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

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Today is our last day on the ship and it was a very early morning!  Our tour bus left Avignon to go to Arles at 8:30 this morning.

We arrived in Arles around 9:15 or so.  It is an old city and was used and lived in by the Romans in 46 BC as it had a strategic location close to the sea.  The roman remains that are left are very well preserved and very impressive.  The old roman amphitheatre is very much like the one in Rome, except smaller.  It had an entire city on the inside of the walls at one point in history.  Later on, it was used for gladiator fights to entertain the people. Now, it is still used for bullfighting twice per year. 

 Van Gogh lived in Arles, and that is mainly what makes it famous. The city has done a good job of marking where he painted his paintings.  Over the 2 years that he lived in Arles, he painted 300 of his paintings.  He was ordered to go to the hospital in the city after he cut off his ear after having too much Absinth and a fight with another painter.  His life apparently relaxed a bit after he was admitted because he no longer had to worry about living costs or burden his brother that was paying for his life.

It had a phenomenal market.  It was huge.  I haven’t seen such a good market in a really long time (if ever).  Mom and I “ditched” Kendra and Dad (they went back to the ship) and we spent a good 3h looking around in the market.  They had everything from things made in China, to soaps from Province, towels, scarves, blankets, gadgets, and FOOD – fruit, veggies, cheese, bread, meat, nuts, spices, honey, garlic, sauces….it was amazing.  We walked and walked and walked and I think we covered almost the whole thing, but it was overwhelming there was so much stuff to see.  I bought some cheese for the train tomorrow and Monday.  Mom and I bought some pastry stuff for lunch and some oranges.  Mom loaded up on soaps from Province and I bought a nice little apron.

We had a little picnic in the Van Gogh square (the old hospital where he lived) and slowly started walking back to the bus that would take us to Tarascon where the boat was docked.  We stopped in a few stores along the way, where mom did damage.  She bought really beautiful fabric to make Bev a table cloth.  It had poppies and beautiful French poems/sayings scattered over it.  She also ended up buying herself a really nice France/Wine table cloth.  A bit smaller than mine and a bit less formal and really pretty.  It was great because she couldn’t get any napkins from the store, but at the last minute she noticed that he had table runners and so she is going to make napkins from the table runner!  As well as we did a bit of damage in a women’s clothing store where there was a long tunic, sweater thing.

Back in Tarascon, we changed and got Kendra and Dad and took the bikes out for one last bike ride.  There is a big castle in Tarascon that we visited before heading over the river to another little town that I do not know the name of.  We cycled along the river on a dirt path for a while before going into town and around for a bit.  It was the perfect day.

We had our last mojitos on the upper deck while playing a really bad game of yatzee for happy hour before attempting to pack and get organized. 

Dinner was amazing because we had reserved the small Leopard lounge for dinner.  They provided wine pairing throughout the meal and the meal must have been 5 or 6 courses.  We had this awesome soup that was basically provided in a shot glass.  He told us just to drink it in one drink.  Very awesome.  We had the most amazing filet mignon – you could practically cut it with a fork.  Awesome dinner.

By the time we had finished dinner we had almost docked in Avignon – where Shawn was waiting!

I waited to get off the boat and finally the guys managed to put the ramp down (seriously it took forever!).  And there was Shawn! He had survived his part of the trip in Pau and Tolouse. 

We showed him our state rooms and went up to the lounge to have a drink.  It was a pretty sad lounge, however, as some people had really early trains and flights, so no one was in the lounge but us.  It was sad.  Mom, Dad, and Kendra left and went to go get ready for bed, but I was so tired that I was not far behind. 

Tomorrow Shawn will come for breakfast and then we will all be going our separate ways.  Last night in our awesome cruise room.

Night,

 

-Allison

Friday, October 3, 2014

We woke up to go do a walking tour of Avignon today. Instead of doing the Pope’s Palace, we did a tour of the entire town.  Since I’ve been here before, it was great to see the little streets and other interesting buildings. I love the park up on top of the hill behind the Pope’s Palace and the sun was perfect today to take pictures.

