just that without hiccup.

We have a good laugh back at the B&B about the misadventure, then turned in for the night. What a great day!

Day 12 - The best wine tour in the world - Chateau Meursault

This morning we woke to the church (eglise) bells and Joanna at least got up. I stayed in bed, having had a bit of a poor night's sleep due to eating rich food late, just before bed. I didn't really get out of bed until after 8am, but I saw the farmer leading his goats out to the pasture at 7:30am when Joanna called to me from the sundeck. There has been churchbells in every town, because almost all of the towns are built around a mega-hundreds of year old church.

We had our petit-dejeuner (breaky!) at 9:00am and enjoyed home made jams, their own grapes and of course their fresh award winning goat cheese. We troughed well, and still didn't dent the amount of food that was set out for us. The goat cheese was outstanding! Especially with the homemade peach Jam!

They actually have a small museum built on their farm as well housing old family relics like combines, threshers, plows, yokes, various implements, and a great collection of fossils found in the vineyard. Most of the fossils were snail-like stuff some getting quite large (20cm in diametere) Quel escargot! I took a few pics then we said our goodbyes and hit the wine road. Jacqueline really took a liking to Joanna, and praised her understanding of French when I stood there like a dummy a few times. They both had a good laugh when I was the last to figure out what she was talking about. It's a real horse race, but that may have been our best B&B yet.

We continued North aiming towards Dijon as an approximate goal for the day, and we really only had maybe 60 kms to cover. We were driving the scenic routes and came to the chateau Montrechet vineyards which produce some very famous dry white wines. We were unable to find the Chateau Montrechet itself, doh! Little lost because Joanna doesn't really care for dry whites anyway. Alors! We had taken another rest around lunch because of course nothing is open between noon and two.

Just before two we arrived in another town called Meursault. It had a famous Chateau, and we stopped for a gawk, and a tasting of their wines. They charged an admission, and they had an art gallery of semi famous art from the early 1900's when the chateau owner had been actively restoring the Chateua Meursault to it's former glory. It was a beautiful chateau, and the self guided tour of the art gallery took an interesting turn as it headed down into the wine cellars.

"Cave" is the French word for cellar, only they pronounce it 'kav' an these were underground, dark, cool, passages and small rooms like a dungeon labyrinth. Each hallway and room filled to the low ceilings 6 bottles deep with wine of various vintages. We came to this huge room full of oak barrels all laying in rows where the wine ages for as much as 2 years before being bottled.

All of the bottle had a ton of dust on them, apparently they dust them off and label them as required. We are talking about Caves from the 12th century to 18th century with some of them holding 170,000 bottles of wine each. The wine was about 30Euro ($45) for the good stuff, and the Premier Cru, the really good stuff was more like $60/bottle.

After leading yourself (following some arrows ) through all of the dark passageways and rooms (seriously a 20 minute walk I think) you get to their tasting cellar where a guide let us try about 12 wines explaining all about them.

Without a doubt, this was the most awesome wine tasting experience of my life, and beats the pants off anything I have done in Napa or the Okanagan. I'm tempted to drive back down and do it tomorrow again!!

We made our way North toward Dijon for our late afternoon adventure of finding a place to stay. Armed with our B&B books, maps and tourist information, 2 hours later we still had nowhere to stay. We use our best bloodhound skills to track these remote B&Bs down through the narrow streets and mazes of small villages, only to find they are full…

We found this nice place up on a hill in a town called Chamboef, and proceeded to work at our next objective which was get some food. Once again, it was a little early for dinner which was OK because the village we were in was so small, it didn't have a patisserie or restaurant etc… We eventually found a shop in a nearby town that had a few baked goods left on his shelf. We bought a few quiche, and some cold drinks and made our way back to our B&B. In the twilight of the day, we are sitting out on the patio with an older couple from Antwerp. Joanna is doing her crosswords, and I'm updating the blog as we both enjoy a few? glasses of wine.

Tomorrow's agenda hasn't been discussed other than we are heading for the Champagne region and Joanna is going to be happier than Oprah on a honey-ham. This central region of France is a wine lovers playground. The Loire and Bordeux are west, beaujolais is south, Burgundy is where we are, and Champagne is just north. All the while you are being stuffed with Goose Liver, Snails, Cheese, and Cured Hams. Aix!!!! Bon nuit.

Day 11 - Beaujolais, Hooray!

