France Days 10 – 14: Paris! The grande finale!

So on Dec 1st, our 4 year anniversary of meeting, we turned in our rental car, and hopped on a train for Paris. When we got there our fist afternoon/evening was getting settled in our hotel and looking for fondue since that is our traditional dinner for celebrating the day we met. We learned a big lesson right away, it is hard to find fondue in Paris!!

Starting with what Don remembers… I can’t help but find it super cool the differences in what stands out to each of us (i.e. I would not have remembered the ballast tanks)

Don:We get to Paris and check into our hotel. Sounds simple till I fill you in on how we had to carry our luggage up and down 12 flights of stairs in the metro system. Then there was the 8 block walk to the hotel from the metro station. After checking into our hotel and taking a nap we head out and walk past the Eiffel tower headed along the river. I get tired and we jump on the metro and head to the Isle De La Cite. When we get there we find the underground is water tight, there are ballast tanks to retain leaks behind steel walls, extremely cool old technology. We walk around the island and then towards Notre Dame on our search for fondue. We head back across the river to the Latin quarter where we finally find a Swiss fondue restaurant. Its an old meat locker with the actual hanging tracks and built in hooks!  We eat there and their credit card machine would not work, so I played the hero because I wasn’t going to be able to sit there while MA was out getting money and took the metro back to the hotel to get my ATM card.  When I get to the hotel I have the concierge call a taxi that spoke English to take me back to the restaurant via an ATM machine. Finally we paid and left the restaurant at the same time a girl is screaming ‘I’m pissed! they wouldn’t take my card!’ Se la vie.

Like Don explains, this restaurant was a Swiss place and the cheese was strong! I like strong cheese and it still took me the first 10 or 15 minutes to acclimate to the smell before it no longer smelled bad to me. Also, of all the places we could have gone, this restaurant happens to be where Ratatouille is now working…

We didn’t really think to take pictures of our hotel room in Paris (although we took a ton of the tippy top of the eiffel tower that we could see), so we don’t have any of the inside of our room except for this super cool pic Don got of my reflection in the mantle on the door to our “Victor Hugo” room (which coincidentally is one of my favorite authors, although I’m sure that is the case for many haha)…

Our Eiffel Tower view (don’t laugh but we paid a higher room rate for this, I have to admit I was certainly expecting more, but it was still cool to come back to the room each night and see this)…

So the next day, starting with Don first…

Don:We slept in too long! It was raining and sleeping through the rain is our weakness. We ate at the cafe near the hotel, Constant, that had awesome food, we both had a rocket salad with delectably fried shrimp. Then we went to the metro to go to the Arc De Triomphe.  It was closed because a labor strike but it was awesome to see up close and the strike probably prevented a big crowd. We jumped back on the metro to go to the Eiffel tower, the 2 hour line was gone and we were at the top of the tower in about 25 minutes! We took our time up there and took in the view before heading down and back to the hotel to make dinner reservations. Before dinner we walked around the Christmas markets.  We went to dinner at the Laduree resturant and this is literally the longest I have ever waited for food in my life. 2 hours and counting for my main plate and I still had coffee icecream coming after that! They finally explained what happened, a group of 30 people were seated together and they get their food at the same time causing a delay for everyone else. We could see that other people that showed up at the same time were having the same wait. Our main course came soon after they explained and it was really great tasting. MA had a succulent steak and I had a wonderful sole filet. Dessert was iced macaroons for MA and I had icecream.

I LOVED LOVED LOVED the iced Macaroons (I’m not crazy about the non iced ones though) and my steak was great but like Don said, it was the longest wait ever.  Anyway, it was a really cool restaurant on Champs-Elysees which was all decked out for Christmas… gorgeous!

And the Eiffel Tower from the top…

The Eiffel Tower from the other side of the river at night!

On Thur, we first went to the Lovre but it was closed!! So we switched up our plans and headed for Montmarte instead. We went straight for a Dali museum that someone had tipped us off to. It is down a LOT of little side alleys, very tucked away, but Dali is worth any search. We finally found it, and it was so cool, it was mostly his sculptures.  We had lunch at a little place also tucked away in Montmarte and as usual, SO GOOD. Then we hit the Christmas markets for that night buying dinner, Christmas gifts, and souvenirs.  Then we headed to the hotel early for wine and relaxation. We watched TV in French for a while and saw some of the funniest stuff I think we’ve ever seen on TV, we were laughing so hard we were crying at one point.

