Photos - Orleans, France

After arriving in Paris, I rented a car at the airport and, with my trusty GPS handy, I headed south to the city of Orleans to meet up with Pascal and his family. As soon as I arrived we headed downtown to check things out. The buildings and streets are just so different than those found in North America.

Pascal and I quickly found a sidewalk cafe and hurriedly ordered a beer. Phew, got that out of the way... didn't want to be in France without having a beer on a patio. Pascal is looking very pensive in this photo but trust me, we weren't talking about work.

We walked around a bit more and went down by the river and checked out some more cool buildings. And of course the cathedral, because every town has to have a cathedral. (and a bakery)

Back in town

Well, after all the traveling the past three and a half weeks, I am back in Ottawa and back to sleeping in my own bed and not living out of a suitcase. The plan is to head back to work and the gym tomorrow morning but I admit right now that seems pretty adventurous. Over the next little while I will sort through my photos and update my blog entries and add more posts so stay tuned. Although the trip is over the stories are not...

Toll-free?

One thing about getting a hotel room from a place where you have rented before, is that they recognize and remember you. So I arrived back in Paris tonight and the girl at the desk said welcome back. Then she told me they forgot to charge me for my phone calls. No problem, since I had only called a couple of local numbers and then Air Canada's toll-free number to change my flights back to Ottawa.

Well, I got the bill and apparently the calls weren't exactly toll-free since they were to North America. (I tried calling the France number but it was closed or something... instructions only in French even after choosing the English option) So that really sucks. And it double sucks because the bill was twice as much as it could have been because I was on hold for 20 minutes with Air Canada before they cut me off and I had to call back and talk to the agent again. Argh.

Its a small world after all...

Ok, whenever I travel I seem to have these small world experiences. Here are a couple examples...

Newfoundland 2003 - While vacationing in Newfoundland with Brian, Richard, and Carolyn we happened to be at Cape Spear (farthest eastern point) and just kind of hanging out watching the whales in the ocean. Then suddenly behind me I hear "those Senators really sucked this year". And while I had to agree, I wondered who it was. I turned around and it was the couple who had season tickets right next to me at the Corel Centre in Ottawa. Small world!

New Zealand 2001 - Jeff and I landed in NZ and rented a car and just drove around to random places. We ended up in a small town called National Park and when we got there the guy asked us if we wanted to go on "the walk". Sure, why not. Turns out it was the Tongariro Crossing and also called the best one day walk in NZ by many. Good call. (trivia fact: one of the mountains was used as Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies) On the way down the side of the mountain, a couple stopped us and started talking... they saw the MEC backpacks and knew we were from Canada. Turns out they were teachers in Singapore but they went to Teacher's College in Truro, NS with a ton of my friends from high school. Small world!

Lagos, Portugal 2008 - One night we were walking around after dinner and we walked by a bar. People who work there are always outside trying to talk to tourists to get them to come into the bar. We said we didn't want to go in and the guy recognized our accents (or non-accents?) and we started talking. Turns out he grew up in Port Williams, NS and knows a bunch of the same people that I know. Small world!

One night in Paris

Ok, I am back in Paris now after spending the week in Portugal. The weather and beaches there were awesome and I had a great time. And not to brag, but I probably have the best farmer's tan you have ever seen. :-)

Back to Ottawa tomorrow morning. And then sleep sleep sleep....

Olympics

So being in a foreign county while the Olympics are on is interesting. Lots of coverage of the French team, in French of course. In a couple of hotels got access to the EuroSport TV channel, but it was in German. At my hotel in Paris I am watching the English feed from England. Not a lot of coverage (hardly any) of the Canadian athletes but at least I can understand what they are saying.

But one thing I have got to wonder... what is up with this steeplechase thing? Isn't that an event for horses? They first mentioned it on the tv and I thought that my definition was wrong but oh yes, there were people jumping over hurdles into water. Does anyone else think that is weird?

Bones

I am still in Paris and today I went to see the Catacombs of Paris. It was really weird. Picture being under the city walking around in a confined space and the walls are all made from the bones of people. Yeah, it is as creepy as it sounds. Got a few photos but we weren't supposed to use the flash so I'm not sure how they turned out.

On the way out the guy asked me to open my bag and I said to him "you mean people actually steal bones?". Yeah, creepy.

CDG -> FAO?

I guess I am really getting caught up in the vacation thing... I have decided to cut short my visit to Paris and fly to Portugal for the rest of the week. Nothing like sitting on a beach reading a book to relax at the end of your vacation...