The Southern part of the Burgundy region is the region where Beaujolais comes from. There is a town, Fleurie, which is reported to have the best Beaujolais wines. I love Beaujolais, so of we went. Actually, we were headed to Macon which is north of Fleurie, and is the Southern end of the Burgundy wine route. Anyways…

We frapped la rue and came to a cool town called Vienne that had Roman ruins and an intact Roman theatre, but it was closed Mondays of course. We had a walk aroud then went driving for awhile until we found another Chateau that was in the guide book. We got there and went inside, but alas, it also was closed… Merdre.

We had some breaky in Vienne a la quiche, so we continued on our way to the wine route. It was past lunch and we were around Beaujeu or some town? And I spotted a narrow road (they're all narrow) that had a sign that said "Parc". We turned into there and there was a soccer field and some other buildings. The place was deserted, so we layed out our beachmats and had some lunch, and I had a halfhearted attempt at a nap. It was nice and peaceful off the main road.

We arrived in Macon, our general goal, and it was getting a little late and we wanted to get off the road earlier today. We tried several B&Bs until we finally found one that wasn't full ("Complet"). A cute goat farm where they made National Concours Silver medal winning goat cheese. The room was deluxe with a stellar view and equally hospitable hostess Jacqueline. She was a busy farm wife, and was helping with the milking when we arrived.

We grabbed the keys for the room and promptly headed into town for dinner. Guess what, noone is open for dinner until after 7:00, and it was only 5:30 or so. So headed back to our room for a shower, and a glass of wine before dinner. We were really only a few minutes out of town, so it was no big chore.

Later we headed back and found a great restaurant in the middle of town that had classic Borgogne (Burgundy) cuisine. This place had a sign beside the door that said (in French of course), that we were to ring the bell and would then be seated (the door was locked). So we rang, then shortly a young woman opened the door and showed us to the terrace, which was an inner courtyard/garden area within the city block. It was really quite charming. We stuck with our standard methods when sampling regional cuisine, order anything under specialite de maison and hope for the best. Neither of us knew what we had ordered exactly, but when it came, it was great! From apertif to dessert it was a first class gourmet Borgonaise meal.

But it was 9:30 or so now, so we went back to our chambre d'hotes (B&B) and closed the gates behind us so the goats wouldn't get out. The beautiful masonry of the all-stone contrcuted buildings I am continually awestruck by. I just love it, and have plans for some stonework replacing the ugly cinder blocks of our "grotto" area behind the house. To each his own I suppose.

Day 10 - Nice and the French Alps

The sun is really coming in our window now, it's 8:06am and we're about ready to head into Nice for the morning, then continue North towards Dijon I believe. I can't wait to find my first coffee! We did manage to find some ice yesterday at a gas station - amazing! So our food and bevvies will be safe for the day, and we can pickup a few things at the market this morning.

The lifestyle here is far from sedentary, walking walking walking everywhere all the time. It is pretty much a hassle to do anything else. There also isn't a lot of fat French people, coincidence?

We walked Nice for awhile finding a café and a patisserie for a snack, then hopped in the car and drove around town for awhile until finally hitting the road. I carried the camera and took zero pictures. The city has a huge boardwalk sorta like Stanley park if you stretched it in a straight line. Normal sort of activities like jogging, roller blading, biking, walking etc..

It was Sunday AM so on our first pass by, there were a couple people at the beach. 90 minutes later on the way back, the beach was 1/3 full. I think we've had our fill of French cities, because Nice is supposed to be a nice one and I was ho-hum.

We headed for the Alps and a really twisty road Joanna had identified on the map. It turned out to be really twisty. There were a zillion bikes, and I'm convinced we were on part of a loop that the road riders take that must be a top ride in Europe. Joanna was really good, I figured she'd be ill, but she hung in there.

We stopped in Grasse which is the world famous fragrance region and checked out the Fragonord perfumerie. This place assaults your nose on entry but isn't as bad after awhile. We had fun smelling different frangrances trying to choose some.

Later, we stopped at some little mountain village and checked out its market and bought this great roule roti (Pork wrapped around a spiced sausage center and roasted on a rotisserie.) We also bought a loaf of awesome bread which we had the baker slice for us. A few kms and hairpins up the road we pulled over and made sandwiches in the car. Delicious!

