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August 13, 2015

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Paris Road Trip!

Road trip to Paris:

With our time in the south of France over already, it was time to make our way to Paris for the flight to London. We opted to drive to Paris instead of flying, since this would give us the chance to see a bit more of the countryside (as I’m pretty sure it was not the more economical option). We started off by driving through Nimes and then through the Parc Nationnel de Cevenne to see some of the sights we had seen while watching the Tour de France. Beautiful. The Gorges du Tarn were spectacular, and we passed plenty of small towns almost too pretty to be real, surely. Kind of wish we had allocated more time for the drive, since at 3 days it was still not enough to be off exploring some of the sights and towns we passed along the way. We also didn’t make any plans for a hotel (opted to wing it), so we stopped at one such town for the night – St Enimie. We hadn’t intended to stop, but the river looked too good to not at least stop and have a swim.

Nimes. It’s got an ancient amphitheatre.

Nice countryside.

St Enimie was a great stopping point, and it was pretty cheap as well. Score. Food was also fabulous (which is good, since there was only two places to eat in the town).

Cute little village in the Gorges du Tarn

St Enimie. Cute, yes?

Definitely a good spot for a bit of a swim. There’s even a couple of waterfalls.

On the drive we also stopped in at Oradour-sur-Glane to visit the deserted town and pay respects to the people massacred there by the Nazi Waffen-SS company in 1944. Basically everyone was burned to death (in the order of 600+ people – men, women and children). Horrible. The town was preserved & now is a memorial site. I’m glad we live in Australia.

Oradour sur Glane.

Oradour-sur-Glane.

For our second night we stayed in Loches, after having driven past many towns and not seeing anywhere we wanted to stop (scenery much less interesting this leg). Also a winner. The accommodation was none too flash, but it was cheap and somewhere to sleep (and the scenery here made up for the bland room). Apparently Loches is one of the best maintained examples of medieval architecture remaining in France. We were a bit late in arriving to see the Donjon castle, but there was still plenty of light to the enjoy walking around the town.

The Abbey

more of the Abbey at Loches

View from near the hotel.

Loches. Apparently one of the best kept medieval towns. I’d have to agree.

On the last leg of our drive, we visited the Chateau de Chenonceau and explored the grounds for a while. Very pretty. Yet another castle/chateau/whatever you want to call it. There are sooo many of them. Never thought I’d get sick of it, but I think a bit of the shine has worn off. They are still certainly fabulous to look at, but the pressing need to thoroughly investigate every single one of them is definitely on the wane. Having said that, we also stopped in at the Chateau de Chambord (but only for a quick picture) and were on our way. It was truly epic, but there are logistically only so many castles you can see (and so much money you can burn on visiting castle after castle). However, we read about it after. Truly an epic castle. However, built for the purposes of being a hunting lodge (for a hunting party of 2000), it is both impractical and utterly ridiculous (who takes 2000 people hunting???). Took many years to build and then it was too hard to heat, too far from food and too far from all other resources that everything needed to be trucked in every visit (seriously everything, including drapes and cutlery). It was only used by the builder for less than a combined total of 7 weeks (and then they died). Ridiculous.

Chateau de Chenonceau. They just kept making it bigger and bigger, until it went all the way to the other side of the river.

Fancy gardens. Of course.

The grounds at Chateau de Chenonceau

Chateau de Chambord. The photo fails to portray just how huge it is.

Paris:

Paris. Well, we have flown into and out of here previously but never actually checked out the city while we were here. So this time around we decided we would make an effort to have a bit of a look around. Since we have been AirBnb’ing our way around the world thus far, I figured we would do the same in Paris. Besides, hotels were epically expensive (more so than usual) and didn’t have any parking. We managed to find our accommodation ok. It was on the 6th floor and no lift. That was exotic. Fortunately we could leave most of our gear in the car rather than haul it up the stairs.

