Road Trip Day #8

          We're here in Saint Malo, and it was great to wake up in a real house.  It is very comfortable here.

          After a leisurely morning, we headed to visit Mont St. Michel.  This is the town/chateau/church that was built in a very strategic location:  an island at high tide and a peninsula at low tide.  No one could ever hope to successfully attack it.  Now, it is probably the most popular tourist attraction in France outside of Paris.

Mont St. Michel from a Distance

Close Up

          Even in low season it was busy with visitors.  But we had fun.  Expect to get muddy if you come to visit, since every high tide brings an influx of mud to the base of the mount.  We had lunch on a rock wall and Ivy took a nap:

Another Picture from Mont St. Michel

          We returned to Saint Malo and had a walk on the beach.  At high tide, the waves come all the way up to the cliff and you cannot walk on the beach.  But when the tide recedes, it exposes 200 yards or more of beach and leaves many tide pools among the rocks.

          In the evening, we went to the nearby town of Dinan.  This is the town where Ford stayed for 8 days when he went to France with his class in April.  He proudly showed us around.

           Indeed, he was able to lead us right to the front door of the French family with whom he resided while he was visiting in April.  They had been nice enough to invite us for dinner. 

Front Door of Ford's French Family's House

Ford's French Family in Dinan:  Mr. et Mdm. Martin, Brieuc et Theothime

          Dinner was a brief affair; only four hours long (roughly eight courses served at half-hour intervals).  It was nice.  It required much concentration from Ed to follow the gist of the conversation.  Averil's French is seemingly effortless at this point in time.

          We did not leave until after 11:00 p.m. for the return drive to St. Malo.

Road Trip Day #7

          This morning we were suddenly awakened in our hotel beds by a loud noise.

          It was Le General telling us to get up and get moving.  We had another chateau to conquer before heading north on the four hour drive to St. Malo.  It was Chateau Chenonceau.  Again, totally out of our price range, but we decided to see it anyway.  Here is what it looks like:

     
          It's built over a river.  Here's what it looks like from a different angle:
   

         
         And yet, another angle:

       

         The inside is fancy too.

            After that, we hit the road for St. Malo. Our car is starting to look the part of a road trip car. And maybe feel it too. When we were about 20 minutes from St. Malo, something funny happened where it would not go over 3000 rpms in any gear. We think it might be sick. We're going to have to deal with that by taking it to a garage.  

          But the good news is that we made it to St. Malo.  We are fortunate to be staying in the beautiful home of the mother of our dear friend Anne Derieux.  Her mother Janine is the quintessential hostesse, installing us in the maison before leaving for her second home.  It's half a block from the beautiful beach on the English Channel.  We had balmy skies as we introduced Ivy to the beach:



Road Trip Day #6

          Le General and Ford forced us out of bed this morning at 8:45.  Eschewing the hotel breakfast, we set out for the center of town which is a 5 minute walk.  It was hard to find a place to eat . . . Valency seems a little downtrodden.  We settled for a working bar, which is really the best place of all to have coffee.  The proprieter gave Ivy some treats.   (Dogs are welcome in most restaurants and Ivy comes with us pretty much wherever we go).  And the coffee was outstanding.

          Then we went up to the Chateau de Valency.  Here are some pictures:

          This is an estate in/near the Loir Valley which was used by various important people over a long period of time begining in the mid 1500s.  Napoleon "imprisoned" the king of Spain here. 

          One of the things you'll notice about these pictures and others is that there is practically no one here but us.  It was like that at the caves too.  These places are teeming with tourists in summer.  But a great advantage to travelling off season is that we have never encountered any kind of wait or had to compete with other tourists.  (The first cave we saw normally has a four hour wait in summer.  But we had no wait.)  So travel off season if you can!

          We had fun touring acres of grounds at the chateu via Golf Cart! which we rented for half an hour.  That was fun.  We all squeezed on, and Ivy rode on the floor in front. 

Here is Napoleon with his children.  Notice that one of them has a dog-face and two of them have big grins, which was not the custom at the time, especially if Napoleon was your dad.

