Barb and Baden’s Excellent France Adventure 4.0 – Part 3

The Real Taste of Paris

The other day we went out for breakfast to a local café and of course we had croissants and coffee. That first bite of fresh croissant is always the best as you taste the crunchy exterior and the soft, chewy interior.

The same goes for a good warm baguette freshly baked. We bought a baguette from a local boulangerie (bakery) that we had for dinner last night with an assortment of cheeses that we bought from a cheese shop. I should point out that the local boulangerie was right across the street from our hotel – not 10 steps away.

The impact to all of this good eating is that soon after our first trip to France many years ago we found that we were woken up to how good this kind of food can be or more correctly how bad it can be when you don’t know the difference. At the very minimum, we found that it had forced us to seek out the specialty stores in Vancouver where we could get great bread and cheese.

The Crowds

For some reason that we can’t explain, the crowds on the Metro subway seem to be significantly worse than we have ever seen before. Certainly it seems to have changed in the past three years. For example there are many times when we’re waiting for a subway to arrive at a station and we find almost every single car filled right to the doors. This is not only happening at rush hour (although it occurs a lot at that time) but even at night when we’ve gone to dinner. It seems to be that some of the Metro lines are much worse than others.

The Scarves

The weather in Paris has been a mixed bag. It’s been raining on and off but not raining so hard that it’s ever prevented us from doing anything that we’ve wanted to do. The temperature has been no higher than about 17 or 18 but when the sun is out there is a high humidity so it feels quite a bit warmer here than the temperature would imply. The interesting thing is that everyone here seems to be dressed for much colder weather than us.

In the vast majority of the time we’re walking around in short sleeves (often carrying our light jackets in our hands) and most people around us are wearing heavy coats and scarves . The thing is that the weather in Vancouver is almost identical to what it is here in Paris so it’s not like we’re coming from a place where it’s 20 degrees colder. What makes it worse is that the subways are about 10 degrees hotter than the street!

Travel Communications

I’ve decided that I want to start a new category on this blog dedicated to travel communication. In the last two trips to Europe (Germany last year and France this year) and the trip to New York this past spring, I have been collecting more and more information about using cell phones in different countries. I suspect that over time more and more people may want to do similar things and having a place for me to write all of the things that I learn may be of use to others.

I realize that staying in touch and online while travelling is not what everyone is interested in doing but I suspect that there are more and more people who will be interested in even occasional Internet access while away.

Goodbye to Paris

I’m writing this section on Wednesday morning on the train as we pull out of the Montparnasse station leaving Paris heading for our next destination of the town of Margaux in the Bordeaux region which is about 40 minute drive from the town of Bordeaux . In about three hours we’ll arrive where we will be picking up our rental car and driving to our hotel. This six day section of our trip in Bordeaux will be the only part where we will have a car as our intention will be to explore the countryside while we’re here.

Last night at dinner Barb and I recollected about our six days in Paris. We had originally planned on booking an apartment here in Paris but due to a number of factors this never occurred. Both of us agreed that our 5th visit to Paris (at some unknown point in the future) would definitely be in an apartment as we had now seen enough of Paris that the experience of living in an apartment was what we next wanted to try.

While in Paris, we did something that we hadn’t done since our first visit: we went to a museum. We had discovered that there was an exhibit at the Musée de l’Orangerie on French impressionists like Monet and enjoyed the afternoon there. Of course when I say that we discovered the museum, it really means that it was there for about 100 years but we just found out about it. 🙂

Vintage Bordeaux

The train ride from Paris to the city of Bordeaux took abut 3 hours which given its approx 550 km was a very short trip. We’ve now arrived into our room at Le Pavillion de Margaux and the pictures above and below show the main building and the grounds of the hotel.

Bordeaux is both the name of the city but most famous for the wine region. In the area where we are staying (in the town of Margaux), vineyards are everywhere and you can’t walk 100 metres without seeing the name of a different Chateau of a different brand of wine. In fact in each winery there are often multiple brands of wines that they produce. Wine making is definitely big business here in the Bordeaux.

From our arrival yesterday in Margaux the weather has been sunny and warm – mostly around 23-24 degrees. Certainly a nice change from the rainier, cooler weather that we were seeing in Paris.

So far we have been driving around the area visiting small towns and wineries. This afternoon we did our first winery tour and wine tasting. We’ve found the local wines to be excellent and one of our biggest challenges will be deciding on which wines we want to buy given the limits what we are allowed to bring back to Canada duty-free. Of course we will not be allowed to bring wine bottles on board our flight so if we do buy wine we will have to consider what the best options are to safely check them to reduce the chance of bottle breakage.

Since the Bordeaux area is on the south west corner of France and borders the Atlantic ocean, we have plans to visit the sea shore over the next few days and it should be less than an hour’s drive from Margaux to get there.

More on our adventures in Bordeaux in my next posting as well as our transition down to the Mediterranean coast early next week where we will be ending our trip to France.

Baden