We arrived relatively late, so we pretty much just dropped our stuff off and walked to the Eiffel Tower (There. Done it.)…and home again via a creperie (and a craft beer stand) for dinner. The number of street vendors and people running games of chance we saw on the walk through the Champ de Mars was nuts (specifically cups…many, many games of cups). It was also pretty weird seeing stacks of street vendors (all black, for some reason), all selling exactly the same cheap chinese made crap (selfie sticks and various sized Eiffel Towers or a bucket of assorted booze).

Yep. There it is. Plus, 1 in 5 people in this photo are probably street vendors.

More interesting when lit up.

Sunday we went to see the end of the Tour de France. We met up with Nath, Steve and Wendy and waited it out through the women’s criterion and right through until the end of the Tour. The weather was pretty awful. Windy and rainy and cold. And all of us had made a fashion fail in some respect. Wendy: sandals. Nathan: shorts, thongs and no jumper. Me and Murray: no raincoats. Murray ended up going on his own adventure by city bike back to our apartment to rectify our error at least. Took a long time, given his original estimate of half an hour. Many fails (and hours) later, Murray eventually rejoined us just in time to catch 2/3 of the men’s circuit. At least it wasn’t raining anymore by then.

Hanging out at the 1km mark.

While we were in Paris we also tried to visit the Catacombs and failed. Waited for over an hour and a half only to be told that we might not make it to the front of the line anyway (before last entry more than 2 hours away). Who’d have thought it would be so popular? We had already budgeted waiting in line for 3 hours (which is already ridiculous, but is apparently the normal wait) and to wait longer and then still not get in anyway seemed a bit of a giant fail. So we bailed. Ended up visiting La Fine Mousse for some quality craft beer and some tapas for dinner. Caught a cabaret show and called it a day.

Murray went on a ride through Paris with DC Rainmaker (aka Ray) and got to see most of the sights. He even rode around the Arc de Triomphe around the crazy roundabout…and returned home in once piece.

For our last day in Paris, we made a last touristic stop before our flight to London: We went to visit Versailles. Mixed feelings about that. Hated the palace. The crowds…the crowds. Good grief, the crowds. There’s nothing like being pushed along by a human wall from room to room. I’m sure it would have been a wonderful experience if there weren’t so many people, but there were, so it wasn’t. The rest of the palace grounds were much better. The Grand & Petit Trianon were much more comfortable to visit than the palace. Hardly any people there. Also very much enjoyed Mary Antoinette’s hamlet. (There were bunnies!) Also got a truckload of exercise for the day. The grounds were huge! Seriously upset my already blistered heels, but it was worth it. Think I might need new shoes, though.

Next stop: London, UK.

The palace gardens

Back at the Hamlet

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Sarah Manson

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August 11, 2015

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We’re in France! The South of France, that is.

Well. July. Another month. Another location. This time: France.

After an uneventful flight from Croatia (totally loved Croatia, so sad we had to leave), we arrived in Marseilles, France. Cuing start of the usual arrival routine. Arrived at yet another podunk terminal, which looked considerably worse for wear. (Seems to be a common theme when flying with the cheaper airlines. They’ve gotta save money somewhere, I guess.) Well. Having managed the part of arriving successfully, it was time for collecting our bags and the hire car. Bags no problem. Car… Not so flash. Yeah, we started out with a bit of difficulty with our car hire. As usual, we had booked using an online service. However, said booking was MIA when we went to collect the car. It appears that for all intents and purposes, that The Internet Ate It…And there were almost no other cars available…And certainly none for the same time period we wished to book for. (I expect at this point some sort of reference to Murphy’s Law is warranted.) Anyway, after Murray doing the rounds for what felt like hours trying to score a car (and me baking in the sun with our bags) we ended up getting a van of sorts just for the day (at an epic premium) just so we could get our gear to our new home and get ourselves sorted out. What a pain in the ass. At least the rental staff were helpful. Welcome to France, yes?

(Luckily, Murray was later able to sort out a car for us over the weekend, with the aid of cycling to and from the airport to drop off the van and collect us a new car. Having a bike has actually come in handy. Yay!)

