Avignon

After our 3 nights in Dijon we jumped on the train to Avignon. We only had a day there but it was a gorgeous little town. A great place for a weekender if you're in the area. They have a palace (of the popes) which looked pretty cool but I've seen enough palaces/castles/churches/cathedrals to last a lifetime! Here's a pic from the outside. We did go in to the wine cellar to do a Cote du Rhone wine tasting though:)

And they also have a bridge which is unfinished. It's the subject of a French nursery rhyme which according to wikipedia is a popular preset on Yamaha keyboards. haha. Anyway, here's a pic of the bridge. I didn't want to pay 13 Euros to go on it but it looked nice.

Anyway, historical stuff aside, they also had FOOD!!!! We went to a tartine bistro. A tartine is basically a piece of bread with something spread on it which sounds boring but in France it's super-delicious. I had eggplant and bacon and Nate had avocado and prawns (forgot to take pictures though!). But here's the cafe complete with a bike to make it look more French...

We also decided to go for some French cider as we hadn't tried any yet. It was from Brittany (the North-West) and came in a champagne bottle and was quite tasty. Not too oaky like some of the British ones (not the ones you get at the pub on tap but the more boutique ones!)

Then Nate got a Choco-Coco tart for dessert. With lollies!!

Oh and we also saw the cutest French Bulldog ever. He was in a pet grooming shop that we walked by and I just had to go in and pat him. The guy working there told me his name but it was something French that I don't remember. He was so cute though and very friendly. There are heaps of these in France and you never seem to see many in Australia. We also saw quite a few in Japan for some reason, but Japanese do love all things French.

Dijon & Beaune

So the next stop was Dijon which is famous for the mustard, however we found out that the mustard seeds actually all come from Canada! In fact most mustard seeds in the world are grown in West Canada. The style is Dijon though and it didn't stop them from selling mustard at every souvenir shop in town.

Anyway, not sure if this has been shown in Australia/UK or not but a while back Obama went out and ordered a burger. Yeah, a burger. And basically most of the US news channels televised this. We saw it on John Stewart's show where he recapped the coverage. One of the channels showed the footage for over five minutes with the most pathetic commentary ever. So now there is a Dijongate scandal because Obama like 'French (or Canadian' - depending how you look at it) mustard better than American mustard. They even edited out him asking for Dijon! Madness.

Anyway, mustard aside, we went for the wine! Dijon is part of Burgundy and they are famous for their wines. We took a day trip out to Beaune which is part of the Cote d'or region. Our first stop there was Marche aux vins (or 'wine market' in English). They had a cellar tour and tasting where you basically walked through the cellar and every so often there would be a barrell with a bottle on it. When you got to the bottle you just helped yourself. Nice! Also they used a tastevin instead of a tasting glass which was pretty cool. Here's one of our stops...

It took us a while to get around as I think there was about 15 wines to taste. And then there were some liquers at the end. Did you know that Creme de Cassis also originates from around here?

By this stage everything had closed for lunch (which is very common) so we had no choice but to have a two hour lunch. And there's no better place to do that than in France. I had 4 courses for €22 and Nate had 5 courses for €28 which we though was pretty good value.

To start with an amuse bouche...


Nate had salmon carpaccio...

And I had the escargot but we ended up sharing because the snails were so good.

For mains Nate had rabbit...

And I had Coq au vin with tagiatelle...

Then Nate got a cheese course which I obviously helped him eat...


And then for dessert there was that nougat ice thing again...

And Nate got something we can't remember but here's a picture...

Then we tasted some more wines and it was a pretty good day all up but I think I fell asleep on the train back to Dijon.

The next day we had a segway tour booked!! We had wanted to do one before but they'd always been over €50. This one was €16 for some weird reason. Then when we rocked up in the morning we were the only people on the tour! He asked if we wanted to do the historic part or go to the park so we opted for the park. After we got there he let us crank up to 15km per hour from the basic 6km per hour. He said he wouldn't usually let people do that so we were happy. Anyway, here's me on my segway...

