Table Talk

The most challenging thing about traveling with the boys was that their idea of dining was a bit different than ours.   Paul is a picky eater and Bryan is quite adventurous, but neither of them was into the adult version of a French meal --the slow, languid process of dining.  They were used to eating quickly and moving on with life, while we wanted to make eating a significant part of our vacation in France.

Balance was, of course, part of the solution to this problem.  As adults, we often relinquished our idea of a wonderful leisurely dining experience in favor of a more child-centered evening.  Other times we encouraged the boys to eat a quick meal and then spend their evening with their iPods/iPads while we indulged in a memorable adult centered meal.

But the other part of the solution was to help the boys to see dining as a social experience,  a time when  we all talked together.  It was sometimes a bit of work to get a conversation going, but it was well worth it.    While I occasionally wished I had more time with just Ben, I really loved our "family" meals together.  Hearing the interesting and funny things the boys shared with us and watching Ben interact with them was a real treat for me.

As our trip drew to a close, for instance, one of our table topics was "What are some things to remember?"   Many of the answers were predictable: seeing the Eiffel Tower from so many different sites in Paris;  the great bread; the sewer tour.   But here are some of the less predictable ones:

Paul running his trikke into the back of our tour guide, Martin, during our trikke tour. (Martin sure was nice about it!)

How we almost missed the boat for our champagne cruise on the Seine.  

The friendly waiter at our first meal in Paris.  His name was Lionel and he liked the boys since he had a son about their age. He just barely spoke English and we just barely spoke French, but no matter, we still communicated.  We liked him so much that we bought a very expensive bottle of wine from him and tipped him very well, even though you don't generally tip waiters in France.  

Bathroom matters:  Unisex bathrooms, toilets without toilet paper, squat toilets, all the different ways to flush a toilet; seeing men "doing their business" by the side of the road and having cars honk at us the few times we were desperate enough to do the same thing.

Ben willingly giving up his seat on the place to a father who really wanted to sit with his young family and had somehow been seated away from them.  (Not only nice of Ben, but smart; otherwise he'd have had a little girl's head in his lap the whole flight!) 

Men and women all wearing fashionable scarves, women wearing boots in the middle of the summer, and Mary trying mostly unsuccessfully to take picture of this.  

Ice cream, especially Chocolate Liegeois, a delectable dessert made of chocolate and vanilla ice creams, chocolate sauce, and lots and lots of freshly whipped cream.

The unfriendly waiter who told Ben "It will take you three hours to eat all that" when Ben tried to order three courses.  (I still don't get this; wasn't he there to sell Ben food? Maybe it was a language barrier thing.)

When Bryan skipped a rock so far across the Gardon River that it almost hit a man on the other side,who shouted out a protest that we all understood; no language barrier there. 

The nude man climbing on the rocks and swimming at the Pont du Gard. 

The big casement windows that are kept open without screens,
 making you feel so close to the outside. 
 The sidewalk cafes; ditto.

How, when we asked for the WiFi code in a very nice restaurant, our young and hip waiter looked at us incredulously, laughed, and said "no!"  

The hotel manager who looked like Aunt Jan.   

Our tour guide's wild afro-styled hair, such a contrast to his deep knowledge of prehistoric and medieval life.

When Bryan got locked in the gas station bathroom.

We're back home now.  We're adjusting to the time change, finding things we thought we had lost as we unpack, and getting all the Euros out of our wallets.  

I always love to come home after being away, but I know I'll miss the closeness our little traveling team shared on this big adventure. 

Not All Fun and Games

Sometimes, of course, traveling was just hard work.  

Oh, to Linger

 We had miles to go yesterday driving from Orange to Auxerre, but with the good weather and good highways, we were clipping along.  Reading the Rick Steves guidebook on my Kindle as Ben drove, I found that Le Hameau du Vin,  a "Disneyesque" theme park centered on wine making, created by George Duboeuf, the promoter of Beaujolais wines, was right on our way; who could resist?

The park was an interesting mixture of education and wine promotion.  The educational component included both in traditional forms like museum displays and films, and in the form of "rides," like one where you flew over the Beaujolais country side.  The promotion included wine tasting and a huge gift shop.  A trip to the vineyard was offered, there was a large garden, and miniature golf.  Clearly you could spend the whole day there.

When we finally arrived in Auxerre we found that our accommodations at the Hotel Parc des Marechaux were very pleasant.  Clearly one could spend a day or two lingering in its comfortable rooms, by its inviting pool, and on its soothing terrace.

