Hope and Vanessa's European Adventure

We’re both back on Canadian soil. And we are both fighting nasty colds. At least we waited until we got home!

We have lots of memories and tons of pictures. I was going to load some here but I don’t have the energy to figure out which pics to load what with my aching head, runny nose and hacking cough. So glad I have one more day, Monday, to recover before back to work Tuesday.

Thanks everyone for following our adventure. We appreciated having an audience and sharing our escapades.

I guess I should tell you that we did brave the cold, rainy weather on Armistice Day (Nov 11) and made it to the Arc de Triomphe, and then the Eiffel Tower. Did lots of walking that day, which was the nastiest we’ve encountered. I think in one post I said that we were within walking distance of all the major sights…we certainly were not. The maps they give you are definately not to scale. So we did a lot of walking, took the metro a few times and taxis the rest of the time. Anyone know a good massage therapist? I could use about a gazillion one-hour sessions.

Off for a nap. A bientot.

Vanessa

It’s early Friday morning and we are getting ready to have one of our final French pastries for breakfast (along with the great coffee here at the hotel). Our taxi picks us up in 45 minutes (7:30 am) and we fly out to Toronto at 11:30. It’s been great here but I am looking forward to getting back home – there’s no place like it.

Au revoir Paris.

Vanessa

Hello everyone. The two blueberries are tired tonite. Today we braved our way around the metro stations to make our way back to the Gare de Lyon, hoping to obtain the items Hope lost on the train the other day. Unfortunately our luck did not extend that far…the items were not there apparently (though they wouldn’t let her look at what they had so seemed kind of shady). And – surprise – more rudeness from the French again today. LOL well, we’ve also seen plenty of very friendly folks too…but it’s not as much fun talking about them 🙂

Second stop today we visited the magnificent Notre Dame cathedral. It was spectacular. Then we wandered over to the lewver as I’ve been saying much to Hope’s chagrin. Okay the “Loevre”. It was okay. Heehee Really it was fabulous too but we only had enough energy to see 1.5 hrs worth, so made our way to the Mona Lisa then to Napolean’s apartments. Indescribable really. Hope will give you more detail later when she finds blogging time. We then made our way back down to our hotel. We basically walked for 8 straight hours…thus the title of this post. I’m not sure how excited I will be to sightsee tomorrow, but our plans are to see the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. But we are flexible and plans often change where we are concerned.

More updates to follow. Please keep those comments coming if you are reading our blog – we appreciate hearing from you!

Bonsoir and chat with you all again soon.

Vanessa

Arrive Paris, full of energy and excitement into rush hour crowds flowing into one of e busiest train stations in the world. Wow, Parisienne hustle and bustle. Get tickets for metro to take us to our B&B. Get on the train, 4 stops, get off the train, grab taxi, it’s chiller here, been raining, but lovely with leaves carpetting the sidewalk. The lights are glistening off the wet sidewalks. Ah,,,,Paris.

WHAM – enter B&B only to get verbally abused by the crusty old bitch who owns the place for about 10 minutes before she calls in reinforcement from her husband and together they bereate me for another 30 minutes – welcome to Paris I guess. Once in a while during the berating, a bit of mental instability peaks through and they would try to be nice between the insults and berating. All this in French, and Vanessa can follow enough to know it is not good, hell a marshian would know from the thick frost alone.

It turns out, she never got all the details of our reservation, or any of the messages I sent (4 in total) as the poor dear was in “the country” this past month, roughing it without internet or a land line. It was ALL my fault, according to her. We had requested 2 separate beds, like the ad had shown. We arrived and the beds were pushed together and made up for a couple. Well, you’d think the world had gone to hell because we asked for them to be separated. I even offered if she left the sheets, we’d do it ourselves. WELL, there was the insult. Not only did i insult her, she had an a ppt, her housekeeper was gone and she didn’t know how to do that, but she bitched and whined the whole time she did it and made no bones about letting me know every 5 seconds how rude I was, what an inconvenience we were for her, she would never rent to Canadians again, if we wanted to find another place in the morning, she invited us to do that….then, “what time and what would you 2 ladies like for breakfast” -HUH?

So Vanessa and I left the bags packed and headed out in search of new digs while the COB (Crotchety Old Bitch) went out for her appointment ( or so we thought). We totally lucked out, hotel room from heaven and we were received by Adil, who I almost married on the spot. He was so nice to us and still is. So the day ended well aft all that, have no idea if we will get our pre-paid room money back, or if Hertz decided to gouge the heck out of us since we weren’t there for the drop off inspection lest we miss our 2nd train. But even if the COB doesn’t give our money back, we could not have stayed there, she would have likely poisoned us,,,and then you know how it goes, there’d be an investigation, an award winning book, and then movie rights….too much drama. Paris has the Hunchback, it doesn’t need to be upstaged by we2bluberries on the big screen.

I left a bag on the train with some precious items in it. I realized it about 10 minutes later, was allowed to go back and get it, it was there, but half of the items were missing so we are on a mission tomorrow to lost and found to see if they were stolen or turned in. Nothing irreplaceable, but some favorite items and personal mementos acquired on this trip.

So today we did retail a therapy to recover, I had enough therapy to be almost 100%. We’re going for dinner now, then maybe watch a film in our room. Tomorrow the Louvre, Notre Dame and a little Longchamps! Bon sour a tous

Esperance and Venezia

Are you sitting down? Monday was a series of small, very stressful and frustrating disasters, but it all ended well due to our new friend at the Paris Clarion.

