Saturday and Sunday

A nice view from a village we passed through between St. Etienne and Avignon.

From St. Etienne, we worked our way down to Avignon, the one time seat of Papal power, prestige and palaces. For about half the trip, we followed really tiny back roads, which provided the best views and small village experiences. When we got behind schedule, we jumped on the toll road and really flew. Avignon was great. Completely within its original walls, the city had lots to see. We took the self guided tour of the Palais des Papes (the French Vatican). Really cool. The palace was the home of the Popes from 1309 to 1377. Nice lunch and then on to our villa.

This is the view from our balcony at Les Carmes onto the courtyard and to the gardens beyond. http://www.lescarmes.com/

Our lodging for the night was an old farm house fully restored and tout a fait incroyable. We found out about this little gem from Jamie's sister Allie. Allie knows the owners of the inn and connected us. The place is spectacular and the Provence countryside is beautiful. The inn is just 4 km from a fantastic town called Isle sur la Sorgue. It was named after the fact that the Sorgue river runs through it creating a number of canals with the main part of the town being an island. After breakfast at the inn, we wandered through the weekly market which featured everything from fruits, vegetables, meats, clothes, trinkets, trash and other items. This open air market is the largest in all of Provence and it took up at least half of the town.

Windows and doors in this country are pretty cool.

Why do I look like "Fat Bastard?" Maybe because of all the French food? But I could be wrong.

From Isle sur la Sorgue, we headed toward the French Riviera. It sure is an awesome experience to be able to see the Med on one side, and the snow covered Alps on the other. We went yacht shopping in Antibes and then headed toward our hotel just outside the hill town of St. Paul de Vence. Our hotel room has views of the tiny town as well as the Med in the distance. Wow.

With this edition, more pics, less blah, blah, blah. Or is that blahg?

To the left is our hotel just outside of St. Paul de Vence. St. Paul is the village on the hill.

Puzzler Answer

Yous guys are pathetic. Not one guess? OK...so here is the answer but I hesitate to give it to you as that will make you all more lazy and yous wont try for any others...Well here goes: We got a nice bottle of wine for next to nothing. We arrived in our hotel room (which was really a motel rather than a hotel. It was really nice for a motel but thankfully the only one of its kind we will stay in), realizing that while Jackie had the foresight to purchase two wine glasses for us to consume this el cheapo wine, we had no corkscrew, and thus, limited opening options. Being the problem solver type of guy I am, I improvised. First I tried a nail file, which I broke. Next I tried some tweezers (not zircon encrusted tweezers) which I broke. Then, in a fit of panic and subsequent inspiration, I struck upon the perfect tool with which to extricate myself from this wineless existance. Thats right, I utilized Jackie's (not mine, are you nuts?) toothbrush to push the cork into the bottle. I indeed pushed the cork into the bottle, and while trying to clean up the colossal mess made from the volcano effect caused by the cork plunging into the wine, creating increased hydrolic pressure and a limited vent through which the pressure could be, well, vented, thus causing a large squirting action, I accidentally sort of, somewhat dropped the toothbrush into the bottle. There you have it. The whole unadulterated story. Yes, we were able to retrieve the wine from the bottle...every drop of it. No, we did not retrieve the toothbrush as the stiff little bristles prevented it from being regurgitated up the neck of the bottle, as it were. No winners to the puzzler, you losers.

More fun with tech in France

Yo Milt:

We can get emails via Outlook but can't send. Server is rejecting the log in...keeps asking for login and password. Cant get to your web mail at all, but obviously we have access to the web. Hmmmm. Maybe your server wont let us send because we are in France eating Freedom Frites? We tried getting to your webmail from a French computer but got the same Cannot display the page error. WE can get to your website, but the link to the webmail fails.

Today's Puzzler

How did Jimmy V. lose Jackie's toothbrush?

Helpful hints:

1. Homeland Security doesn't like Swiss Army products
b. Jim and Jackie like wine
iii. As he has been told before (but never listens): "Jimmy, don't touch the tools".

Friday 11/14 or is that 14/11?

Breakfast of croissants, pains au chocolat, brioche, cafe au lait, preserves and orange juice. Mighty tasty. Provided by our hostess Odile at the Manoir-du-Parc, the B&B we stayed at. Good chow at some restaurant...I think it was French. Drove around Amboise and then headed off to take a tour of Chenonceau, a really really cool chateau. We did a 45 minute audio tour provided us by an iPod. This place was really big. We skipped the even bigger Chambord (400+ rooms) using the logic that once you have seen 399 room, you've seen 'em all.

