France: Crest Day 4, 5 & 6 - Villages, the Market, Mushroom Lasagna, and Ocher Hills

I received corrections from Edwige so I am updating this today, 10/16/2011.

Day 4 (Friday, July 29). We wandered to the train station to set up our trip to Vienna.  The station clerk was great - wrote out the list of trains we had to take and with Edwige's help, we reserved our seats for Monday morning.

Then we went to her favorite market, went home, and had another one of Edwige's fabulous lunches before we all headed out to explore two of the 'nearby' villages; Mirmande and Cliousclat.  Both villages are up in the hills and you hike up further after you park your vehicle.  The stone buildings and skinny streets / walkways are just beautiful.

 
Mirmande had a quiet, country luxury feel to it. Edwige told us that people are rebuilding the stone home in many of the villages, using the stone that was part of the original structures.  It is definitely a labor of love because you must build a normal house structure and then use the stones on the outside.  Not some remodel to be done in a heartbeat or over the summer.

Cliousclat is one of the pottery centers of the region.  It has more artists and shops and restaurants than Mirmande so it is a bit busier with a larger street running through it, but the same small paths between structures. 




The pottery is very nice and we wandered through their operations areas and the gift stores...

I wish I had had the room to pack a few items, but it would have been tragic to have them break.

Day 5 (July 30). This morning we explored the Crest street market while Edwige got rooms ready for a couple of students participating in the Jazz Festival classes.  

The Crest Market was great!  This market seemed twice as big as those in the cities around Paris.  The artisans (jewelry, leather, fabric, etc) had their stalls down the side streets while the meat, cheese, and vegetable stalls were situated along the main street.

It got very busy, but we had a chance to get through it early and bought a wheel of the best cheese ever for Edwige.   It is called "Reblochon" and if you ever get a chance to taste it, please do.  It is made from raw cow's milk so it cannot be brought into the US.


Then we explored the area where Edwige's family had their summer vacation home near Gigor.  We stropped at a wonderful village called Corbonne - like many villages, it had a beautiful, clear pool of water for thirsty visitors.  We drove to Plain de Baix and hiked up to Veylans,  a giant cross on one of the hills.  The countryside is beautiful and the hills are deceivingly high. 

After marveling at the views from the top including the "3 Beaks" (Trois Becs), we made our way to the car and headed back to see the art exhibition and have dinner.

On the way to Matthew and Isabella's house, we noticed an oddly shaped mountain and a castle.  Matthew Tyson and Isabella Oulton have a gallery called Imprints and they live at the foot of Piégros La Clastre (name of the mountain and the Castle.

The dinner was incredible since Matthew and his daughter took a short hike in the afternoon and picked 3 kilos of porcini mushrooms.  They made porcini mushroom lasagna for 20 people.



Day 6 (July 31). Edwige wasn't able to accompany us today because she needed to visit her father and she had some work she needed to get started on. We packed a picnic lunch and Christian and us headed out for Avignon. 
Avignon is famous for being a completely walled city and its bridge (surely you remember the song - Sur le Pont d'Avignon from childhood?).  As you can see, the bridge does not go all the way across.
 We did a driving tour of the city with Christian masterfully navigating the small, winding streets. It would be wonderful to explore Avignon on foot when there is more time.

We then drove on to Roussillon which is famous for its red rocks and and red pigment manufacturing.  These ocher hills have a variety of colors.  This park, Le Senter des Ocres, has descriptions of the plants that inhabit areas, too.  It is a fascinating and beautiful spot.

Christian got a pair of beautiful ocher earrings for Edwige as this is their anniversary.


We stopped in a farmer's field and had our picnic (sausage, cheese, and beer). We visited several additional villages most of them on hilltops with a ruin, church, or castle at the top before stopping to taste wine at one of Christian's favorite vineyards. Needless to say, the wine was incredible. Christian has a fabulous wine cellar.

We went out to dinner with Christian, Edwige, and Delphine to wind up our stay in Crest.   Christian - who is not a morning person - bravely took us to the Valence Train Station  at 7 am on 8/1.   Au Revoir -  it was a wonderful visit.

