Our Honeymoon

OK, the final instalment (possibly) in the honeymoon blog – the driving.  My first and only attempt at driving Einie is documented here.  The Boy did the rest of it – all 6,500kms!  Over the course of 4 weeks we had plenty of time to observe the French drivers at their best.  The Boy was reading James May on Motors while we were touring (well, not while actually driving, although the French probably wouldn’t have noticed), and there were several essays on his opinions of the French people’s driving skills.  The most amusing one had a line that we both remember clearly – “In Britain we invented something called the two-second rule, but the French seem to have mistakenly converted this to metric and arrived at 5.08 centimetres.”.  That seemed to explain pretty much everything.  Pretty much all cars had some kind of panel damage, and we were constantly cut off when being overtaken (in our opinion – the other driver left a good 5.08cm between us and them, so they thought everything was fine).  The photos in Marseilles describe clearly the worst of the driving.

Most places were better than that, but to a couple of Australians who were used to having a lot of “personal space” whilst driving, it was nerve wracking for the first week or so.  We found some common signs by the side of the motor way amusing too.  They went something like “1 car length – danger, 2 car lengths good” (very roughly translated).  Of course in Australia we’re trained that 3 seconds is the right distance to leave between cars, which is more than 2 car lengths when travelling at 130km/h!

We were proud to survive the entire trip without getting a single scratch on Einie.  We hope his new owners are just as careful with him.

The final observation about the French?  They love blinking lights.  Especially by the side of the road.  We quickly nicknamed the lights “Disco Stu” (after the character from The Simpsons).  There were some spots where there was so many flashing lights that a mirror ball would not have been out of place.  Multi-patterning multi-light shows around motorway exit ramps were our favourite.  In some cases they were a bit distracting – probably taking away from their intended purpose….  However, as fun as the motorway lights were, they were by far eclipsed by the chemist signs. Every chemist (pharmacie), and there were many, sported a bright green (sometimes with a bit of blue and red mixed in there) flashing neon cross.  There was a huge variety of different patterns (as a quick Flikr search reveals) and styles.  Woe betide you if you were an epileptic looking for a pharmacy.

And so that ends the honeymoon blog.  Unless I think of anything else to talk about!   We have almost acclimatised back to Australia, but are still missing bread and cheese (and Orangina for the Boy).  I made some bread from scratch on the weekend which turned out very well, but is unlikely to become a regular thing – we eat it too quickly!  We have found a source of Orangina for the Boy, and I’m sure some hunting will yield some decent cheese, but for the time being we’re both trying to lose the extra kilos that seemed to accumulate during the trip….  We hope you’ve enjoyed reading it – I enjoyed writing it, and the Boy enjoyed giving helpful advice and criticism (and technical support – although he probably didn’t really enjoy that..) during the process.  My regular blog is over here, but it’s probably only interesting for the knitters amongst you

We’ve been home for a week and have had time to reflect on the trip as a whole.  So, as promised, here’s the first of a very short series of wrap-up posts.  We shall start with the obvious – the best and worst.

For those of you with a short attention span, we’ll start with the easy ones – best and worst days.

Best day:  12th October – Chablis.  This day had it all – perfect weather, great food and excellent wine.  We both easily agree that this is the obvious best day.  We enjoyed speaking to the wine makers about their wines and the reasons why Chablis produces such an amazing range of tastes in such a small area.  The markets in the morning yielded excellent baguettes for snack and lunch, although the Boy lacked croissants in a quantity that suited him (more than 2).  The only minor issue was the dinner and the lack of open restaurants in Chablis on Sunday, but it all worked out fine and we ate very well.

Worst day:  Probably 28th September – Marseilles and mountains.  Marseilles was horrible and the roads were terrible.  The Boy’s back wasn’t very happy after the dungeon in Burgundy, and the drive around the back roads of Provence didn’t help matters.  We kept waiting for Provence to get prettier but it just didn’t happen.

Up next, accommodation.

Best digs:  The upstairs in Burgundy.  BBQ, full kitchen, comfortable beds and sofas, TV, wireless internet, washing machine and fireplace all combined to make this an excellent place to stay.  We’ll be back….

Worst digs:  The downstairs in Burgundy.  6’ ceilings in a converted cellar.  Need I say more?