We made it to Castellane, a cool little village and managed to find the even twistier super narrow out to the Verdon Gorges. The road had no lines, was a little more than a lane wide and was nice and bendy. No straightaways really at all. Fun Fun. That trip was a "there and back" to Castellane, the continuing on to Grenoble. We decended down from the high country villages to the lower laying areas and finally Grenoble.

Grenoble looks like a cesspool, but it was late, so that's where we're staying. Tt may look nicer in the daylight, but I kinda doubt it. %$#@-hole was the word Joanna used. L'Oasis in Narbonne le plage is now the 2nd worst hotel we have stayed in. This one takes the cake. I won't go into detail, because it sounds like whining. Enough said.

I really don't know what are plan for tomorrow is - besides get the heck outta here at dawn.

Day 9 - Cote D'azur "The topless beach!"

We made it to Nice (pretty close anyway), we can see it down the beach from where we're staying. We had a great time this morning at the weekend market that took up much of the promenade. The fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, fish etc.. were amazing. We bought a shopping bag (finally) to put our loot in, and proceeded to shop with the locals with our best high school French combined with pointing.

There was a home baking vendor that had some awesome cookies and some huge macaroons that Joanna loves. There was TWO vendors that had HUGE selections of olives and tapenade and such. I grabbed a bag of terrific olives, I had no idea what they were, but they turned out to be stuffed with pimento and seasoned with something a little spicy! Awesome. They had some primo cured ham that is 30 Euro a kilo, which is aout $4.50 cad per 100 grams, so I got some of that and some German style Speck. The jovial butcher, threw in half a round loaf of bread for us as well!

After sipping my 2 cups of café au lait we finished up in the market amking sure we had enough for lunch later, then hit the road. We stopped at a beach god knows where and had some lunch. The Mediterranean beaches are topless, so I was enjoying myself of course. I had a great lunch made from fresh favourites from the market, and the view of the Med was just as nice… It was hot hot hot though, and in the hour we were there, we both got a teensy bit red.

After lunch we continued on to St Tropez and were honestly a bit underwhelmed with the place. It's very Napa de la Med, an there was priceless yachts off the beach, and the beautiful people on the beach. The most cosmetically enhanced topless beaches in Europe I'm sure. We didn't bother, we just drove out there to see what the fuss was about then got the hell out of crazy town.

Headed for Nice, we kept to the coast a certain amount after the freeway hoping we would find a nice place before Nice (proounced Neese in case you didn't know). We found a great spot just before Nice called Villeneuve le Something between Antibe and Nice. We got a great bungalow on the beach, and of course had great views… ;)

We got our beach stuff and headed out onto the beach where I proceded to jump right in. We stayed at the beach for awhile then went for a walk around before dinner. We went to a place that was all about mussels and each had a big bucket with fries.

I had to wash a shirt out in the tub because the laundromat was closed, and like a dummy I had left 3 shirts hanging in the closet of our hotel in Paris. They will be forwarding them to the Hilton at the airport where we'll be for our last night in France.

Day 8 - Sanary Sur Mer and Bandol

We have stayed in nicer hotels, but this one had a decent bed, was sorta clean and… well there was no hot water, but there was water! Waking in the night and hearing the sea lapping at the shore was soothing, and you quickly fall back to sleep.

The son has risen over the Mediterranean this morning and revealed itself from the fog that shrouded it yesterday. We are going to grab some food from the patisserie then head over to the tourist office. We're going to see if they can make a reservation at Sanary Sur Mer for us. We figure we'll stay there for a few days. More later.

Well, we're at Sanary sur Mer and it's been a day of discovery. We dicovered that you miss a bunch of things rocketing across France trying to get to the cote d'azur. The other thing we discovered is that we aren't really beach people - even when those beaches are topless. We've been to white rock beach, and that's all this is x 10 pretensiousness. (My spell check says that wasn't a word but who cares). It is a nice place, but after an our you're ready to move on.

We explored the trip and backstreets and then finally went back to our hotel for champagne (which we had in the cooler), instead of 10 Euro ($15) for a champagne cocktail on the promenade. We then went for dinner at the restaurant in the hotel. I can still taste the foie gras with my filet - best ever.