Below we were looking down on Paris from Montmarte. Notice the foreboding clouds! We got poured on on the way back downtown, but it was cool, we were dressed for it with boots, wool jackets, scarfs, and umbrellas.  We didn’t let it stop us.  And because it drizzled most the evening, the Christmas markets were not as crowded!

Fri, we finally got into the LOVRE and it did not diappoint! I’m not a big museum person, and neither is Don, but the Lovre is in a class all it’s own, it’s AWESOME. I’m posting just a few of the best pics we got below (I’d love to post more, but wordpress makes if far too cumbersome).  This was our last day in Paris.  We hit the Christmas markets again, and then had dinner at Constant, a great little place right by our hotel.

Paris turned out great! It is no southern France, but the urban experience can be great in its own right. My favorite part of the urban experience has always been and continues to be, sitting in little hole in the wall cafes sipping on espresso and just taking in the world around me. Paris is so wonderful for this.

So FINALLY, that was FRANCE!

France Days 8 & 9: Burgundy

Driving to Burgundy was long, but luckily we had the pastries from the night before when we had thought they were going to be our dinner! haha. We also had some cheese, bread, and marinated olives we had picked up the day before from the Saturday market on our way out of Sarlat… DIVINE! Best olives I’ve ever had hands down, YUM. This was a long drive across the country so we were taking highways most the way and it wasn’t very scenic… until we hit Burgundy!

You know the minute you enter, it turns into beautiful rolling hills of the greenest green I’ve ever seen.  And these quaint cottage style houses start popping up with little trails of smoke coming out of their chimney’s, very quintessential French countryside.  THEN we hit the vineyards and it became quintessential French wine country! It was really awesome and Don kept sleeping, so I kept waking him up because he was missing it! haha.

We finally made it to our B&B, and although it was a very nice place with a great and cozy room, I was disappointed because the description from the website had led me to believe this was a winery.  I had planned this part of the trip to be staying on a vineyard, or at least more in the middle of that scene! Instead the B&B was basically in the suburbs of Dijon. I’ve since went back and looked at the website again and it is REALLY misleading. Anyways, it could be a great area and place to stay IF that  is what you  are looking for, but not at all what we had in mind.

So o’well! We went into Dijon for a wonderful dinner that night and the next day we drove down to Beaune. Killer cute old French city surrounded by vineyards. We went to the Marche Aux Vins which is an old church with a wine tasting tour that starts in the cellars and then leads back up to the main level. It is self led, which is awesome and there were SO many wines, which means by the end it was hard to taste the difference haha. We ended buying a case to ship home. It FINALLY arrived here at home months after us! We’ve only had one bottle so far but it was wonderful and did not disappoint.

Each “tasting” was at a little station set up like this…

And then it led back to the main level…

A few MAGNUM bottles…

And back outside strolling around Beaune…

That was pretty much it for Burgundy… We had dinner in Dijon again that night and again it was wonderful (I’m convinced there is no such thing as a bad meal in France). Right after we got back I had Don write down some stuff he remembered and about this dinner he writes… “for dinner we went to an italian place, I had 5 fromage raviolo and Mary Ann had the best Lasagna evar! Then MA gave me half of her lasagna because she loves me soooo muuuuch and she was full.” LOL, what a cutie.

The next day we turned in our rental car and jumped on a train to Paris!!

France Day 7: Crazy Creepy Castle Night!

Before I begin the story of our crazy and creepy night in a castle, let me say that Chateau de Tennessus is an AWESOME B&B.  It is a true castle with a mote, drawbridge, towers, the whole nine yards, it is fantastic… and a family bought it and restored it making it into a B&B so that others could share in the experience of staying in a castle! Our friends Michelle and Aaron stayed there in September and had a wonderful time!

So for us, several conditions came together in just the wrong way but it made for a memorable night! Not the kind of memorable night we expected but a memorable night none the less!

So this story actually begins a few days before we left for France when I got an email for the host, who speaks English (in fact I think he is English), saying that he needed to go out of town on our arrival date but that he had a friend who would be there to get us settled, and then would come back in the morning. I was kind of disappointed that we wouldn’t meet the host family, but , OK, he had us covered, that should be fine.

So on the Saturday that we drove to the castle, we left Sarlat and it was five hours going north… we were leaving beautiful southern France =( and by the time we arrived at the castle it was raining and windy and getting dark. We ran inside with our things and the stand-in hosts speaks NO English, and I couldn’t understand any of her French. I’m not, by any means, fluent but I know enough to get the general idea of what someone is saying and usually piece together an answer. I couldn’t figure out anything she was saying… at this point I was really regretting not spending more time on French lessons before our trip. She showed us around and gestured enough for us to get the idea, haha. We go our big key to the castle and she showed us to our room. So coool.

