Dublin

Flew to Dublin on Tues and landed in a downpour which continued all day. We still took the bus and went into town (we stayed at the airport so we could get up a little later to catch our plane) to look around. Of course, it was pretty dismal looking through the rain, but the next day’s sunshine helped considerably. We took the hop-on, hop-off bus tour and enjoyed just riding and seeing what Dublin had to offer. It was a crash visit here, and we’ll definitely return, so we didn’t feel short-changed by it. So, tomorrow it is that we’ll be home (said with an Irish lilt) and we’re ready for a rest. We had a great trip and thank all of you who took the time to read my blog. Special thanks to Vladimir who talked me into writing one several trips ago and to Nate who showed me how to do the photos.

So, off we’ll go to Mukilteo tomorrow and start planning our next trip which, by the way, is a return to Australia in January with a stop in Fiji on the way. We hope all of you will continue to travel with us; we always enjoy your emails which keep us connected to home.

Paris

The Orsay had been closed for renovation the last time I was in Paris with my mom back in 2001, so getting there was my one and only major desire. Since we weren’t spending too much time (only Sat afternoon, Sun and Mon morning) there, I knew we’d have to see it on Sunday, and, lucky for us, it was the first Sunday of the month which meant it was free to enter. So, we planned on being there when it first opened and were only 15 minutes late because of a street closure on our way. Having just come from Monet’s home in Giverny, we were especially keen to see his paintings, and there was a whole room full of them. Delightful. We took our time, looked at each one, and were allowed to take photos, so we spent quite a bit of time just in this room. It was really neat to see his house and gardens painted in several of his masterpieces and know that the green bench was the same one that we had sat on just the day before.

There was also a whole room dedicated to Van Gogh, and since we had stayed in Arles, which had been his residence for many of his paintings, we spent a majority of our total time looking at some of the work that he had done while living there. We also got to see many masterpieces of Renoir, Manet, Monet, Picasso, and Cezanne. In fact, we spent all of our time in the Impressionist galleries and left only because we had met a gentleman while we were visiting our friends Terry and Ann, and he had invited us to his apartment when we got to Paris.

So, Jean-Pierre picked us up at 3, took us around to see various sections of town, and then ended up at his apartment for drinks. The building had been constructed in 1910 and looked beautifully preserved. We didn’t realize it earlier, but he had been instrumental in maintaining the historical integrity of the building when it had been renovated in the 1990’s. We knew that he had been the head of an organization specifically to keep the historical character of many homes in the Figeac area, but we didn’t know that he had had a hand in planning the renovations of some buildings in Paris as well. After we toured his apartment, had our drinks, and saw his 200 pieces of art displayed, he dropped us off at Montmartre. This is a hill which has a beautiful church, Sacre Coeur, surrounded by a small village of restaurants and artists and thousands of tourists! It’s the highest point in Paris, so it’s pretty popular at sunset. But it had started to rain and proceeded to come down by the bucketfuls, so we cut our visit short and went back to our hotel area for dinner.

On Monday we had reservations in Beauvais, a town about 50 miles north of Paris, which services Ryan Air, the cheap European airline we used to get back to Dublin. So, we bid au revoir to Paris and got on the train after lunch in order to have a little time there to celebrate my birthday. Terry found a sweet little restaurant that served traditional French cuisine, and we had a wonderful dinner with French champagne and some really funny French people at the next table who kept trying to talk to us in French. Of course, we couldn’t understand everything they said (earlier I had mentioned that both of us together could remember only enough French to fit in a drop of spit, and it was even more true now). Their solution was to speak more loudly and use their hands to try to get their point across which, of course, called more attention to our ignorance. Next time we will have to do better, but this time we giggled and laughed all the way back to the hotel.

Giverny

It was almost dark when we drove into Giverny, and the town was having a music fest (we were hoping for classical, but it was rock and roll) so all the roads into town were blocked. Bummer. We figured we’d have a terrible time finding our hotel, but we saw the street name after just one turn around, and drove right to it. What a sweet house! Monsieur and Madame Bonchard decided to rent out a couple of their rooms, and we were lucky to have found it on the internet. We unloaded our bags and set out for town to have dinner. We found a restaurant with a bunch of French tourists, but we had a nice meal and wound our way back to the hotel at about 10. We were so tired we didn’t even hear the rock and roll concert that was only about 2 blocks away. The next morning we woke up early, had breakfast in their little porch area and strolled off to see the house and garden of Claude Monet. We entered via the gardens and stood, stunned at all the colorful flowers. There were thousands of them, in all different colors and sizes and would have been almost aglow if the sun had been out. But at least it wasn’t raining, and we were grateful for that, especially when we crossed under the road to his lily pad garden with those famous bridges. We visited his house, cozy, warm and inviting. I loved the exterior most of all; it was pink with green trim, very cheerful, and quite the perfect backdrop for all the flowers. He even had chickens and turkeys, evidently, because we not only saw them at his home but also in one of his paintings at the Museum Orsay in Paris of this house with turkeys as the main focus.

Bayeux and Arromanches

This cute little town saw some major fighting during WWII because it was right on the D-Day invasion track. We got there a little late because we stopped in Bayeux to see the tapestry that told the story of William the Conqueror’s Battle of Hastings in 1066. It was made out of wool thread on a very long linen cloth (70 yards long). It was so intricate that I kept looking at the expressions on the horses’ faces and all the different clothing that was on the solders and the maidens not really believing that this amazing piece of cloth could have survived for the number of centuries that it did. Incredibly, the museum allowed photos, so I took an inordinate number of pictures. There were 71 scenes and each of them as beautiful and colorful as it would be had it been sewn today. I wonder where it was hidden during the war. I’ll have to see if I can find that on the computer.

We drove to the little town of Arromanches on the English Channel to see the D-Day beaches or as much as we could in the time we had. First we went to the 360 degree theater and saw a very interesting telling of the war. While they were showing present day video of the town, they were also showing what occurred during the D-Day invasion. Pretty amazing and stunning comparisons! Then we walked along the beach area, or actually high up on the cliffs. Unbelievable that the allies could scale those cliffs and take out the German Army. We drove along the coast between Omaha and Gold Beaches and saw so many iron and metal parts of ships, sunken blocking debris, and parts of the giant wall that was built left over from the war. The Normandy American Cemetery farther down the coast in Colleville was remarkably beautiful despite the reminder of the thousands of lives lost in just a few days, and we walked around in silence. Having spent so much time on WWII in my US history classes made me appreciate a little more, perhaps, the terrible times so many of the WWII veterans who visited with my students had to endure. I am even more grateful.


Getting out of the Normandy area and finding the autoroute was confusing; we talked about the difficulty of the troops who had been fighting here in finding their way from town to town. It’s like a huge maze with little roads going this way and that, and signs are plentiful, for sure, but they are villages with 100 people, maybe, and not knowing the small towns around us, we easily got lost and drove in circles for awhile. Then we caught sight of somewhere we recognized, and we were off to Giverny.

Mont St. Michele

Incredible, amazing, majestic--all took on a new meaning when we caught sight of Mont St. Michel in the afternoon sun. We could begin to see it from about 20 miles away, and it kept getting bigger as we got closer. Then we were there, and we could see the details of the city walls, the houses at the base of the abbey, and the very tall and stately abbey, itself. On our tour of the abbey, we learned that it was begun in the 700’s as a pilgrimage site by the Bishop of Avranches and was frequented by French royalty which made it even more popular with successive church hierarchy and those with money to spare who continued to add to it through the ages. This made it into more than a church but also into a fortress which sits on a very small island on the northwest coast of France. The tides measure up to 50 feet, and at low tide, the water recedes about 5 miles which allows visitors to walk out onto the mud flats if they dare. We kept seeing warning signs of quicksand (which convinced me that I wasn’t going to do it) and a fast tidal bore that is said to move at the speed of a galloping horse (a little hyperbole, I think). We had reserved a room on the island inside the walls and were so glad we did. After dinner, we walked around the island on the ramparts of the fortress, and then we walked out onto the manmade causeway that connects it with the mainland. We both turned at the same time to view it in floodlight and drew a deep breath; it was magic! The lights gave it a heavenly glow, and the very upper part of the abbey took on a shiny purple hue. St. Michel, bathed in gold, sat on a very tall spire at the top. Many photos later, we tore ourselves away from the vision and scuttled around the darkened town, imagining all sorts of scenarios from Roman times or the Dark Ages. Exhausted, we finally crossed over the drawbridge into the village and went to bed hoping that some fair maiden would spin straw into gold for us so we could pay our hotel bill!

Espagnac Ste Eulalie & The Vendange

Terry and Ann were waiting for us and met us at the train station when we turned in our rental car nearby. After a tasty lunch outside in one of the cute cafes on Cahors’ main street, we walked through a well-done museum of French Resistance in WWII with lots of photos, newspaper clippings, artifacts of military objects, and art. This sad era always evokes emotional responses, and this was no exception. Seeing the photos of such young people who were brave French patriots was heart-rendering.

We left Cahors in the mid-afternoon and were soon enjoying the beautiful French countryside once again. There is so much forested land in France; we enjoyed every mile of it! We crossed an 1800’s bridge over the River Cele, arrived in little Espagnac Ste. Eulalie and immediately fell in love with the tiny streets lined with beautiful gardens and homes. It was a picture book scene, and Ann and Terry's home was a page out of it. Actually, there are two separate homes; one was a tower and the other a barn that they renovated to become what could have been a magazine display. We stayed in the tower with a kitchen and sitting room on the first floor, our bedroom and bath on the second floor, and another bedroom upstairs. Just outside the kitchen was a covered stone terrace filled with geraniums, petunias, hibiscus and other flowers whose name I don’t know. A large table that Terry had made was our eating place for several savory meals, and below was his vegetable garden and beyond that a turquoise swimming pool surrounded by more stone. Their house, which had been the barn, had been lovingly renovated with a bigger kitchen and living area downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. Both places had basements with washing machines and dryer. They had lived here 22 years, mostly in he summers, returning to England in the winter, and they were both beloved residents of Espagnac. We had time to only glance about; it was getting late, and we had to eat dinner and prepare for the next day—the Vendange.

The Vendange Sept 26, 2009
We eagerly awoke to a gorgeous day, ate breakfast, and got ready to pick grapes, first meeting The Patron of the Vendange (he is lovingly called) Rene and his two sons Jean-Louis and Didier. We were going to bike to the vineyard, but in the end Terry decided to drive. (Terry also decided that since he was the smaller of the two Terrys, he would be called Terry le Petit and my Terry would be called Terry le Grand to avoid confusion between the two). We got there just as Rene drove up with his tractor, pulling a flatbed full of barrels and a hand operated grape crusher (it has a special name which I can’t remember). Barrels were taken down and set around the vineyard, and the portable crusher was set on top of the first one. We began to pick. There were 12 people picking, and the French chatter was fun to hear—lots of joking and laughter (I didn't understand the French, but I could tell the good-natured aspect of it). At one point, we heard gunshots and all work stopped to talk about the wild boar hunt that was going on. Of course Terry le Grand’s ears perked up, and he had lots of questions about it. We took about 50 photos and some videos of just the picking. The last rows of grapes that were picked had been planted in 1941, and I marveled at how healthy they looked and the number of grapes they produced. They certainly didn't show their age (as opposed to those of us who also began in the 40's). All too soon, the grapes were picked and beer was passed around. It was actually sad to be finished, but happily there was still more celebrating to do.

After a short rest and a little washing, we regrouped at Rene and Solange’s home on their front terrace for the aperitif of wine, salmon blinis, chorizo, more wine, sausages, chorizo, still more wine, quiche, followed by wine served by Christianne and Pascal, the wives of Jean-Louis and Didier. The highlight of this part was the serving of the nouveau wine which Rene had made earlier from the first and small picking. It was delicious. Next came the dinner which was served one course at a time. First, the soup which was a broth with small pasta was ladeled out by Didier. After everyone finished, we had to perform the “chabrol” which was a tradition where certain people (I’m not sure how they were chosen, but Terry and I were the ones this year) were expected to pour wine into their soup bowl and drink it all at once. Now the level of wine was supposed to cover the upside down spoon bowl, and I suppose Terry’s did; I’m not sure since I was sitting with the women and he was with the men at a long table. I can assure everyone, however, that my wine was about ¼ inch deep (wimpy, I know), but we both managed to down it which brought about a long applause. Acceptance!!
After that, we were served, one at a time, chicken liver and pork pate; a caprese salad with additional boiled egg wedges and thinly sliced cucumber; civet, a stew of wild boar with steamed potatoes and carrots; a cheese place with about 6 different kinds of cheeses and baguette slices; raspberry tiramisu and crème caramel; and coffee. It was truly delicious and I told Terry le Grand that I had no intention of eating that much again in my life—ever. What a glorious day and so much fun. I’m sure it’s a memory we’ll always cherish.

The next 3 days were a whirlwind with visits around the countryside, gourmet dinners at Belle Epoque and other very French restaurants and cafes, brief stops at some terrific hamlets and villages, roaming through abandoned chalets, popping into museums and churches with fantastic altars and stained glass windows, a tour of Peche Merle which is an underground cave with 24,000 year old paintings (incredible!), a refreshing hike around the area (a la Terry le Petit) with views from the tops of hills of Espagnac and other villages at the bottom of formidable cliffs which form the western edge of the Cele valley. All that, plus, we learned that breast of duck, lamb chops and mussels in wine (a la Ann) are such delicacies that we’ll never again think twice about having them, and enjoyed them so much along with fresh vegetables from Terry's garden and delicious tarts for a finish beyond expectations. This is just an overview with more detail to come when we show the photos. What an amazing area Terry and Ann live in, and we were privileged to have had them show it to us.