France: Crest Day 2 & 3 - Annecy & Chamonix

We left Crest around 8 a.m. to meet Christian in Annecy after he made a delivery for his work.  The drive was about 2 hours and was very interesting - the landscape changed dramatically and wonderfully as we went into the more mountainous area  around Annecy. 

Annecy is beautiful.  We met Christian at Annecy Castle or Chateau Annecy, restored to be the Art and History Conservatory of Annecy.  The view from the Castle was very nice. 


We walked around the city and hunted for lunch.  The city has many canals and a number of street performers. 

The sausage shops are fascinating - for the eyes and the nose.   




We toured the Castle and then checked into our hotel for a nap before going sightseeing and then to Delphine's apartment for dinner.  Delphine is Edwige's god-daughter.

Annecy is on one end of Lake Annecy.  Christian drove us to the other end of the lake before we drove to dinner.  What a gorgeous lake!  And hidden amongst the houses on the lake is a part of Tufts University... what a surprise! 



The weather turned nasty and Christian drove in a very heavy rainstorm to the apartment where we met Delphine and she gave us a lovely dinner.  We chatted for a bit and then headed back to the hotel so we all could get up early, Delphine for her job and us for Chamonix.



Thursday dawned overcast and we were concerned we wouldn't see much up the mountain at Chamonix.  We figured we definitely wouldn't see Mont Blanc - not seeing it is the norm we had heard. It tried to break through. 






The town is really cute, like many of the ski towns in Colorado such as Breckenridge. 

We walked the town and the weather seemed to clear a bit so we took the tram / railway up to the Mer de Glace.  The glacier has receded an incredible amount since 1990.  Since 2003 the glacier is losing ice at an increasing speed.  The loss of that much of the glacier made Christian and Edwige sad.




There are still ice caves, we took a cable car down, trekked down the "walkway", and we walked through.  That was spectacular. 

 
We hiked back up - seemed longer going back up, had a beer at the station, and caught the tram back down to Chamonix.  We had lunch and headed back to Annecy and Crest... discovering too far into the journey that we left our binoculars at the restaurant. 

Crest, France Day 1 - Friends, Food, a Walk-About, and a Concert

We arrived in Valence around noon and had to go to the ticket counter since the conductor said we needed to have a stamp on the tickets... we could have been fined, but Di played the dumb tourist and we got a reprieve.

Christian met us at the train station and drove us back to their beautiful home in Crest.  

After arriving, a look at the back courtyard and our room, and meeting the kitties, Edwige served us the first of many fabulous meals.   



 

This lunch was a regional favorite; Guinea Hen with potatoes and bacon. Wow, was it tasty! 



 



We did a bit of unpacking and Edwige took us on a tour of the village of Crest.  


We did not go up to the tower, but we certainly got to some spectacular heights!  We will have to return to do the proper Tower Tour as we never had the time during the rest of our stay.  



 

There are many artists and art Exhibitions in the town throughout this region of France.  Edwige was a curator/director for many years and knows all of the artists so we were welcomed. 


There is an annual Jazz Festival in Crest during this time and some of the artists were performing along the streets. 

This is also the time when a local choral group gives concerts in the evenings.  It was in a very old church in Chabrillan.  The director of the chorale group is a famous artist / film maker an she is quite the showman. She had a couple of her team members direct some songs.  This pictures doesn't do them justice, but it was very impressive!  

Paris Final Week - Chartres, the car, and the TGV

The Saturday morning trip to Chartres was smooth sailing on the highway, through a small town, and then onto the highway again.  There was a short toll road, but no other delays.  The entry to Chartres included some round-abouts - one thick with lavender. 

We lucked out on parking down a nice walking path leading to the old city.  This area had some flavor of Venice with homes on small canals.  As usual the streets were narrow and winding and had fairly steep inclines.   

They were having their Saturday Market and it was a big one.  The produce and all other products looked great.

 

A little further on, we started up the stairway to the cathedral which was about halfway through Rick Steves' walking tour.  

 

The Chartres Cathedral was one of the most beautiful we've seen.  

They are doing a lot of renovation and it is quite noticeable.

