Day 8 : July 9 - Chateaux of the Loire Valley

Chaumont, France

Montrichard, France
Chenonceaux, France

Friday morning we woke up to cooler temperatures and rain. It had basically stopped by the time we got up and went for our run, but it started again once we were out there. It was still pretty hot and after all the heat we had experienced on the trip to this point, it felt great. Of course the French people probably thought I was insane standing in the rain after my run.

After we showered, we had a relatively leisurely breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast we hit the road to our first chateau, Chateau Chaumont, which was about 20 minutes from our hotel. It was an easy drive, along the Loire, and by many caves that are being used for wine-making and as wine cellars.

Chateau Chaumont is up on a hill above the town of Chaumont and overlooking the Loire. It was a very interesting castle to visit b/c they were doing an experiment in organic farming on the grounds as well as having a modern art exhibit throughout the buildings on the grounds. First we checked out the garden, which had all the same things you'd find in a vegetable garden here. Then we walked through the courtyard and onto a path that looked onto the river. To get into the castle, we walked over the drawbridge and through the main gate. The tour of the interior was pretty interesting since they had furnished a lot of the rooms to look like they did when the castle was built. The modern art was a little freaky, there was some sort of post-apocalyptic thing going on with a story and art to go with it.

Chateau Chaumont

Relaxing in the seats overlooking the Loire

The drawbridge and main gate

Janda and the suit of armor- that armored guy had really long legs

We went to the stable buildings too, that was very interesting. The horses of the nobles who lived here had better quarters than most of the people did at the time. We checked out he rest of the grounds, walked down the paths and then headed out to our next destination.

Fancy stall in the stable

We went to Montrichard next, a slightly bigger town on the Cher River, a tributary of the Loire. The town was pretty neat, with a medieval castle overlooking the town center. We stopped and got some Orangina and some candy and used the ATM before heading to the Caves Monmousseau. Cave is the word for cellar in French, so I thought originally that we were going to visit a wine cellar, but there are actual caves, like the ones that we had seen that morning. In the Middle Ages, people dug caves into the side of the hills along the river to make a system of tunnels. The tunnels at the Caves Monmousseau ran for 15 kilometeres deep into the hill. On our tour of the caves we learned how sparkling white wine (known as Champagne if it comes from the right region in France) is made. It is a long process- at the Caves Monmousseau it takes around 3 years. First they make the wine and put in the sugar, yeast and tannens, and then they set the wine bottle on their sides to develop the carbonation and flavor for 2-3 years. Then they take the bottles, slowly rotate them to upside down vertical over the course of a week or two, to make the sediment settle to the opening. Then they freeze the neck of the bottle and pull out a sediment filled ice cube. After that they put in more wine and sugar to fill the bottle and then they cork it. At any one time this cave system has about 4.5 million bottles of Champagne- 1.5 million per year, all made in one batch. Afterward we had a tasting, but we weren't too interested in that b/c we don't really like Champagne.

Entrance to the Caves, right in the middle of the picture

When we left the caves, we headed to Chateau Chenonceau, one of the most famous castles in the Loire Valley. It is on the Cher River, and in fact, the castle spans the entire river. This was much busier than Chateau Chaumont in the morning and by this point all the clouds had burned off and it was hot hot hot. We started out in the maze and then walked through a shaded forest path to get to the castle. The grounds were amazing, with multiple gardens, two sections of forest and a moat system. We looked through Diane de Poitiers garden to the left of the castle and once we got too hot, we headed into the castle. We walked right through the ballroom gallery to the other side of the river. It was nice and shady on that side, so we relaxed in the shade for a while before going back into the castle. We toured the rooms of the castle, which were fully appointed with the furnishings of the time, especially the kitchen. Then it was onto Catherine de Medici's garden, which was right next to a shady path back to the parking lot. The castle is beautifully kept, I can see why it is one of the most popular for tourists. I've heard that Chateau Chambord, the most popular, is not as well kept or as nicely furnished, so I'm glad that we chose Chenonceau and Chaumont.