Ivy liked the peacocks which were wandering the grounds, and the royal fountains, which she waded in.   Then we saw the inside of that chateu.  Remember, this was before Ikea.  The furniture is very fancy.  Too lavish for our taste we decided.  We liked seeing the kitchen where the feasts were prepared.

          We went back to the hotel and flopped on the beds.  But Le General would have none of it!  Inspired by Napoleon no doubt, she demanded that we rise and go with her to the next destination, which was in Amboise about an hour's drive.  The reason?  To see the house where Leonardo da Vinci lived for the last three years of his life at the invitation of the King of France.  This was the house where he died.

        We parked and walked the mile or so to Leonardo's house.  That took a long time.  One of the things about having a three month old Golden Retriever puppy with you is that you have to stop every 2-3 minutes to let people pet her and say "ooooooo!" and "aahhhhhhhh!"  Like this group:

It never stops.  "What is her age?" they ask.  "Is she a labrador?"  "She is so cute!" 

          Leonardo invented many things, some of which they have built models of here at his house.  He also painted a picture called the Mona Lisa.  Apparently, when he decided to come to France, he rode across the Alps on a mule.  He put the Mona Lisa in his saddlebag and brought it with him. 

Leonardo's House.

          We drove back to Valency where we decided to spend a second night.  On the way back into town at 7:30 p.m., Ed took a wrong way turn up a one way street.  (It was dark and poorly signed!)  Anyway, Ed immediately noticed flashing blue lights behind him, attempting to turn around and follow him up the one way street.  It was the Gendarmes!  We went straight into the middle of town, parked, turned off the lights and tried to look natural.  But we were spotted!  A big van full of police pulled right up to our car and three of them got out and marched over and started saying things Ed did not understand but which he assumed had something to do with the fact that he had broken the law. 

          Ed was perfectly cut out for the role he knew he needed to play at that moment in time:  Ignorant tourist who speaks almost no French.  It came quite naturally really.  But Ed managed to squeek that he was "sorry" and "it [was] an error."  The policeman stuck a device in Ed's face and requested (demanded?) that he blow into a straw for five seconds.  Ed did as he was told.  The policemen looked at the device (it must have registered zero, as Ed had not had anything to drink) and then at each other.  Then they shrugged and told Ed to have a nice night and be more careful.  And Ed managed to tell them to have a nice night too and goodbye. 

          So it was all good.  And we'll stay again in Valency tonight and head up to St. Malo tomorrow.

Road Trip Day #5

          We're trippin' on caves!

          We started the day at another site of ancient cave artists:  Font de Gaume.  Font de Gaume is one of the very few caves (possibly the only one) of the dozens or several hundred in Europe that still allow some visitors to come in and see the original cave drawings made by prehistoric people 15-20,000 years ago.  Almost all other such caves are now closed to all but credentialed scientists.  Thus,  normal people can only see replicas of the cave art.  But this particular cave, Font de Gaume, takes a limited number of visitors from the general public.  And there is a SIX MONTH waiting list for a ticket to see the inside!

          But we knew none of this when we picked Font de Gaume as our destination this morning.  Averil thought it seemed like a good cave (and we did know the drawings were original).  But that was it.  So at 10:15 this morning, we walked right up to the visitors' center to the ticket booth and asked if we might have a tour of the inside.  No, we were told, the tours were "complet" (full).  As we were about to leave, dissapointed, the ticket person mentioned (almost as an afterthought) that there was an English speaking tour in 45 minutes.  Would we like that?  "Sure!" we said.

          The first thing our excellent tour guide told us was how lucky we were and about how people wait six months to see this cave.  But this particular week was clear of reservations because a TV crew had been expected and they needed to keep the caves free of people and did not know when the TV crew would show up.   The TV crew had only just been able to confirm the precise date of their arrival, so the visitor's center was able to open the caves to a limited number of "walk-ins" (apparently for a few days that week).  And that just happend to be us . . . no reservation required!

          There were only seven of us in total.  And the caves were quite amazing.  The drawings, though very faded, are incredibly detailed and precise which is something I had not known before.  The artists worked by oil lamp on scaffolds and decorated the entire interior of the cave (which extends back a few hundred yards) with images of animals.  We saw probably 20-30 drawings, some very large, but this was only 5% of what was there.  Many of the drawings  are now hidden behind mineral deposits that have accumulated in the last 15,000 years.  But the details of even these drawings are visible to scientists with special lights.  Anyway, we were very lucky.  And we got to stay about an hour in the cave, which is the maximum.