We had a good chat about our expectations of our trip and our lies and dislikes this afternoon over our champagne. A little bit of homesickness is setting in today, and we were both wishing we could be giving Sarah and Aidan their good night hugs and kisses tonight. Trying to see all of France in 2 weeks is as ambitious as trying to see all of Europe in 2 weeks. You will miss most of it, but hopefully your to-do list is smaller for next trip./

Tomorrow is off to Nice!! (and maybe St Tropez on the way) and then a super bendy road North through the Alps. Hopefully Joanna doesn't puke too much…

Day 7 - the road to the Meditteranean, and Vendez des Glacons? Do you sell ice?

Today we hauled some backside! This morning was beautiful on the farm, we managed to drag the missus out of bed for an 8 oclock breakfast. Grapes grown on the farm, fresh bread and buns with homemade jams: cassis(black currant), apricot(abricot) and fraise(strawberry). They had plenty of coffee and tea for us both and with full bellies we hit the road to Perigeux. We arrived in Perigeux and had a quick look around, but by now we were getting anxious to get to the Mediterranean.

We found an internet café and manged to get some stuff uploaded (the day 2 stuff) but their security wouldn't let me access my memory card directly, so I could upload the photos, but not the text. It was funny, because it was big nerdery computer lab with a bunch of young guys playing Counter Strike online. "Merdre" !!! "Flash!!" "Merdre!! Hahahah!!" etc… Those of you (Steve and Dan) that hae played CS know what I'm talking about.

It was hot, encore. And after an hour of screwing around we got outta there. 3 Euro. French keyboards are diff than ours too. Some of the letters are in diff spots so it was a little aggravating.

Cruising the highway at 130-140km/h periodically there was rest stops. We needed ice for the cooler, and I continued the game of "silly bugger" trying to ask for something they had never heard of before. There is no word for ice cube recgognized in some parts of France. Really, they don't have them. The word is glacon fyi, but I have been told glacee, glacier,. De glace. De glacier, de glacee. But you get the idea…. Joanna was calling me the Ice Man Cometh ala Gregory Peck because I kept stopping at these places asking for ice cubes. -More blank looks like I just arrived from another planet!

We saw the coolest Medieval city today, near Carcoassone I think. We stopped and took a few pics from afar. If it hadn't ruined our plans to make it to the Med, we would have stopped. A la prochaine….(next time).

It is getting a lot more Spain looking around here, and we finally made it down to Norbanne beach. It was foggy at 5 when we rolled into town and it pt progressively worse until when we were drinking champagne on the beach at 8:00 wathcing some guy fishing - visibility was maybe 1000 meters.

Left Lane Bandits, a North American phenomenon. On the highway, people pass in the left lane, then go back to the right. In fact the practice is to keep ypu left turn signal on when you are in the passing lane presumeably to increase your visibilty to overtaking and overtaken traffic alike. Seems to work very well.

Our room tonight is "lack lustre" but close enough to the water that the waves of the Med crashing on the beach almost drown out the Karaoke next door. But what do you expect for 60 Euros a night? We had a great evening walking on the beach and drinking champagne that we bought at that domaine winery yesterday? We are at the Med and ready for a couple days R&R which means we have to drive once again :( . We are going to Sanary sur Mer tomorrow. And we will hopefully spend 2 or 3 days there or nearby. A moped rental and wine tours are on the agenda. Plenty of pics to come, I felt a little guilty taking so little today, but we were on the road , so driving took precendence. There were some chateaus and domaines that would blow your mind though.

The karaoke has started up and the dogs are howling! So we're going to call it quits for the day. We have the patio door fiull open which if it weren't for the fog you could see the med, but we can hear it fine. It's damp, warm, and it's the south of France baby!!!

Day 6 - Saumur to Limoges and beyond

Wow the days are starting to whip by now it seems, this is not good. We woke late and found a café in the old part of town (it's all old, this part was really old) for quiche lorraine chaud, a couple good café au laits, and a tea for Jo. Chase it down with a pastry and hit the road by 11:30 or so…

We were immediately in amongst the wineries, and if you squinted just right you'd swear you were in Napa Valley,CA. We drove past several wineries before stopping at one smaller looking one that had wine for sale. Turns out they also had tasting, hey it was nearly noon. Gustachon (or something like that) is tasting.
Very nice young fellow (son of the owners) of ths domaine winery, he spoke no english (of course) but when we told him we were Canadian he flagged down his Mom who was leaving with two other peope in the car. They saw the Canadian flag in our back window and pulled in. Turns out the two people were Quebecois, and came here on a road trip 5 years ago, and now come and work at the winery every summer. It was kinda nice to speak English (such as it was) to someone beside each other.