(Both are photographed at the bottom of this post)

And now, several categories in the food area:

Best croissants:  According to the Boy, the croissants in Autun were by far the best.

Worst croisssants:  Again, the Boy votes for a couple we bought in Beaune.  They were bread-y – not a good characteristic in a croissant.

Best baguette:  The one with the forked ends from Dijon.  We went back several times and they were all excellent.  I think they’re a type of l’ancienne bread, not traditional baguette bread, but either way, they were fabulous.

Worst baguette:  The one we bought at the Carrefour on our first night in Burgundy.  We learnt our lesson quickly and never again bought bread from a supermarket.

Best meal:  Uh, do you have to ask? After that, any night that we had froggy burgers.

Worst meal:  Definitely dinner in Troyes.  Soggy chips and tough meat.

Best cheese:  Hard to say.  We both became very fond of an orange-rind, semi-soft (not runny like brie, not spreadable like cream cheese), pale inside cheese that neither of us can remember the name of.  Sometimes we bought some that was smellier than others, but the flavour was always relatively mild and it was very easy to eat.

Worst cheese:  The horribly stinky goats cheese that the boy selected from the cheese board in Bourges.  It tasted like dishwashing liquid ☹

Best wine:  Taittinger.  Very, very closely followed by Chablis (preferably Premier or Grand Cru) and most Burgundys.

Worst wine:  Most of the roses we tried in Provence.  We discovered that we prefer bubbles in our roses!

Now, on to the sights.

Best museum:  V&A.  There were three visits - we think it’s fairly obvious that we liked it!  Closely followed by the Decorative Arts museum in Paris.

Worst museum:  This is a hard one.  We don’t think we went to a bad museum per se.  So, out of a very good lot, we’ve chosen the Louvre.  We saw very cool things (the Egyptian collection was a highlight), however it was really too big and too crowded for us.  As a building though, it’s incredibly impressive.

Best chateau:  Villandry.  The gardens were absolutely spectacular and the inside of the chateau itself felt like you could live there.

Worst chateau:  By far Versailles.  If they ever introduce limited, timed entries, we’d be back in a shot.  But, so long as it’s a free-for-all (but not free), not ever again.

And for some special categories:

Most unexpectedly cool thing:  The arboretum south of Mangy-Cours.  For a “detour”, we spent two hours happily wandering around the gardens.  We really should do a tour of the gardens of England and France one of these trips!

Finally, London or Paris?  Definitely London.  We were exhausted, and next time we’ll get a serviced apartment so we can cook for ourselves, but we both loved London.  Paris may have suffered from being right at the end of our trip, but we think London was easier to get around in and easier to live in.

Next up I’ll write some more about driving, including French drivers in general and the French’s love for blinking lights.

No early morning starts for us this morning – our flight left at 1155, so we had plenty of time to get to Heathrow.  But, we’d both heard stories about Heathrow and we’d decided to get the tube, so we wanted to allow plenty of time for the vagarities of both.  We ate McDonalds for breakfast (porridge(!) for me, sausage and egg McMuffins without the egg for the Boy – stomach calming apparently), did the very last of the packing and left the hotel at 9am, just in time to hit the last bit of rush hour.  We managed to make it down to the station, but missed the first train going to Heathrow because it was a sardine can.  We went to the other end of the platform (supposedly the less crowded end), waited for two more trains to go through (not going to Heathrow), and got on the next one without too much jamming.  A couple of stops later we managed to arrange our bags in the most compact manner and got seats.  40 minutes later we were at Heathrow and finding our way to the Singapore Air check-in counter.  10 minutes later we were checked in (ah, the joys of business class!) and making our way through the “priority” security clearance.  We made it through there in very short order (about 15 minute max) and laughed at the queue at the regular clearance - that’s why you’re supposed to get to the airport early!  Shoes off for the shoe-scanning station, then off to the SIA lounge for a 2-hour wait.  Hmmm…. Next time we’ll be a little calmer about Heathrow!

The plane was the comfortable A380 we came over on.  We had different seats but we were soon happily ensconsed for the first leg of the flight.  There were some pretty clouds:

But not much else to look at apart from some movies for me and podcasts for the Boy.  We had “lunch”, then lights out for some attempted sleep (an afternoon nap for me, none for the Boy), then “breakfast” (more like a three-course dinner with an excellent salmon fillet and asparagus for mains) and an easy landing into Singapore at 8:30am.