While we were getting settled into our room, our stand-in host was standing in the doorway saying something and the lights went out! PITCH BLACK! And she says “UUUHHH NOOOO”… LOL!!  Not a good sign! Luckily I remembered where I had laid my keys and I have an LED light on my key chain so I used it to guide us all down the spiral staircase and she led us to one far side of the castle where the breaker box was located. When we got the lights back on my first thought was that she is leaving and locking this side of the castle so what are we supposed to do if the lights go out again!  Oh well. Not much we can do considering I don’t know French well enough to express my concern. So thank goodness, another couple showed up, we weren’t going to be totally alone!

So we head into town for dinner, and find out that in a small French town you pretty much MUST have reservations at any type of restaurant… hell, even the pizzeria type place couldn’t take us without one.  We went to several places and keep getting turned away. We were giving up and stopped at a bakery and bought pastries, and we really thought we were going to have to eat them for dinner.  Then, on a whim, we tried one last place, a Middle Eastern/Moroccan type place.  Of course the first thing the host asked was if we had a reservation and we said no but we must have looked pathetic enough because he looked around and then gave us a little table near the back. We were SO thankful. Then we got our food and were even MORE thankful, the food was amazing! Which is par in France! So dinner turned out well, we had a great meal in a cozy restaurant and the host kept coming over to tease and talk with us. I even showed him how to use his hand-held credit card swiping machine hahaha. He was trying to swipe the corner of the card I kid you not.  =)

So we finally made it back to the castle and the other couple was out so it was just Don and I for awhile. We couldn’t make a fire because the wind was blowing too hard, which sucked because that was one the things I was most looking forward to about our castle stay.  We ran around the room taking  some pictures and explored the castle a bit.

Eventually, we heard the other couple come in and then, the inevitable, the lights went out again!  The couple above sounded kind of distressed and they hadn’t been there when it happened earlier… I wanted to go check on them, but Don was like, well, we don’t need lights to sleep, lets do that. haha. He was already falling asleep but I could still hear the couple above and it sounded like that might be trying to figure out what to do, so I got up and used my LED to go up the spiral stone stair case, and I could only see directly where I was shining the light, other wise, pitch black around me. I made it up to the couples room above us to see if they needed some light to find candles or something, but I could see light under their door so I guess they were ok.  I went back to our room and cozied up with Don and tried to get some sleep.  The wind was literally howling outside the windows and making a buffeting sound over the fire place flute. There were SO many noises! I convinced myself that any creaking was the couple above walking around. But also, water was dripping into the fireplace from the rain and then I swear at one point there was a drip onto the canopy of our bed! WEIRD!  I’ve never been able to figure that out! I finally feel asleep at some point to this cacophony of sounds, and I later wake up when Don grabs the LED light and starts shining it around the room.  You can only see a small portion of this huge room at a time with the little LED. He had woke up and heard what sounded like shuffling feet in the room!  UGH! And he could see some light out the window and there should have been none since there was only fields that direction. CREEPY.

No fire, no lights, we had to used our key chain to even navigate to the bathroom and it was SO cold. So needless to say we had a really uncomfortable night in so many ways and just wanted it to be OVER with. I knew when our stand in host was back in the morning because the lights came back on! I hope she told the host about the lights going out because if stuff like that is going to happen, guests should not be left alone in the castle. I’m sure it would have been a COMPLETELY different experience if someone had been there that we knew we could go to when there was a problem. It would have also been a different experience if we could have had a cozy fire or something, but I guess there isn’t much anyone can do about the wind! We did have a nice breakfast in the morning and stopped to take more pictures of the castle in the daylight.

I had JUST pulled the car up to get Don who was still snapping pictures when it started to pour down again… so he jumped in and we headed for Burgundy… unfortunately relieved to be leaving. O’well, maybe one day we’ll visit the castle again on better terms.  All in all, it was quite the experience.

After the castle we stayed in Dijon for 2 nights and then Paris for 4… and it is taking me so long to get to these blogs (and WordPress and Flickr are ridiculously cumbersome) that I’m just doing two more. One for Burgundy and one for Paris with a quick summary of our four days and some “best of” pics.  That way I might actually get to blog about some things that have happened SINCE France, like our birthdays or the awesome Jazz concert for Valentines. =)

SOOO, next up, Burgundy!  Let’s see how long it takes me to get to that!