Janda in the maze

Me in the middle of the maze

The wooded paths around Chateau Chenonceau


The Chateau from the edge of Diane de Poitiers garden

The chateau from the far side of the river

Standing over the river in the ballroom gallery


It's built right in the river and only short boats can fit under it

After Chateau Chenonceau, we headed back to our hotel in Amboise. Once again we had managed to miss lunch, so we decided to rest up for a couple of hours and try to get dinner right at 7pm when the restaurants reopened for the evening. We did end up falling asleep, but we woke up in time for dinner. Janda had been craving pasta, so we went to the Italian restaurant in town (sit-down meal #3). We had a delicious eggplant appetizer and for the main course I had a pizza and Janda had a seafood pasta dish. Portion sizes in Europe really aren't enough for Janda, so he ate half of my pizza too!

After dinner, we went for another walk around town. We saw some caves carved into the hillside, so we went to get a closer look at them and found a staircase leading to a scenic viewpoint above the city. When we got there we had a nice view of the city and the river. We also saw a sign for some Gallo-Roman ruins, so we went on a wild goose chase to find them. We had absolutely no luck, so we gave up and headed back down the hill to get a better look at the caves, which were actually people's houses. As we walked down the hill checking out the caves, I realzed that we were near Clos Luce, the house that Leonardo da Vinici had retired to at the behest of the French king, who only wanted to be able to converse with the famous inventor. We stopped and had a look at that before heading back to Chateau Amboise for a lit-up night walk through the grounds of the castle. We waited for at least a half an hour, with a large group of people, and no one from inside the castle bothered to tell us it was canceled! Bummer, but it was late, so we headed to bed so that we could get an early start the following morning.

At the scenic viewpoint


Cave houses in the hills


Clos Luce, where Leonardo da Vinci died

Day 7 : July 8 - Tour de France

Paris, France to Montargis France ~ 1.5 hours + 2hours!! Montargis, France to Amboise, France ~ 1.5 hours

On Thursday we had a leisurely morning on our last day in Paris b/c the sight that we were going to see, the Catacombs, didn't open til 10am. We headed out around 9:30, stopped and grabbed some juice and pastries for breakfast and headed to the square where the Catacombs are. We couldn't tell exactly where the Catacombs was, so since it was only 9:40, we found a nice bench and enjoyed our breakfast, a pain au chocolat, a suisse and a torsade. Delicious. Once we finished off our pastries, we decided to go to the island in the middle of the traffic circle, thinking that would be a likely spot to find the Catacombs. We were indeed right and we got at the end of a very long line a little before 10.

The line was a bit slow moving, probably b/c they limit and stagger the people going down into the Catacombs for safety purposes. We finally got in at about 10:30. That meant that we had to rush a bit b/c we needed to check out and get to the airport to get our rental car to drive to the Tour de France. On the tour of the Catacombs, you descend 130 steps, walk for 2k and then emerge 83 steps later in a different part of the neighborhood. We started by going down a spiral staircase and a ramp into the welcome area. Then you head into the tunnels. (Before the tour they warn you that if you have cardiac problems or a nervous disposition, you should not enter!) The light is dim and the head room is minimal. As you walk you see stones with numbers on them that tell you when the section you are in was built and you see other tunnels that are blocked from the tour by iron gates and brick. After walking through narrow tunnels and then through large chambers, you see a door with the following sign above it: "Attention! C'est ici l'empire de la mort." Warning- here is the empire of Death.

The stairs leading down to the Catacombs

The tunnels in the Catacombs

Janda peering into a blocked off tunnel

One of the large chambers you walk through

If you decide to walk through that door, you are now walking amongst the bones of the thousands of skeletons moved into these catacombs in the 18th century after the mass burial sites of the 17th century were flooded and brought back to the surface. The bones are extremely neatly stacked, at least on the facade. Each section of bones has a placard to tell you where these bones came from and when. All along the way there are quotes about death carved into granite markers. At this point there is no flash photography allowed, so it was difficult to get good pictures. At this point we also realized that we were going to be late, so we booked it through the rest of the tunnels and out to the spiral staircase up to daylight.

