Crimson Kathryn and her crew

Lausanne, Switzerland (by Mark)
After a spectacular drive through the Alps from Italy we arrived in the lakeside city of Lausanne. We spent the afternoon wandering the lakeside parks on a beautiful sunny Sunday. There was a colour run in the area, and we saw many cuckoo clocks and Swiss army knives. Bring a thick wallet to Switzerland.

The Black Forest of Germany.(by Mark)

Freiberg is a university town in the Rhine river valley in southwestern Germany. It claims the warmest climate of the country. We saw many things on our quest to have sausages and beer. The town had a farmer’s market that day and a large cobblestoned part closed to cars. Very pretty well maintained architecture. This was the most challenging place so far in terms of language. Very little in German is similar to English/French/Italian, so road signs and menus were a challenge. I ticked off a bucket list item: to drive the ‘no speed limit’ autobahn. 

Strasbourg, France. (by Mark)

A very short drive brought us to this city in the Alsace region of France. Wines from this region are among our French favourites. They come in tall thin green bottles, and they have their own particular glassware with green stems.

This is my favourite city so far. It has the most impressive cathedral I’ve seen, it has a vibrant mix of German and French architecture and culture, it has closed a huge portion of its streets to cars and is surrounded by rivers and canals. We went for a second wander this evening, and found the streets alive with locals and tourists, families and couples, walking and riding bicycles, eating and drinking at the many indoor and outdoor restaurants, in a very pleasant atmosphere. Decent prices here too. 

Google translate will help with the title😄😊😉

The northern part of Italy is quite spectacular – amazing mountainous views, lots of castles and also lots of Roman ruins. We spent today in the town of Aosta. We ended up staying near Aosta because we found an inexpensive apartment. We knew very little (well nothing really) about the town but we certainly weren’t disappointed. The town is very old with many ruins from the Romans. It was very cool to walk around ruins that were almost 2000 years old. 

You might be wondering about the title of this blog. Well for the past 2 days, Evelyn has been practicing her Italian by saying lasagna a lot. Today Evelyn had lasagna for lunch and had loads of fun saying lasagna as many times as possible. I think she has mastered the language😉😊

It’s been a very exciting few days after leaving Avignon and heading to the south of France – the Riveria! It’s hard to believe we are in the same small country. It looks so different and feels very tropical in a way. There are significantly more apartment buildings, all facing the sea (go figure) and the boats…oh my! We picked our next boat – when we win the lottery 😊🎉 We stayed in Juan les Pins which is about half way between Cannes and Nice.

We left Juan les Pins this morning and headed to Arvier, Italy. We traveled through some absolutely amazing scenery, starting with (what we thought) some large mountains with some crazy hairpin turns. But these mountains were just babies next to the ones we saw in northern Italy! It really takes your breath away. Tomorrow we will be exploring a town called Aosta, which is fairly close to Turin (Torino). 

Avignon is a lovely, old city with lots of history and a very famous children’s song (hence my fun title for this blog). We arrived on Sat. Sept. 17 – the circus was in town (it was set-up behind where we were staying which made the streets super busy) and it was European Heritage weekend (which meant all the museums and historical places were free!). We have explored the Palais des Papes, Fort Saint Andre, the Pont d’Avignon and the walled city centre. We’ve had nice weather – a bit cooler and super windy. 

One more night in Avignon and then we head to Juan les Pins on the French Riviera. We’ve decided to drive back to Paris via Italy, Switzerland and Germany. Should be lots of fun.

We’ve been staying in a wifi free zone for the past week so we have a bit of catching to do (including Evelyn’s arrival in Paris). Here we go:

Sept. 10

Canadiana

On our way from Reims to Paris we detoured north to the Vimy ridge memorial and the Somme memorial. We lunched in Arras on market day, which was very lively, and included a Porsche car rally.

The war memorials were exceptional in many ways. The pictures convey some of it. It was nice to talk to the ‘park’ interpreters, who were all Canadian students, mostly from U of Ottawa. The parks are both run by Veteran Affairs Canada.

Sept. 11 – 17

And then there were three. Evelyn has joined the crew.

After connecting at the Paris airport we were off to our ‘Gite’ or accommodate in Trouhaut, 30km from Dijon. On the way we stopped in Provin, a UNESCO recognised town. 

I really liked Trouhaut. We had a small two bedroom house, on a hillside looking over a steep narrow valley. We could see the dairy cows, and hear the church bells and the rooster. We enjoyed a nice hike right out the back door. Great to retreat to after touring all day. There are no businesses in the village, but a bakery and a grocery truck would make deliveries for the seniors. Evelyn made friends with a magpie, which was domesticated by a child after if fell from its nest.

Dijon and Beaune are the two cities that we explored in the northern burgundy wine area. We toured a museum and church in Dijon, went on a wine tasting bus tour with Leona, bought a number of different types of mustard in Baune and sampled a variety of white and red wines. We did our best to retain what we learned on the wine tour, but its a challenge while you are sampling. Most days we would eat lunch in the towns we visited, and then buy food to take home for supper. The French eat well, but some of the cheese is aromatic (stinky!) 