France Days 5 & 6: More Sarlat

We didn’t take a lot of pictures on Thursday, but wow, it was such a cool day. We slept in a bit, probably too long since the hosts had to come knock on our door – we had told them we wanted breakfast so I think that had had it ready for awhile.   While we were eating we saw a group of four (two couples) heading out and didn’t think much of it.  We had also seen another woman staying there the night before.

Later that day, we had a reservation for a tour of the Grotto de Font de Gaume!  A prehistoric cave with drawings, settled by stone age people during the last ice age, about 25,000BC. It’s hard to even comprehend how old these paintings are, most only survived because calcite formed over them preserving them. This is one of the few sites that still has the original drawings. Most sites are now replicas because allowing too many tourists in with body heat and breath deteriorated the originals.  At Font de Gaume there is a team of scientists working to preserve the artwork and the number of people allowed in per day is limited. No pictures were allowed of course but it was wonderful and I can’t believe how insightful it was to see and how much I learned. For some reason, and this is probably just personal, but the most fascinating thing I learned was that the animals were never drawn fighting, but always affectionate (one drawing I remember well was a dear licking another dear’s forehead) or running together, but never any type of violence. When our guide made this point while I was looking at these drawings it gave me a very peaceful feeling and in an instant struck me with many thoughts that completely transformed what had been a stereotype in my mind of the burly brute caveman often portrayed in movies or what have you.  With just this small piece of information and the original evidence in front of me, I instead saw an early human trying to understand the world around them and focusing on the greater things in life… affection, connection, cooperation for a common goal… and expressing themselves through art. Even more, they were skilled artists, the drawings are sophisticated with perspective and shading that give 3 dimensionality and the illusion of movement with torch light. These drawings are from a people so much more complex and aspiring than our modern day portrayal, or the perception of the majority, gives them credit for. These drawings are from a time SO long past that it felt like a true privilege and fortune just to be viewing them, especially the real thing. If you ever find yourself in this part of the world, I highly recommend it!

Another cool thing about the tour, was that when we first arrived we realized the entire group (only 8 of us total) were from our B&B, hahaha, the same people we had seen the night before and that morning. We all went our separate ways afterward, and Don and I spend a little bit of time driving and walking around this itty bitty town next to the caves and even tried to make it up to the building in the picture below that was built into the rock wall, but we just couldn’t figure out how to access it, haha, it was strange.

Anyway, we finally made it back to the B&B and decided to go sit in the common area and have some wine we had picked up back in Carcassonne (a Rose made from Shiraz!). Our B&B mates started returning and we drew a crowd in the common area filled boisterous fun conversation full of recommendations and pouring over tour maps and guides! It was loud and awesome.  Two of the couples stayed the longest, opening some wine they had picked up and getting to know us, and we all decided to go to dinner together.  They had a recommendation for a place called Le Petit Manoir.

We had an “apertif” which is basically a liquid appetizer of your favorite alcohol (gotta love Europe!) and this is the first time I’ve ever had a Violet Royal which is a variation on the Kir Royal and as the name suggest, it’s purple.  Don and I continued our adventures in French dining by again ordering without knowing what we would end up with, and once again we were both pleasantly surprised with a delicious dish.

The best thing about  dinner was the company.  We all had a great time sharing our appreciation of the actual “thrones” in the bathroom, commiserated over lack of ability to read the menu, and had an all around great and funny conversation. Russell, Tania, Darell, and Kathy, we had SO MUCH FUN, you guys rock.

Friday we slept late (after all, what are vacations for) and decided to spend a day of leisure around the city. We didn’t want to feel that we missed out on just experiencing this midieval city itself… this captivating step back in time… this is when we got the most pictures of Sarlat.  We took tons, but these are the highlights.

This night, our last night in Sarlat, we had dinner at the Le Quatre Saisons, or in English “The Four Seasons”, and this was definitely an adventure in French dining to remember! This is an expensive pretentious place that gets creative with the food.  For instance, my pork filet came out only partly cooked on wire and a bird’s nest looking contraption which they set on fire with a mini torch to finish cooking at the table.  We had some kind of sauce that came in what looked like test tubes and a straw for drinking. LOL. Oh ya, and the appetizer was served on a wooden plank with holes for long sticks holding foie gras wrapped in cotton candy.  I can’t even remember all the weird stuff they served and I’m sure it all sounds strange but every bit of it tasted phenomenal! We didn’t get any pictures, only a video that I might upload later.

We hit up the Saturday market  before leaving the next day, grabbing some cheese, bread, and marinated olives for the 5 hour drive to the castle we were staying in for a night.  This turned into the eeriest yet funniest experience! So the next blog to come… CRAZY CREEPY CASTLE NIGHT!