More Photos

Just passed 1600 photos this morning. When I get back I am going to have a party and invite you all and make you sit through a slide show of every last one...

Paris

Ok, made it to Paris. Hopped on the TGV (high speed train) from Tours and got here just over an hour later. Found the right subway and got off at the right spot. Even found the hotel ok... imagine that.

Met an interesting character on the subway. About 3 stops from my hotel a guy got on and pushed people away from the poles at the end of the car and then put up a sheet with clothespins and hauled out a radio. Then cheesey music started playing and, you guessed it, he started doing a puppet show for the people on the subway! I was standing right next to him and got hit in the head a couple of times with the puppets; (his version of audience participation I guess).

Today did the Effiel Tower and all that fun stuff. Man there are a lot of tourists and the lines are long to get into things!

Long time no see....

Well, it has been a while since my last blog entry and no I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, I just have been too busy to get to a computer. We've been on the bike tour and it has been fantastic. Cycling through the sunflower fields in France, going to the chateaus, going to vineyards... everything has been exactly as advertised. I don't have time to write now, but I will write more when I get to Paris tomorrow or on the weekend. Right now we are hanging out on a terrace and there is an open bottle of wine and some bread and cheese which need attention....

French Lesson 3

lapin - rabbit
le pain - bread

Which would you rather have for breakfast?

French on Holidays

In the Rough Guide that I have, they say a few things about travelling in the summer in France. One of the things that they mention is that a lot of French people head to the coast for their holidays. Originally I had stuck to the interior of the country but when I headed out on my own I went for the coast. Wow. I guess they were right. Some of the towns were ok but some of them were insane. For instance...

They say that the Effiel Tower is the number one tourist attraction in France. Number two is a little place called Mont St Michel. It is neat because it is a small walled island with an abbey on it, etc etc. I decided to check it out and got there at 10am. Traffic was a little backed up so I parked in town and walked the 3km over the causeway to the island. Good choice because it allowed me to take some great photos. When I left town, the traffic coming into town was stop-and-go for 6km! And then there was the 3km to the island on top of that. Crazy.

Photos Photos Everywhere

So in just over a week I took 871 photos. Yeah, I'm a little crazy.

Time flies... sometimes slowly

It is hard to believe that my first week away is over. Although on the other hand sometimes it feels that I have been gone for a month! In my week on my own I travelled all over Normandy and Brittany. Put about 2000km on the car I think. Saw a few war memorials and some of the D-Day beaches. Saw a bunch of great castles. Had some cool hotels right in the heart of downtown overlooking small pedestrian-only cobblestone streets. It has been cool.

Now I am back in the city of Tours. This afternoon I return the car and tomorrow the week-long cycling tour starts. Let the pain begin!

I remember when Jeff and I went hiking in New Zealand up this crazy mountain (turned out to be next to Mt Doom from the Lord of the Rings movies...cool) and it just about killed us. The quote of the week was "I don't care how much time you put in at the gym in the mornings... nothing quite prepares you for climbing up a mountain.". Tomorrow we see if all those RPM classes have prepared me for the cycling trip...

Touch typing

You wouldn't believe how long it is taking me to type these short messages. Since I work on computers all day, I'm a relatively fast typer and I don't look at the keyboard. All that changes when they move the keys around on you! haha

I figured out a way to beat the system though as far as typing certain characters. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to type an @ symbol. But copy/paste still work so I just found that character on a page and copied it. Take that you crazy keyboard!

Facebook in France

Everywhere I see someone on the computer here, they are using Facebook. There was an elderly British guy in a put the other day complaining that the computer didn't work and when it finally was ok, he was checking his Facebook page.

Myself, on the other hand, can't figure out this bloody keyboard so I won't be FB'ing from here. In fact, anything which requires the 'at' symbol is out of my scope. The other day it took me 10min to figure out how to do it and that was with help from another guy. And he didn't speak English so you can imagine how that conversation went...

French Lesson 2

I like apple juice with breakfast rather than orange juice (which seems to be standard). So the other day I asked for "jus au pomme". The guy looked at me like I had 3 heads and I repeated myself and he said something in French which I didn't understand so I stuck with orange juice.

I went away from the meal thinking that I had mistakenly asked for potatoe juice or something silly like that. But it turns out (based on other menus, etc) that here apple juice is really alcoholic apple cider. So yeah, I guess that isn't something that I should be asking for in the morning.