           Here is a picture of us at the entrance of the cave.

          After that, we went to a different kind of cave called Grotte du Grand Roc.  This one is full of crystals and stalagtites and stalagmites and other natural formations.  It was like walking inside of a geode (or a thunder egg as we used to call them).  Some of the crystals grow sideways.  Asha took this photo:

          And that was the end of our our grotto-going adventures.  We're done with caves for a while.  After walking around inside the geode (above), we drove 4 hours to where we are now:  a town called Valencay.  Tomorrow afternoon we'll head north to St. Malo.

          Now it's almost midnight and I'm in the hotel lobby and the janitor is vacuuming my feet so I'm going to bed.  I'll close with a couple of pictures from yesterday that I was unable to upload/download/whatever load last night when I originally intended to.

"The too noisy children are requested leave to respect the other visitors."

Road Trip Day 4

          We spent the night in the town of Sarlat.

          In the morning, we went to the legendary Lascaux caves.  These are the caves containing the famous cave drawings that you've seen of bison and so on.  You can't go into the actual caves anymore (they've been closed since 1963 due to a white and green malady caused by the breath of the visitors) but there is a cave next door with an exact replica of the Lascaux cave drawings.  It was really worth it.

         The cave drawings were made by people who lived about 17,000 years ago.  We learned a lot.  For one thing, there are dozens of drawings in the cave.  The people who made the drawings did not actually live in the cave.  They just did their artwork there.  And they had scaffolds and oil lamps that they used to see what they were doing and make their drawings up high on the walls.  Like all good caves, this one was discovered by some boys and a dog in 1940.

         After lunch, we went to the National Prehistory Museum which was in another town about 20 minutes away.  They have all sorts of artifacts from ancient people who lived in this region from 35,000 to 15,000 years ago.  They say these people were smart and they hunted all sorts of great beasts that are now extinct.  They had art carvings and everything.  And, they didn't live IN caves.  The lived at the mouths of caves, because it was too dark and damp to live inside them.  This region is pockmarked with limestone caves so there were lots of ancient people here doing their thing long ago.

          
          Unfortunately I am in a bad internet place and the photos don't post too well to the blog as they take too much time to upload/unload/download/whateverload.  So we'll get you some more pics soon.

Road Trip Day 3

Road Trip day 3 started off with breakfast at this B&B:

        Then we went to visit a grotto.  It was a gigantic hole in the ground which led to an underground river and a long cave with stalagtites and stalagmites and everything.  We took a boat on the underground river and had a good tour.  Here is a picture from the bottom of the hole looking up, before any of the good stuff even started:

        From there we returned to Rocamadour, a town literally built on the side of a cliff with a monastery on top.  It is quite amazing.   We went to the top and walked around and it was really spectacular.  Here is a view of the town from a distance.  We think James Bond's mortal enemy lives on top where he rents a room from Hogwarts:

        We walked from the bottom to the top.  It was fun.

       From there, we drove through really pretty French countryside in the Dordogne region.  It must be the walnut capital of the world!  There are tons of walnut groves and orchards!  There are also lots of little farms with geese and sheep and cows.  They brag about their foie gras here.

         We're staying in a small town here in Dordogne.  Tomorrow we're going to the Lascau caves to see where the cavemen and caveladies drew on the walls thousands of years ago.  But currently it is 11:20 p.m. and freezing outside here, where I'm sitting, which is the only place I can seem to get an internet connection.  And I cry UNCLE! so I'll check in with you soon.

Road Trip Day #2

              Today was the second day of le Road Trip.  

          It started where it last left off:  Carcassonne.  We took a self-guided tour and learned all about the walled city, retaining a fraction of the information but having fun in the process.  

