Paris!

And so we arrive in Paris! 

Paris is the last destination on our wandering the world adventure. I was a bit worried we would all be travel weary, especially after a great couple of weeks relaxing at our two stays in rural France. 

Nothing to worry about! That first sight of the Eiffel Tour brings much excitement and Paris has so much to offer, that filling our last four days of travelling the world was very easy.                      We loved Paris. We used airbnb for our accommodation, staying in a two bedroom apartment in the 15th arrondissement. It was a 15 min metro ride into the city, which was simple. As apartments in large cities go, it was nearly large ... not spacious, but we did have two bedrooms and something that nearly passed as a kitchen. So we were very comfortable. We did get to explore our arrondissement a little, usually looking for food, and it had a lovely feel. There is even a 1.5km stretch of disused railway line that has been converted to a walking/running track, which had a lovely feeling of running in a green area so close to the city. 

The Eiffel Tower certainly has a wow factor about it. We saw it from many different angles, including  ground level, from all sides, from the water and from other view points in the city (top of Arc de Triomphe). On our final day, we did ascend it, using the lift to get right to the top. Stunning view! This is my favourite view, and photo, with the Arc de Triomphe in the centre. The Arc de Triomphe is at the top end of Champs Elysee, so it just felt fun to be in that area! We did have dinner on the Champs Elysee, but no shopping unfortunately!

We enjoyed most of the food treats ... except for the snails. None of us were game enough to try! We did however, try the crepes with chocolate sauce ... they were good! There were many ice-creams along the way too.

We loved the cafe scene and usually stopped for a coffee each morning. No takeaways in paper cups in Paris ... everyone takes the time to sit and enjoy. We gave up on cappuccinos long ago on this trip, after constantly being disappointed, so we now drink expressos with milk on the side. This was usually accompanied by a croissant ... how could we not? We loved the feeling of sitting and watching the world go by.

Some serious chatting happened!

We happened to be in Paris at the same time as our friends, the McGuigans. Kate and Michael have three children, the youngest being Sophie's best friend, Lara. Sophie has been looking forward to seeing Lara in Paris for about 4 months so it was a highly anticipated reunion! It was very sweet seeing the two girls so excited to be back together and chatting away. Lach and Olivia also loved catching up with Alex and Jesse, hearing school news and sharing travel stories, so everyone was happy!

We visited the Louvre to see Lisa; we went into Notre Dame and marvelled at architecture from the 11th century; we spent some time in Luxembourg Gardens (with the McGuigans); we did a cruise along the Seine; we did a Red Bus tour around the city which gave us a great overview and exposed us to the big highlights quickly. It was a great visit to Paris, topped off with three days of great weather and our first rainy/overcast day in the month that we've been in France. 

And now we depart. We are about to wander home - but very mud with a direction and destination in in mind. I'm writing this at Charles de Gaulle airport, as we prepare for two overnight flights and then arrival in Sydney on Wednesday morning (36 hours away). We are all excited: we are ready to come home and settle into life again. We have been so lucky. We have had amazing experiences, with all travel plans working close to perfectly. 

I shall write another blog on our arrival home, once we've settled back in. See you back in Australia!

Wine and cooking

The essentials of French life

To get into the true sense of french life, we decided to had to learn more about the essentials of France: wine and food!


We found a wine tour where we could spend several hours at the winery, chat with the wine growers, learn the process, help out with jobs on the vineyard, taste the wine and enjoy lunch! We loved the sound of this, plus the children were welcome, so off we went!

The winery, La Tour de Chollet, was a small, family owned organic winery. Kirsty and Paul moved from England about 10 years ago, deciding on a "French-change" - having not grown grapes or made wine previously, they went about learning then decided to settle and have their family in France. We had a walk around the vines and learnt the process of growing grapes, seeing merlot, sauvignon blanc and semillon grapes.





The grapes are only a week or so off being harvested, so the vines were heavy. One of our jobs during the day was to walk along the vines and clear leaves away from the bunches of grapes, to allow maximum sun onto the grapes. We also had to snip off any small, underdeveloped grapes.





Our other job was to empty oak barrels of the 2012 red wine, then clean out the barrels. We all got to have a go and it was fun. We tasted their wines and made several purchases! Kirsty and Paul then prepared lunch for us, which was a great spread of baguettes, salads and cheeses ... plus a great choice of wines!

Team photo for the day!