Bones in the Catacombs

Stacked very neatly

Tells you where they came from and when they were put here

We all but ran back to our hotel to check out and then walk back to the Catacombs with our luggage b/c the RER train station to the airport was in the same square. We made it through all that no problem and we were in our car and ready to drive to the Tour de France by 1:15 at the latest. Then we got out of the airport and onto the highway and into the worst traffic I've ever been in! It took us 2 hours to go about 30k to get around Paris and to the south. In 90+ degree weather. With no air-conditioning! We basically gave up on the Tour, but decided to at least give it a shot and head to Montargis, the finish town of the day. Going through the wheat fields, we actually started to make good time on the Autoroute (French for highway). As we got closer to Montargis, we actually saw some Tour de France fans parked on the side of the back roads, so we knew then that we had a good chance of making it!

We got into Montargis, came upon the closed roads and followed the crowds to park on the side roads. It was brutally hot that day and the rays of the sun literally felt as though you were way too close to a heating lamp. I feel bad for those guys out there on the road for 6 hours with little to no shade! We made it into town and to the 1k to go mark. Since we were about 2 hours late, everything closer to the finish was packed. We were very bummed that we didn't get to see the finish and podium area, etc... but we were very happy to have made it at all in the end.

We set up shop in the shade at the 1k mark and watched the caravan go through. It was pretty neat, there were sponsor cars and souvenir vans coming through and stopping for the fans. There were multiple speaker systems going, so we knew when the peleton was on its way. Finally they made it into town and flew by us. We're pretty sure that we saw Mark Cavendish, the winner of that stage and Armstrong as they flew by us. Then all the team cars came racing through right after that, plus a few stragglers. B/c we were so far out and we still had some driving to do, we didn't get to see the podium, but it was still very cool. I only wish that we had gotten there on time.

Sponsor car driving by

The 1k marker

The lead riders flying through- Garmin to the right and Columbia in the middle

We headed back on the road and to the west to the Loire Valley in the Centre region of France. It was an hour and a half through wheat and sunflower fields and it didn't seem that hardly anyone was going our way, so we made really good time. We arrived in Amboise, checked into our hotel and headed out to look for dinner, b/c we had, once again, missed lunch. Our hotel was perfectly located, just outside the little downtown area where the Chateau Amboise, restaurants and shops were. We had a tartine for dinner- it looked like a pizza, but it didn't taste like one! Then we shared a raspberry gelato and meandered around town. Since the sun set so late, we had plenty of time to take in the sights before bed. As we were winding our night down, thunderstorms came in down the river and cooled things off for us nicely.

Heading into downtown Amboise

Chateau Amboise

Lots of old half-timbered buildings in Amboise

Sun setting over the Loire- those clouds brought rain, thunder and lightening

Day 6 : July 7 - Paris on foot

Paris, France

Wednesday morning we woke up and went for a little jog, our first since Sunday. Our, I should really say my first jog since last winter since I've been focused only on sprinting! It was just a 20 minute shake-out, so I made it, but it wasn't pretty. It is a real pain running in a big city, every block or two you have to stop for traffic or a stop light, you can't get away from the cars, it's all concrete (which I personally prefer). In short, it wasn't much fun we just did it to get it done.

After that we headed out to the Eiffel Tower. The Metro stop that was a few minutes from our hotel went straight to the Eiffel Tower, so it was an easy trip. We knew that it would be busy given what we had seen on Ile de la Cite on Tuesday, so we wanted to get there quickly and didn't stop to get breakfast. That turned out to be a mistake as we couldn't find anything to go near the Eiffel Tower. I did manage to get Janda some coffee though, so it wasn't a total loss. There are four pillars (feet) at the Eiffel Tower. Three of them sell tickets to all 3 floors and the fourth just sells tickets to the restaurant on the second floor. One of the ticket booths was closed, so most people were in the two lines to go to the top. They were long! I have to say, though, the lines moved pretty well and we probably only had to wait a half and hour or so.

