Posted by todd on October 12, 2011 under Europe, France | 
We decided to spend our last day on our trip at Versailles, or more precisely, the chateau and gardens at Versailles.
Versailles is very easy to get to from Paris, it is served by the RER A line and from our hotel, it only took about an hour. We followed the advice of our guidebook and stopped in at the Tourist Information office in Versailles, and purchased “le Passport” which is a pass that enabled us to visit all the various elements of Versailles. This pass is available at Versailles itself, however there was no line at the TI so that in itself was worth the extra 2.00 € service fee. The palace itself is only about a five minute walk from the train station so it’s easy to get to.
After going through security, we picked up our audio guide that comes with the entry to the palace. We then joined the hordes of other folks there for a wander through the most opulent palace in Europe. Everything in the palace was done to impress and to cement France as the centre of Europe in the mid 1600′s through to French Revolution in 1789. It’s filled with beautiful artwork, sculpture and furnishings from the period. Much of the palace was looted during the French Revolution so much of the furnishings now are either reproductions or in some cases, the originals brought back after some detective work by the museum.
The gardens at Versailles are as impressive (or perhaps even more so if that’s possible), than the palace itself. The gardens are 800 hectares (yes, you read that right) and are spectacular. There are 50 fountains and numerous smaller palaces and gardens though out the property. The gardens themselves are free to enter (most days) and are a source of recreation for runners, cyclists and rowers. We are here too late in the season to see the fountains actually working but they would be spectacular.
We spent some time wandering around and grabbed a surprisingly good chicken sandwich at a little spot close to the Petit Trianon which was one of the smaller palaces used when the kings wanted to get away from the larger palace. We spent some time at the Hameau de la reine which is a little village that Marie Antionnete had built so she could pretend she was in the country. It has a working farm, vegetable gardens and a selection of livestock including chickens, ducks, sheep, goats, cattle and rabbits. We didn’t get a chance to see this part of Versailles the last time we came. It’s well worth the trek. It’s about a 40 minute walk from the chateau. There are also golf carts one can rent as well as a tourist train you can hop on if you’re so inclined.
We headed back to our hotel for a small break before venturing out for our last dinner of the trip. We decided to head back to the first place we stopped at when we got to Paris last Friday, Cafe Richard. It was a fantastic last meal, Deanna had her new favorite sandwich, a Croque Madame and I had one of the best steaks I’ve had in a long time. It came with creamy potatoes, green beans and a baked tomato. We finished off with some chocolate cake and crepes.
And that intrepid reader is the end of our trip. We board a flight to Frankfurt at 6:40 am and then back to Calgary. I’ll post some final thoughts in a few days but for now, Au reviour and thanks to everyone that sent words of encouragement and emails throughout the trip. They meant the world to Deanna and I and it was nice to keep in touch with folks on our adventure.
Posted by todd on October 11, 2011 under Europe, France |
Today we spent more time in Paris, walking around and just being part of the city again. We headed over to Montmartre, which commands some of the best views of the Paris skyline and is home to the Sacre Coeur Basilica. This church is relatively new having been started in 1875 and was consecrated just after WWI in 1919. Deanna found a cat (actually the cat found her), and was her best friend for a few minutes while she fed a bit of leftover lunch.
From there we took the metro to the Champs Élysées and just wandered about for a bit. Again, the weather was not great today, a bit windy and chilly but it is October after all. After not spending a fortune on anything, we headed back to the hotel for a bit of a break.
Dinner tonight was at “The Moose” which is a Canadian bar that is literally the next block over from our hotel. I noticed an advertisement for the bar in the Metro and after looking at their menu, knew we would have to stop by. Apparently it’s one of a handful of places that caters to the Canadian expat crowd (and locals). They show hockey games and football games on televisions, have Canadian beers and serve typical Canadian pub fare. For us, that meant nachos for Deanna and a burger and fries for me. Both, very tasty, and totally not French.