We stopped at another domaine winery, preferring their atmosphere to the chateau (larger) wineries. They were having lunch, which is about true for nearly every business or shop in France from 12-2PM they are close for lunch. This is something to remember when organizing your day.

7 nothings open
8 nothings open
9 some cafes (bars) open and bakeries
11 most cafes open
12 noon shops closed
2 pm open again
5 pm most shops closed - most all grocery stores and ALL bakeries are closed
7 pm you're outta luck they have rolled up the street and gone home to bed/dinner or something.

Trying to get something to eat for breakfast before 8 is impossible, so it seems is getting enough coffee. Today was perfect café au lait times 2 for me ;)

Mostly a highway day, we stopped as some little park to make some lunch from the cooler we bought yesterday in Mt St Michel. Finding ice has proven to be a little problematic, very few places actually sell it. Luckily my French is gaining momentum and pantomime makes up for any shortfall. I had a bit of a one sided conversation with a pig farmer at the gas station today - long story. Asking for directions to the B&B near Limoges from some old guy out sitting in the shade beside his house was good for a few laughs - as was arriving at the chateau directly following his French instructions through town and several turns. Turns out it was the chateau owners' daughters wedding, so no rooms!!

We went by lots of cornfields and lots of sunflower fields, but it looked like they sit "ready" for a long time to dry out before harvesting. I'm noting this now sowe can google it later when we get home. The roofs have also turned to red clay tile like spain I guess, and the earth looks redder as well. The "dirt" in Paris was pretty much limestone gravel, we didn't see any brown dirt or topsoil anywhere.

Limoges was a busy city, and we drove right to the center and went to the tourist info, found out that basically every hotel in town was booked and we'd have to try out of town. So no internet again today - hopefully tomorrow. We tried a few places "complete" was the response (full). We finally followed a sign for a chambre de hotel about 6 kms off the main road down a farm road to this old mill house that has converted the upstairs of an old out bulding to a few suites. It was ancient and charming, so we checked in (verbally) then tarvelled about 10kms into the nearest town (Chalus) for diner.

We had a fantastic dinner of Steak in a Pepper Sauce for me and Duck Breast for Joanna with all the trimmings incluidng wine and dessert. We decided this was the anniversary dinner we didn't have last night. And Joanna has changed ger mind, Bronwyn, she does like asparagus - but only the white ones. Which seem to be available quite readily in France Jseptember.We're really loving the road trip now, and tomorrow we're going to the region of Franxe famous for truffles and Foie Gras. So we should be there by mid AM and then we are going to bomb on down to the Mediterranean. Tonight we are spending "on the farm" which is nice. Bon nuit!

Day 5 - Coffee at last! Normandy to the Loire Valley

This morning we had breakfast at the auberge and they made me a small pitcher of coffee accompanied by an even smaller pitcher of steamed milk. I had died and gone to coffee heaven. Finally I got the caffeine fix I needed for 5 days now. Happy happy. This place was awesome from every angle. They even had a yellow lab!

We drove through Creully which is a small town that was liberated by the Winnipeg rifles and there is a plaque in town commemorating that event. Also there was cool chateau there we had a look around.
We got back on the road, and with Joanna navigating we arrived at the Juno Beach Canadian War Memorial center.

It sure was cool being a Canadian and reading the accounts of the Canadian portion of operation overlord that commenced on D-Day. We purchased a few things to sponsor the center an walked the beach a little. I touched the Atlantic (close enough) for the first time, and we collected a few shells for Sarah and some rocks for Aidan.

It was hot.

We headed for Mt St Michel which is a castle on a rock on the coast. It s tryly a marvel to behold. It just appears out of the ocean.
It was hotter than hell. We walked around the castle on the beach and then went inside the walls to see what we could see. It was a tourist trap from hell, but still very cool all the same. There was a bunch of shops lining the narrow streets and steps leading up to the abbey. Every 3 rd shop was a souvenir shop selling the same stuff as the last shop - just in case you changed your mind.

We got some ice cream on the way back to the car, which was easy to find because of our newly purchased Canadian flag from Juno Beach which we put in our front window so we could find our silver Citroen. We then piled back into the car with our sights on th Loire Valley (France's Napa Valley) this is a couple hundred kms south of where we started the day. The drive continued to reveal amazing scenes of green country side, fields of corn, ancient stone walls, houses, and grand chateaus and churches.

