Ah…finally hit the road for a short trip…to meet up with friends Rob & Val from Ontario/Canmore doing a house exchange in Versailles, just outside Paris. Took the train, the TGV (French acronym for “High Speed Train” which in some parts of the country runs at over 300 kph (180mph)!! It’s like watching a movie from your window.) Our friends’ house-exchange place in Versailles was just outside a daily market, a few meters from great restaurants, and some half kilometer from the Palace de Versailles. Not too shabby!
The highlight the next day was a tour of Paris lasting about three hours on little upright two-wheeled rigs called a Segway. You stand up on them and they’re controlled by a rod which is tilted to the left or right to turn; they go forward or backward as you lean your weight. They take about twenty minutes or so to become comfortable with the process and then…look out! The hellions come out to play! Through the crowded streets, crosswalks, busy sidewalks…and wherever else we could scare the poor pedestrians we made our way around the sights…and the hazards. Well, at least most of us did. One of the hazards was countless metal barriers being set up in preparation for the last day of the Tour de France near the Eiffel and the Arc de Triomphe. These barriers have legs sticking out to support them. Dawn tangled with one…TWICE!! Fell down hard…TWICE!! Right onto the sidewalk and into the barriers. Luckily she was wearing a helmet but she did injure her ankle, back, neck but mainly her left shoulder. Suddenly we starting hearing her screams of, “I can’t cook anymore!” and “I can’t wash dishes anymore!”. To make things even more fun, we were drenched by a downpour the Amazon would have been proud of. But roaring around the rivulets of dirty water with a Segway is a blast. By the time we got back to Versailles, Dawn was in a whole lotta pain and could not move her arm. Lots of Advil with equal portions of wine did help.
By the next day Dawn was in such pain and so stiff, for her, going to visit the Chateau de Versailles was out of the question. So Rob, Val and I left her with lots
of her two buddies…Advil and Wine…and left. The visit to the chateau is a highlight of any visit to France. The buildings, decorations, grounds and history are very impressive. The “Hall of Mirrors” where the Armistice was signed ending WW1 is especially impressive. Over the top decorations and massive grounds actually put France into bankruptcy at the time which was then followed by the French Revolution. Heavy crowds, as expected in July, made going through the rooms a bit tough. And once again as we were in the gardens, the floodgates opened up and the three of us, as was everyone else dashed back to the buildings totally wet. That and a drop in the temperature helped us to decide to go back to Dawn to see her friend Wine. That evening we had dinner served by a waiter who nicknamed himself Sweet Toot. Yup…no ‘h’ on Toot…so we were unsure if he was getting a cavity or passing gas. But we had lots of laughs.
Sunday was the day we looked forward to the most…the arrival of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysees. Train to Paris and grabbing spots early was highly recommended so we arrived at 9:30 am. (Dawn glared at the barriers which two days earlier had taken her down.) Some four hours later came the caravan; the sponsors, the team cars and buses, etc, etc. Finally the riders appeared, still intent and pumped after 3400 km (2100 miles) of riding in three weeks, lots of it in the mountains. Average speed going by us was 55 kph (33mph)! And that was into a headwind! Eight times at that speed around a seven kilometer circuit packed with people, some pushing and shoving to get a view, made it a bit difficult to take pictures. But Cadel Evans, the Aussie winner of this year’s Tour, didn’t notice. After twice being runner up, he had done it. Now it was time to leave. But routes were blocked by 100s of police forcing us to walk a long distance to finally grab the subway to our train back to Versailles.
Monday was on the TGV back to Vendome for the four of us so that we could show Rob and Val the area. The first thing we were forced to do was to have an official French wedding ceremony for the two unsuspecting innocents. Present were Madame Curry (Dawn as official photographer), Louis Pasteur (me as the pastor), and local donkies (or asses) as the witnesses. The next day we drove in the immediate region to show them (Rob & Val, not the asses) what the place is like. The key was a stop at the farm where I was born and where my father’s foreman at the time, Andre, who bought the farm from my parents in 1955, still lives retired but cultivating two huge gardens. He and his wife, Jeannine, are truly special people and welcomed our friends with open arms…and an open bottle of wine of course. Rob and Val really enjoyed the visit with these two magical people even with the language barrier which soon was melted by laughter.
The next day we were off to Amboise, a town about one hour from here where there is a famous chateau. But even more impressive, yet less known is the house and grounds where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life. He travelled from Florence, Italy to Amboise, France by donkey carrying three famous paintings in burlap bags. You may have heard of one…it’s called the Mona Lisa which sits in a funky building called the Louvre in Paris. The house is full of period furniture while the grounds have oversized replicas of his inventions. An amazing place!
And then…thing’s got crazier. We had organized a day for Ron and Val with friends. Daniel and Jojo, the friends can be a bit nuts. For those who have heard of the Paris/Dakar race, Daniel was involved as a driver, navigator or supporter during various races for seventeen straight years. His best was 4th. It’s a full-on race involving cars, motorcycles and trucks covering 7200 km (4300 miles) on off-road in three weeks from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal in Africa. He and I had arranged for a “rendezvous” on the road that Rob & Val would not forget. On the way there, I stopped to call him for directions to where he lived…a way to tell him where we were. Arriving at his house, we see a yellow official road sign, in French, “Works in Progress”. And there he was, dressed in clogs with straw, a French beret, a tank
top, and a scarf (necessary in any French scam!!) On the stone wall behind him lay cheese, a baguette, a phone from the 1950s, and an aluminum foil pan (wait for it!). He drinks from a bottle of wine. I get out of the car, “shocked”, “angry” about being stopped…and he starts, very loudly (in French of course)… “Who are you? Are the people with you Canadians or British?!? We don’t want any British here cause they burned Jean d’Arc!!!” Daniel then grabs the phone and “calls” “someone” in a very load voice. And to make a cell call he holds up the aluminum foil pan high up in the air to get a signal. That’s went I cracked. Lots of laughs and photos all around led to an amazing afternoon involving a great meal, a walk in the area, and a visit to Daniel and Jojo’s (his
wife) friends Marcel and Hugette’s wine cave attached to their home just down the road. A cave Marcel personally hand carved out of the limestone and now filled with an endless volume of the most amazing wine ever drunk, all homemade from a grape now illegal to sell in France because of the alcohol content. The picture here is a very small section of the caves and the booze inventory they have. We continue to offer our unselfish services in helping them maintain a reasonable level of undrunk paradise.
Sad to see Rob and Val go back to Versailles and eventually home in Canada a few days later but we had an amazing time with them.
What’s the weather doing here? Basically what ever the hell it wants to. Spring was the driest in 60 years and the warmest in 100 years. July? The wettest on record! Kinda like the stock markets. Go figure.
We’ll tell you more about The White Night in the next episode.
Cheers everybody.
more than a few bottles of wine were thoroughly enjoyed by all. The local fire-water called “eau de vie” (literal translation is ‘water of life’ though in fact it should be ‘water of death’) was thrown in at the end when human defences were lowered with the previous alcohol consumption. Four-and-a-half hours later and goodbyes all around. They gave us a nice gift of three wines for the trip…that should last us through Day 1. Departure is slated for 9 am, Monday, August 29.
