Our Honeymoon in France

The honeymoon
Pictures Here The Wednesday after our wedding, we did the final packing (e.g. shaving kit, etc) and headed on over to the airport. Our flight left at 11:25 AM so we didn't have to get up too early. Still, we did have to be there 2 hours ahead of time, although it really wasn't any more complicated than a regular flight once we got there. So, we had quite a bit of time to kill in the airport. Then we flew to Atlanta, and changed planes to one of the big ones, which was an Air France plane. From there it was the long flight up and over the Atlantic (via flying over Greenland & Iceland, and stuff) and into Paris. The trip was uneventful (good thing) and they had some games and stuff you could play on the little screen in front of each chair. I slept a little; I don't think Charles did. Our flight got into Paris at 6:00 AM - then we tried to navigate to our hotel via subway (called "metro" there). I think we got there around 10 or 10:30; after some initial confusion it wasn't too bad on the metro but it did take an hour and a half. We left our luggage (couldn't check in yet) and proceeded to walk all over Paris. We started near Notre Dame, checked out a different church-thing, then Notre Dame, then random stuff we happened to see, then the Louvre (no we didn't go inside, although brief naps were alternately had in the courtyard & by a fountain) then down to the Eiffel tower via way of several other monuments, then to the Arc d'Triomphe. It was an extremely long walk, at the end of which my feet & back were killing me. We took the metro back to the hotel then and checked in (I believe around 6ish or even later - we have kept a journal but of course it isn't with me at the moment). After a brief rest, we headed out to find dinner, discovering a restaurant which served huge portions of "couscous". This essentially consisted of: 1 platter of meat, 1 giant thing of couscous, and 1 giant thing of stew. Charles ate that, I had a chicken dish instead which was not so enormous.
The following day we spent at the Sacre-Cour, a really neat cathedral which you can climb up on top of (via stairs, so not dangerous) and get some great views of the city. That was probably the highlight of Paris, it was very cool. We got lots of pictures, although it did rain fairly heavily when we first got there so my hair is a mess. ;) In fact, it basically rained almost every day we were in France, at least a little bit. Still, it cleared up nicely after we went up and got some good pictures of Paris & also the inside (post-mass; we went up top first so as to not interrupt the mass going on when we arrived). We then had lunch at a creperie, and then headed down to the Louvre. Unfortunatley we discovered that it closed at 5:30, and by the time we had arrived there we decided the steep admission price was not worth it. Since that had been our plan for the afternoon/evening, we decided to then randomly walk around to see things marked on the map we had. They included the opera house, another church, and a tower, among other things. Then we acquired more dinner and arranged for the shuttle to the airport the following morning, where we planned to rent a car for the rest of the trip.
Indeed, the following morning we got up and to the airport. There was some confusion with the shuttle people who didn't seem to understand that we didn't have a flight to catch (during the attempt to get to the airport, but it got resolved), and then some confusion in the airport as to which terminal we needed. But it wasn't too bad - fortunately Charles knew the word for "Car Rental Place". I think that between the two of us, we each picked up on different things to know how to say and we both helped each other along a lot of the time. Anyhow, we got the car rented and headed out. We had a little bit of difficulty at first figuring out the direction to go, and missed the autoroute (essentially like a turnpike), but decided to go for a more scenic road instead. The drive to Dinan was pretty good, overall. At one point we actually saw Mont-St. Michel in the distance and snapped a picture, although we weren't certain that's what we were seeing at the time (we visited it later on). The drive really was quite nice - the drivers in Paris seemed quite insane (much like Boston, only worse) but on the highways everyone was very polite, despite cutting back into the lane after passing a little sooner than we would have liked. We saw very few (if any?) incidents Insane Idiots driving, much fewer than we'd see here in the US.
We settled into the hotel in Dinan, after I found the hotel (on foot - we parked the car near where we thought it should be) and then had to run get Charles because I didn't know how to say "Hi, we have a reservation..." and the requisite check-in procedure (the people in Paris spoke English). Which, again fortunately, Charles had figured out. So we checked in, and found dinner at a very nice place recommended by one of the guidebooks (we had three, though one was specifically for Burgundy and we were in Brittany at this point). That night was our first introduction to the standard "three hour meal" that seemed to be fairly common unless we were eating at a creperie.
