2 weeks in France

If you are a Food and wine connoisseur, then France is the place to be. The spectacular landscapes of St Emillion ,wine appellations in Bordeaux, Chateaus of Loire valley , notorious Marseilles and it fish bouillabaisse, high tides of Normandy, Cornices of Nice, food and culture of Provence, Louvre’s Mona Lisa , Paris,……the list goes on!

We backpacked in France for 15 days. Our itinerary was Paris->Normandy ->Paris->Loire->Bordeaux->St Emillion ->Avignon -> Arles -> Marseilles -> Nice -> Paris.
In spite of all the premeditation, we would be at sixes and sevens, if not for lonely planet. We carried it around like it was our baby!

Here's the blog of some of the places we visited in no particular order
St Chapell , Notredame

Bordeaux and St Emillion.

Avignon

Marseilles,

St remy - Les Baux - Arles

Louvre Museum, Musee D’orsay, Champs-Elysées‘

Catacombes, Montmarte and Cruise on Seine

Loire valley

Nice Monoco Corniches

Versailles

Just when Life seemed like a fairy tale, I was in London’s Luton airport, sleeping on the corridor, while trying to keep myself warm with a beach towel, waiting for the sun to come up. The next day, I flew out of Heathrow and V flew out Charles De Galle. We are back home in SF, living our mediocre lives.

St Chapell , Notredame

After spending 5 weeks away, alone in UK, I was looking forward to this trip with V. His absence had made my heart grow fonder. Like planned, we met in Paris, at the Charles De Gaulle airport. Everything felt new and fresh for us. Delta airlines had misplaced Venu’s baggage, but that didn’t diminish our spirits. We took RER B from airport to Republique Station, from where we took Metro line 3 to the rented apartment in Oberkampf. We had no idea that owner of the apartment couldn’t speak English. With the help of our neighbors Frederick and Sara we settled our dues with the owner, who also gave us a tour of the apartment, in French, of course!

We kickstarted our vacation, with Tomasin whisky, I bought in Scotland. After lunch, we visited St Chappell and Notre Dame. St. Chappell was built to house Christ's crown of thorns and a piece of his cross. The stained glass in St Chappell is worth visiting once

Be wary of the homeless near Notre Dame. They don’t shy away from stealing your food while your eating it. It is worth taking an audio tour of the Cathedral as it explains the history and architecture of the Notre Dame 

Versailles

Versailles was the unofficial capital of the French throne. Chateau de Versailles is one of the largest palaces in the Europe. It magnificent gardens draws huge crowds.

We took a 40 min Train to Versailles from Paris on a very cloudy, rainy morning. We arrived at Versailles in the noon. We took a three hour organized tour of the palais and wandered aimlessy in the garden till it closed, after the not-so-great musical fountain show 

Louvre Museum, Musee D’orsay, Champs-Elysées

Louvre was the former seat of the French throne and now the grandest museum in the world. The colossal glass pyramid commissioned by president Francois Mitterrand and designed by Pei, is the main entrance to the museum. The pyramid has always been a controversial monument of Paris. In my view, the pyramid fails miserably to radiate the artistic energy of the museum, although some may disagree

We dreaded the long lines at the Louvre. To our surprise, we were inside the museum in no time. We spent all morning and most of the afternoon in the museum. We took an organized 2-hour tour of the museum, which covered all the famous pieces, like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Headless Statue of Samothrace, Napoleon’s Apartments, and Coronation of Napoleon. I’m gonna talk about Mona Lisa in another post. The tour also covered the Sully gallery, with an introduction to the history of the Louvre.

After lunch, we wandered aimlessly in the vast museum, cursing every min as to why the Parisian’s wont put English placards, so we know what we are looking at.

The impressionist art fascinated me when I visited the Tate art museum in London. I watched some videos and did some homework before visiting the Musee D’orsay. This museum is world famous for its stunning Impressionist art. Here you’ll find the precious works of Monet, Von Gogh, Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet, Renoir… If you are an art connoisseur, this is the place to be!

We spent time in the museum until it closed and then sauntered on to Champs-Elysées, the most famous avenue in the world. Champs-Elysées is exactly like MG Road in Bangalore, India, but 10 times as big. We settled down in one of Champs-Elysées‘s Street side café. We started making plans for the next day, while devouring the rose wine. We had a delicious bowl of Moules(Mussels). I have never tasted moules like that in my entire life!

Catacombes, Montmarte and Cruise on Seine,abbey of Mont St michelle,Arc de Triomphe

Catacombes is a disturbing attraction where millions and millions of bones are stacked up. Some of them have cross formations, heart formations.