From Chenonceau we took some really small roads, and I mean really really small, to a great town called Loches which happens to be the where Jeanne d'Arc heard the voices. Or Joan of Arc for all you non French speakers. I have heard Joan was hot...really hot! Actually, what the French inscription says is basically, Jeanne d'Arc was Joan's smarter sister who heard the voices, but told Joan that they were actually speaking to her, and that SHE should go to Reims and do all that crazy shit. Jeanne stayed behind, had the pick of the menz, and became an English teacher in a small high school. She was later known as Jeanne d'Berthoud. Joan got toasted.

Lunch in a Brasserie with beer (not Splugen) and wine. We found a perfect fixer upper for Terry to flip. The commute in the boat truck is a bit much, but the neighborhood is safer than most of the places in which he works.

Decided to skip through Clermont-Ferrand and went all the way to St. Etienne where we have holed up in a chain type hotel. Dinner is in our room with some wine, meats, fromage, wine, bread and wine. We bought these comestables in a number of shoppes in Loches. Very bohemian.

We took the big highway to St. Etienne. Speed limits are 130! I like to go really, really fast. Went through some mountains in the dark which was a bit stressful at times. It took us a while to figure out how to work the defroster so I navigated the twisties at 130km/h through a pin hole sized spot at the bottom of the windshield until the fog finally cleared. Excitement in the style of the French!

For any of you who are interested in this sort of thing: today's bottle of wine is a 2003 Chinon, Domaine de l'Abbaye at the staggering price of 4E,70 (=$6.11). In the nearly inimitable words of Adam Sandler, the abbaye is "not too shabby".

Safety tip for the financially squeamish. Toll roads are really expensive here. Today we spent 20E (=$26) for the privilege of drving really really fast. Good thing the wine is cheap.

From NJ to France via Newark

Milt, If you are reading this. Please let us know what to do to allow access from here to net2atlanta...all other internet access is working, but we can't get to you AND you have our mail. Katie or Kristin, please send an email to Milt to read this message. Jeezh, I feel like MataHari here, passing coded messages to spy networks all over the world. ;-)

Overnight flight out of Newark NJ to Paris FRANCE ;-). Great flight; no “issues”; slept a few hours and hit the ground running.

We landed at 8:35a local time and by 9:30 we had cleared immigration (guess Jimmy’s felony warrants haven’t filtered into the international system YET) got our bags, and were in our rental car driving off campus.

Less than 1 hour later we were in Chartres standing in front of the Gothic cathedral that puts all other Gothic cathedrals to shame. WOW WOW WOW. Pretty impressive stonework. Had deux cafes crèmes, deux croissants for breakfast upon arriving in Chartres. About an hour of mesmerizing grandeur was all our craning necks could endure.

Took another short scenic drive to enter the Loire Valley and the sleepy hamlet of Chateaudun. Quick tour of this lesser known chateau, lunch of croque monsieur, frites, salade and a local red wine served in un pichet.

Back in the car for a short drive to Amboise. By now it was 4:00pm local time and that could only mean one thing. NAP TIME!! 2.5 hours later made ourselves get up and take a brisk walk to a great little restaurant called L’Alliance. For just about $80 (I am not making that up) we had duck, a local take on beef wellington with a really hearty wild cherry reduction, a couple of appetizers, a cheese course and dessert, and cognacs. Pretty freakin’awesome. Oh yeah and a ½ bottle of a local Chinon.

2 things. It’s cold here, and we LOVE our little Garmin machine that Torey and Mike Young lent to us. It is “spot on” so far.
De bon reves, mes chers

More Day 4--Carlisle to Hackettstown

Got to my sister Patty's house about 3:30pm. Seeing family that we have not seen for a long time is nice, but frankly, after the Martin Factory, a little anti-climactic. Just kidding of course, it was very climactic. We hung out, abused the children and several of the animals while waiting for Patty to prepare perhaps the last great meal we would eat before we arrive in Europe. I say perhaps ony because we may get a fabulous meal on the WWI Folkker Red Barron plane provided by that famous airline L'Avion. I am indeed looking forward to Ick with Velveeta as our overnight dinner selecton. Anyway, we had some laughs with Patty, the kids and Patty's hunny bunny Kevin. Kevin is a scientist of some sort and I do believe he has succesfully altered the genetic makeup of his daughter Maggie and turned her into a rather large tree frog. But I could be wrong.