We stopped at this man-made beach thing for a bit of a break. Here's Nate at the beach (there were heaps of planes leaving vapour trails in the sky so it looked cool).

After that he let us crank them up to 20km per hour and we went for a lap around the lake. It was so much fun! Nathanael reckons he wants to give up walking and just get a segway. As if! Anyway, here's a picture of Nate and his segway.

Chamagne

So after Paris we got on a train to Epernay which is the capital of Champagne or so they say. We dropped our bags at the B&B we were staying at and went straight over to the Avenue de Champagne which is a street where a lot of the champagne producers are located.

Here's me outside Moet & Chandon with my good mate Dom...

In Champagne you usually have to do a tour before you can taste any of the good stuff so we chose to do a tour at Mercier. It was €16.50 and that included the tour and 3 tastings. The Moet & Chandon one was €26 with 2 tastings!

Here's a picture of Mr Mercier who I thought looked rather like Dr Phil!

We watched a fairly crappy video and then we went down to the cellars and got on a train! Yes a train. It was laser guided so there were no rails on the ground. It was quite cool. Here's a picture...

After that we went to Comtesse Lafond. This was our favourite by far. The Extra Brut was probably one of the best champagnes I've ever had. Here's a picture outside...

And here's one of the Rose. And guess what, you can't buy it outside of France. Typical!

After that we went to a champagne bar in town. We got some champagne and were given these with the drinks. I can honestly say I've never eaten a marshmallow while drinking champagne before. Weird but kinda good.

The next day we went on a day trip to Reims (pronounced Rance for some weird reason). They are also one of the big champagne producing places. It was a much bigger place and we weren't very succesful in tasting there. We did one tour at Tattinger but the rest you had to make appointments for and there is only so many times you can do a tour of cold cellars and learn about the process of making champagne.

The final day we spent in Epernay again. We went to one of the smaller producers Janisson Baradon and did some tastings there. The only problem (for me) was that the lady only spoke French. Nate had a good old chat with her though and translated for me. Regardless the champagne was good and we bought a bottle to enjoy at our B&B. That's ours in the middle...

And here's a picture I took while we were enjoying our champagne. This was the back of the B&B and that's a Belgian kid that was staying there. It was a beautiful place.

This is the view from our upstairs window on the first day...

And this is the view on the third day. The weather obiously got much better.

Oh yeah and here's a pig's head that I saw in the local charcuterie where we picked up some pate made from 4 different animal's livers - yum. The pate that is, not the pig's head.


More pictures here

Paris

So from Venice we jumped on an overnight train to Paris. As it was busy we had to get a 6 person cabin. That's 3 bunks on each side. And Nate and I were last to book so we got the top two. It was so hot. The train was definitely better than those in Russia and China but the aircon was about the same (intermittent!). Thankfully it came on a bit later and we were able to sleep. All up it took 12 hours but the train was stopped for a while in some places so I don't know how many hours we were moving for.

Anyway, we arrived at 8am to a fairly warm Paris. We went to grab a coffee before heading to the hotel but on realising that they were 4 euro we decided to head straight to the hotel. haha. Once we'd checked in a investigated the neighbourhood that we were staying in we jumped on the metro into the city. We went for a walk and saw Notre Dame and then went to the Tuileries Garden to stroll along and watch all the Parisiens basking in the summer sun. And yes, it was actually hot!

Here's one of Notre Dame (and yes that is a stupid mark on my lense to the left of the image. grrr)...

And here's one at the gardens...

After that we found a little market thing that was selling some pets. We saw this chicken which is super-cool...

And I saw my first Chinchilla which was crazy. It looked cute but if you could see this thing jumping around in that cage it's scary.

And we also spotted some of the plastic variety on the street. They were actually part of a window display for a shop which was outside the shop. Pretty cool hey. They had heaps of smaller ones in the window with mannequins and whatever it was promoting. I thought it was Marc Jacobs at first because I saw the daisy perfume but I'm not 100% sure.