Entry routine complete.

Home for the month:

Our place is lovely, although in a rather unlikely location. Having looked at tonnes of Airbnb accommodation, I’d eventually decided on a tiny gite in a small town. Mostly because the accommodation was rather unusual and somewhere that we would otherwise never have the opportunity to stay. (Or the funds… A place like this would be ridiculously expensive at home.)

So our little gite is in Chateauneuf-Les-Martigues: a small agricultural town near to Marseilles. As such, there are farms everywhere,…growing wheat, olives, figs, stone fruit and all manner of lettuce varietals. It’s also dry as. All the cars (and pretty much any other surface you care to name) are solidly coated in a layer of dust. The trees are a) sparse and b) twisted little pines of some sort. There’s hardly a normal tree to be seen. It’s like they (the trees) aspire to grow strong and tall and at some point things just go south (and east and west, just not north.. And by that I mean any direction but up). It’s not quite what I had in mind when I was thinking of staying in the south of France. Not really sure what I was thinking, but my experiences with other areas in France are certainly nothing like here. Certainly not this…dusty. However, it is certainly beautiful. Just not quite in the way I’d imagined.

Our gite (holiday accommodation where the owner resides on the same premises) has been lovingly crafted by hand by our host Stephan. It is made of raw materials and features large tree trunks as structural support and locally grown hay as insulation. The roof tiles look hand cast and were also locally made. Everything is rather rustic and the fragrance of the wood when we first arrived was almost overpowering. Thank goodness it settled down. The bathroom is amazing, with panoramic views of the nearby olive and jujube orchards and the local bird sanctuary. The accommodation was certainly a great find. Although I’m not sure of it, I’m fairly certain that our host is constructing what will eventually be a bnb lodge – he is hard at work every day building a house in the same style as the gite. If it turns out anything like where we stayed it will be epic. If anyone feels the need to see more of our gite, check it out here: A Pincu

Fancy bathroom. Nice view of the jujube orchard.

Since we are close to a large wetland area (ie. the bird sanctuary), I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but, it turns out our little gite comes with frogs (one lives in the bathroom)…And a family of tiny bats that live in the wall next door. They (the bats) are ridiculously cute. And all small as a pinky finger. They chitter endlessly and poke their little heads out to sticky beak every now and then. At night they pinwheel around in the darkening sky outside nearby and swoop down to snatch bugs that approach our brightly lit gite. They are quite the entertainment. This is not to say that our resident frog is not also entertaining. He (she?) lives on the ledge of the window in the bathroom during the day. It’s always fun to try to spot the frog when it is out and about during the evening. Sometimes there are other frogs that pay us a visit as well. There has been an unanticipated amount of frog removal required. Thank goodness I like frogs.

Twilight from the gite.

One of the local beaches. Not bad.

One of the neighbourhood bat family.

The sunsets here are pretty good.

Our frog. Not sure why we didn’t name him. Should have.

What we have been up to:

We have had a rather quiet time here in France, with Murray making the most of the opportunity to catch up on work after being in Croatia. Also, being Le Tour De France season, it also meant some quality tv-time watching the live feed & english commentary (thanks Internet – never thought about it, but having english commentary really makes it).

Our host Stephan was pretty fab. Everywhere we have been, our hosts have been friendly and often furnished our stay with little extras like complementary beverages or milk & eggs etc as a welcome. Our host this time around kindly invited us to dinner with his friends and family one evening, so we got the chance to eat some authentic french home made food (including home roasted tomatoes, escargot cassoulet and some wonderful desserts made with chocolate, figs and fresh peppercorns). He also gave us a carton of figs, since he grows them for a living. A whole carton.

Seriously. I can't eat an entire carton of fresh figs. Compote time.

Seriously. I can’t eat an entire carton of fresh figs. It’s compote time.