Mountain towns, Pont du Gard & Carcasonne Sep 24, 09

On our way to our hotel in little Monteux, we passed through many tiny and picturesque villages. When we arrived, our host suggested that we might enjoy a little village that wasn’t too far away, so off we dashed immediately to L’isle sur la Sorgue. The town center was located on a small island on the River Sorgue with sweet little bridges crossing and ducks floating beneath. We walked around town, had a gelato (orange sartine this time—yum) and found a cute restaurant on the river for dinner. It was only about 10 miles, so we drove back easily through another little village and on farm roads to our hotel.

The next morning we set out to drive through the mountains. We stopped at nearby Pernes des Fontaines, bought pastry, and drove on to postage stamp St. Didier for coffee (pastry shops don’t serve coffee, so it’s ok to buy pastry at one shop and take it to a coffee shop to eat it--at least this is what we were told). We sat on the street at a miniscule table for 2 and watched the traffic try to pass one another on their little one lane road, residents getting their daily fresh vegetables and meats, and students going to school. The morning had turned chilly and it was the first day of dew on the car, so we had to wear jackets.

The mountain road was, itself, barely wide enough to pass two cars and very curvy. It climbed to the tops of the high hills and back down to valleys again, all the while giving us views of lush green forests with little clumps of houses, red tile roofs and stone fences looking like a giant Christmas tree with ornaments hanging off the branches. One of our favorites was Venasque which was a walled hilltop town that we could see from afar and kept getting closer, all the while hoping that the road would take us there but not knowing if it would veer off in another direction or not. Like several others, the road passed through a stone arch (very small passage) and opened up to a beautiful square with a large fountain surrounded by hanging flowers. We hadn’t planned to park and explore this particular town, but we found ourselves looking for somewhere to stash the car so we could just walk around it and take it in the history, beauty, and ambiance.

After a time, we continued up and down again along hillsides planted with olive groves, truck farms of vegetables, cherry trees, lavender that had already been cut but still fragrant, Italian cypress trees that lined little lanes, and great big sycamores or plane trees with their spotted bark and gnarly trunks. We passed through Gordes, St. Remy, Robion, and stopped at Village des Bories, a much different village than the others. It was from ancient Ligurian times and contained dry stone huts; it looked much more primitive than all the other areas, and I shuddered to think of the difficult living conditions and short lives these inhabitants endured. But it was getting late and we needed to be in Carcassonne that night at the hotel we reserved; we had one more site to visit before we made the serious and direct drive there.

I had read about the Pont du Gard in my high school Latin class, had seen pictures in books, but I wasn’t prepared for the enormity of the Roman built aquaduct and bridge. It was huge, massive really, and so beautifully and perfectly built, I could only stand there and wonder how in the world people during that age could possibly do such a work with the tools at hand.

But we had reservations in Carcassonne, so we had to enjoy the Pont du Gard for a couple of hours and then move on. We hurried along A8 past villages and larger towns, and at about 7 in the evening, just at dusk really, we came to Carcassonne, looked to our right and spotted the fortress on a hill in the middle of the city. It was dark and brooding and had I been an 13th century traveler, my knees would have been shaking. It was too early for the floodlights to light it, as we had read about, and we needed to get to our hotel first, so we drove to that end. However, as we drove toward Argon, it became clearer that our hotel wasn’t as close to town as we thought it was when we made the reservation. In fact, it was so far out of town that I knew once we got to it, we would not be going back that night, and when we got lost and ended up in another hamlet, there was no doubt in my mind. Dang it! We really had wanted to see it illuminated. We finally got to our hotel around 9 and went to bed. The next morning, we left early, drove to the cite ‘ (as it’s called) and marveled at what must have been an incredible, invincible and imposing fortification. It was so even now; I can’t imagine what it would have been like in very ancient times. We walked up the path, along the walls, and through the gates to a maze of streets. It was very early, and we must have been the first ones there because we saw only delivery and working personnel until after we had had our coffee and baguette. We knew we wouldn’t get to see very much of this huge structure because we were pressed for time and needed to get to Cahors by noon to meet our friends Ann and Terry Kempley who had invited us to their village near Figeac on the Cele River. So, we said “au revoir” to Carcassonne and set out north.