After dinner, we headed to Pont-neuf for an hour long boat tour on the river. It’s another perspective seeing the city of lights at night from the river. It’s very beautiful. We thought briefly about doing a dinner cruise but from all we’ve read they are very expensive for what you get. It was a great experience, wonderful to see the city and something everyone should do if they get a chance.
Posted by todd on October 10, 2011 under Europe, France |
A person can only take so many churches and museums and charming towns 
We went to Disneyland Paris today for something completely different than what the last six weeks were like. It’s easy to get to from Paris. It’s served by the RER-A metro line which is apparently one of the busiest commuter lines in the world (not due to the park but the other outlying stops it makes between the park and Paris).
Our trip out was a bit longer than it should have been as there was either an accident or a breakdown somewhere along the 4 line which we needed to take to get to the RER line. It’s fairly typical of Paris metro stations to serve more than one line so we instead took the 10 to the 7 to the RER. It only added another 20 minutes once we figured out thats what we needed to do. Anyway, we’re becoming experts at the Paris Metro system now 
The trip to DisneyLand only takes about an hour from downtown Paris. There are two parks DisneyLand park and Walt Disney Studio Park. We bought a park-hopper pass which allowed us to visit both parks.
DisneyLand park is very much like DisneyLand in California or the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. I guess if you have a formula that works, why mess with it? The park isn’t as large as either one but it does have some of the more popular rides. Thunder Mountain Railway, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain etc. No Splash Mountain and No Country Bear Jamboree (Much to Deanna’s disappointment). Deanna also mentioned that the haunted house is much less scary in French than it is in English.
Walt Disney Studios is a smaller version of the like named park in Orlando. It’s theme is the animation and film side of Walt Disney. There are attractions like a special effects stage, animation exhibits and that sort of thing. We didn’t spend too much time here but we did attend a stunt show that involved shooting a live action car chase scene.
We caught part of the parade and did see one stage show with the Disney cast of characters singing (in multiple languages) and performing around a halloween theme. We’re not sure how big halloween is here in France. This was the first we’ve seen of anything halloween related. I’m guessing that it’s mostly a north american thing.
It was a fun day and like I mentioned something totally different than what we’ve done for the past six weeks. It was a distraction as we’re both missing our family and friends on Thanksgiving.
Two more days and then we’re headed home.
Posted by todd on October 9, 2011 under Europe, France |
We have another day on our Paris Museum Pass so we decided to venture out and take in a few more museums today. We started at the Louvre. It was busy, but again, we didn’t have to wait in the line to buy tickets with our pass. Armed with our trusty audio guide of the museum we spent a couple of hours winding our way through a few centuries of art. From early greeks and roman statuary through to Italian and French Renascence. There are a few must see pieces at the Louvre and we did our best to jockey with the crowds to see them. It’s an overwhelming space with more than 30,000 pieces on display. The best one can hope is to scratch the surface and plan on coming back one day soon to continue exploring.
From the Louvre, we hopped on the Metro to head back to see Saint Chappelle and Conciergerie, two spots covered by our museum pass that we skipped on our walking tour on Friday.
Saint Chappel has some of the most beautiful stained glass we’ve seen on our trip. The cathedral itself is just ok, but it’s known for it’s stained glass. It was originally commissioned by King Louis the IX to hold the Crown of Thorns.
Next door is the Conciergerie which played a crucial role in the French Revolution. It’s where the ruling elite was sentenced to death. The most famous prisoner was Marie Antoinette.
From there we wandered back to Notre Dame and considered climbing the stairs to bell tower but the line was too long and our museum pass didn’t allow us to get around it so we skipped it and instead went to the Pantheon which is not too far from our hotel.
The Pantheon was originally a church to St. Genevieve but it’s mostly used as a crypt for some of the more famous folks from France’s history. Here you’ll find the remains of Marie Curie and her Husband, Victor Hugo and dozens of others. It also contains a huge Foucault Pendulum which illustrates the earth rotation. It’s quite impressive to see.
We were exhausted and headed back to the hotel for the night.