After our week in burgundy we drove south through the Beaujolais vine region, stopping to drive to the top of ‘Mont Brouilly’. Vintners pilgrimage here to pray for a good harvest at the chapel. What a scary drive up, but what a spectacular view! 

We stopped in Avignon, home of the bridge, where we will be for 4 nights. Its at the junction of the ‘Cotes du Rhône’ wine region and the Provence region.

It’s been an amazing week of touring the Champagne region. We’ve seen cathedrals, medieval forts, fortified towns and of course more vineyards than you can imagine! Reims (pronounced Ronse – go figure) has been our home base and we have traveled to Epernay, Troyes and Sedan. In Epernay we walked along the Avenue de Champagne where we saw Moët et Chandon, Mercier, and many others. Troyes is the original capital city for the region and had some amazing tutor-style buildings. We visited the medieval castle in Sedan and we also toured the remains of bunkers 1 & 2 of the Maginot Line near a village called Villy. 

We’ve had 2 champagne tours. The first cellar tour was at Taittinger. It was an hour long tour that took us into the underground cellars where millions of bottles of champagne were stored. It was very impressive and in the end, we bought a bottle of their bubbly which we will drink when Evelyn arrives to celebrate the completion of her Masters.

Our second champagne tour was very cool. We went on this bus that drove through the countryside of Epernay, twisting through little villages and vineyards upon vineyards. It’s incredible to see that many vines all together. On the bus we had champagne (of course) and some brioche – very yummy bread. This bus tour is very new (only 2 months in busy) so they really treated us well. We were the only paying customers – another couple was on board but they knew the owners and were on the bus as tour guides I think. This couple owned 4 or 8 hectares of vineyards (we can’t remember) and shared all kinds of interesting facts about grapes, vineyards and the champagne industry with us. We had a great time on this tour!

We have 2 more days in Reims before we had back to Paris to pick up Evelyn. From Paris we head to Burgundy where we will stay about 30km from Dijon. The photos are more or less in order of our days in Reims.

 

By Mark
I think the architecture of the place has an influence on the character of it. Paris is predominantly composed of six story buildings with narrow streets. Most buildings have storefronts on the first floor, and apartments or offices on the rest. The metro is always close by and parking is for scooters/motorcycles so walking is popular, and its ordinary to see men in suits and women in high heels riding scooters. You will never starve in Paris because you can’t walk 25m without passing a restaurant or food store. The sidewalks are sometimes crowded, but unusual for a large city, people are polite and say excuse me and thank you as we all dodge around. So you have a walking friendly city, a little crowded by our standards because of the narrow streets, and lots of families walking together because living and working is mixed together.

You shouldn’t drink too much wine because you need to stay alert for the bicycle lanes and the posts. The sidewalks are protected from cars trying to park on them by metal posts every few meters. Not too challenging except for the places where driveways cross, and then you may get a surprise if you are looking at the map as you walk.

Coffee. Wow. Yum. Helps with the jet lag, oui !

We had a great day today, wandering about. We were looking for a tour book recommended food market and stumbled across a nice area of streets closed to cars. So nice after dodging traffic. Lunch was sweet crêpes and coffee.

The highlight of the day was Gaston the cat burglar. As we were chilling at the apartment with the window open, a woman poked her head in and apologized because, unseen to us, her cat had entered the apartment through the window. Naughty Gaston was soon reunited with his owner and we all had a good laugh.

Tomorrow we go to the airport to collect our car and then we are off to the Champaign region.

It was another wonderful day in Paris and Mark almost died from sore feet😊. Walking is definitely the best way to see and experience Paris but it’s awfully hard on your feet. We did the rest of the Paris bucket list – Musee D’Orsay, Champs Élysées, Arc de Triomphe and of course the Eiffel Tower. We even took the stairs up to the first observation area (not because we really wanted to but because the line for the elevator was crazy long). All in all, another great day of exploring. One more day before we head to Reims.

Day 2 in Paris – lots of walking! I think my feet hate me. We had a great day exploring a few of Paris’ many bucket list sights. We started the day by visiting Notre Dame. What an amazing place – really spectacular. We then walked along to the Louvre. I’m not sure what’s more impressive, the artwork collected inside the walls of this incredible building or the building itself. The last part of our walk took us through the Jardin du Tuileries – beautiful gardens and lots of places to sit and admire the fountains. It was also great to get back to our little apartment to relax with some wine and cheese.

We made it – landed in Paris at 6:40 am. We had 2 good flights although a crazy woman and her two children sat in front of us on the flight from Washington to Paris. We just drank more wine to deal with the situation 🍾😉.

Our Airbnb apartment is exactly like the photos and was very easy to find. We got here by about 9am. We then decided to walk to Montmartre which is fairly close. After sitting all night it was great to walk around. We have 3 days in Paris before we pick up our rental car and head for Reims. Got to make a plan😉