Inspecting the vines and pruning some leaves

Then there was the French food! 

the girls starting the chocolate
lollipops

Learning the tricks with choux pastry

We arranged to have a chef come to our house, who helped us prepare some canapés for our dinner. Our savoury dishes included foie gras lollipops with a fig dressing; toffee tomatoes with pesto tarts; parmesan bread with duck; and fish mousse on toasted baguette. For sweet canapés, we had double chocolate lollipops with roasted pear; lemon and basil tarts; and choux pastry with hazelnut filling. All yum, yum yum!!

Filling the choux pastry

Stirring lemon curd

The cooking and preparation took about 4 hours, but it was fun afternoon, chatting and learning new skills. We all got to have a go at preparing the dishes and learnt many new tricks along the way. 

Jac de-boning the fish

Whether or not we can recreate them when we get home is another issue!

Foie gras on the end of those sticks!

Sprung!

toffee tomatoes with pesto pinwheels
on top!

the result of the choux pastry -
profiteroles!

 





















 After our afternoon of preparation, we decided that such fancy food needed a fancy occasion: so a dress standard for dinner was introduced. Lipstick and high heels was the dress code!

The savoury results of our cooking class


We all did the best we could, with our limited travelling wardrobes, but all scrubbed up well. We started the evening with champagne, proceeded to eat our specialities, then ended up dancing to Olivia's playlist! Sophie's quote the next day was: "we didn't even sit at the table to have our dinner!" It was great fun and will be a highlight for all of us.

Bec and I

and the dancing starts!

The Wilsons dressed up for the evening ... one of the few times I've worn lipstick and heels!

French villages and markets

Trying to live as the French live

We are in the village of Montmaur, as shown by the green marker. It is southeast of Toulouse. The villages of  Villefranche-de-Lauragais (where our closest big supermarket is) and Revel (where the best local markets are) can both be seen on this map. 

Village of St Felix de Lauragais - about 10 mins away.

Part of the appeal of being in one place for a longer period was to get to know the area and to see how locals spend their time. Our nearest village, Montmaur, is tiny yet has a growing population. One of the markers for “village status” seems to be the presence of a boulangerie … a bakery. There isn’t one in Montmaur, yet 18 new apartments have just sold off the plan in this tiny place! Map-france.com tells me the population was 153 people in 2007! 

There appears to be great appeal to living in a small village, full of old buildings. In the case of Montmaur, the new apartments are actually in a 13th century castle! Montmaur claims to be 45 mins from Toulouse, but we suspect that its only 45 mins if you drive there at 3am in the morning, at breakneck speed! 55-60 minutes is much more realistic!

So many of the villages still maintain the old buildings. Its hard to estimate how old they are, but certainly as far back as the 16the century and earlier. The houses are just a metre or so from the road - no footpaths, yet many still squeeze pot plants and flowers into their tiny gaps. Most have shutters, as well as small windows. Colours are very much the different hues of orange - from quite pale to rich, strong terracotta colours. 

I love the pot plants squeezed onto the tiny footpath. This
is the main road through Montmaur.

Each village has a sign announcing the name of the village as you approach; then as you leave, it has another sign with a line through it to inform you that the village is finished! Most villages have a square of some sort. In Revel, it is a large square and that is where the markets are held each week. Montmaur didn't quite have a square, but it did have a "rectangle" near the centre of town.  A couple of times, we saw groups of older men playing the French game of boules there, often late in the afternoon. Made us chuckle!

Most houses still have small windows,
complete with shutters.

Moving on from Montmaur, there are several other villages that are a little bigger than Montmaour, as they have a loulangerie!  The biggest centre in the region is Revel. Revel has several boulangeries, as well as a large supermarket - a population of about 9 000.Revel is most well known for its weekly markets. The markets, held each Saturday, rate as one of the best regional food markets in france. We were lucky enough to go twice, so we stocked up on fresh food 

and french specialities - cheese, pâtes, baguettes, Toulouse sausage and plenty of seasonal fruit and vegetables. Mushroom linguine for dinner was the result of our market trip this morning!

Snails! They were very popular!

There were several food varieties available at the markets - the most distinctive being the snails! The waft of garlic hit you before you saw the snails, but they truly were snails bubbling away in this massive pot. It was a very popular stall and though we were offered a taste, we all declined ... much to the amusement of the locals!

Some of the other foods available ....

We love all the images associated with the markets as they seem to epitomise all that we’ve read about markets. Plenty of fresh food, direct from the seller; sellers who are passionate about their food and how to cook it; great instructions on how to cook it (despite me saying I don’t speak French) and the locals sitting around the edge of the square, drinking their coffees … and beer, and wine …. no need to wait until wine o'clock here... wine is drunk at any hour!

