In the quest for some photos at sunrise, we arose from our beds before 6am, and headed up the hill to La Bonne Dame, from which a panorama over Argenton-Sur-Creuse, in central France, stretches before one’s eyes.
Category Archives: Travel
France 2014: Road Trip – The Long Way Round
If we hadn’t taken a roundabout scenic tour, we would never have stopped at a little “aire” (parking area accessed from the autoroute) to obtain these photos.
Leaving the aire
I love the way the signs in France have a big red line across them to indicate you are leaving an area.
France 2014: Road Trip – More of Carcassonne
La cite de Carcassonne at night
This post features photos taken by my husband, with my Olympus DSLR that he gave me for my birthday a few years ago. Although it takes brilliant photos, I tend to stick with my little Canon, due to its more portable size and ease of use.
A medieval mecca for tourists
Sometimes tourist areas are not the best places to dine, but this was delightful. The goat’s cheese salad seemed to comprise the cheese fried in a crepe triangle atop a lovely green salad, a wonderful starter. Cassoulet is a specialty of the region, with slow-cooked pork, duck and sausage and haricot beans. Think French-style baked beans!
Avoiding tourists appearing in our photos is a game we play. As we had arrived in the afternoon, the place was brimming with visitors, but the crowd had died down somewhat after dinner. Then the lights shone on the battlements to create an awe-inspiring atmosphere.
Bright and early the next morning we were back again, but by missing the tourists, we hadn’t thought about delivery trucks and people on their way to work at the many shops in the old city. As you can see, we managed to achieve the goal of the game.
Carcassonne early in the morning
And finally, the street that had been bursting with tourists had a greater sense of history in the morning in its stillness.
France 2014: Road Trip to La Cité de Carcassonne
Our main plan had been to head down to Carcassonne, but we were glad to have seen Sarlat as well.
The old walled city of Carcassonne, covering an area of eleven hectares, is reminiscent of Le Mont St Michel up north. Popular amongst tourists, it presents a challenge to take photos containing only the architecture.
These photos were taken with a Canon IXUS 135 camera by yours truly.
The subject matter certainly helps take a good shot 🙂
France 2014: Road Trip – Nothing Toulouse Except Time
On the continuation of the road trip towards southern France, we decided to check out Toulouse, but really, if you are going to try to discover a city, a couple of hours is not nearly enough time.
Parking was an absolute nightmare. We drove into a multi-level parking area which indicated a large number of available spaces, only to find cars taking up more than one space each. Unless you drove one of those tiny smart cars, there was no hope. I was annoyed because we had already taken a ticket and thought we would be stung for parking, but perhaps the authorities realise the difficulties and since we exited within five or so minutes, we were not charged.
crazy parking in Toulouse
a better choice of parking
Try this parking area rather than Victor Hugo in Toulouse
We had much better luck at a newer carpark, from where we went to find something to eat. I was in major need of a toilet stop by this stage, after driving around Toulouse for so long and not really seeing anything, so we ate at Quick, one of a chain of hamburger stores. Oh well, it was food, but not highly recommended by moi. Fast food may be fast, but it never seems to satisfy. C’est la vie.
Quick lunch in Toulouse
In retrospect, we hadn’t done any homework or research on the area. For example, what is Toulouse famous for? Probably a cathedral or two; perhaps being one of the larger cities in France. We were unprepared, and if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Unfortunately when it has taken so long to get into a place, and so long to park, for such a little time, it puts you off somewhat, but as I said in the title, we had nothing Toulouse except time.
France 2014: Road Trip to Sarlat-la-Canéda
Last time we were in Argenton-sur-Creuse, in 2010, we took a road trip up to Le Mont St Michel in Normandy, a medieval town virtually atop a little island. Google it to have a look. Is this a case of history repeating itself? Perhaps, but you have to expect medieval architecture scattered across France, which is part of the charm of travelling all the way to Europe. Australia’s architecture is less than 250 years old, so even our old buildings are relatively new.
France 2014: Day Trip to Chateauroux
It all started off innocently enough. “Let’s drive up to Chateauroux.”
in Chateauroux
Great idea, but it became fraught with a triple whammy of complications:
1. Driving a different car for the first time (minor adjustment)
2. Driving on the wrong side of the road (major adjustment – as Australians use the left side, since we are one of England’s colonies)
3. Using our brand-new Tom Tom navigational system, which we had barely tried out in Melbourne, and suddenly we are supposed to know how to use it here. Fortunately the lady in the machine giving us directions kept her calm. At least that made one of us.