We’d decided to take a 12-hour stopover in Singapore when booking the flights.  We thought it’d be a nice opportunity to get out and stretch our legs, and I’ve never seen Singapore, so we’d get a look around too.  It was a good theory, but we were both exhausted after not much sleep and I think we both wanted to get home.  But, we did get out of the airport and braved the humidity and drizzle to have a walk around. We took the train to and from town – we were both very impressed with it – it’s definitely a much cleaner version of the London Underground rather than the Sydney network…  The architecture may have been British,

But the vegetation was definitely tropical:

And there were more cranes than you could poke a stick at:

I had some udon soup for lunch while the Boy rounded off the day with a Big Mac (currently rated the worse Big Mac in the world on his list).  We were fading quickly so went back to the SIA lounge for some rest and showers and airconditioning!   We walked around the airport (well, our terminal at least) in an attempt to stay awake, but by the time we boarded we were both falling asleep in our chairs – we both missed takeoff altogether.  Unfortunately the Boy then woke up and stayed awake all night and I slept fitfully.  Jetlag is a bugger.

We were both pleased to see the distinctly Australian landscape and to finally land in Sydney to a perfect Sydney spring day.

It’s good to be home.  The lawn is up around our knees and everything needs much weeding, but we’ll get to that eventually.  For the time being we’re appreciating our large sofa, our comfortable bed and our well-equipped kitchen.  Today we also appreciated that we can get Taittinger cheaper here than in France…. (if you buy it with 5 other bottles (any mixed half dozen will do it) at Dan Murphys)

Is the blog done now?  No!  Tune in over the next week or so while we reflect on some of the things that we noticed the most in France and London including such exciting topics as bread, cheese and traffic.  Fascinating, yes?

We were on the 1pm Eurostar back to London, and it was one of the few that wasn’t rescheduled. We spend the morning stocking up on pastry (croissants of course and pain au chocolat for me) and attempting to put all our belongings back in our suitcases in some semblance of order. I had no idea how long a taxi was going to take, or how long check in would take, so we left early. I successfully negotiated the automatic taxi booking phone system in French and the taxi showed up very quickly. I was most chuffed with myself!

We got to the station in about 25 minutes. We discovered that after 5 weeks we’re both oblivious to the chaotic Parisienne traffic, but we’re still grateful it wasn’t us driving. Then, after being scammed by a nice man with a bag trolley who negotiated the escalators for us (I say it was worth the money…), we discovered that we had a 1.5 hour wait until our train started boarding. We bought some English newspapers and sat and read for a while.

Boarding was easy, but we weren’t thrilled to discover that our seats were facing backwards. Fortunately the train wasn’t full, so we quickly swapped to some facing forwards and we were happy. The boy napped, I knitted and listened to podcasts for the 3.5 hour trip.

St Pancras was chaotic, but it was all in English which made everything just that much better. I’d booked a dog-box hotel within a bloc of the station which we found easily and checked in. We’re lucky we booked a triple – the bags are happily settled into the single bed.

It was 2:30pm, so we had plenty of time to go do stuff. Can you guess what we did? Yep, off to the V&A for us! There is a new exhibition on – Cold War Modern Design 1945 – 1970 which the Boy had read about last week and wanted to see. It was fascinating – it centred around the affect of the cold war on design. If you’re in the area I’d highly recommend it. I was too vague to take photos, but there’s some stuff on the web.

We then headed off to Harrods to buy a year Christmas bauble and some tea, both of which we managed successfully, and then headed back to Kings Cross for a pub meal and an early night. Well, the Boy took in a soccer game or two at the pub while I enjoyed some English TV, but the theory was good!

It was a very miserable, rainy day for our last full day in Paris.  We slept late and lingered over breakfast (croissants for the Boy, Vegemite on baguette for me) before heading out.  We reverted to type today – we headed off to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs (the Decorative Arts museum) to look at things rather than paintings.  Apart from wishing we had umbrellas or hoods, we made it there fine.  It’s in a wing of the Louvre so we knew where it was.