But we are out of time.  It's now early morning and we'll soon all be up for breakfast, a quick swim, and then on the road to the airport, a two hour drive that will probably take three due to the traffic.  Oh, to linger in France for just another day or two!

Last Day in Orange, France

One reason we decided to stay in Orange was to see ancient Roman theater.  Its status as the best preserved Roman theater earned it a place on the UNESCO World Heritage sites list, so after the Pont du Gard, it was the next "tic" on our list.   Since I couldn't get a photo of the entire theater, I'm sharing this one from the UNESCO web site so you get an overview of it.  Can you see that the seats are built into a hillside?  And that the stage wall is very tall and well preserved?

We used an audio tour as our guide, so each of us had a kind of recorder we wore around our neck that gave us information about different aspects of the theater as we explored it.   This was pretty cool since we could each move at our own pace and interests.

The theater is still used today to put on productions and the stage crews were getting the scenery in place for the next event, which I think is Turandot, opening the end of July.  It was interesting to watch as they were having some trouble getting the last column to fit! 

From the audio guide we learned all about how the Romans experienced the theater.  Everyone went; the tickets were free but you sat with others of your class; and that they rooms built into the hillside behind the seats were used for refreshments and lounging, much like in our current stadiums.

After touring the theater everyone except me was ready for a rest.  So I took the opportunity to walk around Orange and take a few pictures of the architecture and plants, which remind me so much of what we saw in the Carribean.  As you look at these, feel the dary heat of a 90 degree and the constant strong wind.  No wonder everyone was sleepy.     

We went back to Pont du Gard later in the day and the boys jumped off the rocks into the water while I swam near them.  It was so nice.  And then off to our last dinner in Orange.  Today we head up to Auxerre for the night before we fly home tomorrow. 

Pont du Gard

To see the Pont du Gard, the famous Roman aqueduct that supplied water to the town of Nimes, we rented canoes and paddled down the Gardon River.  The water was clear with enough minor "rapids" to keep paddling interesting, the sky was that "Boulder Blue" which we love, the temperature warm enough but not hot, and the wind was brisk, giving us a taste of the "mistral" wind that is so prevalent in this area.  We thought we had died and gone to heaven and that was before we got to the aqueduct!

Once there we stopped and joined the many other visitors who were swimming, sun bathing, taking pictures, and generally having a good time in the shadow of the aqueduct.

 After a while Ben went exploring and found the restaurant, so we walked across the aqueduct and had a wonderful meal while admiring the view.

Then back down to the banks of the Gardan for some more swimming and sunbathing.  We spotted a man enjoying the river au naturale and a woman swimming topless, which was pretty interesting.

We finally had to leave the aqueduct and paddle down to the canoe drop off point.  But it was only seven o'clock and way too pretty an evening to head back to our hotel in Orange so we drove to Avignon to check it out.  Well, it was hosting its theater festival and was very busy and crowded.  We settled for a walk down to the river where we could at least see massive walls that surround the city.   

The boys decided on "McDo's" for dinner, and Ben and I walked the two blocks to the center square where we just caught the last call for dinner at Le Pigalle.  It was a great end to a five star day.

We made it!

 We made it!  We arrived safely in Orange, France, in the northern most area of Provence, after a daunting nine and a-half-hour drive.  We can't say we weren't warned; good friends assured us that we would get lost driving in France.   But we didn't imagine that we'd get lost just getting out of town!  Sarlat is not on the main road, but it shouldn't have taken more than thirty minutes to get onto the main road.  Instead, we wandered around for a good ninety minutes, feeling more and more silly, trying to "get out of town."   We did get out of town, but not out of the immediate area.  It seemed at first that all roads led back to Sarlat.  Then finally we got away from Sarlat and saw a lot --and I mean a lot! -- of scenic French countryside before we finally hit the highway.  I will just say that the GPS that was so helpful getting us out of Paris was really terrible in navigating the country roads.  And we had only a basic map, a default we rectified as soon as we found a place to buy a big book of road maps.

Then it was smooth sailing for a couple of hours on one of the fabulous French autoroutes until we hit rain.  Rain?  Where did it come from?  The weather report had assured us it would be clear.  No matter; there was quite a bit of rain off and one for hours.  We dealt with it, but it slowed us down, as did the heavy traffic near Lyon and St.-Etienne (we had taken the north eastern route, not the south eastern route).   What should have been a six hour drive turned into almost ten hour one, with just a few quick bathroom/sandwich stops.