         We most enjoyed seeing the "Murder Hole" which was where the defenders dropped rocks down on the invaders' heads.  Oh, and did you know that "boiling oil" as a means of defending a walled city is a myth?!  Never happened!  The defenders of castles and fortresses did not drop boiling oil down on the invaders.  Oil was too expensive and rare to use for that purpose.  Mostly they just threw rocks at them.  One time they threw a pig on the invaders.  That was done for a specific purpose.  The fortress dwellers were running low on food.  But they did not want the invaders to know that the invaders' siege was working.  So they used reverse psychology.  They threw the pig on the invaders' heads, and the invaders figured if they could afford to waste a pig carcass then they must have plenty of food.  So they went away.  That was a good trick.

Holding Our Self-Guided Tour Devices

O'er the Ramparts We Walked

Here We're Getting Crepes

 After that, we drove towards our next destination:  Rocamadour.  It took about 4 hours.  We stopped part way and had some American Sandwiches.  They were unlike any sandwich these Americans had ever seen:  french fries and sausage stuffed into a french roll with ketchup.  They were gross and good at the same time.

Le General With Gross/Good American Sandwiches in Her Clutches

We lunched by a canal.  The wind was blowing like crazy.  A leaf blew in the canal and Ivy jumped in after it.  It was her first swimming lesson.

Before Jumping In Canal

         In fact, the landscape and architecture has really changed.  It's not like Provence anymore.  It looks more like England, or what I imagine England to be.  And they grow food here in big fields, instead of just grapes. 

          We traveled through Toulouse on our way to our stopping point.  Toulouse is a big French city.  They make airplanes there.  And the service at the gas stations is excellent!

She Doesn't Miss a Spot!

          Then we arrived at a B&B outside of Rocamadour.  (You should look it up Rocamadour on the internet.)  It was funny, because when we arrived Le General and the innkeeper started jabbering back and forth in French.  After a few minutes we realized he was English and he realized we were American.  Everyone laughed!

          For dinner we went into Rocamadour.  It is like a town out of a movie . . . maybe Harry Potter or even The Lord of the Rings.  It was nighttime, and we got some good pictures but I'm too tired to download them right now.  We'll show you some pictures of that tomorrow after we finish what we're going to be doing, which is . . . .   
                                             going into grottos!!

Road Trip!

          This coming ten days is a school vacation and Ed returned from Seattle on Saturday.  We had a little bit of apprehension about whether they'd let him (me) back in to France due to possible noncompliance with an issue we don't fully understand.  But they didn't even check his (my) passport upon arrival in Marseille via Amsterdam. 

          So what are Le General's plans for the next ten days or so?  Can you guess?  That's right!  A Road Trip! 

Setting Out on the Road Trip

         The itinerary is well-planned.  Basically, we'll head west, then north, with stops along the way until we reach the area of Normandy.

         Would we survive the road trip?  Le General was CERTAIN that we would:

          Per Le General's orders, we drove about 3 and 1/2 hours west to the first destination:  Carcassone.  You can find out about it on the internet.  There's a midevil city here with ramparts and turrets and even a moat.  It's neat.  We walked all around:

Entering the Walled City

A sunny spot

The reunited couple

Taking a sip

The narrow streets

Sitting on a Wall in the Walled City

What Happens to Your Brain if You Live in the Walled City Too Long

NEXT STOP TOMORROW:  We knock on the door of Rocamadour!

About to be Reunited!

          Long distance relationships (LDRs) can be hard.  But if you find yourself separated from your loved one, you can find lots of advice on the internet.  Like these tips from Stargurl92:

Yes, LDRs require lots of compermises.

          But after three weeks, Averil and Ed will be reunited on Saturday.  Then our LDR will be a NDR (No Distance Relationship) again.  The only question is: will the French authorities allow Ed back in to the country.  Remember, he left without having his physical examination and obtaining his special seal.  We know you are hanging on this cliffhanger.

Market Day in Nyons

Today my parents and I took in the market in Nyons, the next town to the north.  Lovely.  Beautiful, beautiful sun.  Yes, I am soaking it all up for my Seattle friends and sending sun-warmed vibes to you.

Saucissons, a regional specialty

Provencal pottery

Honey vendor

My dad keeps us in good olive suppy . . .

Cheese, cheese and more cheese!

That's right: urchins!

Give a gal provencal food, and she's going to want a tabecloth to go with it.

Hard to tear ourselves away, but there's always next week!