Rich people suck

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Well, I felt like Cary Grant (scared that is, I don't think I look like him exactly) in To Catch a Thief, if you haven’t seen it - do. On the drive to Monte Carlo there are three roads at varying heights along the steep cliffs between Nice and Monaco. Well, at one point we ended up on the highest one – not good for me….had a death grip on the wheel and looked no where but the road. Essentially there were two very (very) small lanes with a small (2 foot) brick wall on the outside, and then….nothing. The part that was great fun was passing repeated memorials for past deaths, including Grace Kelly’s. Also, throw in the repeated mantra of crazy as $%^& French drivers.

After reaching Monaco, we spent a little time gawking at the array of Ferraris, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis parked in front of the Monte Carlo casino. What cracked me up was watching them put the Porsches off to the side (not good enough apparently).

There wasn’t much there, I was very surprised how small and “Hong Kong” the city was. It was a good 2-3 Chicago blocks, full of crazy roads and not much to see. Lots of private bankers, I don’t believe one of this country’s traits has been scruples. Very odd the Nazis left this three block country alone…hmmmm,wonder why?

We did find one site for Nadirah though – the 103 year old “Jardin Exotique”, and entire cliff-side park full of cactus. If you don’t know her well, it’s her favorite thing. It was pretty crazy, some of these things were so old they had tree-like bark. There were entire forests of 20 foot tall monstrosities. Of course, I spent the whole time trying to avoid running into anything – you would have thought Nadirah was in Disneyland though.

Beaches here are cool

French Riviera
We’re in Nice, all checked in to our cozy bungalow. All our experiences with campsites in France have been so wonderful we’ve decided to stick with them. It’s really nice having your own little home right near a very expensive beachfront for €40 a night. We’ve decided to take the next few days pretty easy here, it is the vacation capital of Europe I guess. Blue doesn’t even begin to describe the color of the water here. I had trouble keeping my eyes on the road sometimes as every view off the road seemed nicer than the last.

There’s a nice little walk in Nice along the ocean called the “Walk of the English”, apparently no one really came here until the English decided this was the place and fronted the money for a lot of improvements back in the 1800s. The beaches are just large pebbles, which doesn’t seem to faze anyone one bit. The water’s beautiful though, so we’re planning on coming back tomorrow for some sun and a dip. Oh, and there are lots of topless sunbathers. Disgusted, I tore myself away after gawking a mere 10 minutes or so.

Heading to Monaco this afternoon.

Arles
Quick run through Arles, another old Roman city with a coliseum and theatre. We thought it a bit odd they seemed to be completely rebuilding the Roman theater with new stones. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a historic relic? Also the “Nature Reserve” of the Camargue. Supposedly a protected salt flat area with wild horses and flamingoes. This may be the most un-natural nature reserve I have ever seen, and a complete joke that it was in our 500 best sights in the world book. There wasn’t one square meter without a field, towns all over the place, and one third of the area has been turned into a rather ugly salt production field. Not one of our better days, but it’s still vacation!

Onto the French Riviera - whoohoo!

Trip Map

How do you buy a suit of armor?

Pont du Gard
Great day, started off with a visit to an amazing roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard (the most complete still in existence). The thing was massive, and the museum was one of the better ones we’ve seen. Really amazing their water facilities were so advanced, and we decided to forget about things like plumbing for another 1000 years.

Orange
Swung through the town of Orange for a tour through another of the most complete Roman ruins in existence, this time a theater. Again a massive structure, the crazy part is when they describe the amount of punishment this thing went through. It was so huge, it was used as a castle and had a town within during the Dark Ages. Also of note is that the town was the original location of the House of Orange, who are the current monarchs of the Netherlands (if you wonder why their teams wear orange when their national colors are red, white and blue).

Avignon
Avignon was next on the route (these are all very close together, we’re not as crazy as these schedules seem). Pretty interesting history, as it was the home of the Vatican when a French pope was elected. The fact he moved the Vatican to this town created the two-pope situation. The crazy part is they owned this whole town in the middle of France for 400 years, and the inhabitants spoke Italian until the 1700s. Nothing special, but a nice part of history to see.

Castle Baux
Before we settled in for the nights in Arles, we made it to Castle Baux. This thing was cool, I haven’t wanted a suit of armor so bad since I was 8! It’s a fairly small plateau which at one point held a castle and town with 4,000 people. It’s very weird since the land around is a nature preserve and completely barren. You pull up to the bottom of another plateau and wonder where the heck this place is. Following a few signs, you get to something out of a movie – an entire little village, still living on top of this plateau.