The next day, we headed out of Dinan to check out a neat ruined castle that was marked on the local "neat things to see" map provided by the hotel. That was very very neat and we snapped a lot of pictures. There was one very narrow, very twisty spiral staircase that we climbed up in (hey, it wasn't roped off...) which was nearly pitch black for part of the climb, but we found ourselves on the top of a very tall tower with a great view. Oh yeah - this ruined castle had a real moat with water and everything. :) There were lots of towers to climb in, except one which was ruined too much. Actually, they were in the process of trying to restore the ruin, but after seeing some of the already restored castles later on, I'm glad we got to see the ruin the way it was. They have a tendency to turn them into museums for random things, instead of placing period furniture etc in them so you could see what it was like back then. We also ate at a creperie right next to the castle beforehand and it was really tasty. Then I think we headed back to Dinan to explore the city a bit. We tried to find some of the recommended creperies for dinner but one was closed and the other we couldn't find. Instead we settled for another one which turned out to be fantastic & was actually working with Rick Steve's guidebook for the next edition. So we feel we got a jump on the game. :) We also spent a fair amount of time wandering around Dinan itself that evening, including climbing up on the fairly impressive ramparts for some great views, and pondering pouring boiling oil on (or at least throwing rocks at) invading armies.
The next day we decided to go to Mont-St. Michel via driving up the Scenic Route by the ocean. It was a beautiful day (one of the few that didn't rain on us). We spent a good lot of the morning just driving by the ocean. We took one detour out a random road that led us to the ocean itself, and hiked around a bit. The water was brilliant blue and so many beautiful colors. We even got down to the water itself at one point (there were pretty steep slopes so it was largely inaccessible) and the waves were a lot bigger than they looked from up top! It was really beautiful. Then we drove along the coast some more to Pointe du Grouin, which was a bit more crowded (but not too bad, really) and also ocean-y and prominence-y. From there we could see across the water to Mont-St. Michel, realizing that it was indeed what we had seen on the drive to Dinan. There were people fishing too, and they had these lures that essentially consisted of intervals of little metallic-looking small fish along the line. I figure that it probably was to simulate a school of minnows, and Charles pointed out that also meant more hooks for fish to bite. We didn't see them catch anything though. We continued on to Mont-St. Michel after a little while (and after more pictures).
Driving up to it on the causeway, it just didn't look real. The air was that slightly hazy, just enough to soften the shadows. But more than that, the place is both huge and so fairy-tale-ish that it just didn't look real, even once we got up right next to it. It used to be an abbey, and then later on was used as a prison. Now of course it's a tourist attraction, but at least it was mostly just as the abbey would have been (with little/no furniture). There's a very small town situated below the abbey itself, most of which sells kitsch, food, and whatever else tourists tend to buy. But wait - I've left out an important part. As you drive to the abbey, there is parking (really the only parking) just before you get to the island itself. You drive off the causeway into these parking lots, which are lower than the causeway. There are warning signs telling you the time you have to get your car out of the parking lot -- or else the tide will come in and your car will be underwater!! There are also signs warning people to not walk out on the mud flats (which are covered with water when the tide comes in) because there is quicksand out there. We noted that a number of stupid people decided to ignore that, although we didn't see anyone sucked under. Also, later on (close to when the tide was starting to turn) we noticed some people had walked almost all the way to the next island over -- I'm pretty sure there wasn't enough time for them to actually get back before the tide came back in. Guess some people were going to be spending the night on an island without food (they weren't carrying any packs or anything that I could see). Of course, we weren't there when the worst tides are (when the sun & moon line up) but still. Anyway, on into the abbey. We took Rick Steve's suggestion and headed immediately up a staircase (which wasn't really obvious without his pointing it out) to the abbey, thereby skipping most of the tourist trap beforehand. We climbed and climbed and had some great views before finally coming to the entrance to the abbey. The line was about 45 minutes long, which was the longest line we had on the whole trip. Still, it wasn't too bad a wait (Disneyland is like that for every ride, right?) and I snapped a couple of pictures on the way in. And then we got to go in and wander around, which was great fun. We took a lot of pictures (some low light - it really is quite impressive how the digital camera manages in low light. The only downside is we didn't have a tripod so we had to hold really, really still...). Finally, afterwards we grabbed a sandwich (ham & cheese, the staple) from the local tourist trap at the bottom since I was extremely hungry. We took the highway back into Dinan and found the creperie that had been closed the previous day and ate there - it also was very good.
The next morning we checked out and began our trip to Vannes. Our plan was to stop by and see a number of chateaux on the way, as marked on the "nifty things to see" map the hotel had provided. Unfortunately, a number of them seemed to be closed to visitors unless you called ahead for an appointment. After a number of unsuccessful tries, we gave up and headed to Vannes more directly. We had a hard time finding the hotel, but with the help of an extremely nice woman at a bank we stopped at (we had found the right street but couldn't seem to find the hotel), we eventually got there and checked in. We decided that driving once through the center of Vannes was enough for us (it being a larger city than Dinan), and so decided that dinner would be elsewhere. We had acquired a map at the Office of Tourism, and so headed down around to the coast on the other side, checking out another castle (which fortunately was open!) and dinner and spending some time hanging out by the ocean on the southern side of Brittany.
