Another French Adventure

We left our home on the harbor in Pemaquid Beach on Thursday a week ago and five days later we were in Versailles, with a stop in New Jersey to do laundry and repack. 

We are always sad to pack up for the season and leave Heron Cove because we have come to love being there. We have in a few seasons made more friends and acquaintances than we did in living in our New Jersey home for 46 years. Of course, that could be because for most of the formative years in New Jersey we were busy with raising children, getting additional college degrees (several of them), and building careers. By the time that our work lives were over, we had bought our house in Pemaquid Beach where we have immersed ourselves in fitting into our community.

However, the promise of a trip to France made the end of the season routine easier to tolerate.

And, so, here we are!  We left Newark airport on Sunday, arrived at CDG airport on Monday and for the first time ever, we stayed at the airport hotel to recuperate from the trip. We always say that we should do that, but eager to get right into the swing of things, we never have scheduled a day of down time upon arrival. What a difference it made.

After sleeping on the plane on both legs of our trip (via Reykjavik), I forced myself to stay awake but relaxing until normal bedtime here. Then when I awoke in the morning the next day, I was in sync with the local time and had no jet lag. Larry was not able to get any sleep on the plane, so he was desperate for a nap when we arrived at our hotel. Then he had the usual jet lag. So, lesson learned.

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Versailles

We picked up our car at the airport and drove directly to Versailles. We went to Versailles probably twenty years ago and had not returned in our many trips since. We skipped the tour of the building because we remembered it well. I really wanted to spend some time in the gardens because on our previous trip we didn't cover much ground in the gardens after wandering all through the enormous palace.

It's pretty much impossible to take a photo of the entire palace, partly because of its shape and partly because it is so huge. This is just a corner of one wing, but very representative of the architecture of the palace. 

The gardens stretch forever and include several waterscapes such as the canal on which one can rent a small boat and several pools of varying sizes.

On the day that we were there, the groundskeepers were taking in all of the plants (including trees) in containers and storing them for the winter in the orangerie, like in this photo.

The French are very precise in their gardening; nothing just happens. Everything is planned out exactly and all shrubs whether small or very large are trimmed neatly.

By late October, the fountains (all 50 of them) had been shut off and the statues were being covered up for the winter. I could not figure out how they chose which statues to wrap up. They wrapped some, but not others. Here the workers are using a cherry picker to reach the top of some marble lady. 

The gardens were started somewhere around 1635, shortly after King Louis III bought the final parcel of land. By 1746, this plan was established, which is pretty much the same as it is today.

This schematic only shows about a quarter the layout of the gardens, but gives an idea of the scope of the plan as early as fifty years before the French Revolution. This is what the map of the gardens looks like today. It is still such a large area (3 square miles) that there are whole sections not shown here.

Obviously, we didn't cover much territory even though it seemed like we had walked for several miles. To adequately see all of the grounds, one would need to rent a golf cart because it would be impossible to walk the distance through all of the gardens.

Walking is a tiring activity for older adults, so by 4:30, we were a half hour away from closing time but decided to leave the grounds anyway for a short walk to our hotel. 

In France, there is always at least a decent restaurant within a stone's throw from wherever you are standing at the moment. We found a good bistro directly across the street from our hotel and had a really good meal there. While both waiters spoke rather good English, our waiter apologized for not having menus in English. I took that to be a good sign actually because it meant that they are not necessarily on the tourist map. In fact everyone in the restaurant except us and the two young women seated next to us were French and appeared to be local. I am never intimidated by menus in French because, being a card-carrying foodie, I make a point of learning "Menu French". I get stuck sometimes on the names of fish, but otherwise I pretty much have it under control.

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Amboise

When we were planning our trip, I suggested that we might like to revisit the Loire which I have come to love. After the torturous mountains of Languedoc and Provence, I am thrilled with the flat plains of the Loire. This is our third trip to the Loire. Last year we chose an apartment in the lovely town of Amboise. We liked the apartment, we liked the town and we met a wonderful new friend, Beate. Since I enjoy traveling to familiar places (or at least mixing in some familiar with some new), I suggested that we stay in the same apartment.

This whole trip (about 3 1/2 weeks in total) was planned only a month before starting. Normally we start at least six months in advance, but we were waiting for Larry to get clearance to travel from his physician. As soon as we knew that he could leave the country, we started making plans. Let me say that again. Immediately after his doctor's appointment, we went home and started planning a trip within the hour. However, the trip would begin in about 30 days, so we had very little time to get a reasonable airfare, figure out where we wanted to go and to line up apartments in those areas. All the more reason to choose apartments that we had stayed in before.

We got unpacked just as the stores were reopening after their afternoon break and the sun was breaking through the rain clouds. It seemed a good time for a walk around town.  Here are some representative photos of the old town of Amboise.

We went into the chateau last year, so we skipped it this year and simply took the steps up to the top of the hill where the chateau is and then walked around the lookout. The road down from the hill took us past the caves, some of which are inhabited and some of which have been abandoned (probably due to safety concerns -- the rock is quite soft). Here are some that are current residences:

And this is what they look like when abandoned:

For some reason, I am totally fascinated by the idea of cave living. These "houses" have all of the modern conveniences of today -- plumbing, electricity, wifi, cable TV -- but have the added advantage of maintaining a year-round temperature of about 60F. All that is needed to keep these cave homes toasty warm is a few baseboard heaters to raise the temperature a meager 10 degrees.

Along our walk, we saw three sets of these bookshelves. They run on the "leave one, take one" system.

Amboise is a lovely town. It is very walkable, it is very friendly, it has enough tourists to make English widely spoken by shopkeepers and, most of all, it is a real town where people really live, not just a relic kept alive by tourists renting the gites. We have been to a few of those towns and they are like living museums but not like real places.

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