The castle was destroyed by one of the French Kings, but the town was left intact (and billed for the destruction). The rulers of the area were famous warriors, from the oldest line of kings in existence. They were ruthless, one guy taking joy in making his prisoners jump off the cliff when he was bored.

Anyway – I digress, but suffice to say I completely geeked out over this place. They bored out the entire plateau for their structures, and at one point you could spy a massive stone hall through a crack in the bottom of the plateau – looked like something from Lord of the Rings.

So…moving on, nice campsite outside Arles – actually slept in our tent this time!

Trip Map

French people in cars are scary

Gorges du Tarn
On our way between Carcassone and the Provence region, we made a rather large detour to see the Gorges du Tarn. This beautiful gorge (30 miles or so long), had such insanely small roads with nothing but a drop on the sides. Thankfully Nadirah had elected to drive, so I spent most of the time gasping in horror. The French drivers, if we haven’t mentioned – are completely insane!! – they go around these hairpin turns on a 10 ft wide road at 60mph and don’t ever brake when they see you.

Millau Bridge
To top off the day for the guy scared of heights we drove over the tallest bridge in the world, Millau Bridge, which spans the gorge at a single point. I have never seen anything like it – we could have been on the Empire State Building. Never even been close to that high on a bridge before…..can’t even describe the height, or my need to change pants.

Aven Armand
Halfway through our drive, we also managed to stop at the Aven Armand caves – the world’s largest collection of stalagmites in the world. Supposedly you could fit the Notre Dame inside.

Driving on to the Provence Cities, stayed the night in Nimes.

Trip Map

Those damn vegetarians

Carcassone
After leaving Dordogne, we stopped in Albi to say farewell to our friends (until they come to Amsterdam). Albi had a nice museum for the artist Henri Tolouse-Loutrec. You’ve probably seen some of his work, he was famous for his lithograph posters for the Moulin Rouge.

After dropping TJ and Michelle off, we made our way to Carcassone. This fortress dates back to Roman times, and was once the center of a group of “renegade” Christians called Cathars. I had never heard about them until this, but apparently they believed in reincarnation and were vegetarians. They also, important to the Catholic church, were very anti-materialistic. The Catholics wiped out the area during the inquisition, with the help of the French king who wanted the land. Oh, and there’s a cool board game by the same name. The old fortress is named “Le Cite”, and the town below was where the expelled Cathar populace was forced to settle.

We managed to stay the night within the walls of “Le Cite” in a cute B&B, and had the city all to ourselves that evening. There was also a Jaguar rally that stayed the night, I of course got a little excited.

Trip Map

"My child thinks the cow is giving birth"

Dordogne Valley
After getting here on Wednesday, it didn’t take much to convince us to stay a bit longer than we intended. This region is gorgeous - a beautiful river winding through a dramatic gorge with stunning castles crammed on every other hill. We stayed by the most beautiful little town I’ve ever seen, built into the cliff faces - La Roque Gageac. Found another cool little house at a great campsite. The only bad part was that the weather was steaming, and we were taunted by the owner carefully cleaning the pool every day – redemption arriving with open gates on the day before we left.

The region is known for its foie gras – and despite my moral reservations I decided I had to at least try it. Suffice to say we’re not quite sure what the fuss is about – just pate, nothing especially mind-blowing. However we did love the other local delicacy, a duck marinated in its own fat – mmmmmmm.

Cave Art
The area has a ton of caves, including one of the premier examples of cave art in Lascoux cave. Sadly you can’t see most of the caves anymore, but the Lascoux cave was replicated (in amazing detail) – these guys were not drawing stick figures. It was beautiful. Picture is not mine - no cameras allowed.

The best part was one our fellow American tourists that had read the guide at the entry (as we all did), and then would offer "suggestions" as to the meaning of different paintings. Such as, while looking at the painting entitled "wounded hunter" in the guide, she would then ask "Is it possible this was a hunter that was wounded by the bison?". She would also then offer her child's interpretations of the paintings "my daughter thinks the cow is giving birth". We were't sure what she expected as a response (maybe a helicopter flight to the Sarbonne?), but our guide handled it with aplomb. It provided some entertainment.

We also made it to another massive cave which you could view more simplified images drawn deep underground. You got to take a little train all the way down, which was fun. Okay, some of these guys could have used some lessons.

