No, we haven’t made it to France, yet. We’re in Elmsford, NY, with the East Coast Z’s. We arrived Monday and will be here until mid-day tomorrow – Thursday, 5/14 – when we head for JFK and that Air France monster.
Since I know that both you readers of this blog really want to see pictures of Clara…
Grandma meets Clara’s bus.
Clara enjoying an after-schools snack.
We arrive in France Friday morning about 11:30 pm Seattle time. I’ll post when I’ve recovered from the flight.
Yes, it’s back to France, for another extended stay!
We loved our 2013 France sojourn so much that we’re going to do it again this year. Not quite as long as 2013, but close:
May 11 – Seattle to New York, for a visit with Craig, Annie and Clara
May 14 – New York to Paris
Four-and-a-half months in France.
Sept 28 – Paris to New York for a visit with Craig, Annie, Clara and Clara’s new brother, who will have been born mid-August
October 3 – back to Seattle
(Yes, that’s correct: Laurie and I are going to be grandparents again. We are SOOOO excited about that!)
For some details…
First, I am excited that we fly from New York’s JFK airport to Paris on an Air France Airbus A380, the biggest passenger airplane ever built. I think both readers of this blog know that I love airplanes – passenger airplanes, in particular – and I’ve wanted to fly on this beast since it entered service in 2007. Here’s a picture:
Laurie and I will be sitting on the upper-deck, at the window just in front of the last door opening. Yeah, it’s just plain old Economy Class (when you’re paying for the tickets because you don’t have enough frequent flier miles to get in Business Class, you fly Economy Class), but we understand these seats have a couple more inches of leg room (good for me) and are in a row of only two seats (good for Laurie, as she doesn’t have to fight for the armrest with some stranger sitting next to her or have that stranger fall asleep with his head on her shoulder – yes, that has happened).
We really lucked out on places to stay this time. In 2013, we rented a house in the small town of Montigny-sur-Loing. That worked just great, but this time it’s even better. Last year, when we started talking about doing another long trip, I emailed our friends there and asked them to keep an eye open for a place to stay nearer them. Almost immediately, Jamie Rufin (of Jamie and Hervé; you read of them in our last trip blog and certainly will again this trip) wrote that their friends/neighbors leave their house each summer to go to a summer house in the Alps and they would be glad to have us “house-sit;” we leapt on that opportunity. Then, with a little digging around on Airbnb I found a house in the town Mary and Gilles Germain live in. I asked Jamie and Mary if they knew anything about it and it turns out the owner is good friends with both of them! I contacted her and rented her cottage for five weeks. So those take care of June, July and August, and we figure we can find things to do for the last half of May and most of September.
We’re leasing the same kind of car – a Renault Clio – from the same company – Renault Eurodrive – this year. (Renault Eurodrive has offices in Elmsford, NY; six months ago I couldn’t have told you where in the world Elmsford was – it’s about 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, a small town with a population of about 5,000 – but in August, Craig and Annie and Clara moved to…Elmsford!) We love the Clio: it’s sporty, has a lot of get-up-and-go, looks good with plenty of space for the two of us, and in 2013 we got just a touch under 50 mpg for the entire time we were there. Fuel prices have declined in France as they have here, but diesel is still $5.25 per gallon (it was over $7 per gallon two years ago), so 50 mpg, we’re good with that.
So we’re off again. We cannot wait to get back to France. It really feels like our home-away-from home, until we try to ask a question in a store; then…not so much.
The trip home yesterday was uneventful. Our worry (and it wasn’t much of a worry) was that the officer at Charles DeGaulle Passport Control would notice that we had stayed 145 days on a 90-day visa. In the event, the officer opened our passports, found an empty page, and stamped it with the exit stamp. He didn’t look for the entry visa or anything. We could have been in France for a year – two years! – as far as he was concerned. Wish we had been…
We also learned what happens to unoccupied houses:
So that’s what greeted us last night. We ignored most of it and went to bed. This morning our friend Margaret left a breakfast casserole, so we had a hot meal (thank you, Margaret!); a couple phone calls got Internet and cellphones working again; another call got a hot water heater service call, so we had hot water by 11 this morning; the lawns got mowed and I started on the overgrown plants; the cars got charged and are working fine. So we’re good.