One of our highlights has been attending some local trash and treasure markets on Sunday. Known in French as 'vide grenier', which literally means emptying the attic, these were amazing. In the village of Saint-Julia, which according to map-France.com only has 117 people, this village came alive with hundreds of people coming to the stalls. You could buy everything from old typewriters, clothes (a Yves St Laurent skirt and jacket - although it was 150 euro, so a little more expensive than most other options), kitchen bits and pieces, antiques, old farm equipment plus anything else you haven't thought about in months! 

We had a very enjoyable morning wandering around this quaint village, chuckling at the variety of things available. Icecream at the end was great too!

Wandering around Bristol

Bristol, west coast of England.

Many months ago, I discovered some bike riding trails around Bristol and Bath, the two major towns towards the west of England. There are excellent paths, relatively flat land and beautiful scenery ... as well as great little pubs dotted around the place, which conveniently provide an ale or two at lunch time!

Beautiful scenery

This all sounded very promising, but there were a few hitches. We often have trouble hiring a bike for Sophie ... not many places hire bikes that are only 16" wheels. Secondly, we had requested a tow bar on our hire car, but it didn't happen ... so we couldn't keep the bikes with us for the five days, as we had hoped. Instead we opted for a few day rides.

1.7km worth of tunnel!

Our first ride was around Bath. We all got bikes, but they were poorly maintained, so riding them was hard. There is a tow path out along the canal, with a loop about 12 kms or so. We headed out and it certainly was a beautiful ride. We past many long boats, which were obviously the permanent home to many people. We had lunch and ales at "The George", which was right on the path. At one stage, we rode through a tunnel .... that was 1.7km long! Purely for cyclists and walkers! Amazing feeling, with music playing and dim lights the whole way. It came with a warning that it would take you 10 minutes to ride through it. There was a second tunnel, but only 400 m long.

But, one wrong turn and the situation can change! We got so excited by the tunnels that we just kept riding .... until it was too late. We were way past our drop off point; very close to our drop off time of 5pm; no way to keep the bikes overnight as no bike rack .... and very tired kids, as we were up to about 22kms! A minor panic resulted in a ride through traffic, through town and a rather unpleasant experience really.

Bristol is known for this really high suspension bridge!

Storm developing over the harbour

The next ride, a few days later, had to be suspended due to rain. We had to have an inside day, doing some shopping then some museums around Bristol. We went to the M Shed Museum, one of Britain's free museums, which is child friendly and based on the history of Bristol and its people. Bristol is a much more interesting town than we initially thought and the more we learn about the history, the more we like it. The Avon River runs through it and was an important port in the 1800s for getting goods to the west of England and Wales. But due to very high tides, the river height was unpredictable - so the city created a floating harbour, that is based on the same technique as a lock system. So clever! The harbour is now 200 years old and while not the big trading hub that it once was, it is still used somewhat. There is significant retail, cultural and residential development around the harbour, so it was much more interesting that we expected.

Rain jackets on all day!

We planned another ride and despite rain in the morning, we were determined to just go! We hired bikes from a great shop; but again, no bike for Sophie - so the owners went home, collected their 8 year old son's bike and lent us that for the day! What service! We ignored the black clouds, put our wet weather jackets on and set off along the Bristol to Bath railway path. This is an excellent path and we only did half the distance - from Bitten to Bath, then back again. This was a 20km ride which had the added bonus of dodging rain! Thankfully most of the rain fell just as arrived into Bath, so we headed to the nearest pub to wait it out! It was a great ride and we all really enjoyed this. Its a shame we are leaving the area tomorrow, as we've love to explore the other end of the railway path.


The Cotswolds

In between our riding days, we also had a day exploring the Cotswolds region of England, albeit briefly. The children are enjoying seeing different countryside and are fascinated by stone fences and buildings, styles, cows (don't understand this one as they do spend time on a farm regularly) hedgerows and identifying quirky pub names. They have been keen to see thatched rooves and we had hoped to see some in the Cotswolds. That didn't happen but we did have a nice day wandering around the villages of Bourton-on-the-water, Upper and Lower Slaughter and Stow. Cute little towns, but not much more to do other than wander the shops and eat! We did eat the local speciality, scones with cottled cream which were rather yummy!

From Bristol, we are heading south east, past Stonehenge and to Southampton, where we will base ourselves for four days.