The driving is fun on narrow country roads at good speeds - damn the French drive fast! I would pull over to let a faster driver by, and it would be two old ladies (ok and exaggeration) but you get the idea. I enjoyed it, jo doesn't care for the windy roads much.

We continue to have fun wherever we stop fumbling with our French, and we are finding the people switching to English for us less and less. Usually when you start murdering their language they switch to English for you, but now they don't speak English at all, which I find much better! My recollection and improvising in conversation is getting better with practice, but is still heinous.

With some skilful navigating ;) we found our way to the start of the wine country and bizarrely the horse capital of France. Realy, the French Calvary has a training school here plus there is a bunch of other equin e stuff. Plus there are mushrooms growing in caves. Yes, we passed the Musee de Champignons.

We are spending the night in the Hotel St Pierre after diving around looking for a place to stay here. Admittedly we left it a little late (7pm) to start looiking for a place, but we didn't want to top befor Saumur.

The AC must be shut off at 11PM and its 11:07 so time to open the window and turn off the AC.

Day 4 - Paris to Normandy

Jo was up at 4:30am again and I managed to sleep until probably 7am. She has vowed to stay up until ten and sleep until 6 anyway, so we'll see how she does. The morning had broke overcast, and by the time we had fetched our morning repast and started our laundry at the laundromat it had started raining very lightly. We were out on the road after laundry and before lunch.

Heading out of Paris, I got to have my thrill by deliberately heading down the Champs Elysee towards the biggest traffic circle in Europe - around the Arc de Triomphe. I managed to get through it and made my exit in the first try!! It was pretty exhliirating, 9 lanes of traffic, NO LINES!! Cars and transport trucks entering and exiting 2 wide into the fray. Everyone was accelerating, noone was braking!

We then hit the Peripherique which circles the city and made our exit to Rouen which s pretty much due west of Paris by about 150kms or so. The speed limit gets up to about 130km/h so we made some good time. After Rouen, we got off he super slab and got onto a nice twisty road that followed the Seine through what they call the Valley of the Abbeys. This is a secondary (not very busy) road that has a few small towns and magnificent churches from the 12th century.

We stopped and went inside a few of the churches and enjoyed them as much or more than the Notre Dame in Paris. We would go into the cathedral and we were the only ones I there, it was great and I even took a few pictures inside the one church.

We also stopped for lunch at this little café, and decided we would try the daily special. It turns out there was two so we choose 1 of each although we really had no idea what we were ordering. It turned out Joanna got this awesome ham plate with a delicious salad, and I got ground steak grilled and topped with butter and herbs with "frites" (yes fries). And it came with a 1/2 litre of Sauvignon Blanc for 26EURO c'est tout! We weren't in Paris any more, prices were now half, and we were in for a treat when it came to the night's lodgings.


At Lillebon we stopped to see the ruins from a Roman theatre
and went up to this old Chateau (which is pretty much a small castle). It was a bumpy little road leading up there, and to our surprise the place was deserted. We toured around the place taking photos, it was so cool. The place was in between total ruins and fixer upper status and the doors were wide open. Noone around - bizarre. I think it was the Chateau Tancarville, I can't wait to do some internet research on the place. It looks like some of it has been blown to bits and other walls are pock marked from gunfire.


(remember you can click on a picture to enlarge it)

After getting back onto the highway we arriving at Caen, a town pretty much completely destroyed during WWII and since has been completely rebuilt. We didn't stop at Caen, but I missed my turn off the peripherique road that would have lead us towards Juno Beach. There is a Canadian war museum there we want to see. The saying goes, "the adventure begins when things stop going as planned" Not that we had anything planned, in fact as I was arriving in Caen Jo was having a lil nap so I grabbed the map and decided Mt. St. Michel (our original destination of the day) was too far and we need a closer goal as it was already 6:00 or so.

Juno Beach is just 20 or 30 kms from here as the crow flies I thought. But missing the exit and taking a later one meant I had to traverse ill marked back country roads through tiny villages of stone walls, single lane wide roads until I had got sufficiently close and our dinner bell had gone off. I told Jo, next little village that has an Auberge, we're stopping. 90 seconds later we were stopped at the most unsuspected, amazing little place in a town called Thaon. It's not even on our map.