We agree that it’s the best museum we’ve been to so far (the V&A excepted of course).  It was very well laid out.  You start with the Renaissance and work your way through the museum on a guided path chronologically.  Thanks to our new-found love of Art Deco, we spent the most time there where lots of photos of the underneath of tables

and bed ends were taken

so that the Boy can attempt to replicate the style when we get home.  We also had fun playing with the chairs from the 60s and 70s:

And generally had a great time.  After the chronological stuff there were some themed galleries – the use of red through the ages, and something incomprehensible that seemed to be about water and fishing.  Interesting anyway.  After we were done we thought we’d stop in for a quick look at the Louvre (being right next door), but for some reason it was closed to the general public - people who had tickets to some exhibition could go in but not us plebs.  The rain put us off doing anything else more energetic, so we headed home.

Lunch was had, more washing and more posting done, and some shopping for metal rulers (apparently the French kind are superior to the Australian kind – no inches) and rubber bands (to keep our playing cards together) made up the rest of the afternoon.

For dinner we headed off to what the owner of our apartment called “bistro food but much better”, and she was right.  I had lamb and the Boy had steak.  Both came with excellent chips and salad and we had a good Burgundy to wash it all down.  I decided that desert was definitely required, so I had crème brulee.  It was very different to what we call crème brulee, which tends to be more “custard brulee”.  This was definitely crème, not custard, and was excellent.  All in all it was an excellent traditional French meal to round off the trip.  And it failed one of the tests too – there was an English menu!

We woke late this morning and mooched around for a bit before getting going. It’s Monday and lots of things are closed, including the Louvre (and Versailles – probably a good thing…), so we’d planned a day walking around seeing some sights. First up was Arcie – the Arc de Triomphe. We got off the Metro at Concorde, which is at the other end of the Champs Elysee to Arcie, and walked up the famous avenue. We had a momentary distraction in the Disney store before I reminded the Boy that we have one in Sydney too…. The walk was pleasant enough once we learnt how to dodge the tourists. Then, Arcie was upon us. We crossed the road to get the straight-on pictures:

Then crossed back and went under the tunnel to the centre of the roundabout. Our museum pass included entrance to the arc itself, so up the stairs we went.

It was worth it. The views were spectacular.

Made even better we think by the location – it’s right in the middle of the major avenues which fan out below you. Just stunning.

Arcie itself is pretty spectacular too with all the carvings:

Next up was Spike (no, not the vampire, the Tower). We wandered down a side avenue to get away from the Champs Elysee crowds and had a very pleasant time looking in the shop windows and seeing another part of Paris. I think the little neighbourhoods are my favourite part of this town. That and the food….

Over the river, and then there was Spike in all it’s glory.

I hadn’t realised there were twiddly bits on it too!

We didn’t go up it – too many queues, and we’d already seen what many consider to be the better view anyway. We walked away down the Champ de Mars and got some better shots:

And then onto the Metro and home. I picked up a slice of excellent chocolate cake on the way home which made a good accompaniment to tea. The Boy had another couple of croissants and we were both happy just to sit and read the English newspapers for the rest of the afternoon (The Times, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph and the IHT for a bit of USA stuff were today’s pick). We’re in the need of a bit of a relax after all that walking – although it was much better than the museum shuffle!

The day dawned clear and bright – a perfect Sunday morning in Paris. The morning was taken up with domestic things. I went to buy croissants, juice and bread while the Boy watched the Chinese F1 live at 9am. I was sent out to do the washing too - the race was live, which means live timings on the web, which means no blogging this morning from me. All in all, we had a good morning.

We’d decided to spend the rest of the day in Versailles. The train there was easy and cheap, and finding our way once we got there was easy too – just follow the crowds. And that was the story of the day (the crowds that is). We’d hope that we’d miss the worst of the crowds by being here in late October, and we probably did, but I hate to think what the place would be like in the peak tourist seasons. We shuffled through the chateau with the rest of the people muttering quietly to ourselves that it wasn’t as good as the other chateaux we’ve been to.

Probably the most interesting part (for me) was the Dean Koontz exhibition taking place there. The juxtaposition between the glaringly modern art and the 18th century building and decorations was rather amusing. The Boy thought it was just weird and a bit too distracting. He was hoping for more interesting furniture.

We shuffled, I took photos of beds and gilt.

And the hall of mirrors, which was probably the most impressive bit.

