Advertisement
A bright and early start once again, heading south today into the Beaujolais region! We did fortunately make a stop via The Louvre this morning, with its closure the day before it was nice to go inside while we were in Paris. Most importantly we saw The Mona Lisa, and it's so much smaller than I imagined! Now, exiting The Louvre was a nightmare; someone allegedly got caught damaging an artwork (no one on Contiki thank goodness!) so the whole building was in lock down, no one could leave the exit as they were all closed off. After a good 30 minutes, I managed to get out alongside a few others and the next struggle was trying to find where the coach was parked! Ran back to the coach, virtually drenched in sweat, with mostly everyone sitting comfortably on board waiting to go. However, on the plus side, I tried my first macaroon - divine!
So we hit the French motorway, a 7 hour journey with a couple of service/lunch stops along the way. This was a lazy day, slept most of it away on the drive, a few card games also! This was now our chance to get know
each other better, time for us to introduce ourselves on the microphone standing at the front of the coach! So I knew there was a reason why I shouldn't have sat on the front seat, this meant I was first cab off the ranks - we had to say where we were from, what we do back home, where we want to see the most on tour and our most embaressing/bizzare moments in life, now there was nothing to nutty or out-there but was a light-hearted way to get to know each other! Tour Manager Katie told us that we would have our first Contiki theme party tonight also - Trashbags!
The next two nights were at a Contiki special stopover, so we would be residing in Chateau de Cruix, Contiki's own 16th century chateau. Upon arrival, we went for a short walk to hear a brief talk about the history of The Beaujolais Wine region. The area is famous for it's light-bodied red wine, and uses Gamay grapes. White wine isn't a huge seller, having only a 1% stake of production. Being 5pm by the time this was finished, it was time to go back to the Chateau
and get ready for dinner!
Dinner was great, prepared by Contiki staff with help from the Cookies and Dishees also. What this means is, everyone on our tour gets their duties of either helping out in the kitchen cooking, or doing their bit washing up and clearing tables. This just made breakfast and dinner run smoothly, the way we were assigned was just at random and we only each had to do it once over the course of the tour, so we each got a fair share.
Trashbags theme party! Our opportunity to not get spruced up for something, instead looking dirty, wearing plastic bags, black make-up on the face - that sort of thing. Look as derro, and dodgy as one possibly can. The event was held in "The Cave", yes, a cave in the basement below the chateau just fixed up with some UV lights, a wicked sound system and a decent bar. So I can safely say we all got a little jolly drinking glasses of wine (well, actually from plastic cups!) and 80% alcohol shots from this booze that had a dead snake inside the bottle - was rank!
After a bit of
a lousy sleep - birds tweeting outside our window at about 2am for a few hours, there was an organised picnic lunch for us, at the top of the world! We met down in the foyer of the chataeu around 11am to go on our short, apparently 30 minute walk to get to this spot. There were 8 of us per group, and we all took turns of carrying the picnic bag with all our lunch. Once we really got walking, it became apparent that it was going to take a little while longer than just half an hour. With a slight wrong turn, and managing to lose the other half of our group (the half with our lunch) it took us 2.5 hours to reach the picnic area. Perhaps jeans & thongs weren't the best idea. It became clear that we were very late, especially when other groups are coming back down and already eaten! Although the walk was long, it was nice, very peaceful.
So about 6 of us started venturing back down this mountain to head back to the chateau after a few hours up top. On the way back to the accommodation, one of the
girls slipped, none of us had first aid, so myself and one of the girls ran back to get help. She had to get stitches in her knee, but pulled through well. The afternoon was relaxing, sat on the chairs outside the chateau, read a book and chatted amongst ourselves. And of coarse, we played UNO!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0418s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb