Saturday, October 11, 2014

It was our last morning in Angé.  It was the most beautiful day of the week!  Go figure. 

It took us a while to pack.  We bought a lot of stuff.  And we still have quite a bit of food.  Trying to pack all that stuff in our little backpacks is always a challenge at the end of a trip.

We went for a beautiful walk up through the vinyards and found a back route to the bakery.  It is too bad that we found it today!  It was really nice.  And we found this field of old cars – and there were goats everywhere.  The little kid raced up to the fence once I started making goat noises.  It was soooo cute.

 Our walk was longer than what we thought it would be and I got a little stressed about getting back to the house in time.  The home owners were nice enough to drive us to the train station, so that was awesome.  It was great to not have to walk back with our huge bags again.

We made it through Paris and back to Meaux by around 4pm.  Once we arrived at Sophie’s place we went into full cooking and preparation mode.  We made a full Thanksgiving dinner for Sophie and Dani!  Sophie, Laure, Shawn, and I went off into town to find the things we needed for dinner.  We bought pumpkin (like actual real pumpkin), and potatoes, and boursin. 

Back at the house we had Dani make the pastry for the pumpkin pie.  Sophie worked on dealing with beans and chopping pumpkin into chunks.  We put chicken in the oven with this amazing rub that Shawn made and I was working on potatoes and pie!  We managed to make everything we needed – including gravy!  It was a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. 

Finishing packing was a whole different story.  It was quite a challenge to make sure our one checked bag and our two carry-ons were the right weight.  This always happens when I am in France.  All that extra cheese and wine to come home definitely adds to the baggage weight.

It was sad to say goodnight to Sophie, Dani, and Laure!  This will be the last time I will see them for a while.  Hopefully they will come to visit soon!

It was a great trip to France.

Until next time!

Good night!

-Allison

Friday, October 10, 2014

This morning we were up and mobilized at a much more reasonable hour.  Not compared to when I am actually working and being productive at home – but better compared to the last week here!!

We hopped on our bikes and rode down into Montrichard so that we could take the train into Tours.  There weren’t many options for train times, so I am glad that we got up at at it!!  My bike started to fall apart en route!  The handle bars were not bolted in any longer, so I pretty much had to cycle without any pressure on the handles.  Seriously!!

The train ride was lovely and it was not bad weather.  Tours is much bigger than I thought it would be!  It is a funky little city!  There are lots of schools and even an above-ground tram thing.  We didn’t really have any mission while we were there.  We were following the maps for the city and trying to find everything that we needed to see.  Finding the Cathedral was funny…we kept turning on streets in and out and all of a sudden there it was.  It was huge and just right there.  It was a great Cathedral to go through because there were detailed explanations of the images in the stain glass windows.  I learned a lot.

 

We went through a park right near the Cathedral were there was a tree that was planted over 100 years ago.  It was fantastic.  After that, we walked down a pedestrian street looking for a place to eat outside.  I guess it isn’t really France prime-time eating outside weather.  I thought it was though.

After lunch we found the touristy street and poked around some shops.  I found a great hat and scarf for Shawn!  He resisted, but once he realized how cute he was there was no stopping him.  We also went into the science and discovery store and spent an awesome amount of time in the great massage chairs.

Eventually we made it back to the train station and took the train home.  The “best” part was once we got off the train and got back to our bikes.  My handlebars were obviously still broken and Shawn’s tires were almost completely flat.  It was pretty amusing.  Thankfully it was the last day for riding the bikes!

Dinner was a mix of extra food.  We had a lot of food.  Yep.  I should be good on the food department for a while!

Last night in Angé!  Soon to say goodbye to our “castle”.

Night!

 

-Allison

Thursday, October 9, 2014

We ended up not going into Tours today.  We kind of had another chill day around the local area.  When we finally made it out of our little house, we walked down to the bakery.  I totally complemented the owner on the quality of her “religeuses” as they are definitely the best I have ever had.  This made her much less grumpy than she was earlier in the week when Shawn paid for a 3E purchase with his VISA!  Oops.

We walked down to a corner park and sat at the picnic table there to eat our treats.  In the park there was a walnut tree.  There was the perfect little old French man using a reaching tool to pick up the walnuts and put them in his bag.  When he noticed us, he came over to chat.  I asked him about the nuts and him and I had a great discussion about the wording for walnuts and nuts in French.  I was confused because the translation for walnuts and nuts is the same word – les noix.  Once I got that straightened out, all was well.

 We took directions from him to walk into town a different way.  We crossed the river and walked along a road that lead us into Montrichard.  This was great because we got to check out a couple of other little towns on that side of the river for a change.  There were some mushroom caves and vineyards and some other scenic spots en route.  It was a nice, relaxing stroll into town.

Shawn was hungry (again) once we got there, so we went into one of the only affordable restaurants that was open for lunch.  We ordered a pizza to share and a couple of glasses of wine.  The pizza was good – but I am pretty sure there was tripe sausage or something of that description on it – and that was not ideal.

We walked around Montrichard a bit.  We tried to make our way up to the top of the castle, but decided that it was pretty much not possible due to the residential houses built into the side of the structure.  I stopped into a few shops too and tried on a few things.  Not much success, however, I did manage to find a perfect pair of shoes!  They are those lace up ankle ones – and they were even on sale.  I was happy.

We walked back to Angé our normal route, which is lovely and still my favourite.

Nothing too exciting this evening, but it was a lovely day.

Good night.

-AJ

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

We did not sleep in quite as much today as we did yesterday – I think we may be almost caught up on sleep from the traveling and everything.  It was a lighter looking sky today, so we decided to take the sketchy looking bikes and cycle the 20ish kilometers to Chateau Chenonceau. 

The bikes are definitely not ideal – the “woman’s” bike has 4 gears and barely moves and the men’s one keeps losing air in the tires.  We actually strapped the big bike pump to the rat trap so that if we lost air we could pump the tires up en route.   We had to do this only once – about 2 km down the hill from the house.

 

There is an amazing path that goes flat beside the Cher river all the way from Ange to the castle.  It was not a hard ride, except for the equipment that we were completing the ride with.  I am sure that you can continue on and on with the bike paths that are provided.  I was really impressed.

What was even more impressive was that it didn’t rain the entire time we were outside today!  We left the house around 10am this morning and returned at 4pm and it didn’t rain until we started eating dinner around 5pm.  It was an awesome day.

We missed the bike path turn off for the castle, so we headed up the highway and completely overshot the castle.  We stopped and turned around and headed back down towards the river – where we were afforded the most amazing views of the castle.  The castle is built right over the river and there are spectacular arches over the river, with the castle overtop of the arches.  Apparently the bridge/castle was useful during WWII to help people escape from one river bank to the other. 

I have always wanted to see this castle, so I was pretty happy to get here!  We didn’t go inside because we were told that it was nothing special inside (as most castles are).  So after a little break and an apple, we continued back on to Montrichard.

We were going to stop in one of the bakeries to have a little happy hour pastry, but the lady in the shop yelled at me because of our bikes being parked outside of her windows, so we didn’t stop and just decided to go back to Ange and the house for happy hour!  Silly woman – she would have made a sale if she didn’t yell at me.  People.

It was still nice enough when we made it home to play 2 horrible games of yatzee and have some wine on the patio.  Definitely worth while skipping grumpy baker lady for patio yatzee! J

Tomorrow, I think we will take the train into Tours and spend the day there.  Hope all the trains are still working, as mom mentioned there is a strike right now.  Seriously?!

-Allison

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

This morning we woke up at 10am. I don’t remember the last time (if ever) I have slept until 10am.  That’s crazy!  I guess we were tired from all the traveling and things over the last couple of days.

It wasn’t great weather out this morning, but it wasn’t raining.  So, we decided to take our umbrellas and walk down the hill into Ange to go visit the tiny town and the bakery.  It is cute and the bakery has some of the best pastries I have ever tasted!  We bought a lemon tart and a religeuse.  We walked over to the church gardens and ate our treats there – and it was amazing.  Yeah!

 

We decided we would continue walking all the way to the closest grocery store – which ended up being over 5km away.  I know that we are tough Canadians, but when I ask if a place is close, I definitely do not think that most people would think that 10km round trip would be close for groceries. 

Anyway, by the time we got to the Carrefour, it was absolutely pouring rain.  Not just a drizzle, but an absolute downpour.  We decided we would basically buy everything we would need for the rest of the week and take a cab back to our place.  It was an excellent decision, because potatoes, and the cheese needed for tartiflette were on sale, so those are heavy things.  And now I have cheese to bring home to freeze for later on this winter!  It was a fun grocery expedition and we were almost dry by the time we went to leave. Almost.