The next day was a fairly unplanned day. We had intended to see the standing stones at Carnac (woo! megaliths!) but didn't know how long it would take us to get to the "eh. big rock." stage. So, we pulled all our maps of the area, and hunted down some other ideas of what to see. It turned out that the standing stones were really really neat - thousands and thousands of big rocks, turned up to point at the sky, in rows. No one knows why, though generally it's assumed to be of religious significance. We certainly decided that it wasn't one of those things that starts off as an afternoon's boredom. We also got to see "dolmen" which are sort of tunnel/chamber things built out of the same rocks. After seeing the large fields which were fenced off, we continued on in search of others. We came across another decent sized field that wasn't fenced off so we wandered about in that for a while, and then hunted down a few dolmen that were marked on the map. The locals appear to have incorporated several into random things - we saw one that had been incorporated into a wall. You also have to wonder how much of the stone used in the buildings (houses, etc) was once part of the menhirs (standing stones) or the dolmen...I would wager quite a lot! After the morning had passed, we took a slight detour to find a windmill marked on the map, which I snapped a couple pictures of. We then, being full of rockness, headed out to another ruined castle near a town called Elven. We wanted to get lunch there (it was around 2:00) but nothing was open. There were a grand total of three small restaurants which were not open. However, there also appeared to be a funeral going on, so we ditched out of town and headed back to to the castle, waiting there until it opened at 2:30. This castle also turned out to be ruined instead of restored so it was also great fun climbing up into it. We also got really great winds about halfway through, which led to interesting things like my hair going nearly vertical while we stood in one of the stairwells. Too bad Charles didn't get a picture of that... We did get to climb the tallest dungeon tower in France though! Keen! It was used to imprison noble-type people. Afterwards, we headed back to Vannes (it was getting fairly late by the time we were done with that castle), though we did head back down to the southern penninsula briefly for shopping & dinner - unfortunately, we didn't find the latter. After a stop at the hotel for a brief rest & to freshen up, we decided to brave downtown Vannes for dinner, parking in a lot near the quay that we'd found on our drive in. The creperie we ate at was really good though, despite the smoking people next to us (actually one woman at a different table asked them to stop, which was very nice. Charles thinks she may have actually done so for our benefit, but we're not sure).
The next day was our drive to Burgundy. We planned the route to be Scenic along the Loire river, and it really was. Interestingly, the Loire was very sandy with large stretches of sand islands & low lying flood area with no vegetation. This is interesting because those areas would be fully vegetated, if it were the Mississippi (for example). So I was wondering if maybe the Loire was just really low on water or something. We never did find out. Still, it was a beautiful drive, although it took a lot longer than we expected. We arrived at the next hotel at around 7:30PM, which was worrying because we weren't sure we could check in that late. Fortunately, we were able to do so. Out of all the places we stayed, this hotel was the BEST. It was actually in a renovated Chateau, and it was gorgeous! The proprietor was extremely nice, and even though he claimed he didn't speak English very well, he was quite good at it. Much better than our French, though that wasn't too big a feat. I gather he had some trouble with some Americans that had showed up once speaking no French at all and had some difficulty with them. Still, this B&B (which it really was, not a hotel) was superb and his breakfast was great. The whole place just exuded calm relaxation. We wish we could have just stayed there the whole time in Burgundy - highly recommended to anyone travelling to France! Unfortunately, we couldn't even stay there for our time in Auxerre, as the weekend had already been booked when we called. So we only got one night... He also recommended to us the (only) restaurant in the small town for dinner. It was FABULOUS. It was also pricey, but when you consider that we had two four course dinners with wine and "palate cleansers" in between (sorbet, a little tart, etc...) it wasn't too pricey. Plus, it was by far the nicest restaurant I've ever eaten in (I've been in a few that *wished* they were that nice), but they still let us in wearing t-shirts and jeans. Charles buttoned up his flannel so he looked ok, at least. The setting was fantastic too. Very nice (and the wine was fabulous).
The next day (after a relaxing, leisurely breakfast) we headed up to Auxerre and checked into our hotel there. Also a nice hotel, but more...well, hotel-like. We then spent pretty much the rest of the day walking around Auxerre and seeing the sights (it has four cathedrals within very short distance of each other -- two of which are practically right next to each other). By the end of the day, I was extremely tired & had developed a headache, so took a nap while Charles headed out and did a bit of laundry (isn't he sweet? :) Afterwards we got some dinner and then called it a day. The next morning we got up (and hit the usual patisserie for breakfast/lunch baguette) and then headed out to drive down to Vezeley and through a national forest to get to Beaune. It was by and large a very nice drive, although Charles drove the whole way (I was very tired & sleepy about the time he wanted to switch so we took a brief break & he kept driving). Vezeley was also very neat. We had to park a ways away, due to it being summer and not being allowed to drive up to the square by the church. We walked up to it along the street and took a bunch of pictures. This is the church where there are relics of Mary Magdalene, so we went down into the crypt as well. It was a very pretty church situated on top of a hill with quite a view. We grabbed another ham & cheese sandwich on the way out (I was hungry) and it had superb cheese on it so I was happy. :) Afterwards we headed through the forest, which as I mentioned was a very pretty drive. We arrived in Beaune without incident, though the traffic there was a little nuts (not like Paris though) and checked into our hotel.