We walked around the old town and the Jewish quarter where the streets are all twisty-turny and there are lots of shops.  We visited the market where mom bought some Herbes de Province.  Mom and I tried on some shoes and went into some stores, but decided not to buy anything.

I did go and look at some really cute French tea towels…which got me in trouble because the store was really nice!  I ended up buying a beautiful table cloth with matching napkins that will match my china and my normal dishes quite nicely.  Oops.

In the main square there was a painter that had all of her own work displayed.  She was selling beautiful things, but after buying that awesome painting in Crete last year for 10 E it was hard to think about buying another painting for 100 E.  Not quite the same thing.

 

We had a nice lunch in the dining room, which we haven’t done since day 1 on the boat, before heading out at 2pm to go kayaking.  Our group was so small, only 8 people, and it was amazing.  It was a perfect weather day.  Lots of sun and it was so hot with no wind.  This area can get really windy, so we were really lucky.  It was also awesome because all 8 of us were decent kayakers – no one tipped or had a panic attack or anything.  We were super lucky.

We stopped under La Pont du Gard – this huge aqueduct that is 2000 years old.  There are three levels to the aqueduct, all made up of different size arches.  It was built without any mortar, which considering it’s huge size, is pretty amazing.  The top level is where the water was carried.  The water flowed a distance of 50Km to the next city and descended a distance of only 15 meters!  That just boggles my mind.  The top channel, where 200 gallons of water flowed each day (I think…it may have been 2000), measured 2 meters deep and 1 meter wide.  You can actually take a tour to walk through the water channel.  It is amazing.

I was feeling pretty energetic and quite warm, so I also decided to go for a swim. That is the one issue with a river cruise; there is all this water, but nowhere to swim!  I just hopped right in with my kayaking clothes on and swam for a few minutes. It was pretty cold, but not nearly as bad as lakes I’ve done triathlons in at home!

We made it home in plenty of time to have some drinks on the patio before going down to our last “fancy” dinner.  I think we were all tired today and after dinner we pretty much just went to bed.

It is sad that tomorrow is our last day on the cruise.  It has been really awesome and we have seen a tonne.

Night, -Allison

Thursday October 2, 2014

Today was another beautiful day.  We woke up in the little town of Viviers.  It is a small town, built on a hill with a population of only 3500 people.  The town gets its name from vivarium – where it was a food and supply centre in the 5^th century. 

Mom and I went for a short walk before our hike started today.  We had a great view of the St Vincent Cathedral.  It is a Romanesque style cathedral that was started in the 12^th century.  It is the smallest cathedral in France.

With the group we hiked up, through the tiny stone town, to the Madonna statue on the top of the hill.  It was a great little hike through the trees.  We were able to see the entire town that is protected – so that all the houses and renovations have to be approved.  It was a beautiful view.

After the hike, we were able to go into the small cathedral and listen to an amazing organist play for our group in the cathedral.  It was pretty awesome.  We also got to climb up the tiny, circular stairs right up into the organ itself.  We were able to climb up and see the amazing organ right up close.  Pretty awesome view of the entire church from there too!

We had such a fun time after the cathedral visit! We were able to play Petanque (les Boules) with some locals!  It was aweseome.  I had forgotten how to play and I really quite enjoy it.  It is kind of like bocce ball.  Made me happy.  We had a great team and it was super great that the other team was interested in playing as well. 

Mom, dad, and I took out the bikes and peddled past a couple of bridges on this super quiet path we found next to the river.  There is an 800km path called the Velo Route (or something to that effect) that goes from Genevia down to Montpellier.  I am so interested in doing that in a couple of years.  It would be such a great way to see some of the smaller villages in France.

We sailed (is that still the term if it is a power boat?) at 1:30pm today and the top sun deck hasn’t been opened because of the really low bridges.  Some of the bridges are clearing the boat by less than a foot!  It is really cool to watch the bridges go over.  If the river was any higher, we wouldn’t make it.

We also went through the deepest lock today.  It was 75 feet deep, 39 feet wide, and 59 feet long.  It was pretty cool.  Very weird to think that all that water is being is held up by a metal gate!  Eeek…

It has been a nice, relaxing day in the sun and on the boat!  After dinner and a few drinks, mom and I decided to head out into Avignon.  We had docked during dinner and it is a beautiful city at night.  The entire city is surrounded by an amazing wall and the entire old city is inside.  It was so great to see all the people out in the centre eating and drinking – it was so warm. Yeah!!