Walking towards the Eiffel Tower

We got our tickets and got on our elevator pretty quickly once we made it through the line. The first elevator takes you up to the first and second floors, so we decided to look around the second floor before getting on the elevator to the top. It was pretty high and you had a really good view of Paris. Then we got in line for the next elevator. This was the scary one. As you look down out the window, you see the ground rushing away from you and you feel like if you took a step you could fall out of the elevator all the way down! We finally made it to the top and that's not so bad, it's very solid and you don't feel like it would be possible to fall. We walked around the top and checked out the view- in every direction, as far as you can see it is city, city, city. It was also a bit windy, but it was super hot that day, so not unwelcome.

Janda at the top

Me at the top

Champ de Mars

One of the views from the top

After we saw everything at the top, we headed back down the elevator. This time we got off on the first floor to see what that was like too. Luckily it was the least popular floor and the line for the ladies room wasn't completely insane like it had been upstairs. We walked around, saw the exhibitions, the cafe, the gift shop, etc... Then we decided to walk down the stairs the rest of the way. Even though the stairs are caged in, I still felt like I could fall off the Eiffel Tower! The walk down was pretty neat, but I wouldn't have wanted to do more than one floor that way. I'm pretty sure they don't allow people to climb the steps to the top, but if they did that would be insanely scary!

Walking down the stairs

Down the stairs

The view of the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadaro

After the Eiffel Tower, we crossed the river to the Trocadaro and started the walk to the Arc de Triomphe. I had read about an open air market on the way, so we walked through that and got some lunch, a baguette, some cheese and strawberries. We carried that to the Arc de Triomphe and ate it on the Champs-Elysees. After lunch we headed through the tunnel (no running across the road for me this time!) and went to see the Arc de Triomphe up close. Our feet were a little tired from all the walking we had been doing on the trip, so we didn't climb the steps to the top, but I was OK with that!

The Arc de Triomphe

Looking down the Champs-Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe

Next we walked down the Champs-Elysees to the Place de la Concorde. We went in a couple of stores on the Champs-Elysees, but I couldn't find what I was looking for- an outfit for Emma. :( All along the Champs-Elysees the roads and sidewalks were being set up for Bastille Day, which was yesterday. There were gates and fences plus huge sets of bleachers being put in place for what I'm assuming was a parade yesterday. The Place de la Concorde was completely covered, you could hardly see or get near the obelisk. That was a bit of a bummer, but we decided to relax in the Jardin des Tuileries for a little while instead. There were chairs and tables set up in the shade all along the gardens, which was just what we needed to A) get out of the sun and B) rest our feet.

Looking down the Champs-Elysees from the Place de la Concorde. You can see the bleachers they've built.

The Place de la Concorde with bleachers built on it

Relaxing in the Jardin des Tuileries

After relaxing there for a while, we left the gardens and went into the Louvre. It was pretty busy, especially as we got closer to the Mona Lisa. I swear that most people who went to the Louvre just saw the Mona Lisa and left. After we got past Salle 6 where she hangs, there was hardly anybody! The Louvre is 3 wings and 3 floors plus a basement in some areas. It would be impossible to see everything, but we did see 2 floors of the 3 wings. To be honest, I would have rather gone to the Musee d'Orsay and seen the Impressionist paintings, but Janda had never been and may never go back to Paris, so I thought the Louvre was the thing to do. On the way out, we saw the inverted pyramid and Janda looked for Mary Magdalen. ;)

The entrance of the Louvre

After a little break in the shade, we crossed the river at Pont Neuf and headed back to the St. Michel area. I did a little shopping and then we grabbed some dinner. We had a quick pizza and some crepes. I had a Nutella and banana and Janda had a Nutella and coconut. We ate them in a little park and then headed back to the hotel for the evening. After all that walking, we were definitely tired!