Then we visited the lively Montmarte Basilica. After some promenading on Champs-Elysées,we took a midnight cruise on Siene,where we saw young tourists, partying on both sides of the bank. .


We also crossed paths with the wee Statue of Liberty








The abbey of Mont St michelle, perched on a rocky island, was founded by Benedictine monks,as a sanctuary,dedicated to archangel St.Michael.


The Arc de Triomphe ,at the western end of the Champs-Élysées, was commissioned, by Napoleon Bonaparte

Loire valley

After dumping our backpack in one of the Château’s cloakroom, we began touring the castle in Loire. Loire was declared the world heritage site in 2000 for its Château, cultural landscape and pretty little villages. The history of the Château is a medley of murder, conspiracy, debauchery at the highest level, Splendor,……..!.We visited the Château in Blois, Cheverny and Chambord. Few other attractions in Cheverny, is the Tintin exhibition and Dog show.

Update : Vijay Mallaya bought a Vineyard in Loire to help bring French wine to Indian market. Read the news clip here 

Bordeaux & St Emillion : Wine Country

If you are a wine aficionado, then St Emillion is the place to be. We made a day trip to St Emillion, which was named as the World Heritage site in 1999,for its awe-inspiring vineyards (St Emillion appellation) and lime rock underground monuments. Saint-Emillion was also a stop on the pilgrimage path , that led from northern Europe to Spain’s Santiago de Compostela, the most popular pilgrimage destination for Christians.

Our tour began at Château Dauphine, owned by a businessman. The manager of the vineyard, who was very coy, gave us a tour of the facility, after which we tasted 6 different types of wine. The hangover still lingering, after consuming excessive wine in Bordeaux’s wine festival the previous night, we decided to use the spittoons during the wine tasting session. Almost all the wines were fruity, except for one vintage (I don’t remember which year) which was spicy, Clove probably, with a woody flavor.

We had duck confit, a local specialty, for lunch, in one of the restaurants, recommended by our tour guide, in St Emillion’s City Center. The salty flavor of the duck went perfectly well with the bland, potatoes baked with fat.

The tour guide took us to the underground lime rock monuments, explaining the history of St Emillion. Then we were on our way to the family owned Chateau Haut Veyrac. The owner is the guy in green Shirt (he has green eyes too!). He gave us a tour of his vineyard, with a sense of pride. The glow in his eyes and the zest, with which he gave the tour sold us! Even before drinking the wine, many of us had decided to buy the wine here.

The longevity of the vineyards was what amazed us. The vineyards were 70 yrs old!. They grew merlot and cabernet. The blending of wines is family tradition. He explained that, his grandfather, father and himself worked in concert to come up with a perfect recipe for blending the wine!
Then came the best part, Wine Tasting!. We couldn’t wait to taste the wine. We stepped into the modest home, where the living room also served as wine tasting room. It could fit around 25 people. We all sat down with glasses, and the owner gave a brief description of the wine while he poured wine for all. He loved to serve wine! He told us some inside secrets about wine tasting, most of which was not discussed in the wine tasting course we took the previous day in Bordeaux.

We tasted around 4 different types of wine and decided to buy 1997 vintage, which had complex aromas, called the “bouquet”. It was of common consensus that, the wine was under priced. When venu asked the proud owner about that, he goes “He is aware of the fact that he could sell his wine three times higher than the current price. Its not about money.” he says, “It’s about personal satisfaction”. Very seldom do people do what satisfies them

 

Avignon : Did V kiss the dude?

Avignon is the cultural capital of France. The theater festival is world famous.

We signed up for “Daughters of Rhone”, organized by office de tourism. A French women who lived in Tibet’s French colony also signed up for this tour. The tour which was scheduled to begin at 10:30 AM, didn’t start until noon, as the whereabouts of the tour guide was unknown. We then found out that there was a disconnect b/n the tourism office and the tour guide on the tour’s starting location. “Daughters of Rhone” started at the St Benezet Bridge, outside the fort, where our tour guide was waiting. Apparently, some personnel in the tourism office were not updated. Finally, at noon we were dropped off to the starting location by an office de tourism personnel.

Our tour guide, Sophie, was absolutely amazing! She told us all kinds of fascinating stories, history, and facts. She had some documents on her to corroborate the stories. The 2 hour tour, exceeded the time limit and kept on going. There was no end in sight and we were starting to get restless. Venu was subtly sending her messages that we didn’t want the history lessons anymore. She coolly dismissed it saying it was men’s natural tendency to do so. OOPS!
When she expressed her intentions to give us a tour of Notre dame, we set our foot down and plainly declined it. While parting we asked her for recommendations on restaurants and the Provencal dishes. She walked with us to the restaurant, still giving us history lessons and explained to us the French menu.