We can laugh now, but a couple of days ago it wasn’t nearly as funny. Dutchy has mastered the art of reversing. Taking wrong turns here is fairly easy, until you become accustomed to the way the signage operates. The arrows seem to point in a vaguely different direction to what you expect.
Before we even got onto the A20 to head up to Chateauroux the mood in the car became quite stony: his because he was not happy about turning the wrong way and having to reverse, and me, because of course I felt like I was unfairly getting all the blame. There and then I decided perhaps we shouldn’t be going on road trips together, when we had been having such a lovely time taking walks around Argenton, with no arguments. Trust a trip in the car to fuel a fight, or at least a stony silence.
However, we managed to get to Chateauroux safely, and even managed to find some free parking, due to the seasonal holiday of many businesses in France.
Dutchy with the car
free parking this month
parking pay area
Coffee and cake, some retail therapy for me, with him tagging along helped alleviate the tension, and then a nice lunch at Patapain made the day improve further. I know which segment he preferred! We even broke our one-cake-per-day rule since it was our Big Day Out in Chateauroux, which is actually less than a half-hour drive from Argenton. It served as a good trial run to get to the station to pick up our Canadian friends in a couple of weeks.
Sandi at Patapain
tartelette aux fraises
Because the TomTom’s battery was running low, we had to find an auto shop to get a cigarette lighter connection, which he admits he didn’t bring to France. This was just outside Chateauroux near Brico Depot, a large hardware place similar to Bunnings, a home improvement DIY business. It took us a while to figure out they don’t seem to have actual driveways moulded into the kerb and channels. Rather, you just drive up over the shallow kerb, making it easy to miss the entrance to the place you want to go because there isn’t one. We managed to buy a cigarette lighter adapter, only to find that the cigarette socket in the car didn’t work when we plugged it in. Ah the joys of travel.
The old and the new in Chateauroux
restaurant du theatre
the boots I nearly bought
France 2014: Home Cooking in Argenton
As part of our relaxation process during the three weeks prior to our planned Paris apartment expedition with two other couples, we decided to enjoy a few home-cooked meals since we have a lovely kitchen to work in. When I say work, the meals aren’t exactly labour-intensive, when you consider preparing some salad and cooking a couple of pieces of Atlantic Salmon or pork chops!
And yet how delicious these relatively simple meals proved to be. Was it the wine we enjoyed with them, the fact that we are on holidays? Either way, the flavours seemed to leap out at us with their freshness. Perhaps the long, long flight we endured with its less-than-appealing aeroplane food, added to this.
Our first dinner consisted of salmon and a simple salad, accompanied by an inexpensive vin petillant (sparkling wine).
Frequenting the local patisseries is a pleasant pastime, although we are limiting ourselves to one each per day, which we divide in half so that we can actually taste two.
The St. Honoré, similar to the Réligieuse, but larger, consisting of choux pastry filled with your choice of chocolate or coffee mousse, was delicious, as was the Milles Feuilles, literally meaning a thousand leaves, which describes the layers of light flaky pastry interwoven with magnificent thick and creamy custard, a far cry from the Australian Vanilla Slice, sometimes irreverently referred to as a snot block.
Why would we waste time actually cooking dessert when you can buy these pieces of heaven?
France 2014: Etihad Experience and Beyond
The red-eye special has never been our favourite flight, but in this case it was even worse. WARNING: Do not read on if you don’t want to read about a negative experience, but at the end of the day these sort of things make the best anecdotes.
I have never before been on a plane where they virtually ignore you for over two hours before you get anything. In this case it was almost two and a half hours before we were given a meal. And bad luck about getting a drink; even water. EY461 was our first impression of Etihad and we were singularly, or doubly (because there are two of us) unimpressed. Even though the second leg of our flight from Abu Dhabi to Paris was better, first impressions last. I know we have been spoiled by the high quality of food on various cruises, but aeroplane food has now become quite second-rate and particularly because it arrived only lukewarm.