Beaune was an interesting place. There was a Baroque music festival going on, which might have added to a bit of the tourists there, although it seemed that most of them were there for the same reason as we were - wine. Still, Beaune had a number of sights to see as well, including the Hotel Dieu (house of God, essentially) which had been built as a sick house during the plague -- by someone who thought that *everyone* deserved good treatment, even the poor. So the poor got what was essentially a beautiful palace to spend their days in, complete with chapel at the end of the sick room so they didn't have to get out of bed (many couldn't) to attend service. The tiles on the inner roof were what we read about as the "typical burgundian tiles" although the exterior was austere to deter thieves by implying there wasn't money there - betrayed a bit by the ornate spire, but hey. Also, there was a lovely church (Notre Dame ;) which had tapestries displayed about the Virgin Mary's life. We saw other town sights as well, though we thought (after Dinan, etc) that the ramparts were a little disappointing. However we also saw some really neat art there - one place was essentially 3-D wood carvings with interesting perspectives (one was sort of a fish-eye lens kind of look) and another was just a place with fabulous paintings that I really really liked. At the latter I bought a poster and some post cards - alas, I couldn't afford the actual art (but actual art is very pricey).
And then there was the wine tasting, which we did on several different days. One thing interesting about many of the wine cellars is that they are in Very Old Buildings, which often used to be a convent/church/etc. This means that the cellars themselves are pretty neat, being Old and all, and containing things like statues and sarcophagi and stuff. One we went into (Patriarche Pere & Fils. Alas, the only time we forgot the camera!) was very neat -- the entrance was through an old old convent chapel which was incredibly ornately carved. It also had much better wine than the other one (Marche du Vins). So anyway, you go in, and either get a glass or a little metal tasting cup, and wander around to barrels and taste wine. Yep. You pour it yourself, and you're "supposed" to spit it discreetely into a provided small barrel...but no one really does (why waste it? :) At the bigger places you get a little scorecard to write down comments (of course they hop you buy - but if you pay to get in, it's less expected). Anyway, it was really neat to see bottles and bottles and bottles (and HUGE barrels!) of wine, as well as learning about how they do wine stuff. We also went to the wine museum which was pretty neat, where we learned all about making wine. It really is an art... (so why doesn't it count as art when you go through customs?) In addition to the two places in Beaune itself, we took a drive along the Grand Cru route, through all these little towns. We wound up tasting at only three places that day (me tasting mostly, since one of us had to drive...) but we saw lots of stuff, and only got lost once ("hey...are we *supposed* to be driving up into the hills?").
We also took a day to go back up to Auxerre area (Irancy, really) to attempt to find (yet again) the wine that we had at La Chamaille that first evening in Burgundy. They were closed but we did find another small winegrower on recommendation from the only local restaurant/bar/grocery store and bought some of that wine (Woo! 4 Euros a bottle!). We also went to an abbey which was really neat; although it rained pretty heavily right when we got there, it did stop somewhat while we were inside the first part. We then found another ruined castle from the map, and got a great view of a rainbow from the top of the only standing (probably restored) tower that you could go in (it seemed that people lived in the other one).
The last day we headed back to Paris and were so tired after the drive and returning the rental car and using the bus/metro to get to the hotel that pretty much we just hung around the hotel area. After trying fairly unsuccessfully to find a good dinner, we wound up at a place that at least served us cheese sandwiches. Bastille Day is apparently not a good day to try to eat out in Paris. Still, it was a good trip in all, and Charles arranged for the shuttle to the airport again in the morning - we headed out at about 6:30AM for our trip back. There was only one small glitch -- they forgot to ask for the key to the hotel room and we were pretty rushed checking out. So we got to the airport and we still had the key! Fortunately the hotel address was on the keychain, so we sent it from the airport post office back to them.

So to sum up: France is neat. There are castles, wine, good food, and very nice people, even in Paris. Being married is kinda weird, and causes much giggling when we call each other "husband" or "wife" (especially the latter - for some reason it's a very funny word. Particularly when Charles says it). And life is settling down into a routine again, for the first time in what seems like a very very long time. No more classes for me, just research. Starting to go to Aikido again. Enjoying having free time - I even had time to finish off a book, and have another one to read now. :)