French Cooking is just like Dennys
We had a great day of canoeing down the river. I think cordial relationships and canoeing are inversely related, as both parties begin to wonder why their frantic efforts to control the craft continue to fail. Following our harrowing battle against closing canoe rental facilities and no currents to get us there, we were rewarded with one of the top 5 dinners I’ve had in a random little village. Magret Duck with Black current sauce, Sarlat Potatoes…..good lord it was amazing. I can think of worse things in life than eating dinner under a grape leaf awning overlooking cliffs full of castles over a sparkling river.

Nadirah had a nightly battle with the demons of the dark, known to you and me as gnats. She is deathly afraid of anything small and moving (not sure about Oompa Loompas). Again, no screens on any windows and you had to have things open given the heat. We had a veritable bug rave going on by our ceiling lights. The best part is that while playing cards below (we’ve decided Michelle has witch-like powers over card games), they would fly kamikaze style into the lights, littering our playing surface and drinks with their sad little souls.

After a wonderful break from our American-style blowthrough of France, we’re moving on to the southern coast.

Trip Map

Trailer Park Livin'

Loire Valley
We found a rocking little bungalow a bit north of Amboise. Well, it’s more of a trailer – I think we can officially say we’ve lived in a trailer park now. We made sure to hang some washing outside on a string as well.

Amboise is this tiny little town, as always with an insane amount of history. Leonardo Da Vinci retired here, and you can see his work in some of the surrounding Chateaus. The man who could be the King of France, the Duke of Paris, lives here currently. The town lies on the Loire river, which apparently marks the farthest the Moors reached in their conquest of Europe. I had no idea they had gotten this far – we were only 200km SW from Paris.

Coolest Chateau for me was definitely Cheverny – I had no idea until I saw the place that this was the chateau that Herge modeled the one in Tintin after. If you don’t know Tintin, it’s a wonderful Belgian cartoon that’s ridiculously popular everywhere but the US. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, so a rather nice surprise. The other fun part was the hunting dogs – there must have been 50-60 of these guys in a massive pen. At 5:00 daily they are fed and it was a massacre. The guy brought out a wheelbarrow full of duck remains and the dogs went insane. The weird part is that not a single dog touched the food till he said so.

Chateau Chenonceaux was definitely the prettiest, and the one you see in all the photos. Again an amazing amount of history, with a massive number of royalty having owned or lived in the building. Some of the owners were pretty impressive, such as one man who let the building be used as a hospital during WWI, and the prisoners would fish out of their beds. Interestingly, the building was apparently quite useful during WWII, as its front door sat in Occupied France and its back door in Vichy France.

Chateau Chambord was absolutely massive – would have taken us a year to see that whole place. I took a bunch of pictures, and will leave it at that as this post is getting obscenely long.

Long drive to the south tomorrow for a stay in Dordogne region.

Trip Map

Children of the Campsite would be a good horror flick

Dinan, Brittany
Well, our first night where Nadirah and I pulled car duty. The campsites seem to close along typical European working hours – not a good idea to pull up around 7ish. The best part of my rather large (all muscle, of course) frame in the front seat was looking back and seeing tiny Nadirah comfortably curled up lengthwise in the back! I felt officially old this morning after waking up, like I had gotten a crowbar in the back.

The campsite next to ours had these 2 adorable little French girls that thought we were quite funny for being in the car. At several points during the early morning I awoke to the rather unsettling sight of two little blond heads peering over the hood at me.

We wanted to get some idea what Brittany looked like, and Dinan is supposed to be one of the nicer cities. Odd to think that the entire northern part of France was British for years. We thought it was crazy that even into the 1970s, if you named a child in this region a Celtic name they could lose their French citizenship.

The entire town is still surrounded by a wall, on a plateau over a beautiful river. We stopped to buy some wonderfully stinky cheese and some cured ham for TJ that had been dry aged for 17 months. He verified that the ham was indeed glorious, and we enjoyed the cheese quite a bit – cool note, it’s made from cows that feed on the salt marshes at Mont St. Michel (where we just came from) and was quite salty as a result.

Driving to the Loirre valley this evening.

Trip Map

Where are the tent poles?

Mont St. Michel
Like something out a fairy tale, Mont St. Michel seems to rise out of the mud flats surrounding it with incredible size. We pulled up miles away and it was still larger than life over the surrounding countryside. It ranks as one of the most beautiful structures I've seen. No picture I’ve seen before this does its size justice. I’ve tried to take a couple panoramas to give you the scale. The inside was pretty amazing as well, as an entire medieval town has been carved into the rock.

