Bonneville to Paris

 On Tuesday we cleaned up our house, packed, and our neighbour Claire dropped us at the Bonneville train station.

The board didn't list a platform for our train, so we waited on Platform B (the only platform) for the first leg of our trip (Bonneville to Bellegarde, where we would transfer to a Paris train).  Waited in vain ... 11:30 came and went and no sign of our train.  When it disappeared from the board we panicked a bit, but we managed to book tickets for a bit later in the day (4 legs instead of 2, and arriving in Paris 2 hours later), and we also managed to get a partial refund for the second leg of our original trip.  During this process we found that our Bellegarde tickets we actually for the BUS not the TRAIN, d'oh!  Sonya says she will start checking our tickets from now on!

Once we got into Paris I punched in the wrong address into google maps, so it took a bit longer than necessary to get into our apartment, but after a day of mis-adventure we settled in to a lovely but quirky Paris apartment!

We are close to the Jardin du Luxembourg, a lovely garden next to the senate (? we think ? - the building is surrounded by police with machine guns ...).  On Wednesday we walked through the garden on the way to a walking tour.

Off in the distance, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame under construction.  (Fun fact - we asked our guide (the walking tour guide) about this and she said the Parisians don't really care about the Notre-Dame fire, "There are too many churches already!")

The start of our walking tour - it's a "foodie" tour with many stops to eat and drink, here is Sonya learning the finer points about French tomatoes.

Breakfast - snails (NOT escargots) with a carafe of wine, two kinds of cheese, and a baguette.  Home-made mayo for dipping, and seaweed for cleansing the palette.  (And a tomato of course.)

Walking the Paris version of the NYC HighLine.

After the walking tour (we did a LOT of walking, eating and drinking) we ended up at the Centre Pompidou, pictured below.

Among other things this contained the Modern Art Museum, which included a special retrospective of the architect Norman Foster.  So we decided to give it a go!

Here is the view from the top of the Centre Pompidou.

Paris is very flat, and most buildings are 5-story apartments.  There are just a very few buildings that stick up.  The tall skinny building on the left, next to the tower (the tower is close by so looks taller than it is) is some butt-ugly building nicknamed "The Finger".  Apparently there is some famous Parisian (maybe the president?) who has has his coffee there every morning because that's the only place in Paris where he can't see "The Finger"!  The other skinny building is of course the Eiffel Tower.

The Norman Foster exhibit was very interesting!  (So interesting I forgot to take any pictures!)  There were 2 floors of art - "Modern" and "Contemporary" (you explain to me the difference).  We took a look through the "Modern" but skipped the "Contemporary", by this time we had been doing a LOT of walking already.

Is this Modern or Contemporary?

Heading home, a view of the typical Paris architecture.

Apparently Paris is designed with tall buildings (these 5 story apartments are everywhere) and long, open wide streets in order to help crush the next rebellion.  No narrow little back alleys for the rebels to hide.

Paris sure loves it's statues!  Most are fairly traditional, but this one is more modern (or contemporary).

Day 2 (Thursday) is the Louvre visit!  We had "skip the line" tickets to get in.  (This is the line, the photo doesn't do it justice but it's the longest line I've ever seen!  And once this line gets inside, you just join an equally long line INSIDE to buy tickets.)  Officially we had a "30 minute tour" but the entire tour was skipping the line and walking into the museum.  That's our group on the left.

Once inside we joined jet another line!

We didn't get that close due to the crowds, but luckily I'm tall enough to see over the crowds, and I have a pretty good zoom on my camera.

The Louvre is HUGE, we spent maybe 2.5 hours total and saw maybe 20% of the museum.  As wella s all the art, the museum itself is incredible.  This is the room where they house the crown jewels.

A couple of shout outs - Lady Liberty leading the revoluion:

And the Wreck of the Medusa:

Too many paintings, including five Da Vinci's!  Afterwards we wandered over to the Jardin du Palais-Royal and put our feet up.

(Note for Louvre visitors - once you exit the museum to actually end up in a huge underground mall that it's almost impossible to escape.  We spent maybe 20 minutes walking through the mall before we found the exit.)

There are lots of gardens in Paris, and they are all well used by locals!

We found a nice restaurant for lunch, highly recommended if you are in Paris - on the Île Saint-Louis and abut a 30 minute walk from the Louvre - https://anysetiersduroy.com/

Another view of the Notre-Dame.

Next we visited the Sainte-Chapelle - built in only 7 years apparently!

15 towering stained glass windows telling the stories from Genesis to Armageddon.  On Sunday we are going to see a Vivaldi concert here (4 Seasons) - how incredible is that!  (After we watch the Tour de France finale of course.)

One the way home - a view of "The Finger" from our local park.

Friday we are going to see the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and climb the 300 steps to the roof of its dome!

Sad day leaving Bonneville

 It’s a sad day today we are leaving our home-away-from-home of Bonneville France.

Here is the view from our deck and our yoga studio for the past month:

It’s a small consolation that we’re going to Paris for a week but I’m going to miss this cute little town.

Watching the Tour roll through our Home Town (Bonneville)

Today the tour rolled through Bonneville!  A lot of people have been asking us if we travelled to France specifically to see the Tour, but the truth is we didn't even realize the Tour would be on when we were here (let alone that it would pass by only a few km from our house).

We staked out a nice spot to watch:

Second time seeing the carivan!  The carivan took about 20 minutes to pass by (unlike the cyclists who took abut 15 seconds).

We added to our pile of loot from the previous day (we also got a lot of snacks which we mostly ate while waiting for the pelaton).

I was so excited I fat-fingered my camera and didn't get any good photos of the riders, fortunately Sonya was able to get a good shot of the lead group approaching.