But geeze, mentally and emotionally, we are still in France. I think it will be a long time before that fades. I found myself today responding with “Ah, voilà” to lots of stuff, just like you hear all the time in France.
I’ll post a summary of our best memories and impressions in the next days. For now, I can only say that everyone should do something like this. We loved darn near every minute of the 145 days we were in France, and it ain’t gonna be easy to let that go.
Last week, the Berlin Zumstegs descended on Montigny-sur-Loing. We were sooooooo glad to have them here and sooooooo sad to see them leave. Rather than a long, detailed and boring account of what we did, here are some pictures, mostly of Clara.
Clara’s third birthday was Sepember 20, so we celebrated while she was here. She didn’t seem to mind having another party.
Craig and Annie and Clara left Sunday; Monday we went to Paris for a couple nights. Now we’re back in Montigny-sur-Loing, our home for almost five months. Sunday we’ll shut the house up and return the keys and go to chez Germain; Monday the car goes back to Renault; Tuesday we return to Seattle.
It has been a great adventure, from start to finish, and while we’ll be glad to return home, we will equally be sad to leave France. I’ll likely post another “wrap-up” commentary soon, but I think this is the last newsy post. Sigh…
I’ve got some catching up to do here! We spent three days in the Loire Valley with Laurie’s sister Peggy, then Craig and Annie and Clara (aka, “The Red Tomato”) arrived and we culminated that visit with a birthday party to celebrate Clara’s third birthday. I’ll start with the Loire Valley visit.
I read somewhere that there are over 1,200 registered chateaux in the Loire Valley, which makes visiting all of them problematical. So we narrowed it to three – the same three Laurie and I visited about eight or ten years ago on a ramble with Mary and Gilles. One has the best gardens, one is almost unanimously hailed as the most beautiful and the third is one that we just like – maybe not the best known, but a favorite for us.
Chateau Villandry is known for its gardens. There’s a chateau, of course, and it’s possible to tour it, of course, but the gardens are the stars here.
The first time we went to Chenonceau, some ten years ago, I was prepared to dislike it. Every guidebook says that Chateau Chenonceau is the most beautiful chateau in France, and so I was going to be an iconoclast and dislike it just on general principle. Unfortunately, my plans fell apart when I saw it. Chenonceau likely is, indeed, the most beautiful chateau in France (I haven’t seen even 2% of all the chateaux, so I can’t really say for sure), and it is surely one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen. Some pictures:
The Chateau Azay-le-Rideau is a perfect Renaissance chateau. Although it’s less-known than most Loire Valley chateaux, Laurie and I may like it best. It’s small, amazingly beautiful, easy to visit and tour, has been a residence since the early 1500s and has rooms furnished as they would have been throughout its history. We love the place. We visited early in the morning and found it almost deserted, adding to its charm.
This abbey has a rather long history: it was founded in the 1100s by a Duke of Aquitaine and has been associated with Aquitaine rulers ever since. At that time Aquitaine (the entire southwest quarter of todays France) was an independent entity, not part of France as it exists today. When Eleanor of Aquitaine, who ruled Aquitaine in the 12th century, divorced the French king Louis VII and married the future king of England, Henry II, all the lands she controlled became English property and the seeds of the Hundred Years War were sown.
Eleanor, who was one of the most powerful woman Europe has known, supported Abbaye de Fontevraud and went there to live in 1200. She died four years later and was buried there with her husband Henry II and her son Richard Lionheart, also a king of England.
In 1803, after the French Revolution stripped the Abbaye of all power and religious meaning, it was converted into a prison. Really! For 180 years it was about the most feared prison in France. Then in 1983 the prison was closed, most of the prison buildings were torn down and a long restoration commenced. Today the Abbaye de Fontevraud is one of the most complete and beautiful Romanesque complexes in France.
It was also great fun to show Peggy these places. Her enthusiasm – her almost constant comment was “Oh, my God, is that beautiful or what?” – was great fun for Laurie and I, and made us enjoy these sites even more.