Stephan also invited us to the local fete & we had a great time eating local food and playing petanque with his friends. They each brought their own set (plus sets for us), complete with measuring tape (which they totally used). Somehow, I get the feeling that the French take the game of petanque very seriously. We played for hours. It was much more fun than I anticipated. In fact, the whole fete-thing was more fun than anticipated. There were long rows of tables and everyone sat together like a giant family gathering, while the kids cut up the rug on the dance floor. We ate local mussels and sardines and some sort of fish dumpling stew and drank wine. The evening was all quite festive and certainly not like any I’ve attended at home…Think we got home at midnight.

During our stay we have visited a few places of interest – Aix-En-Provence, Avignon (where the papacy moved for a brief while), Les Baux (a historical village), Luberon and the surrounds (home of lavender and sunflower fields), Mt Ventoux (and the small village of Bedoin) & the calanques at Cassis. We would have visited more, but that would require a teleport.

Le Baux

Some of the lavender fields.

Avignon. Not quite as fancy as I’d imagined. However, plenty fancy enough.

Murray did the famous ride up Mount Ventoux, while I explored the town below (as it took hours to do the ride). While reading about the area, I discovered that Bedoin apparently features a nudist camping ground. Unusual. Who camps in the nude? Sounds rather uncomfortable.

Mount Ventoux. The place is bald as on top. Rather challenging ride, apparently.

We also went for a road trip to explore the coastline from here to Nice (via Frejus, Cannes, Antibes etc – if it was on the coast road we visited it). As we discovered Monaco was not all the much further, we ended up going there also, and then continuing on right up until the French-Italian border. Never realised where Monaco was. Or that it was so tiny (it’s something like 2 square km). Bit of a joke really. But quite lovely nonetheless. Murray got his opportunity to drive the iconic road/underpass known from the Monaco Grand Prix. (Although it may be a little underwhelming driving at 50km/hr in a 3 door compact Renault Twingo. Lol.)

Monaco. Here just to drive the Grand Prix route. And it appears it was 47..not 50. My bad.

On the drive, I was expecting to see some seriously fabulous beaches. The beaches were ok, but on the whole far from amazing. Some of the coastline was gorgeous, but the amazing part is the clear blue water. Not everywhere, but in enough places to make me exceedingly jealous. It’s also pretty weird seeing beaches with no surf. There were more beach umbrellas, inflatable pool toys and snorkel gear than you can poke a stick at.

I’ve also never seen so many boobs. Clearly, Europeans have a different idea of modesty.

This bit of the coast was pretty good, although pretty inaccessible from a “let’s go for a swim’ point of view.

The weather:

The south of France is hot. Perpetually hot. While we have been here, the sun has done a solid job of shining all day, every day. It’s strange, uncomfortable and wonderful all at once. It’s also solidly in the territory of 30+ weather almost all the time. After being in Ireland it feels a bit freakish.

I had hoped that we might do some hiking while we were here, but the terrain and conditions more or less make that a bit of a no. It’s just too damn hot. The only place we have found that it’s consistently great to be is in the sea. So we have been to the beach almost every day. I don’t think I have been to the beach this frequently in my entire life. I have to say, it’s pretty fabulous. The water is crystal clear and a lovely shade of blue. So clear that as Murray pointed out – he can see his toe hairs from the surface. And this has been more or less the case all the time (at least where we are staying). The water temperature (unlike the ambient temperature) has been rather changeable, with some days being quite (read: very) cold (wouldn’t surprise me if it is 22 degrees) and other days when it is like getting into a tepid bath. Either way, it has been a bit of a life saver, as we have no air-conditioning in our place, and the summer heat is rather uncomfortable from about 2-7pm. So we stick it out (literally, stuck to the leather couch) and watch the Tour De France every day and then go to the beach. Fabulous. And then have to contend with the heat again when we return… I didn’t think the heat would annoy me all that much, since our weather is worse, but… (being the indoor plant that I am these days) I have become unused to what the outdoors (and lack of air-conditioning) really means. It means being distinctly uncomfortable.