But we were both more enthusiastic about the gardens than anything else. We’d seen tantalizing glimpses through the windows and were desperate to get out of the press of crowds too. Our first hint that they wouldn’t be quite what we expected was the extra charge to get into them – another E8 each on top of the entry fee to the chateau (which was included as part of our museum pass – the gardens weren’t). We thought we should see them though, so we coughed up. They were oddly disappointing. The first thing that hit us was the lack of actual gardens. After Villandry I think we’re a little spoilt! Great vistas, but no real human-sized gardens.

And then there was the music. I think it’s a special thing for the weekends (if only we’d known) – classical music blaring out of loudspeakers around the gardens at rock-concert sound levels. Blergh. We couldn’t hear each other talking, and there was no way we could properly appreciate the gardens, so we figured out where the music was coming from and walked in the opposite direction very quickly. The only thing that would have added to the atmosphere would be people dressed in Marie Antoinette and Louis costumes wandering around posing for photographs. We were unimpressed to say the least.

We walked down the canal away from the chateau and got a good view back up the canal, just in time for the fountains to come on.

They only turn the fountains on three times a day (or so), so we were (I suppose) lucky to see them.

We walked back along the edge of the chateau walls into the town where I had an excellent nut and caramel tart to make up for the disappointment, and the Boy had more Orangina. Ah, Orangina. You might think he’s addicted to croissant, but the Orangina is worse. It’s a orange (duh), mandarin and grapefruit flavoured fizzy drink that he has at every opportunity. We don’t think you can get it easily in Australia, and he’s trying to wean himself off it….

Overall though, we would have been happier staying in Paris for the afternoon walking around some of the streets in our area. But, that said, we always would have thought we’d missed out by not seeing Versailles, so at least we didn’t waste a whole day doing it – we had a good morning!

Dinner was excellent though. As part of my morning shopping I bought some very large hunks of faux fillet. We cut one in half for dinner tonight, and one will be eaten tomorrow night with some salad and some random but excellent wine from the local bottle shop.

More culture today as we headed off to look at more art.  The Musee d’Orsay’s collection is (I think) more accessible for the non-art lover, and it’s smaller than the Louvre (not that that’s particularly hard!), so that’s a bonus.  The train to get there was a little awkward, requiring two line changes, one onto the regional train line, but we made it.

We finally saw some Cezanne!

After spending a week looking at the real thing, I figured the painted version needed a photo too.  The rest of the Impressionists were good – much better than all those Italian Jesus paintings…

And then we struck the Art Deco section, which is mostly furniture and decorative arts.  The Boy had left his camera behind (he needs to use flash to get decent photos indoors and most museums don’t allow flash), so there was lots of “Girl, photo!” for all the woodwork:

We ambled around the rest of the museum, looking at the Pastels exhibition (beautiful), but skipping the queue for the Picasso one.  The sculpture was a highlight, especially the bear:

After the Orsay we headed to Notre Dame.  We didn’t go inside, or up the towers – far too many people for that.  We contented ourselves with a few photos

and headed away from the tourists in search of something to eat.  Eventually we found a sandwich place without too many people and ate and walked.  We bumped into the Pompidou centre (no photos unfortunately), but didn’t see the exhibitions – neither of us really like modern art, and it’s not included in our museum pass.  I think the building itself is the attraction more than the stuff inside…

We headed back to read the Saturday papers and have a nap before heading out for dinner.  All this museum shuffling gets tiring after a while!  Dinner was some excellent Italian.  We’d both been missing pasta, and we headed off to a place recommended by the owner of our apartment.  We were not disappointed – good smells, full of people and excellent food.  We were very happy with our choice.

Today was Boy’s day. One of the big things on his list to do in Paris was to see the Concorde. The Musee d’Air et d’Espace has two, so off we went. The train and bus ride out there was remarkably easy to navigate, and we’re pleased that we have an unlimited ride ticket to get around – much easier than buying separate tickets for everything.

The place was deserted. There were more rockets than people!

The galleries were broken up into space (with lots of rockets, and lunar landers):

Air (with lots of planes):

The concordes:

There were two of them – on British Airways and one Air France. We could walk through both and I was surprised at how cramped they were. It’s a good thing the trip was so quick – I wouldn’t want to be on those seats for very long!