-Allison

Wednesday October 1, 2014

Both Kendra and I were confused when we woke up this morning – we were in Tournon again.  The difference is that this town is Tournon sur Rhone, not Tournon sur Saune.  Kind of a difference.

We had a late day to get off the ship so we had a nice sit down breakfast after mom and I went for a walk around town.  It was a really cute little town with an amazing castle that is built into the rock around it.  And it was connected to another town called l’Hermitage.  Interestingly enough, the one town, Tournon is in one of the poorest districts in France, called Ardeche and l’Hermitage is one of the is one of the richest.  They are only separated by a bridge, but because of the wine vineyards and the ancient salt taxes in l’Hermitage, the two cities are very different and the wealth in each place is also so different.

We visited vineyards on both sides of the valley.  The Hermitage vineyards are organic and the wines are made from the Syrah grape.  It was great to climb the hill through the vineyard.  Beautiful views and perfect temperature.  We were pretty lucky with the weather.

On the other side of the valley, above Tournon, are the Saint Joseph Vineyards.  We climbed up a bit here to visit, but stopped at the ramparts to take looks out over the city and to have a wine tasting.  It was great because we got to have an open-air winetasting of the local wine.  The tour guide actually works in a lab where she specializes in the chemistry of wine. How cool is that?  Definitely not a job that you hear of in Canada all that often!

After our walking tour was over, mom, Kendra and I headed back over to l’Hermitage to go to Valrhona chocolate shop.  I was reluctant to go because I have not had a lot of luck with “free samples” at these chocolate places.  This one was awesome.  The chocolate was so amazing and there were so many samples that I was almost feeling sick by the time we left the shop.  Definitely worth the walk over to see the shop!

We were walking back to the boat and Kendra and mom had a bit of a panic attack – the boat was in the middle of the river!!  We all knew that the boat wasn’t leaving and that it must have just been moving away from the shore to let another boat leave, but it was slightly disconcerting to see the boat in the middle of the river!

We had an early day back on the boat because of the distance we needed to cover before tomorrow.  However, it was a great afternoon.  We sat on the upper deck and laid in the sun.  We had a nice, light lunch in the sun with the most amazing mojito’s ever.  I also had a spectacular fall off the back of my lawn cot – it was pretty epic.

Dinner was awesome as well  - like it always is!  I am becoming quite the drinker. Lol.

We skipped the music and drinks after dinner because it was cold.  Funny how cold is everywhere, even when it’s warm out!  I dislike AC sometimes.

Night,                             -Allison

 

Tuesday September 30, 2014

We woke up early this morning so that mom and I could go for a long walk along the river this morning.  I actually got up at 3am to see if there were any pictures worth taking…but then I decided I was insane and I went back to sleep.  Then I woke up at 6am to go up to the top deck to see if there were any pictures.  There weren’t.  But anyway.  Kendra was ready to kill me with all of my up and downs, but the walk was excellent.

First thing in the morning we went on a walk around the city.  Some of the things we covered, we had already done on Sunday afternoon before the cruise started.  It was great to get a tour overview of things, however.  Lyon is the second (or third – depending on where you get your info from) biggest city in France, after Paris.  It is where the Saone and the Rhone rivers meet.

I quite like Lyon.  It is a big city, however.  The river banks are lovely with great bike paths, pools, walking paths and little parks.  There is the old part of the city and the new part.  The old part of the city is fun because there are lots of winding streets and great cobblestone.  We saw the St. George quarter where there are theatre puppets called Guignol that a dentist used to perform in order to convince people to come get their teeth pulled. 

We saw a few of the secret tunnels that were used during the silk trade that was big in Lyon.  They were also used during World War II to escape people as the tunnels often lead back to another street entirely.  They were pretty interesting.

One of the squares was cool because there is a big building that is now in the middle of the square now.  It used to be where men sat on benches to exchange money.  It was a bank.  After sitting in the rain, people eventually decided to build a building to cover them from the rain when they were exchange money. 