"Bon Soir Monsieur!", she calls down from the 2nd floor window as I walk up to the stone building.
"Bon soir! Avez-vous une chambre pour ce soir?"
"Oui, un moment"

So I got us checked into this place that inside is beautiful and must have been recently redone in the last 2 years because it was just like new. It cost 1/3 what we paid in Paris (although you can't see the Eiffel Tower from here.) I bombed into a little nearby town called Creully "pr. Cree uhLee" and found a grocer for some bread, cheese, grapes, cured ham, and cold bevvies of course. There were posters up in town advertising the Canadian Museum at Juno Beach - which I thought was pretty cool. I know tomorrow will be a sad and proud to be Canadian sort of day. We'll go up to Omaha beach as well I'm sure.

Back at the room, dumb and dumber tried in vain to figure out the telephone to call the kids. Well, let's just say after 2 or three calls to the same woman somewhere in France - she was getting a little pissed with us. We found found the magic combination of numbers and the call connected. It was good to hear from the kids, we both miss them very much and talk about them during the day, especially when we see other kids.

Tomorrow the adventure continues up to the beaches of Normandy, down to the castle at Mt. St. Michel and finally to the Loire Vallet (which is like Napa valley with more super-old castles I hear. I think the Loire is a pretty optimistic goal for tomorrow, but the key to happy traveling seems to be having the flexibility to change your plans as you go.

Day 3 - the louvre

Oh what grand plans we had for today. Early rise and walk to the Louvre to be there when it opens at 9:00. The first Sunday of every month, most of the museums in Paris are free. So on an overcast Sunday AM, the streets of Paris were relatively deserted. The zillions of cars were all parked, and the buzzing of mopeds was conspicuously absent. We et a pretty brisk pace and within a few minutes we were both hungry and I was wanting coffee.

We had woken up early (4:30am) again and fell back asleep around 6-ish. We both felt like we could not get out of bed. But we had our grand plan, and we had better stick to it.

No café open in sight, I tell you Tim Hortons would friggin clean up over here. Most of the sidewallk vendor coffee comes from a Nescafe cappucino dispenser (haute cuisine). I didn't give a flying fling flang jang if it was dispensed from a donkey's backside, I needed my caffeine. Across the seine, pres de place de concorde there was a crepe stand and we both ha a crepe avec fraises (thin pancake with strawberry jam) and COFFEE for moi.

We were on the opposite end of a large jardin (garden, park) from the Louvre and sat at a fountain and ate our crepes. We finally moved on to the Louvre to discover that about 20,000 people had the same clever plan as us (la meme plan brilliant chez nous). We actually ended up getting escorted wth a bunch of other people to an alternate entrance and were inside pretty quickly.

Imagine you're at Safeway and all you need is a an of baked beans and a carton of milk. You could look at every piece of produce on the way and inspect every jar of pickles for colour and clarity, or you can make a bee-line for the beans and the milk. The Mona Lisa was our beans, and the Venus de Milo was our milk. You can't really take pictures in a lot of the Louvre, which didn't seem to stop some tourists! So my snaps are the outside of the Louvre, if you want to see a picture of any piece in the Louvre, apparently http://www.louvre.fr/ or something like that has pics of everything. You really have to see this place.

Honestly we didn’t spent much time at all inside, the place was crowing quickly and we both were starting the fatigue. We had a pleasant walk back through the backstreets of Paris, and retired to our room for a nap.

After a nap we headed out to our fave boulangerie on Rue St Dominique and picked up some food and drinks for a picnic. We walked the Champs de Mars (park surrounding the Eiffel Tower and back to the park on the other sie of the Siene where we had pcinic'd the day previous. Today was the finals for the LG Extreme Sport World Tour and there was a skateboard, inline skate and freestyle bmx going on. We ate and watched for awhile in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower as storm clouds began to gather.

We had finished eating, and at the first few drops of rain were on our way back up the Champs de Mars. The clouds started to break a little, so we stopped at the café Champs de Mars which is a typical corner café made for posing and people watching. We did a little of both and enjoyed a cool drink before heading off to our boulanger for a baguette to take back to the room. The epicerie across the street is a good place to pick up a few cold beer and a bottle of wine, as we have found on a few occasions…

We both love Paris and can definitely see coming back and spending more time here. We both are anxious to get moving and seeing the country side and experiencing the different coasts.

More day 2 pics Notre Dame

Of course we have about eighty to onehundred eighty pictures every day, so more to come. We have to get going. More soon hopefully.