Arriving at Melbourne Airport, e-tickets and allocated seats in hand, we were rather disgruntled to find the plane had been changed and rather than having a cosy pair of seats near the tail end of the plane, there was a third seat. Fortunately the man who had the third seat was a slim, friendly fellow who happened to be wearing a really nice aftershave. Thank goodness for that, as when we had walked down the extremely narrow aisle an offensive waft of body odour accosted us. Remember, it could always be worse.
Our departure time of 22:40 ended up being 23:10. A few late arrivals appeared to have caused this, but I thought that was fair enough if there had been connection problems. The pilot made up some of the lost time, only to find that our own connecting flight from Abu Dhabi to Paris would be delayed half an hour.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, suddenly that connecting flight was delayed for three hours. Oh dear, we had already booked and paid for our train journey from Paris Gare d’Austerlitz to Argenton-sur-Creuse, having allowed a generous two and a half hours to get from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the station.
The narrow seats and aisles on the B777-300 hardly provide enough room for me, let alone a larger person. Intermittent sleep occurred. Meanwhile, we had put my laptop up in the cabin overhead lockers as I knew I wasn’t planning to use it on the flight and besides, my large handbag needed to fit under the seat, only to find that when I pulled it out to use it during our layover in Abu Dhabi, the screen was broken and hence I couldn’t use the computer. Spoke to an Etihad employee who took a note of this and told me to contact Feedback at Etihad and ground staff at CDG airport.
The highlight of the layover was spending AU$20 on two coffees and a muffin at Abu Dhabi, but it was worth it. I had also managed to sleep for forty minutes on a chair that looked a little like a sun lounge. Funnily enough, outside the temperature would have been at least 40 degrees, and yet here we were inside almost shivering due to the air conditioning. This paints an unrealistic picture in your mind of what it’s like in Abu Dhabi!
At CDG the Etihad booth was closed, apparently opening up three hours before the next flight, so I took a photo to prove that they were closed. Spoke to at least three other ladies who had various complaints against Etihad.
We caught the train into Paris on the RER Line B. Met Patrick, a very nice French guy with a good command of the English language. We exchanged details and Dutchy and I might catch up with him and his family in Perpignan during the next week.
We duly got off at the Metro station St. Michel-Notre Dame, only to find Correspondance to Line C was undergoing maintenance work, necessitating catching the Castor bus to Gare d’Austerlitz, and losing even more of our precious time.
I explained in French to the line of people at the Billetaire that I was Australian and our plane was late and the train would be leaving in ten minutes. They kindly let me get in, but in retrospect why did the ticket guy sell us tickets down at the far end of the train? I like to believe that he incorrectly thought he was giving us tix closer rather than further away, but qui sais? Who knows? As it was, this cost us 92 euros, which we hope to retrieve from Etihad, since it was all their fault. Having purchased the tickets, we managed to race to the platform with barely two minutes to spare; and it was the last train for the night. In our mad rush, I managed to fall over on the platform, skinning my elbow. One of the attendants helped us get to Carriage 16, where we collapsed into our seats with a sigh of relief. The 16 euros spent on the train on beer, wine and a shared sandwich constituted dinner. Time passed quickly typing all my initial notes for this post on our fantastic little Samsung tablet and before we knew it the 2 1/4 hour trip was over and we were disembarking at Argenton-sur-Creuse station, with only a 25 minute walk left, with our luggage to reach our destination, which took, including the layover and transport, a total of 35 hours’ travelling. No wonder we were exhausted, not to mention jet-lagged. I told you not to mention jet-lagged!
Hey, I’ve heard worse stories than this, and these adventures are all part of the travel experience. We got here safely after all, ready to relax.
Back in the Saddle? No, Back on a Ship
Dear Reader,
It has been almost a year since my last post on Travels With Princess and Quiquinou. Somehow other blogs and life in general got in the way. This is about to change.
Princess and Quiquinou are on a cruise to New Zealand, aboard the Dawn Princess. Funnily enough, we also did the same cruise one year and two weeks ago. Last year we travelled with another couple, and we tested out an interior room, while this year we are travelling as a couple in a balcony stateroom.
There will be comparisons of both as well as photographic evidence detailing some of our experiences, which, though similar, will be quite different. And that’s the beauty of cruising; each journey brings with it different memories. Happy cruising!
The Dawn Princess awaiting our embarkation at Station Pier, Melbourne.
Travels with Princess&Quiquinou 