French Lesson 1

pour voler - to rob/steal
pour conduire - to drive

Try not to get them confused when you are trying to describe what you do to your car.

Vitré

That is the name of the town I stayed in last night. Got only one paragraph in the Rough Guide but was a neat medival town with, of course, a castle. Got a good 24 hour parking spot close to the tourist office and walking distance to the hotel so you can't beat that.

While at dinner I was trying to decide whether to start heading back to Tours (where the bike tour starts) or whether to go back up to the North Coast of Britanny to check out some of the cool rock formations. Well, I got up early and grabbed so,e quick breakfast at the bakery across the street from the hotel (oh yeah, that's cool) and hit the highway for the North. Currently I am at the tourist office in a small town called Plougrescant.

I think tonight I will stay near Vennes and then start making my way to Tours for Friday night. But we'll see... plans might change depending on what interesting things I run across along the way!

Where's Waldo?

Ok, 5 min left on my time at this cafe and this bloody keyboard is driving me nuts. All the keys are not where they used to be. So...

- after Orleans went to Pascal's grandmother's place
- then to Tours
- then to Normandy...stayed in Dieppe
- in Saint Vaast du Hogue tonight
- St Malo tomorrow

until next time....

Je cherche pour une aussi comme ca

Ok salesgirl at Bestbuy in Ottawa...you get the last laugh. I guess I should have paid the 79 dollars for the extra battery for my camera. I have been looking for one around here but they have to be ordered in. Oh well, no big deal. I will just charge my battery every night and try to convince myself that I do not have to take 100 photos of every castle. :-)

House Hunting

I have spent a couple of days looking at some of the chateaus around the Loire valley and they are amazing. I have decided that I need a moat for my house. Pictures to follow when I get home...

What is p2?

Most people know that Pascal and I work on the Eclipse p2 project. What does p2 stand for? Could it be Party Pascal? We went to a club on our last night in Orleans and man does he like to dance! It was pretty dead when we first got there but we were early...12:45. ha! I guess that is how they like to do it in France!

Sorry Kim....no photos. :-)

4

4. It is the number of seasons in the year. The number of quarters in a football game. And now the number of police vans I cut off in a round-about. I do not know who they were chasing but he probably got away. I have never seen a policeman stick his head out the window and shake his fist at someone... until now. Hey, was that the middle finger? Needless to say, I did not spend much time in Roen...

Je ne sais quoi...

Ah, my French teachers from high school would be proud. Or not. Either way things are slowly coming back to me. I have a basic vocabulary but it takes me a while to put together sentences and sometimes I forget key words. But I'll get by.

I just realized that I haven't really written much about "touristy" things so here you go. Yesterday I arrived and after I got cleaned up Pascal and I hoped in the car and went to the park and ride and grabbed the Tram downtown. Then we made a beeline for the nearest cafe patio. haha Phew, wasn't sure if I would be able to get to a cafe before I left so it was good to get it over with on the first day. ;-)

After a cool refreshing beverage we walked around the streets and looked into a few shops. We walked down to the waterfront and then up to a cool cathedral. Then we sat on benches in the sun by a fountain. And decided we better hit another cafe and grab some ice cream before we fell asleep. hehe

I tell you, these vacations are pretty hard on me. But you will be happy to know that I had a good 2 hour nap today. Tomorrow we leave Orleans for his grandmother's place about 50km away. This also means from now on I will only have internet access when I stop by an internet cafe. OMG... no internet? How will I survive? Hopefully the naps will make up for it...

Accepted!

Visa... accepted at millions of locations around the world. Well, except for the train station in Orleans, France apparently. And just my Visa. But it is fine now. I guess there must have been something wrong with their machines or something but it looks like everything is ok with the credit card situation. Pascal and I went to the bank this morning and talked to the guy there and he suggested that I put the card in the ATM to see if it would be recognized and it was all good. Then later on we went to a store and I used it to buy something and it worked, so I can breathe easy again.... I don't have to live off the handleful of Euros I grabbed from the bank before I left Canada.

Speaking of stores, we went to Auchan this morning. Wow. It is like Loblaw's plus Wal-Mart and throw in a little Future Shop there too. Pretty crazy. I've got a couple of photos of the cheese and yogurt aisles. Yes, that is "aisles".... plural.

And now to continue with perhaps the most important aspect of all my vacations... an afternoon nap. :-)