We are missing being home, missing Thanksgiving and our family. A few more days and we’ll be heading home.
Posted by todd on October 8, 2011 under Europe, France |
One can’t think of Paris without thinking about the museums and monuments that are found here. The amount of art and culture that is centered in Paris is really quite overwhelming. People have dedicated entire careers to the art and found in Paris. We’re not that quite adventurous. We started the day with a visit to the Orsay Museum. Now I know what you’re thinking. Paris? Shouldn’t you be at the Louvre? Well yes, however we did visit the Louvre on our last visit so I thought we would check out the Orsay.
We decided to buy a two day Paris Museum Pass which allows us to visit over 60 museums. There are two benefits to the pass. One, it is most likely cheaper than paying admission to the individual museums and two, it allows us to skip the lines to buy the admissions at each of these museums. Time is important and waiting around in lines is no fun.
The Orsay museum was opened in 1986 in a decommissioned train station. It is a grand old building that was going to be demolished but someone had the idea of moving works from other museums that cover the period of 1848 to 1914. There are many famous works in this museum by such painters such as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin and Van Gogh. It contains sculpture, furniture and photography from this period as well. It’s a large collection, but is not overwhelming like the Louvre.
We had another audio guide in podcast form that from our guide book that we listened to. It covers most of the highlights in the museum. The problem we had is that the museum is undergoing some renovations and some of the paintings were not where they normally were, some were away in storage or out on loan etc. It was a bit confusing trying to find the commentary to go with the works that were available but in the end, it all worked out ok.
After a couple/three hours, we walked to Les Invalides which is where Nepolean Bonaparte‘s tomb is as well as a French Military Museum. The tomb is a very impressive space with a huge dome and beautiful artwork. We didn’t go through the military museum and instead decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower.
Our museum pass doesn’t cover the elevator ride in the Eiffel Tower and we really weren’t thinking of going up again as this was something we’ve done in the past. It’s worth doing for sure, but if you decide to go, buy your tickets ahead of time instead of just walking up and buying them onsite. The lines were massive and the day was not great, cool windy and bit rainy, so it wouldn’t have been worth the time to get up there anyway in my opinion.
Instead, we opted for lunch. We found a little bistro very close to the Eiffel tower and had a bite to eat there. Deanna has been wanting to try a Croque Madame sandwich which is basically a ham and cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top. She really enjoyed it even exclaiming that she might like it better than a Monte Cristo sandwich which is very high praise indeed. Deanna fell in love with Monte Cristo sandwiches on our last trip to New York and makes them at home at least once a month. I suspect we’ll be trying to recreate Croque Madame sandwiches in our near future. I had steak-frites which was pretty tasty.
After lunch we hopped on the Metro to walk up the 274 steps of the Arc de Triomphe. With our handy dandy museum pass we were able to skip the line and basically head right up. The views from up top are quite spectacular with vistas looking down the grand boulevards of Paris, to the Eiffel tower, Sacre Cour etc. As I mentioned, the weather wasn’t great but at least it wasn’t raining when we were up top. It was quite blustery,cold and cloudy though so after a few photos we headed back down the steps and back to the hotel via the metro for a bit of a break.
We decided to head to a movie and (google) found Les Trois Luxembourg a little theatre a 10 minute walk from our hotel that was playing (quite appropriately) Midnight in Paris. A film starring Owen Wilson by Woody Allen. It opens with a number of scenes of Paris and I found myself saying, yep we were there today and hey there’s somewhere we saw yesterday etc. It was quite surreal actually. The story itself is interesting, Owen plays a Hollywood screenwriter who is trying to write a novel and is in Paris with his fiancé. There is a historical element in which Paris from the 20s plays a big part and some of the characters of the time intertwine into the story. Scott Fitzgerald,Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter and others. It’s actually really well done and Paris itself plays a big role in the movie. It wasn’t a typically hollywood blockbuster which was great. Sitting in a little theater in Paris with a bunch of other Parisians watching a film about Paris just seemed, well, very cool and one of those serendipitous things that happens rarely.
