Post by Becky (Berkeleytravelers) on Jun 22, 2008 1:20:28 GMT -5
It's taken me a little time to get organized enough to post about our recent trip to France, but at long last, here's a short report.
We arrived in France on May 26, taking the train from CDG to Bordeaux to pick up a car large enough for six passengers plus luggage - necessary (and not easy to find, hence the Bordeaux pickup). Getting the car and getting out of Bordeax was not difficult (although returning it was an entirely different matter, due to much construction around the station, general lack of signage, etc. - was very glad we had allowed what seemed like a really excessive amount of time before departure to Paris!)
Our family group (BIL Phil, his two sons Elliott and Kenny, and daughter Kelly) was scheduled to arrive on May 29, and we spent the intervening days meeting with our architect about the house and dashing around looking at tile, door handles, kitchen cabinets, etc., as we don't plan to be there again prior to completion of the project.
For those of you who have asked, here are a couple of shots of Becky & Joe's Construction Site:
We picked up the family in Angouleme (after dealing with their luggage emergency, because one of their bags was lost - although it worked out fine eventually, delivered two days later in rural France to the owners of the gite where we had them booked). So, since we knew Elliott was not going to have much in the way of clothes etc., we spent a little time in Angouleme while waiting for their train, picking up some necessities for him.
Angouleme:
The train was on time, and we met them on the platform (looking a bit frazzled, but not surprising in the circumstances):
We set off for Aubeterre and stopped for a quick photo op before going on to our gite to make sure they had some dinner before crashing for the night (this being France, "dinner" was cheese, bread, wine, cherries, stawberries, etc.):
Over the next several days we did what Joe calls the "not in Kansas any more" tour of the Dordogne valley (Beynac, Domme, Castelnaud, Sarlat, Rocamador - yes, I know it's actually in the Lot - Bergerac, etc.). One day we saw fields of beautiful poppies that looked like they came straight from Impressionist paintings:
No other pictures to post, because they are mostly family and not really different from what I've posted in past trip reports (except, of course, for the people you don't know ).
One of the more unusual things we did was to go to Arcachon (about 30 km west of Bordeaux), because one of the nephews was intrigued by the idea of seeing "the other side" of the Atlantic. I didn't much care for Arcachon - it's a resort town like the others, nothing special in my view (but then again, I have the same reaction to Nice so don't take my word for it ). From Arcachon, however, we went about 30 minutes down the coast to the Dune du Pyla - the largest sand dune in Europe, I'm told. It actually was quite interesting. There are stairs to get to the top, and it goes for a very long way (probably several km at least) along the coast. The water is very beautiful there (not at all like "our" side of the Atlantic):
Coming back from Arcachon we missed an exit that would have put us on the toll road to get back to Bergerac and ended up on a secondary road - with the surprise below when we came around a curve:
This decidedly mixed group was being moved from one pasture area to another, with the help of several herders and some dogs (very well trained and quite effective).
Phil (BIL) had been to the area before (he went with Joe on the first house-hunting expedition), but this was the first time in France for Elliott, Kenny and Kelly. Quite a change from Chicago!
We arrived in France on May 26, taking the train from CDG to Bordeaux to pick up a car large enough for six passengers plus luggage - necessary (and not easy to find, hence the Bordeaux pickup). Getting the car and getting out of Bordeax was not difficult (although returning it was an entirely different matter, due to much construction around the station, general lack of signage, etc. - was very glad we had allowed what seemed like a really excessive amount of time before departure to Paris!)
Our family group (BIL Phil, his two sons Elliott and Kenny, and daughter Kelly) was scheduled to arrive on May 29, and we spent the intervening days meeting with our architect about the house and dashing around looking at tile, door handles, kitchen cabinets, etc., as we don't plan to be there again prior to completion of the project.
For those of you who have asked, here are a couple of shots of Becky & Joe's Construction Site:
We picked up the family in Angouleme (after dealing with their luggage emergency, because one of their bags was lost - although it worked out fine eventually, delivered two days later in rural France to the owners of the gite where we had them booked). So, since we knew Elliott was not going to have much in the way of clothes etc., we spent a little time in Angouleme while waiting for their train, picking up some necessities for him.
Angouleme:
The train was on time, and we met them on the platform (looking a bit frazzled, but not surprising in the circumstances):
We set off for Aubeterre and stopped for a quick photo op before going on to our gite to make sure they had some dinner before crashing for the night (this being France, "dinner" was cheese, bread, wine, cherries, stawberries, etc.):
Over the next several days we did what Joe calls the "not in Kansas any more" tour of the Dordogne valley (Beynac, Domme, Castelnaud, Sarlat, Rocamador - yes, I know it's actually in the Lot - Bergerac, etc.). One day we saw fields of beautiful poppies that looked like they came straight from Impressionist paintings:
No other pictures to post, because they are mostly family and not really different from what I've posted in past trip reports (except, of course, for the people you don't know ).
One of the more unusual things we did was to go to Arcachon (about 30 km west of Bordeaux), because one of the nephews was intrigued by the idea of seeing "the other side" of the Atlantic. I didn't much care for Arcachon - it's a resort town like the others, nothing special in my view (but then again, I have the same reaction to Nice so don't take my word for it ). From Arcachon, however, we went about 30 minutes down the coast to the Dune du Pyla - the largest sand dune in Europe, I'm told. It actually was quite interesting. There are stairs to get to the top, and it goes for a very long way (probably several km at least) along the coast. The water is very beautiful there (not at all like "our" side of the Atlantic):
Coming back from Arcachon we missed an exit that would have put us on the toll road to get back to Bergerac and ended up on a secondary road - with the surprise below when we came around a curve:
This decidedly mixed group was being moved from one pasture area to another, with the help of several herders and some dogs (very well trained and quite effective).
Phil (BIL) had been to the area before (he went with Joe on the first house-hunting expedition), but this was the first time in France for Elliott, Kenny and Kelly. Quite a change from Chicago!