So the next day we tried to get up early but it didn't really happen. Eventually we made it to the Louvre along with a billion school kids (they get in free - hooray!). So here's the outside...

We wandered around for a few hours (this place is humugous) and obviously we went to see the Mona Lisa and Venus De Milo.

After that we went and had a great lunch in a cafe. It was an 11 Euro menu (and please consider that a 250-330ml coke costs at least 2.50!) and we got a tart/quiche thing plus a dessert and a drink.

We got two different ones and went halves. The one you can see is chicken but behind the lettuce is half a salmon one.

And we both got the same dessert as it looked so tasty. Some kind of plum tart thing. Oh and did I mention I love the food in France! I'll be on a diet in about 4 weeks. eek.

After that we went to check out that big tower thing and bought some keyrings off a dude that was trying to sell us 3 for a Euro. Then he offered 5! People had been trying to sell these things to us all day so I said we'd take 2 for 50 cents and we were all happy.

So after two of the hottest days Paris has ever had the weather turned to shit. Very British. Drizzling and cold. So we were back in jeans, jumpers and jackets again. We went to see the Catacombs and nearly missed out as they're only open until 4 and there was a massive line. Anyway, we got in and I took heaps of pictures which surprisingly all turned out very blurry. Here's a couple that will look ok blog-sized.

Do I look scared?

We also went out to Montmarte to check out a church on top of a hill which was quite cool although I will say we realised what a great area of Paris we were staying in after we got off the train in North Paris. Yikes! There was about a million dodgy looking people standing in and around the train station all trying to sell cigarettes (which is common in Albania!) and God knows what else.

Anyway we made it up to Sacre Coeur and it was quite nice... Great views of Paris too.

There were heaps of people up there and a few buskers. Here's one that I gave some money to because he was really quite talented.

There was also about 20 people selling Eiffel Tower keyrings (even though you couldn't see it from there - haha). And there was all there African guys waiting at the bottom of the stairs trying to put these string things on your fingers. They were actually quite intimidating as there was heaps of them at the entrance. When we got down there one dude said "Hakuna Matata" and I laughed but then he grabbed my arm and started to put this string thing on my finger. I told him no several times but I had to yank my arm away to get him off me. He wasn't happy that the thing fell on the floor but apparently they wind these 'good luck' things up your arms and then demand money for it. I don't know where the cops were but they were seriously hassling a lot of tourists. And I was just reading on some forums with comments back as far as 2006 saying what pests they are and how they won't take no for an answer so obviously it isn't a new thing.

But in saying that I did love Paris. I wasn't expecting to as I'd heard such mixed reviews but I thought it was a beautiful city. Probably one of my favourites in Europe so far.

More photos here

A Few Hours in Venice

Due to Trenitalia having the worst website in the history of the Internet we only actually got to spend a few hours in Venice. We were supposed to stay overnight but the train we needed to get on was booked out and we had to leave the day earlier. I also won't go on about how unhelpful this dude at the Trenitalia office was but anyway we arrived in Venice at 3.30pm and left at 8pm. Although I will say we were probably grateful as it was stinking hot and unbelievably crowded. Still had to go though:)

Oh yeah and we got this thing coz it looked cool/gross/awesome. It has a straw too and you drink it. Tasted like Kahlua to me actually. Not sure why you would get it but ok, we did. haha.

Anyway, Venice. It has all that Venetian stuff like masks...

A Rialto Bridge...

People on Gondolas...

Millions of little bridges...

Nuns...

And more gondolas....

Did I miss anything? Oh yeah they also had heaps of African men selling fake handbags that were laid out on bedsheets. And you even get to see them bundle up the sheets and start running when the cops are around. Cool!

If you've been to Venice before then you'll know that they also have these wine places where you can pick up a litre or two or wine for next to nothing. It's like a co-op situation or so the guy told us. We opted for a local specialty which was just about the most expensive thing there and it set us back 3 Euros 15 cents for 1.5 litres. Now that's what I call value!

Here are some of the wines...

And here's Nate with our 1.5Ltr bottle of goodness. And it was really quite good actually!