After the movie we wandered back to one of the main streets close to our hotel and grabbed a slice of raspberry tart and a hot chocolate and watched a very busy Saturday night in Paris unfold before us. Many many people around eating and enjoying their city. It’s fun to be part of, even for a little bit.
Posted by todd on October 7, 2011 under Europe, France |
Today we travelled to our last city in our European adventure, Paris. We checked out of our hotel in Reims and boarded a non-stop TGV train to Paris-Est. In 45 minutes we were there and hoped on the 4 line of the Paris metro which took us to the Odeon stop, a 10 minute walk to our hotel. The train/metro system in Paris is so easy to use, it’s great.
We made it to our hotel and dropped off our bags as our room wasn’t quite ready yet. We headed towards the Luxembourg gardens, which are just down the road from our hotel. It was quiet over cast and was raining off and on. We stopped in at a cafe close to the garden for lunch. They had roast chicken on the menu which I’ve been craving for weeks now. Deanna had a salad with shrimp, avocado and smoked salmon. As the weather was a bit crummy, we also had hot chocolate. We haven’t had hot chocolate since we started our trip and it was a treat and just what we needed.
After moving our luggage up to our room, we headed out for a self-guided walking tour. I had downloaded a couple of recordings that go along with our guidebook and with our headphones on we started at Notre Dame.
Notre Dame is a very impressive basilica, made even more so by it’s location on the Isle de la cite. The line to enter was very long but moved at a good pace and we were inside (out of the rain) in no time. We’ve seen some pretty impressive basilicas on this trip including St. Peters in Rome and St. Michaels in Venice. They are more ornate than Notre Dame but there is something about Notre Dame. It could be that it was the first large cathedral that I saw when we first came to Paris nine years ago, I’m not sure. We ended up sitting through part of a mass (which was in French of course) which was interesting even if we couldn’t understand what was being said.
We then headed out of the church and down to the Deportation Memorial. This is a very quiet and moving tribute to 200,000 French victims of the Nazi concentration camps in WWII.
From there, we crossed back over the seine river and into the Latin quarter. We had a quick look around Shakespeare and Company, a venerable Paris institution that originally opened in 1919 and was frequented by now famous authors of the like of “Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, George Antheil and Man Ray”. It’s crammed full of books, both new and used. It’s a great store that is becoming more and more rare these days.
We wandered through a couple of narrow streets that hint of what Paris would have been like in the early days. We crossed the river again and wandered past Sainte-Chapelle, Palais de Justice and Conciergerie but didn’t go in to look. (The lines were long and we weren’t sure there were worth the entry fee). We ended our tour on the famous Pont Neuf which while named “new bridge” is actually the oldest bridge in Paris.
Posted by todd on October 6, 2011 under Europe, France |
Deanna was feeling a bit better this morning so we decided to head out and visit some champagne cellars. There are many that are found in Reims. As I mentioned earlier, the weather has turned a bit on us. Gone are the lazy sunny days of last week to be replaced by cool and rain. It was with rain coats on we headed to find a bus to take us to one of the Champagne cellars. This is one time where our guide book let us down. We thought we could take a city bus from the train station, but after asking a driver she indicated another bus at another stop. We wandered to that stop and waited. And waited 10 minutes past the posted time when the bus was supposed to come. In the rain. And it didn’t come. So we started walking and then got grumpy about walking and decided to find a tourist information spot so we walked there. By this time we had been out in the rain for over an hour, no breakfast and Deanna wasn’t feeling 100%. We’ve had better moments.
We did make it to the tourist information building, made one booking and figured out where to catch the bus to take us where we wanted to go.
Our first tour was at Taittinger. The cellars are built on top of an ancient quarry that was originally constructed by the romans in the 400s. It’s a large sprawling complex of chalk and limestone that is perfect for keeping champagne at the correct temperature and humidity. The tour started with a 10 minute video explaining a bit about the process of making champagne.