The good news was that we all remained calm and in good humor.  Ben and I are a very good team in the car, which we proved again yesterday by not biting each other's heads off.  The boys were especially good travelers, sleeping, listening to their ipods, and watching movies they had downloaded onto the ipad, and only occasionally announcing to us that the drive seemed to be taking a long time.

When we did arrive in Orange and were eating dinner in front of the great Roman theater there, celebrations were in order!

We've had a good night's sleep and a good breakfast and will soon head out to the Pont du Gard, the main reason we made the long drive down here.  

Sarlat Market and Castelnaud

We hadn't meant to go to the Saturday market at Sarlat.  We planned to sleep in late, find some breakfast nearby and meet Steve at our hotel for our afternoon tour of a large castle and its weapons collection.

 But when we got in our car to go find breakfast we somehow ended up in the Sarlat market traffic.  After crawling trough it for a while we suddenly saw a parking space and grabbed it.  We had just an hour until we met Steve, so we went fast, well as fast as you can go in a French market, which isn't very fast.

You don't just grab your selection and pay. You must browse, taste, and actually interact with the salesperson.  This is true in all dealing with merchants; you treat them as real people and enjoy your momentary connection with them.  It's different, but it's quite nice.

We bought our breakfast at the market and ate it picnic style at our hotel.  Then on to our tour of Castelnaud, one of the several large castles which dominant the Dordogne river valley.

It was BIG!

It as very enjoyable to visit as it had great views of the surrounding area, lots of weapons, including big siege engines, and many hidden and unexpectedly spaces to explore.  

Last night was our last in Sarlat, as we are driving to Orange today.  We ate at an auberge, or country restaurant, near Baynac, a picturesque town with its own huge castle, and then enjoyed the fireworks which Sarlat set off at 11:00 to celebrate Bastille Day.   Our hotel is perfectly situated to see them, as it sits on a hill right above the launch zone.   

Too close, as a matter of fact, for "security," we were told when we tried to drive up our driveway only to find it blocked by Gendarmes.  For a desperate few minutes it appeared that we couldn't "go home" until the fireworks were over, but after a show of our hotel key along with cries of being tourists and making the sign for sleep, the nice policeman let us through.  Whew!

   

Caves and Castles

The Dordogne River Valley is known for its both its prehistoric sites and its medieval towns and castles.   Yesterday we toured several sites used by Cro-Magnon man, including Lascaux II, a painstakingly faithful replica of Lascaux, a cave housing the best known and most stunning cave paintings and engravings.   To help us understand the sites we had hired Steve Burman, a professional archaeologist who now lives in the area and owns Caves & Castles tours.  This was a smart move; not only did Steve do a great job of making the paintings and ruins come alive for us, but he did all the driving, no small thing in this very hilly region with its narrow winding roads.  We had a very full day with him, seeing three different sites. 

The first, Le Thot, wasn't actually a site but a museum that prepared us for what we'd see at Lascaux.  Through the excellent displays and Steve's explanations we learned how the paintings were made, how to "read" them, and about Cro-Magnon life.

Then it was on the Lascaux II, which was the main event of the day.  Discovered in 1940 and opened to visitors in 1948,  the original cave was closed to the public in 1963 by the French government when it was determined that the artwork was being jeopardized by the millions of visitors it had received.  An intensive effort was made to build a replica very close to the original, and that is what visitors see in visits now.  You might think that seeing a replica would not be very rewarding, but you would be very wrong; it was amazing.   When I entered the cavern and saw the paintings --their size, detail, dimensionality -- I was stunned.  Steve said he had clients who cried when they saw the artwork, and I believe it.  

After a sandwich break we went to La Madeleine, one of the many cliff dwelling sites that line the Vezere River.  The Cro-Magnon people lived in these rock shelters, not in caves.  Much later they were used by medieval people who build towns right in the cliffs and castles on top of the cliffs to protect the towns.   It was very cool and we all enjoyed being there and learning about it. 

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The last stop of the day was in Les Eyzies, a town which is billed as "the world capital for prehistory," for ice cream and then to see a maker of flint head, tools, and weapons.  Bernard takes huge chunks of flint rocks and whacks away at them and files them  in just the right manner so they are transformed into tools and weapon.  We all would have loved to own his neat spears, knives, and arrows, but alas, it just wasn't practical for our lifestyles.  

Last night we went back down to Sarlat for dinner.  Paul discovered that he likes Croque Fromage, a grilled cheese sandwich.  Go Paul!

This afternoon Steve is taking us to a castle with an excellent weapon collection.  Should be fun!