After our morning tour was over, we went back along the tourist street in the old town to this amazing ice cream shop.  It was an amazing ice cream shop with crazy flavours – mom had lemon-basil ice cream and I had salted caramel.  Kendra and Dad had done boring cherry and strawberry flavours, but they said they were also excellent.

We decided not to kill Kendra with walking today, but never the less, we walked over to the shopping streets to try and do some damage.  Nothing stuck, however, and we went back to the ship for a quick bite to eat before heading out on an 8km bike tour.

It was kind of funny because I saw that we were taking 2 hours to bike only 8km – so I knew that we were not going very far.  The paths are fantastic.  I want to cycle here more.  We went to the zoo. It is in the Parc de la Tete d’Or – where there is a legend of a golden head being buried in the park somewhere.  The park was fantastic – the zoo is even free!  There is a great, huge lake in the middle too.  I was pretty impressed.

Mom and I caused some problems when we got back from the bike tour.  After a small snack we decided that we wanted to take the boat’s bikes out for a little ride (because our other ride was so lame), but they had already put the bikes away!  Oops.  The took 2 of them out for us so that we could go for our ride.  We still had over an hour before we had to leave, so it was a bit premature to put away the bikes, so I am glad that we got to go.  Their bikes are super awesome and really adjustable.  I was really impressed.

Dinner was great, once again.  I am definitely eating and drinking a lot on this little ship!  J

We headed upstairs after dinner to listen to the music and dance a bit.  I had a mudslide (which the bartender knew as a screaming orgasm) and all of us danced a bit.  The singing/piano duo is really quite good and knows lots of songs. Even dad got up to dance a couple of times.  Yeah!

It was an excellent day!

Night,

-AJ

Monday, September 29, 2014

I had a great sleep for the first night on the cruise!  We headed back north over night so that by morning we were sitting outside of a town called Chalon-sur-Saone.  It is a cute little town in Burgundy.  It was slightly chilly this morning, but I was all excited to wear skirts and dresses, so I just plowed ahead.  We took a bus right after getting off the boat to the town of Beaune.  It was kind of sad to not have a chance to see Chalon-sur-Saone at all, but I guess that is how it goes.

We had a great guide for our day today.  She was born and raised in California and came to study in France at age 24 and never left.  She does tours for wineries and city tours and was excellent.

We started off in Beaune walking around the town, through the ramparts, around the market.  Lots of great old stone and brick buildings everywhere.  The highlight was Hotel Dieu/Hospices de Beaune.  This hospital for the sick and poor was built by Nicolas Rolin and his wife Guigone de Salins in 1443.  The hospital was used as such until 1971, which is really crazy to think.  It is beautiful and quite more modern than I was expecting, but it is crazy to think that a medical structure could have been built so long ago and maintained for so many years.

Part of the building is still in use today as a senior’s residence.  It is only the actual hospital part that has been turned into the museum.

The roof is the most spectacular thing about the building.  It is completed in bright yellow and green tile mosaic.  Interestingly enough, the facade of the building is done in plain slate so that people from the street wouldn’t know how rich the hospital was.  At the time and over the years they became quite rich because people would give them large gifts of vineyards and other expensive things in attempt to “buy their way” into heaven.  Because of all the wealth that the Hospice still maintains today, there is a huge charity wine auction that is held here each year where you can buy barrels of the best Burgandy wines.

The town is built right over a river, so that was really interesting as well.  The hospital was built where it was because of the ease of cleaning (into the water) and the access to water.  There is actually a spot where you can see the river running clear under the stone floor.

After the tour we had a couple of hours to visit the rest of the town and eat lunch. We did a bit of shopping (I bought a shirt and a sweater and some leggings because I was cold!) and found a nice park bench to eat lunch.  It was a perfect morning.

In the afternoon we visited the town of Tournus where we visited an old church.  It had a fantastic organ and we were able to climb the narrow stairs up to the top to see the organ billows and the old wooden stairs leading to the church bells.

We sailed early this evening, which was nice as we had time to enjoy our happy hour and our amazing rooms.  The windows go down to ½ way – like a balcony – so it is fun to relax in the rooms as well.

Night, -Allison