I didn’t know this, but champagne is always a blend of various grape varieties. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Munier are the only types allowed into wines that can be called champagne. Most champagnes are made up of grapes from all over the regions that may have been grown in different years. The wine maker composes the taste for his particular wine, by selecting and composing the flavors he wants from a variety of sources. Champagne is aged in the cellars for a minimum of 18 months but it is common for champagnes to be cellared for many years. It’s a two stage fermentation process where in the second stage, yeast and sugar is introduced. This is where the bubbles come from. The longer a champagne has been aged the number of bubble goes up and the size of the bubbles goes down. A good champagne has lots of small bubbles.
After the movie, we toured the caves where they still have 3 million bottles. They have another 13 million bottles at another site. At Taittinger, they still employ the manual turning of at least some of their champagnes called Riddling. A Riddler can turn as many as 7500 bottles an hour. It’s cold, hard work and not many young people want to do this anymore. Many producers are using more automation.
At the end of the tour we got to sample one of their champagnes. We both quite liked it. Deanna is a bigger fan of champagne than I, but this particular one was quite tasty.
We had an hour before the next tour which was just down the road so we grabbed a ham and cheese croissant and some chocolate chip cookies from a boulangerie and waited. It rained off and on so we ended up hanging out in a bus stop until the second tour opened at 2:00 after lunch.
The second cellar we stopped at was G.H Martel & Co. It was a bit more intimate in size than the first tour (20 compared to 40+), and followed the same sort of approach. A short movie (that had more information than the first one), followed by a tour of the cellars (not in use at all anymore here, except for the tours), and a tasting. In this case we tried three different champagnes We preferred the Taittinger to all three of these ones. They didn’t have the same flavor and qualities as the first one we tried. It was a very interesting tour and we’re glad we did both of them.
We then headed back to the hotel on the bus. We stopped at a pharmacy to get some cold medication for Deanna. The pharmacist was very helpful and asked all sorts of questions before presenting us with three different medications. One for cough, one for runny nose and one for inflammation. Hopefully these will help. She’s doing fine but it’s no fun being sick on vacation.
We’re off to Paris tomorrow on the train. Our last stop before heading home next Thursday.
Posted by todd on October 5, 2011 under Europe, France |
Reims (rhymes with France, I know, don’t ask), is the centre of all things champagne. It was our intention today to visit one or more of the champagne cellars but Deanna was not feeling well at all. We did get out for a bit this morning to visit the cathedral. You would be forgiven if you thought the cathedral in the photo collage was Notre Dame in Paris. It’s strikingly similar, though not quite as grand, it comes pretty close. The cathedral was mostly destroyed in world war I and rebuilt. The rebuilding was done masterfully, however you can tell there are many bits that aren’t original. Most of the stained glass was destroyed except for the Rose window that was taken down prior to the war. It’s been replaced by various artists including Marc Chegall.
Just beside the cathedral is the Carnegie library. It’s part of a network of libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie and his philanthropy. It contained a small exhibit regarding the 800 year anniversary of the completion of the cathedral. It was all in French so we didn’t learn too much about it.
We headed back to the hotel and noticed a set of stalls setup with Quebec and Canadian flags. It turns out the Quebec tourism board is here and were selling all sorts of Canadiana type things from beer to pancakes and lumber jackets. Nice to see Canada represented here.
The rest of the day was spent at the hotel, taking it easy. I asked at the front desk if they knew where I could find some soup for Deanna and they had the restaurant next door make her up some and brought it to the room, which was very nice of them.
Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see some Champagne caves tomorrow. We’ll see how Deanna is felling.
Posted by todd on October 4, 2011 under Europe, France |
As I mentioned yesterday, the plan today was to pick up the rental car and make our way to Reims which is North East of Paris. We headed out of Beaune and within a few minutes we were zooming our way northwards. It was interesting to note how quickly the terrain changed. South of Beaune it’s vineyards as far as the eye can see, north it quickly became mixed farming (cattle, grains, grapes and other crops that were hard to identify from the road) as well as forest.