We went for a walk in the forest outside of the house and took some pictures during a raining break.  We found tonnes of chestnuts and decided we should shell and cook some of them.  They are okay.  Not as amazing as the walnuts I found this morning on our walk.  So very cool that there are nuts just growing everywhere here.

This is our "castle" where we stayed for a week!

We made an amazing tartiflette for dinner – and almost made ourselves sick.  It is definitely not a “light” dish at all.  We will have to do some serious exercise tomorrow to make up for all of our potatoes and cheese meals!

-Allison

 

Monday, October 6, 2014

Today was one of those days that was never-ending.  It seemed like we had about 3 days in one today!!  We got up before 6am and walked to the bus/train station to get Kendra to the airport.  It is super easy from Sophie and Dani’s house because they already live outside of Paris.  It was only really a 20 minute bus ride to the airport.

We found all the info needed to check Kendra into her flight and off she went.  She has a transfer in Amsterdam, which is much nicer than in Toronto or Montreal.  Makes things seem shorter, I think.

Shawn and I sat around in the airport for a while – there is free wifi and a warm building to get organized and wait for the day to get going.  We headed off for Paris and Gare Montparnasse where we were taking our train for Tours.  It is a really cool area, that I have not seen before.  I think that next time I am in Paris, I am going to go to this area and spend some time poking around.  Looks like there are some nice shops and the Jardins de Luxembourg are beautiful.  We were slightly hypothermic today because it was so chilly, but definitely an area to remember for next time.

Our train was easy to get to Tours, where we took a local train back towards Montrichard.  We got off here in the drizzle and decided it would be a good thing to buy some groceries.  We had passed a Super U just outside of the town, so because we knew we were headed for a smaller town, groceries would be a good idea…so we bought some food and started walking, and walking, and walking.  Kendra would have killed us.  We walked about 7 km from the grocery store (with our backpacks, carry-ons, and a fabric grocery bag carried between us) to our little house in Ange. 

The area is absolutely beautiful, with lots of forest along the Cher river and many tiny towns scattered along the countryside.  It is awesome – and would be even better if it would stop raining.  It was apparently a beautiful week last week, which is why we are having more seasonal weather this week, apparently.

Our little place is to die for.  It looks like a mini castle from the front.  There is a turret and a small patio and rose plants outside.  I love it.  It is about 500 sq feet on two levels.  It is on the property as the main house, which is a huge bungalow.  Both houses are built on over 2 hectares of land including a couple of bridges, a forest, and a fishing pond.  Really awesome place to spend some time.

I think that we will both sleep well this evening. 

Night,

 

-Allison

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Mom was really sick over night – which was really too bad.  At least they are headed off to Nice today and are staying in one location until they come home next week.  That is much better than traveling around or needing to get on a plane sick.

Shawn made it over to our boat for brekkie before mom and dad headed off to catch their train.  We had a good last breakfast before Kendra, Shawn, and I went up to install ourselves in the lounge for a few hours.

Shawn and I went for a long walk.  He had told me he left his new travel shirt in his hostel in Tolouse, but actually it was in the hotel here in Avignon – so we walked all the way back to his hostel to get it.  Yeah!  We then walked back through the city to get back to the cruise ship.

We all hung out for a while before the lunch buffet was open.  So Kendra and I ended where we started a week ago.  Kind of a funny feeling.  It is super nice to have Shawn here as well, however.

At noon we walked to the local train station (with Shawn hauling my huge green suitcase) to catch the train to the TGV station just out of the city.  It was a nice little station, and it was easy to catch the train.  The TGV was easy too, with a beautiful platform, however, because we had less than 4 minutes to board it was a little hectic.  And there was not a lot of room to store our bags – I hate that rush that happens on trains!

Our seats were right next to a young family with a girl about Laure’s age – and this one giggled and yelled for the entire 2.5 hour train ride back to Paris.  My ears were bleeding by the time we made it off of the train in Paris.

We treated Dani and Sophie to pizza for dinner.  I figure that is the least we can do with all of our “crashing” we are doing at their place.  I felt bad because we had to get up early again tomorrow to get Kendra to the airport for her 8:30am flight!

I know that France is in financial trouble, but it was interesting to learn more from Sophie about this – they are in big trouble and there is huge resistance in making that change happen.  There is so little interest in working longer or understanding why this is so important for the country.  Sophie actually said that the country’s debt is 95% of their GDP currently and the current President is liked by only 12% of the population.  Definitely not a good place for things to be.

Sleep.

-AJ