I haven’t posted for a while, because it has been a busy week or so. Last weekend we took off with Laurie’s sister Peggy to see some chateaux in the Loire Valley (had a great time; pictures soon). Tuesday, Peggy headed back to Paris, just about the time I picked up Craig, Annie and Clara at Orly Airport. They’ll be here until Sunday.
I promise I’ll get some pictures up soon.
Can’t believe it: we’ll be back in Seattle two weeks from yesterday.
We spent three days last week with Mary and Gilles on a ramble that centered on the town of Reims. The reason for the funny title is that the French pronounce Reims as “Rance.” I don’t know why; an example of the crazy French language. I should point out that I live in the Northwest part of the U.S., where Sequim is pronounced “skwim” and Yachats is pronounced “ya-hots” and Puyallup is pronounced a dozen different ways, so I don’t think the French have anything on us in the pronunciation arena.
Anyway, Reims was a fascinating place. It is the biggest city by far in the Champagne region, and has become a rich city on champagne. During World War I (“the Great War” or “The War to End All Wars” but more accurately “The War That Made World War II Inevitable”), Reims was just a few miles from the German/Allied front lines. The German army bombarded Reims every day for four years, leaving over 80% of the city’s buildings uninhabitable when the armistice was signed. This means that there are few really old buildings in Reims, though the Cathedral survived with major damage and has been restored to its original appearance.
For us, Reims falls into a category we’ve assigned many places to: “Cities We Want to See Again.”
This area of France was the front of World War I for almost four years. Most towns and cities were devastated by the war. In Meaux (pronounced “Mo,” as you expected), France has created a beautiful museum dedicated to WW I. It’s pretty powerful.
We bought a package at the Office of Tourisme that included an audio guide with two walking tours and a visit to one of the champagne houses situated in Reims. First tour: the Reims Cathedral.
All French kings, starting with Clovis in 496, were crowned at the site of the Reims Cathedral. The cathedral itself was built in the 1200s, when Gothic was the style and so this cathedral is pure Gothic. It is really known for its stained-glass windows.
The cathedral was less than five miles from the German front during World War I; saying that its towers could be used by French troops for observing German activity, the Germans shelled the Cathedral nearly every day for four years. The structure remained (a testimony to the strength of Gothic architecture), but the roof was gone, much of the stained-glass destroyed (some had been removed for safe-keeping) and both the interior and exterior were badly damaged. Restoration started immediately after the war and today the Cathedral is much as it was pre-war, with the exception of some new stained-glass windows.
World War I devastated Reims. Like the cathedral, German guns shelled and German planes bombed the city nearly every day for four years. At war’s end, 83% of the city’s buildings were uninhabitable. The city was rebuilt almost completely, and quickly.
Now this rebuilding had a benefit for those of us who like and appreciate Art Deco and Art Nouveau buildings. Because these styles were still popular post-WW I, many of the new and rebuilt buildings in Reims have touches of these styles. Our second walking tour was to see some of these buildings.
Our audio guide purchase included a visit at a Champagne house. We chose Taittinger, a premium producer. The tour included a walk-through of the cellars and a taste of their champagne, which was very nice indeed.
Many champagne producers chose Reims as their headquarters for production because, before champagne came along, the city had provided tons and tons of sandstone for buildings throughout France. That meant miles of caves, all at a constant temperature (53F/12C) and humidity. The tour went 120 feet below ground into the caves. This particular cave, about a third the size of Taittinger’s main cave a mile away, holds about 3 million bottles of champagne. The region produces some 350 million bottles per year. That’s a lot of bubbly.
Taittinger
A picture of our friends Mary & Gilles Germain. The best traveling companions.
Mary & Gilles: tour guides extraordinaire and wonderful traveling companions.
That’s it for Reims. As I said at the beginning, it’s another city we want to re-visit; I think we saw about one-quarter of the interesting sights here.
And, by the way, we had fabulous meals here. At an Italian restaurant, canneloni stuffed with shredded duck. A lamb dish that was among the best ever. We’d come back for the restaurants.