Watching our crepes being made

Janda and his crepe on the little streets near Place St. Michel

Day 5 : July 6 - Munich to Paris

Munich, Germany to Paris, France ~6 hours

Janda and I got up bright an early to catch our 6:20am train to Paris. Even at 6, the train station was already busy. We got breakfast for the road and then found our seats on the train. We were in the 2nd class section, so it was a little tight, but all in all not a bad voyage. It was a 6 hour journey through western Germany and eastern France. We only made about 6 stops, so it wasn't too bad at all. Once we got into France, it was all farms all the time. Until we got about 30 minutes away from Paris, we mostly saw huge wheat fields with a few towns here and there. Since we had been sleep deprived the entire trip thus far, we tried to catch up on a little sleep and napped on and off. We finally got to Paris at 12:30pm and hopped off our train and onto the Metro. Our hotel was about 10 minutes from the Metro stop, so it was manageable, even with all of our baggage.

After we got settled into our hotel, we headed out into Paris. On our schedule for the day was Ile de la Cite and Montmartre, so we got going pretty quickly. We walked down the Boulveard St. Michel to get to Ile de la Cite and grabbed some sandwiches on the way. We ate our sandwiches on Ile de la Cite, in the square in front of Notre Dame. It was incredibly busy and I was surprised how many tourists were there during the week, I had thought that during the week wouldn't be that bad, but I was wrong. After our French sandwiches, we got in line for Notre Dame. It moved very quickly and we soon found out why- there was a separate line for the towers. We enjoyed walking around the inside of the cathedral and seeing the stained glass and the carvings and architecture, but decided the line to the towers was too much. We took a walk to the park in the back and then continued on to see how the other lines were.

Enjoying our French baguette sandwiches at Notre Dame

Notre Dame's facade

The back of Notre Dame- flying buttresses

The line for Sainte Chappelle was extremely long- there were warning signs about the length of the wait at the ticket booth! We decided to skip it and just go onto the Conciergerie, which is the prison in which those sentenced to be guillotined were kept until their execution. You start out in a huge vaulted chamber and then tour the prison where there are re-creations of rooms and cells, including the cell where Marie Antoinette most likely spent her last days. There was also a list of the 2780 people who were guillotined and a brief history of the events of the Revolution.

You enter the Conciergerie through this vaulted chamber

Re-creation of Marie Antoinette's cell

After we toured the Conciergerie, we crossed over to the right Bank via Pont Neuf, where we got our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. We walked through a relatively quiet little neighborhood, past the boarded up Samaritaine, past a bar showing the Tour de France, and hopped on the Metro to Montmartre. When we got off the Metro we were accosted by beggars and then again as we walked the steps to Sacre Coeur, but once we got up to Sacre Coeur it was more peaceful. From this church, built in the 1800's, you have a good view of Paris b/c it sits up on a hill in the north of Paris. After taking in the view, we walked around Montmartre to the Place du Tertres and through some of the nearby neighborhoods.

View from Pont Neuf

Looking up at Sacre Coeur

Looking down from Sacre Coeur

Cute little cobbled streets in Montmartre

We took the Metro back to Place St. Michel and had dinner on the little side streets that are lined with cafes, restaurants, creperies, etc... You can get every kind of food imaginable there. This was one of our few (only 4) sit down meals while we were in Europe and we opted for French cuisine. We had a meal from the prix fixte menu- we got an entree, a main course and a dessert for 9 euros. We found out later that they can charge so little for the meal b/c they charge 4 euros for 1 can of Coke! Janda and I shared a salad and a French onion soup for the appetizer. Then I had steak and he had turkey, both with some kind of sauce. For dessert we shared the apple tart and the chocolate gelato. Very yummy. After dinner we walked back to the hotel past the Sorbonne and the Pantheon and emailed for a while before bed.

Pantheon as the sun sets (10pm!)