 

Around all cities are beautiful flowers, the Tourist Info (TI) center here had every color of hydrangea. 

Right down the street from the TI is a place Rick Steves recommends, Le Pichet.  The sun finally came out and we sat outside and had one of the best meals ever.    

 The rest of the walking tour included more narrow, winding streets and an interesting church - yes, another one.  This is the Eglise Saint Pierre and they have an archeological effort going on inside.  This church has "character" like no other - besides the character standing by the confessional.

Then we made our way back to the car - the way back is supposed to be shorter, but this wasn't.  

Neither was the drive home... We missed a turn-off  to take us the way we drove to Chartres and encountered The Toll-road from Hell!  

The toll plaza appeared to be normal; there were a number of cars and 8 lanes to each of the 8 ticket pay booths - no problem, but NO... 3 or 4 lanes came down to 1 and then every car in France showed up and the odd-ball fighting for a place in the queue started!  This was a total mess (CF, if you are familiar with the term).  2 hours later we got through and were on our way again.  This was horrible, but the worst is yet to come.

Now that we had been driving the van for almost 3 weeks, the gas gauge was dipping below a quarter tank, so time to fill-er-up at a station close to the boat. For a diesel engine, you'd pick the pumps withe the green handles, right? You'd never put something called "gazole" in a diesel engine, right? WRONG, we pumped 68 liters (about 100 euros worth) into the van. About a half mile later, the engine started running rough and started stalling. Then we realized our mistake, we had filled the diesel tank with gasoline (called "essence" in France). We got the van back to the boat and parked it and informed Daniel of our blunder. He made sure we got the keys to his smaller car, so we weren't without wheels for our last days. The cost to drain the tank, blow out the lines, replace the filters was about 240 euros, an expensive lesson / souvenir for Lee and Di.  Daniel later informed us that the van had suffered no permanent damage.

Last bike ride was along a bike path next to the boat headed towards Le Pecq.  It goes along the Seine and there is a garden at the end. 

 

We picked Daniel up at the Le Pecq station, had Champagne and a nice wine with dinner, and heard about his adventures on a friend's boat around Croatia.   We said goodbye to the boat - on a gorgeous morning -  caught the train to Gare de Lyon at Nanterre and got on the TGV to Valence / Crest for the next leg - a very active leg of the adventure.

Paris Final Week - 7/21 The Bus from Hell, Musee d'Orsay, and more Rain

Got up early to head to Paris so we could get to the Musee d'Orsay before  the crowds.  Unbeknownst to us, the RER C (Express Interurban Train) had other plans.  

After waiting on the train and then having the train go back one stop, we returned to Les Invalide and noticed some guys apparently answering questions.  There were no written notices about any routing changes.    We should have checked the RER web site (and hunted for this closure) to see that they re-routed passengers to buses at the stop called Les Invalides - one stop before Musee d'Orsay.

Then we made another decision to regret, we got on their 'free bus' knowing that it did go to the museum.  However, it went to the museum by way of Gare d'Austerlitz (almost to the edge of Paris) and a change of bus and then back by way of Notre Dame and Ile de la Cite - with incredible crowds trying to get on the bus.  An hour and a half late, we arrived as did everyone else in Paris.  We could have walked to the museum in less than 10 minutes!

The bus ride did provide an apartment building that was interesting.
But it was mainly a pain.  There was an Asian coupe who didn't understand and the bus people couldn't help them, but we heard they wanted to get to the museum so we had them tag along.

There was an English couple who had wanted to Notre Dame as one of their grandchildren was due to sing there and they were also irate.  We had a nice chat and they finally arrived in time for the concert.

Musee d'Orsee is an old train station converted to this museum, but there were no pictures allowed (oh goodie) so check out the museum link.  We tried to do Rick Steves museum tour, but many parts were hard to find so we used the book and saw some wonderful masterpieces.

We left and went to Rue Cler for lunch and to do a bit of shopping and then went home.

Lee got an excellent haircut from a lady in Le Port Marly and we got home in time for the rains to start again.

Short video on YouTube shows a bit of the Storm.

We did another batch of Fried Chicken and hunkered down to see what the floods brought.