You may recall from my earlier post that we loved La Rochelle. So much so that we returned last week for another stay, three days this time. I am glad to report that we still love La Rochelle.
One thing about La Rochelle is that its main purpose for existing is to serve seafood to as many people as possible. And I mean great seafood – always fresh.
Now, Friday was Laurie’s birthday and we had to celebrate. It’s not everyday that one celebrates his or her 40th birthday, and I can tell you that Laurie didn’t celebrate her 40th that day either. Anywhooo, I had to find a special place for a birthday dinner, a place with that certain je ne sais quoi, the greatest in a city of great restaurants. I looked, I researched, I checked them out, and finally, I found it:
Le P’tit Bleu – nothing but the best.
You can see that the “dining room” of Le P’tit Bleu is a bunch of tables along side the old harbor.
Now, you may be laughing (or crying) but I’ll tell you that the moules (mussels) we had there were fantastic; they are cooked on a grill while you wait and served up too hot to eat for a few minutes. Here’s Laurie tucking in:
Moules – Mmmmmmmm.
Here’s a picture of the view. The tower in the background was built in the 1400s.
View at dinner.
Le P’tit Bleu is not the only restaurant in La Rochelle; there must be hundreds of them. This is truly a city dedicated to seafood.
Some more La Rochelle pictures. I didn’t take so many this trip, as I took hundreds last time we were here.
Nice place for a coffee.
La Rochelle’s coat-of-arms. La Rochelle has been a sea-faring city since its founding – by the Romans!
This is – really – a lighthouse. Now in a sea of cars.
The sign on this wine store says “Supplier to the Navy.” Hmmmm….
So we still do love this city and, honestly, can’t imagine coming to France without a detour down to La Rochelle. Want to see more La Rochelle pix? Check out the La Rochelle post from July.
The weather has turned hot again – mid-80s today; we’re keeping the strenuous activity to a minimum and to the morning. This morning we returned to an area near us that is designated as a nature preserve: the Plaine of Sorque.
Once, this area was mostly stone quarries. A particularly beautiful sandstone was quarried here until the 1960s from open-air pits. But evidently sandstone fell out of favor, or the supply was used up because in the 1950s and 1960s, the quarries closed, leaving large holes in the ground, which quickly filled with water.
Someone decided that these lakes could form the central part of a great bird preserve, so the land around them was allowed to return to its native state. Trails were created, and two observation platforms, with camouflage and holes to look out and use for cameras, were built on the shore of the largest lake. The trail goes along the Loing River for quite a ways, too. It is really a beautiful place to visit.
The trail.
The lakes here were once stone quarries; here’s some stones left over, in use as a bench.
Loing River
We’re thinking of buying this boat to live on. It’s the best we can afford!
Loing River
One of the two observation blinds in Plaine de Sorque
The Loing River
Laurie enjoying a beautiful sunny day at the Plaine de Sorque
Okay, phew! I finally got my pictures of Bourges ready for a post. Hard work, you know!
Bourges is a mid-sized city about two hours south of us. For tourists, its attractions are a beautiful, HUGE Gothic cathedral, and many medieval buildings that have been preserved, or restored to medieval condition, making it a great walking-around town. It also was the home-base of Jacques Coeur, who must be the most unknown powerful man ever. No one knows of him, but in the mid-1400s, he and his companies were essentially the French economy. Jacques Coeur had – and exercised – the power that the King of France could only wish he had.
Jacques Coeur built a beautiful Gothic house in Bourges. It remains the biggest and best example of Gothic architecture in a private residence. It’s thought that he never actually lived here, though his long-suffering wife and kids did while he was off gallivanting around the world on his commercial and diplomatic missions.
The front of the house also has what are thought to be busts of Jacques Coeur and his wife. These are on either side of the front door of the house. Maybe they weren’t getting along at the time…
Because Jacques Coeur made much of his considerable fortune in shipping, his house pays honor to his ships in a number of places.
Bourges – another city we would return to visit in a minute. We’re never going to see all France, because we keep finding these places to which we want to return, which means we don’t have time for new places. Such a dilemma…
