Leaving France...

We're just about to leave France to spend a week in the UK before heading back to Victoria and we're a few days behind on our blog.  We did our best to keep on top of the blog entries, but we fell off the wagon in the end, or got run over by the wagon, or whatever...We probably won't get to finishing our last entries before getting home. So before going, I'll just quickly summarize the last few days...

We spent Bastille Day at the Domaine de Marie Antoinette (Petit and Grand Trianon and Hameau de Marie Antoinette).  This was partially in heavy rain, which then turned into beautiful sunshine.  We got lots of nice pics, which we'll share when we have time.

In the evening, we watched some Bastille Day fireworks from a distance. There seemed to be celebrations happening in every direction.

The next few days, we mostly wandered around Paris with no particular destination (nice for a change!), saw some areas we hadn't explored and did a bit of shopping.

Today has been a quiet day of tidying the house and packing before getting a very early EuroStar train to London tomorrow morning.

Montmartre

We finally made it to Montmartre. It was a day of stairs: 200+ stairs just to get out of the metro, lots of stairs up to the base of Sacré Coeur, 300 stairs to the top, 300 stairs back down again... You get the idea.

We surfaced the metro at one of the only remaining intact original Metro entrances.

We worked our way over to the base of Sacré Coeur.

We spotted a recent statue dedicated to Cavalier de la Barre, who in 1766 was singing a song and did not doff his hat to some nearby monks. So, they cut out his tongue, decapitated him and burnt his body. 

We decided to climb to the top of Sacré Coeur. With minimal line up and only 5€ each, it seemed like a much better way to get a view than at the Eiffel Tower. We figure with all those stairs and no elevator, most people were giving it a pass. But it was totally worth it.

We popped out on the roof to see how much further we had to go.

At the top the view was amazing.

Going down...

We enjoyed a cardiac crépe for lunch - bacon, potato, onion in some sort of bechamel with raclette! We're going to invest in a defibrillator!

Next, we checked out the Dali museum. It was ok, but there weren't actually many original works - sculptures were basically licensed by Dali, so he didn't even make the model from which the castings were done. Also, sketches were lithographs. And there wasn't even one of his fabulous paintings. Oh well...

We wandered around Montmartre a bit more. Recognize this place? M. Collignon wasn't there.

Intellectual grafitti:

We found the fabric district. There were 6 floors of stuff at Marché Saint Pierre. We gave it a quick look, but didn't buy anything.

This was worse than Value Village. It was piles of clothing in bins!  Maybe it was cheap, but we didn't have the patience to investigate.

And we didn't forget to go looking for the windmill (Moulin).

L'Opéra

Today was a day relating to opera. First stop was Opéra Garnier, built in Haussmann's era by a then unknown architect, Charles Garnier. It was opened in 1875 after 15 years of construction. There was lots to look at!

The view from the terrace was pretty nice.

They had a library with a display of old set models. We figure their stage at Opéra Garnier is a bit bigger than that at the Royal...

We then headed to Printemps Galeries Lafayette (another Grand Magasin) to catch a view of the opera house from above.

Some crazy person once landed a plane on the top of Printemps Galeries Lafayette. And here's the proof:

Printemps is pretty swishy and has some fabulous architecture for a department store. Check out the guy having a champagne break.

We had heard about cheap last minute opera tickets and decided to try to obtain some for closing night of Cunning Little Vixen at Opéra Bastille. Apparently you can show up an hour before doors open and get tickets for 10€, but lots of other people had the same idea. We were tired so we figured that paying any more for tickets wasn't a good idea since we may both just fall asleep anyway!

We spend the rest of the day wandering around and ended up at Notre Dame in the evening. We got to see the building a bit closer up this time.

Here's our favourite Saint again, Saint Denis.

What a nice way to end a day.

A Quiet Day at Home

After our epic trip to Blois, we decided to lay low for a day. We headed to a nearby town for their local market - up and over the big hill and past the lakes. I guess we were totally spent because we didn't take one picture of that cute little market! Oh, and it was killer hot again so we were also moving pretty slow. We did manage to capture a photo of our lunch which resulted from the trip.

We finally picked les groseilles (red currants) in the yard. There were tons and we donated a couple of bowl-fulls to the next door neighbours, one of whom is originally from the US. That lead to an invitation to join them for a drink. They were having friends over to watch the World Cup Final - a lovely group of people, mostly English speaking wives and French husbands. So, the husbands watched the game, and Shea and the ladies had interesting conversation around curse words in various languages. Lots of fun and educational too!

La Vallée de la Loire : Day 3

On our last day in the Loire Valley, we intended to see 2 châteaux and a museum. We woke up to torrential rain but headed to Chambord nevertheless.  We were one of the few cars in the parking lot and had to sit in the car waiting for a break in the rain.  We still got soaked in the few hundred metres we had to sprint to the ticket booth and then again to the château entrance.

The Château de Chambord is located in a former marsh, within what is now the largest public forest park in France, and possibly Europe - the park is the size of inner Paris.  King François I began construction of Chambord in 1519 as a hunting lodge.  Because of its intended use, and since it was never an official royal residence, the interior did not have the same ornamentation as some of the other châteaux we have seen, but as the largest château in the Loire, it is nonetheless a very imposing building.

The architecture of Chambord is quite interesting and unique.  It was built around a central keep, containing a double-spiral staircase, which was topped with an ornate lantern that allowed natural light into the center of the building.

Not too many of the rooms are recreated as they would have been when the château was lived in, but there are many mementos of its history as a hunting lodge.

Danielle was quite concerned about the baby birds (partridges?) in the display case.

We quite liked this engraving. We're pretty sure the guy holding the boat buggered off and left his buddy to sort out the bear on his own.

Even though the interior is not very ornate, there is a lot of detail on the exterior of the building, which is especially striking from the rooftop terrace.

It was still rainy by the time we finally made it to the roof. Our shoes never did dry out this day...

After returning our rental car, we had a bit of time to spare before catching our train back to Paris so we decided to squeeze in one more thing. The Maison de la Magie was more of a kids' attraction with all sorts of things relating to illusions and magic, including a live theatrical magic show. Probably the most interesting thing was the animatronic 6-headed dragon that came out every hour.

Highlights from our return trip to Paris included seeing a field of sunflowers against the backdrop of a nuclear power station, and the giant vending machine at Gare de Lyon.