Our first three days in France

We arrived in Paris and Shannon's hostparents met us at the airport sunday morning bright and early. They helped us get the rental car and then led us to their appartment in downtown Paris. They then returned to Nancy and left us to explore Paris on our own with Shannon as our guide. Steve and Anna took a quick nap and then we set out walking towards Sacré Coeur along with all the other tourists of the country. We then walked back down Montmartre toward Pompidou Square where I got to see Stravinsky Fountain with all the mechanical spinning pumping sculptures along with the mechanical lips from the french videos I've been watching. We had purchased our quiche and baggette and vin earlier in the day at the Marché so we enjoyed those for dinner.
On Monday we managed to get through early morning construction traffic in Paris it took us an hour to get out of Paris and we were headed to the Loire River Valley: Chenonceau Castle. We got to the castle in the afternoon and toured it and the fabulous grounds and gardens that surrounded it on the Cher River. In the garden they even had a giant pumpkin growing which I will post the picture of later to the Pumpkin Blog. We stayed at a small hotel in CHenonceaux on the main drag. Shannon's been helping us get reservations the night before on the telephone using the recommendations from Rick Steve's guide book.
Today we drove to Chambord, another château, a huge one with over 400 rooms, and over 200 fireplaces. They only had 40 rooms open but that was plenty. I don't think Chambord was nearly as nice as Chenonceau. Chenonceau had lots of beautiful huge flower arrangments in most of the rooms. They even had a center piece in the kitchen composed of small tomato plants with baby tomatoes on them.
After our tour of Chambord Steve and the girls wanted to do something other than look at castles. Shannon wanted to go boating in the canal around the castle and Steve wanted to go for a bike ride. So we rented the equipment after much debate. Shannon got in the boat with Anna as it was threatening to rain and thunder et pire. Steve and Cara went biking off along the canal....just as the rain was dumping. The girls got soaked and blown off course 15 mins after starting. They were all alone in a tiny boat with big waves and big rain drops and a tiny camera. They tried to row over to the shore a couple times but alas mother nature won for awhile until it died down a little and they were finally able to get across half of the canal to the riverbed where Steve and Cara were waiting ready to catch them. After awhile of Steve taking pictures and laughing at the sitution the storm died down and they were able to row over to one of the big tourist boats and grab a rope and were then towed back to dock with pelting rain on their necks and shoulders...........
We all ran back to the car to change clothes except for Steve who had to take advantage of the situation and went around shooting pictures of strangers and how they were bearing with such a storm. Finally the rain stopped and we headed off next to the Loire River to Amboise for the night.
We are headed to Sarlat tomorrow to see the Cave paintings and perhaps some Foi Gras.......

Ciao

ps Anna still likes us as far as we know.......;)

Boulder 6/24

At the time I created this blog, I must've had a premonition that suitcases were going to figure prominently in this trip.

I'm all packed, and Steve says he's packed and Anna is on her way to our house to spend the night. After much discussion, we're all taking 1 suitcase each to check, and we're taking 3 empty ones. Fortunately the 3 all fit together into 1 so we can check that one piece. We are very lucky in the suitcase inventory since my mother has suppliedo us with her collection.

Shannon asked us to bring a large empty suitcase for her since all her french and american clothes no longer fit in the 2 suitcases she took when she left Boulder last August. Hopefully the 3 extra we're taking will accomodate all her things and any purchases we acquire along our travels. The important factor was getting bags w/wheels since we have a 1/2 mile walk from the Paris apartment to the train station to get to the airport coming home.

I spent some time last night on www.viamichelin.com last night (similar to mapquest) printing out some driving directions for some of our trip. It seemed like it was friendlier and easier to use than mapquest. Our first chance to use their directions will be Sunday morning getting from Charles de Gaulle airport to downtown Paris. M. Prouve (her host dad) and Shannon will be meeting us at the airport and then taking us to the Prouve's apartment for our first night in France.

Steve's off to the grocery store to get some last minute snacks for the flight and also film for his camera. He bought a new pair of shoes today for walking so I hope they will be comfortable since their first steps will be in France.

We leave tomorrow morning at 5:30am to get to the airport, Torin will be taking us. We've had so much rain lately, everything is very green and the raspberries are starting to get ripe along w/the sweet peas, so he should have some pretty good eating while we're gone.

Quote for today while I'm anticipating watching the tour in Nancy

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."
H. G. Wells

Steve

Marriage is a wonderful invention: then again, so is a bicycle repair kit.
Billy Connolly 

Anna

Our traveling buddy Anna, who's still trying to figure out which suitcase to bring. She's very brave to go traveling with the 3 of us for 3 weeks.

" I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
Mark Twain

Shannon

Shannon leaves for France 8/04

Cara

Cara not planning for the trip to France, but enjoying Long Canyon, Moab, May 2005

Life is like riding a bicycle: you don't fall off unless you stop pedaling.
Claude Pepper

Musings from the backyard

I've been talking about creating this blog for our up coming trip and here it is. The test post. I was hesitant to create it since I didn't want to feel obligated to find an internet cafe while we're in Europe. So, now I've done it, so we will see how often our group of 4 posts to it.

We leave for Paris on June 25, 2005, ready or not, no matter how many suitcases we take.

"It's great to just disappear, grab a suitcase, switch the answering machine on and just go somewhere else." Dido Armstrong