(

... and I managed to snag a screenshot from one of my terrible videos ...

)

After we got home I got a facebook message from one of my buddies Daniel from my China trip, from 12 years ago.  He just happened to be staying at his mom's place a short distance away.  (I had posted on facebook to make all my cycling friends jealous an he saw the post, reached out and invited us to dinner.)

Here we are 12 years ago drinking pineapple beer on the Great Wall.

And here we are last night!

When I showed Sonya the pics from China she observed that I had brown hair back then and Daniel probably wouldn't recognize me :-P  I admit I'm a bit older now (and I have a bit more of a paunch than my China days) but Daniel hasn't changed at all!  It was a great evening and a joy to catch up with Daniel and meet his girlfriend and family.

I hear that NBC has cut us from their TdF feed but we made it into the France broadcast again for Stage 15.

We're off to Paris tomorrow so today we get to spend the day cleaning and packing!

The Tour on France.tv

 

Watching the Tour in Mieussy

We drove up to Mieussy early in the AM and were very lucky to secure a parking spot in town (we were parked just before town, as the bicycle rides).

Here we are ready for a tailgate party!

We took a walk up to Messy to take a look at the route and scope out good locations to watch the cyclists.  Criteria included a corner, shade, steep incline, and we found a few good potential locations, BUT ...

... once we got back to the car the thunder started thundering and the heavens opened up for about 20 minutes, and we thought ...  why not stick close to the car :-P

We manages to pick up some schwag on our walk ...

 The first thing that you don't usually hear about (at least we didn't) is the "carivan" - we expected the team cars and busses etc but instead ...

As you can see the "carivan" is actually all the sponsors throwing out yet more stuff at the spectators.  We actually got pelted a few times and we ended up with a trunk full of junk (I ate all the good stuff pretty much as it arrived).

There was a major accident early in the stage (I assume caused by the deluge of rain) so the riders were delated by about a half hour.  When they arrived they sped past pretty quick!

There was a Canadian in the top group!

There were maybe 3 or 4 groups of cyclists, and a ton of support vehicles ...

Overall it was a very nice day!  Mieussy is a lovely town, we had a coffee before our pre-tour hike and an ice cream after the tour (while we were waiting for the roads to open back up), and tomorrow we're looking forward to seeing the riders again speeding through Bonneville!

Fete Nationale in Bonneville

 Today is Fete Nationale so we wandered into town to join the festivities.  There was a short parade, and a ceremony in the town square celebrating the emergency responders and cadets.  Awards were handed out and speeches made - we did our best to follow along, but only manages to catch the odd word.

Afterwards we wandered over to pay a visit to Bonneville Castle, which is something we've been meaning to do since we landed in Bonneville almost a month ago.

The castle dates back to the 1100's, before Haute-Savoie was even part of France (which it has been for only 150 years apparently).  The castle was once a home and once a prison (until the 1930's) and is now an interesting attraction.

This is the view from the ramparts:

In the afternoon we went for a hike in the hills of Bonneville.

When we got home from the hike we watched the end of today's stage - and this is what you snack on when you watch the Tour in France:

Tomorrow we're off to Mieussy for some more Tour-watching.  We're hoping to watch on the hill portion of the road between Mieussy and Taninges, but it all depends on road closures and how much walking we feel like doing.

A lazy day in Bonneville and a couple of Hikes

I finished a couple more books!  Iain M Banks is not great but a good vacation read, and Maeve Binchy I read on the train to/from Zurich.

I have a few more books with me, but I also now have installed "Libby" (thanks Janet), which allows me to take out library books and read them on my phone.  (Not the greatest reading experience but much more convenient than carrying around a lot of books.)  We're going to try to figure out how to connect Libby to Sonya's Kindle ...

After our lazy beach day the weather cooled off and we've just completed a couple of hikes, the first to Lac Benit.

A lot of the hikes here are along roads and many go through farming country.  This hike passed by a large herd (?) of cows - they were pretty docile but kept a close eye on us.

Spot the two faces in the rock face below.

At the Lac!

After our hike we decided to scout some locations to watch the Tour de France.  We drove through Taninges (pic below) and Mieussy - the Tour passed through both towns on Saturday and Taninges on Sunday.  (It goes straight through Bonneville on Sunday but we've been advised to try to watch on a hill if we can.)  There is a steep climb between Mieussy and Taninges on Saturday so that's our current thought ...  We just have to figure out all the road closures and narrow narrow narrow French roads ...

For our next hike we decided to drive to Megève (close to Chamonix, and also on Sundays Tour route).  Megève is a beautiful town (see photo below) - as are most French towns - but the price of coffee and a croissant is directly proportional to a town's beauty (so for your wallet's sake add a few ugly French towns to your itinerary).

Here is our hike (thanks to my hand model Sonya pointing at our parking lot).

Today's hike included some guest horses.  They kept wandering into the shot as we were trying to take scenic photos.

A horse-free scenic photo.

We found a picnic table with a few (unfortunately we had already eaten our lunch a bit earlier in the hike).

Here is our Tour viewing plan (if you're watching on TV you can keep an eye out for us).  The purple box is Mieussy - we're going to park there Saturday and walk towards the big climb (the "1" on the map).  Not sure exactly where we'll wind up watching.  Sunday we'll probably stay in Bonneville (red box) and watch for the 20 seconds it takes them to speed through town.

Today (Friday) is France National Day, so we're looking forward to whatever festivities are on!  Last night there were fireworks (we watched from the deck of our house - I took a few videos but nothing turned out unfortunately as we were a bit far away) and after the official fireworks were done people around town were setting off their own fireworks until all hours.