We had a pretty interesting night in our first European campsite. After setting up the first tent, we started on the second – suddenly realized we seemed to be lacking one little things – those rather necessary tent poles! I, in my infinite patience, completed freaked out thinking 2 of our 4 would be in the car every night for a week. Then, like a revelation from above we noticed some small buildings on the other side of the site and asked if you could rent one. We officially love camping in Europe – these things are little houses with kitchens and beds for almost nothing (€30-40 total) per night. After thanking the missing poles, we settled into our cozy cabin just in time to discover that there are a truly epic number of mosquitos around Mont St. Michel. Guess that would explain why the town was so small and our camp site was overlooking this gorgeous monument.

I will note here for the record that none of us could figure out what Europeans have against screens. They seem like a fairly useful invention in these buggy climates, but we have never (and I mean never) seen one on a single door or window. Are they just not bothered? We are completely lost on this one.

Drive to Dinan, Brittany to spend the evening.

Trip Map

One of those serious days...

Bayeux
After spending a night at a beautiful little hotel in Bayeaux, we saw the Bayeaux tapestry in the morning. If you don’t know it, it’s pretty much “the” tapestry, and depicts the invasion of England by the Normans. The art is almost a thousand years old, and is in remarkable shape. I was pretty impressed, it was far longer and more beautiful than I expected. It wrapped the entire way around a massive room, and it almost felt like a movie with the detailed story it presented. There was even gratuitous sex and gory violence.

Normandy Beaches
The drive along the coast was still littered with remnants of the huge invasion force, the scale of the false harbor at Port Winston brought it home.

The American Cemetery was stunning, and very haunting. You sit on top of the ocean bluffs, surrounding by beauty – and behind you lies these young men. Below the cemetery was Omaha Beach, and I can’t imagine what it must have been like. Watching children play with their kites on the beach below us where these same men died was an odd contrast for this place. Some people might find it disrespectful I guess, but it seemed rather wonderful to me.

We also went to a nearby German cemetery, which touched all of us as well – there were somber collections of 5 black stone crosses, with one marker for every two men. The Japanese could learn a lesson from this country, as the entire visitors center made sure no German forgets what happened in the past. There were also letters home from these other young men, which made their own sacrifice for a misdirected country seem so poignant.

Near Omaha was the Ponte du Hoc, an imposing set of cliffs which the first American Rangers had to scale with ladders and hooks. This installation was huge, much bigger than I had thought with my reading, and the importance was fairly obvious. They had left the bomb craters alone, and it was like walking on the moon – there were hundreds of them, the size of dump trucks. It was odd how few fortifications had been destroyed by these same bombs, however.

There are some people that believe the French don’t honor the sacrifices our country has made on their behalf, I wish they could see the crowds of French tourists and schoolchildren solemnly viewing these locations.

Driving this evening to stay by Mont St. Michel.

Trip Map

Man our car is small!

Some friends, Michelle and TJ, just happened to also be in France during a 1 year wandering of the globe. Really amazing, they’ve decided to both just see as much as they can before life gets serious. We managed to pick them up in Rouen on our way down the Normandy coast. Note for future: 1 Suzuki Swift with 2 immense backpacks, all our camping gear, and 4 people is a bit cozy…

We stopped off along the way at all the beautiful little villages lining the ocean, including Honfleur which had an old church made entirely of wood and a nice little harbor (church looked very Scandinavian, I guess the original inhabitants).


On a more important note, there are trailer parks in France – we have photographic evidence, so don’t let them get culturally elite on you! Not that they do, they are always wonderful to us. We just thought it was funny, driving through these little towns with as much history as our whole country and randomly hitting a massive trailer park.

Driving through to Bayeux, by the Normandy Beaches. I've put a google map of our trip below as we go, if you are really really interested! It's not exact, but should give you an idea.

Trip Map

Not to get political....

But I thought this was a fairly interesting quote I just found online.

'A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favourite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no common interest exists, and infusing into one nation the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without justification.' - George Washington.

It's funny as you travel, you realize that ignorance, hatred, and wonderful people are in ever country. It's the most ridiculous thing on earth to lump Israelis, Iranians, French...anyone, into a bucket - and it makes me a little sad when I read some very blatant characterization on our US news websites sometimes.

On the topic of an enlightened understanding of other nations....