We got out of the medieval dungeon ok (aka the B&B) for the 20 minute drive to the Aix en Provence rapid train station. We arrived 21/2 hrs later after a scenic drive across the whole f’ing region. During that drive in our manual-stick-shift car, which what was at first nostalgic for these 2 bluebeamer-automatic-transmission-babes, but became a huge pain in the ass when you have postage stamps
to turn around on. Which we did about 3000 times, after we would figure out about every 500m we were going the wrong way. You see, the French must either want to stick it to the tourists or the economic crisis hit them so hard they didn’t have the money to put up the rest of the street or road signs. We also found out that the trusty GPS we were using doesn’t work in the French countryside, or it was in one of its selective moods. We ended up at the train station on time, but oooops, thanks to faulty GPS and lack of road signs, it was the wrong station. Which meant our train was the leaving the station we were supposed to be at, about 45 km away. The agent at the country station was frustrated with us until I said we were Canadian. It really is amazing how the attitude changes when they discover you are not American. He helped us with written instructions from one station to the next, which we also struggled with because of no road signs. You see, they even name their “round a bouts” here, but you never know which one you’re at – and there are a lot of them. Finally we found our ration, a place to gas up the rental and dropped it, threw the keys at the Hertz lady (nicely of course) and ran like hell with about 20 seconds to spare to catch the next train. We made it.

We were about to have a nice, quick 3 hour ride to Paris on the bullet train, until the artist across from us and Vanessa struck up conversation. She was nice enough at first, but quickly turned into Joan of Arc when she found out we worked in oil and gas. Vanessa retreated into her book and you all know me well enough to know how I responded when she asked for my business card, what kind of company it was and when I said oil and gas her response was “oh the bad guys” and that “the oil is from the ground, so it should stay there”…hmmm enter Soap Box Hope… so “so what is that necklace and pendant around your neck made of, oh – metal – comes from the ground -oh – and you are using that to adorn yourself, should that metal not stay in the ground??? I soon softened and became teacher instead of preacher!!!!! Yay Hope. She gave us her number if we wanted to meet up. I told Vanessa if she wanted to meet up with Joan of Arc, she’s on her own. End of disaster #1, it gets better later that night….stay tuned.

Bonjour everyone! Yesterday was very frustrating for the 2 blueberries…BUT we are finally here and safe and eager to start exploring this beautiful city. We are no longer staying at the intended B&B but in a Clarion hotel a few blocks away. I think we are still in the 8th district and within walking of the Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees…all the good stuff.

Sorry for the short post but we promise to blog more later as you will most definately be amused by yesterday’s adventure!

A bientot.

PS we are in Paris until we fly home Friday; should arrive in Calgary by early evening (Paris to Toronto to Calgary).

C’est la vie de Vanessa et Esperance, we stroll, we dine, we wine, we buy, we sleep, we cheese (did you know that cheese is now a verb), well in France it is.

We’re off in first class tomorrow on the high speed grain to Paris. Sounds luxurious, but there was only €1 difference between coach and first class – lets’s face it, the only coach i like comes with matching wallet, so we’re headed to Paris in style! Ah, Paris, the city of almond croissants and creme brûlée ( I have tasted, turned my nose up at and not enjoyed a creme brûlée since I left Paris 81/2 years ago) – oh this is what I have been waiting for….and to share with my best friend will make it taste all the better.

I definitely want to come back to the Provence area in early September timeframe when flowers are blooming, its still warm and still able to swim. there are lots of hikes, great cycling routes and even kayaking – that’s what this trip was all about, finding out where to buy a summer home where i can do all my outdoor activities, when I win the lottery!

More tomorrow from the city of lights. Bon soirée a tous…
Esperance

Vanessa here. So we’re back at L’Jardin de Marie for the evening, taking it easy and preparing for our trip via TGV train to Paris tomorrow. We have enjoyed Aix en Pce but we are eager to get to Paris for the final leg of our trip. It is so nice being in France with Hope who can interpret and let me know when I’ve offended anyone…the French are so SENSITIVE! Alors, I am trying to speak my high school French when I can. Today us Sunday and things really do slow down in Europe in Sundays…a lot of shops and restaurants are closed. We were able to get more cheese today but not figs or wine. Sigh. I don’t know what we will do 🙂

Today we took a drive in the country and it was quite beautiful. We ran across a castle in a small village which had been owned and occupied by Picasso. Impressive for sure. Didn’t get to any museums here, to see any Cezanne, but we will see beautiful works when we get to Paris.

Okay, that’s it for now…chat with you all soon.

Everything is provincial as they say. This place is bustling with people. Apparently everyone comes to town on Saturdays, and we saw them all. Finally, Vanessa and I did not feel so out out place as the humidity picked up due to the threat of rain, and frizzy hair seems “la mode” here so it’s not just us. We have not figured out how to defrizz since arriving in Europe. While we love Europe with all it’s splendor, for us (from Calgary where humidity is measured in the negatives) it has meant frizzy hair and zits , but we have managed.

We have no itinerary tomorrow, were going to do wine tours, but for some reason the wineries are all closed this week – quelle insulte – did they not know I was coming to town?

It’s a quaint town, we will likely do the museum as it has a section on Cezanne, I studied him in University.

Alors, I must bid you adieu, we have bread, cheese, fresh figs, wine to consume – all of which we picked up at stores within a block of the B&B where we are staying. Speaking of this place, you should see it, it’s uh, different, an old medieval building, that was remodeled about 200 hrs ago.

Bonne soirée a tous
Esperance