We made our way to Flavigny-sur-Ozerain which is a small town about an hour North East of Beaune. We decided to stop there after searching for interesting towns north of Beaune on the internet. It turns out Flavigny-sur-Ozerain belongs to a select group of villages in the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (“The most beautiful villages of France”) and the movie Chocolat was filmed in and around the town. The town is very beautiful and was eerily quiet. We didn’t see many people around and heard a few roosters crowing away as we wandered about. Aside from the charm (of which there was plenty), there really wasn’t much else there. We went looking for a boulangerie and couldn’t find one which is saying something in France.
We headed back out and drove through more rual France on our way to Châtillon-sur-Seine where we found some ham and cheese croissant and strawberry beignet. From there we headed north, past rolling hills and some massive wind-mill energy farms into Champagne country.
The weather turned a bit on us, after five weeks of stellar weather we had some clouds and bit of light rain. Nothing too nasty mind you but enough to remind us that we are in October now and summer is defiantly over. Our GPS that had been working like a champ for us all day started giving us really bad advice when we got close to Reims. It totally missed the turn off the auto-route and four or five times gave totally wrong directions in our attempt to find the rental car agency at the train station. We got close to the station, parked the car and then went on a reconnaissance mission to find the Avis return point. We could see other rental agencies but not Avis. I went into the train station and found an information booth and asked and it turns out the Avis rental spot is on the other side of the tracks and not where all the other ones are . Anyway, we had parked close(ish) to our hotel so we decided to check in and then return the car.
Deanna has come down with a cold 
We were both doing well this trip but all the traveling finally took it’s toll. She had a bit of nap while I dropped the car off and we then ventured out for dinner. We’re on a busy road, with lots of choices of things to eat. We picked a brasserie just down the block. I had round three of Moules et Frites while Deanna had some salad. She also has a glass of Champagne, so she’s not that sick
Hopefully she’ll bounce back here (and not infect me), but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Posted by todd on October 3, 2011 under Europe, France |
Today was a relatively lazy day. We decided last night that we’re going to rent a car and drive to Reims tomorrow instead of taking the train. This is for two reasons. The first is that the earliest we can get into Reims is 7:45 pm which includes a trip to Dijon first and then a 3+ hour trip on the train. The second reason is that we’ve done all we wanted to do here in Beaune and would rather explore a few towns along the way and doing that by train isn’t feasible.
The first stop today was to the rental car agency to get a car arranged for tomorrow. We’re getting one with a GPS this time so that should reduce the navigation stress somewhat.
The second stop was to the train station to get a refund on the train trip we’re not needing any more. We first tried to get a refund from the automated ticket machine but that option wasn’t available. I waited in line for an agent and tried to explain what I wanted to do. She misunderstood me and actually printed the tickets for the trip. When I was able to explain that I wanted to cancel the trip, she informed me that she couldn’t and I would have to contact the agency that I booked the tickets through. The tickets are refundable so it shouldn’t be an issue but as of tonight, my query with raileurope.com hasn’t been returned. Regardless, we’ll drive up to Reims tomorrow and enjoy the trip I’m sure.
After leaving the train station, we wandered around the ramparts of the town of Beaune for a bit. It’s still very cool to be in a place with so much history, it’s probably something I will never tire of.
We stopped into the Notre Dame Basilica at Beaune which as Deanna observed, not nearly as impressive as some of the other churches we’ve seen. I guess we’re getting “churched-out”
We then stopped into the Museum of Wine just down the street from the church. It was a small but interesting museum that covers the history of wine making in general and wine making the the region in particular. There were lots of old farm implements related to the process of making wine, an interesting display on barrel making, lots of glassware as well as the historical importance of wine to the local economy.
Dinner tonight was a low key affair. I had a steak haché which turns out is just a hamburger patty without a bun. Denna had a pizza.
We’ve enjoyed our time here but we’re also ready to move on.