The WWII planes:

The outside, with a semi-gutted 747 that was very interesting:

And a familiar, elderly looking plane (that’s probably best left on the ground!):

And some very large rockets (with a 747 for scale):

And then the early years of flight:

Those guys were just bonkers. How they ever got the nerve to get airborne on those things I’ll never understand.

There was a very interesting exhibition on ballooning too. I never realised how old balloons were – Napoleon used tethered balloons for surveillance! And there was a balloon craze at the end of the 19th century too that even affected clothing:

We both had a great time – for me it was an unexpectedly good time! The bus and train back were just as easy, but a little longer as we had to fight with traffic coming into Paris. The traffic really is insane and we’re very glad we don’t have Einie around any more.

We returned to the apartment to drop off camera equipment (it’s heavy!), and then headed back out for some more retailing. The Galleries LaFayette was next up – the food section especially. It was very crowded when we got there and I knew that the Boy wasn’t going to cope for too long. We quickly (or as quickly as the crowds allowed anyway) found the food section and headed in. We browsed the wine (how’s a 1969 bottle of Chateau d’Yquem at E2000 for a bargain Michael?), but made no purchases. The cheese section was impressive too, especially the free samples. There’s an article in today’s IHT about how France’s 400 cheese varieties are under threat from large manufacturers – we’d be happy to make the personal sacrifice to eat more if that would help….

After a tour of the food section, the Boy piked and headed back home, leaving me to explore the rest of the place. I lasted another hour or so looking at the clothes (some very nice stuff, but I wasn’t really in a buying mood) before I headed back too.

We had non-BBQed Froggyburgers for dinner. The BBQ definitely adds something to the flavour, but they were still good. The HP sauce makes the difference we think.

We decided last night that given the weather (a bit cold and rainy), that our best tourist option was the Louvre. After all, why not do the biggest attraction first? This, of course, meant that we had to figure out the Metro and the museum pass options too, so we thought we’d do it all at once. The Metro was relatively easy – we decided on an unlimited 5-day pass. Unfortunately it’s not on a prox-card (like the London Oyster card), so the Boy whinged a bit. But, they seem to work OK. Then, we thought we’d get a museum pass, which gives you unlimited entry to most of the major museums over a 4 (or 2 or 6) day period. We found a seller just outside the Louvre, purchased our passes and we were away.

We, of course, took all the requisite tourist photos of the pyramid:

And then we went in. Choosing where to go first was mostly random. We ended up in the French sculpture area, which was impressive. Then through the Egyptian areas:

With lots of mummies (including cats and even a crocodile). And on to the Greek antiquities:

There were several roomfuls of vases.  I think I was more impressed with the building itself at this point rather than the collection:

We wandered through the building looking at the French and Italian paintings (lots of religious stuff – not really our thing), marvelled at the number of people hovering around the Mona Lisa:

And kept walking. And looking at more stuff. Until we got tired of it all and decided it was time to go and find some lunch. One big advantage of the museum pass is that we can come back again and not have to repay to get back in. So, we found lunch at a little café (burger for the Boy, Croque Madame for me (toasted ham and cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top – really good!).

It was starting to drizzle and get cold again, so we decided to head back to the apartment, drop the boy’s camera and go in search of wool for souvenir socks. The Bon Marche was the goal, which is a relatively short Metro ride away. We found it with ease, and after some fun trying on furry hats made out of alpaca (very, very warm, and completely impractical for Australia), we made our way upstairs to the wool section. <knitter talk> It reminded me a little of the wool section in Liberty, only slightly larger and selling a wider range of brands (Phildar, Rowan, Noro, Debbie Bliss, Bouton D’Or, and a small range of Regia). The Boy decided (eventually) on some Regia sock wool (it’s the Kafe Fasset range – he wanted the violent pinks, I talked him down to a more muted blue and green version), and I picked up two balls of Kidsilk Haze (it was on sale!). </knitter talk>

We also spotted an icecream maker attachment for our kitchenaide that would fit without modifications, however it wouldn’t be much cheaper buying it here if we post it back given the price of postage and the exchange rate. We may wait a little longer for one.

We returned home for dinner and a sit down. I’ve done more walking today than I have done in the past week! We’re back to being tourists in a big city without a car.