She was very pleased, when we invited her to lunch with us. During the course of our conversation we found out that, dear Sophie didn’t have anything to do in the afternoon (and we were punished with history lessons for that). She said, for a girl like her Avignon was mind numbingly boring. All action is when the tourists start pouring in. She seemed be concerned about the fact that her boyfriend, who is in the French navy, was moving to the base in Tahiti for 2 yrs. She wanted to move with him, but then what would she do in Tahiti for 2 yrs , She questioned herself.

“Women in France usually don’t drink bear” She said, in response to my order of chilled Heineken. They drink Monaco (She didn’t know how it got the name), which is a concoction of beer, lime juice and fruit syrup. Unlike beer it is sweet and thus appealing to the women’s palate. After tasting Monaco, I decided to stick with beer. Well…I want beer to taste like beer , not like some fruit juice!.

We spent all afternoon chatting with Sophie. We talked about France, French people, food, wine, culture, Sophie’s Indian friend and his arranged marriage to a naïve girl in India! We parted after huggin & exchanging contact information

Tourism office gave us free tickets to the Pope Palais as they made us wait all morning.
After touring the Pope Palais, we headed to rent a motorbike for the next day. The shopkeeper at the rentals, told us proudly that he was in Madras, for a music festival 20 Fu**ing yrs ago!

Did V kiss the “DUDE”?
After taking a break at the hotel, we decide take a romantic walk on the bank of river Rhone before dinner. On our way, a big man dressed like a women whose name I don’t know, but would like to call him “The Dude”, stopped us. The carousal was running with loud music behind him. People had gathered to see “The Dude” and suddenly , we were put on the spot by him. He started blowing his whistle in front of us, making funny gestures. For reasons unknown (My best guess is the rhone valley wine we had earlier!) Venu started whistling with his mouth, louder than the “The Dude”. The crowd was cheering them on!. Then the “The Dude” stopped to ask Venu if he could hug and kiss him. To my surprise,Venu was like “yeah ,sure why not”. I was dumbfounded when they hugged , and kissed right on the mouth! I crowd burst out in laughter! Recovering quickly I joined the crowd in laughter with my face red! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget this. Just hoping ,I wont get nightmares about this. 

St Remy,Les Baux,Arles

Hopped on the rented 150 CC motorbike towards St Remy. Brushed past the Roman city of Glanum,toured the Mental Asylum where Van gogh was treated. The view of lavender fields and alps from Van gogh's room, are reflected in his paintings. Les Baux is perched on the rocky outcrop,has an extraordinary history. Bauxite was first discovered here and named after the village. Arles is 20 miles from Les baux.Van Gogh lived in Arles for about a year before volunteering to goto Saint remy's mental asylum. The Yellow painted house depicted in his drawings,was his residence in Arles. Photo expo was going on in Arles. After browsing thru some,we went to the arena. On our way back to Avignon,we made a quick stop at the sunflower fields,to take pictures. Provence is such a beautiful place on earth,it should not come as a surprise that this place inspired Van gogh. 

Marseilles

We began touring Marseilles by having a sumptuous traditional fish bouillabaisse lunch, in one of the street side cafe's of Vieux Port. Then we headed towards "lles de Frioul" on a ferry to view the ancient maritime site. In the evening we rode the bus to Notre Dame de La Garde and sauntered on JFK blvd (That's right,JFK blvd!). We Came back to Vieux port, only to see the center totally shut down and people (intoxicated, ofcourse) were gathering to watch world cup(France Vs Portugal) on the big screen TV, setup right in the center of the port. We were off to NICE like any unsuspecting tourist and reached NICE at 12:30 AM. The Railway station in NICE closes at 12:30. So we were kicked out of the Station on to the roadside Taxi Stand.
To our horror,we realized, it would be a long long night!. France had just won the game against Portugal,gliding into World Cup finals and was celebrating the Victory. As a result, there was no Taxi serving the Station. The crowd was drunk & wild. All the phone calls for the Taxi went unanswered. There was a small queue for the taxi, waiting for over an hour. There was this one taxi that showed up couple hrs later and that was the only one serving the station that night. And when our turn came it was early in the morning! Until then, ladies and gentlemen,it was wine time ,with some swearing thrown in,which made the sweet rose wine, bitter! 

Nice Monoco,Corniches

Vegged out on the nice pebbley beaches in NICE. Promenaded on Promenade Des Anglais. Biked on corniches from Nice towards Monaco/Mentone. Stopped at villefranche sur-mer,Eze sur-mer,Monaco and Menton (France-Italie border). On our way back ,we stopped at Mont Boron for a panaramic view of NICE. This is suppose be the absolute best place for a perfect picture. I'm told Elton John owns a villa up here!