Trip to the other side of the world

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Who would have thought life in Samoa could get so busy! Excuses aside, I’ve finally written the first instalment of our trip to the other side of the world. Europe really is on the other side from Samoa, you can go either way around and it takes about the same time. So here you go:

Having barely spent three months settling in to our new island home, Ed and I suddenly decided it would be a really good idea to jump up and leave again for three weeks to Europe. I’d been hatching the plan for a little while, but it was only at the very last minute we decided it would actually work. It wasn’t completely harebrained, we did have a couple of good reasons for launching off again - my cousin Rachel’s wedding in the UK and an opportunity to see my rather large extended family, and also an opportunity to spend a few days hanging out with the Fiji Rugby World Cup team in France and see one of their games. So after a few hasty emails lining up drinks with some London friends, a call to Mum and Dad (who were heading to the wedding) to bring us over some warm clothes, and a ridiculous amount of time in aeroplanes and airports, we arrived in London. We had a couple of days in the city, staying with my cousin Damian, his wife Claire and their gorgeous kids, and zooming around catching up with people. We then headed down to Sussex for the wedding, arriving a day early to spend some time with the family and help with the preparations. Chailey is a picture perfect English village surrounded by lush green fields, and so of course the obvious thing to do that evening was to head to the local pub, the Five Bells, for a good old English pub meal with all the various family members who had thus far arrived.

The wedding itself was a ball - Mum and I had had great fun trying on all manner of hats to go with our outfits the night before, and the next morning after a few last minute preparations we hopped straight across the road to the several centuries-old village church. Rachel and Alex looked ecstatic the whole day, I’ve put a photo here but I’ll put the rest on facebook. Sadly it was all over much too quickly, and the next day we were bidding farewell to the family and heading back to London.

Next stop was Paris. Ed and I had both visited before, so rather than race around the usual tourist attractions we had a bit more time to soak it up, wandering the streets and pausing for an occasional coffee, or perhaps a three euro bottle of wine on the steps of Sacre Couer. Within two hours of arriving in Paris I swear I had seen at least five people walk past with baguettes under their arms; it felt like a film set with ‘French’ extras being sent out to do laps around us. I was absolutely certain this was the case when a guy in a beret walked past, followed by another man in a blue and white horizontally striped shirt. I think they’d borrowed the cast from “‘Allo ‘Allo”. Ed and I were inordinately excited about our first baguette with cheese and chorizo (not French I know but tasty!), and continued to make variations on that our lunch staple almost every day. Our second day we squeezed in an impressionist exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay and a snooze in the sun outside the Louvre, and then headed out to meet some local friends for dinner, Ed’s old workmate Thomas and his wife Cheri.

The beautiful Loire Valley was our next destination - I first saw the Loire chateaux on a family holiday aged nine and was entranced by them, so I was looking forward to seeing them again and showing Ed. After getting quite lost in country laneways in our rental car and vowing to buy a more detailed map, we finally stumbled across Chateau Chambord and Ed was suitably awed. The chateau has a phenomenal number of chimneys (37 from memory but don’t quote me) and an incredible double helix staircase in the centre, and ambling around the rooms was one of the many times on our trip when we felt like we were on a completely different planet from Samoa.

That night we stopped in Blois, one of our favourite places of the trip, where we wandered incredibly old and beautiful streets by the river. The locals here were also much happier to let me stumble through some mangled French when necessary without insisting on replying in their much-better English, as had generally been the case in Paris. The following day we visited the town of Amboise and then Chateau Chenonceau, my favourite from my last trip, built over a bridge of archways across the river. We had a lot to squeeze in though and raced off again towards the Massif Central, the next region we were planning to visit.

By now you know us well enough to know it’s not a proper blog without some serious discussion of food, so I’ll describe our highlight meal of the whole trip. We weren’t going to make it all the way to the Massif Central that night, so picked a small town off the map called St Gervais that looked big enough to have accommodation, and found ourselves a basic room above a local bar. The town seemed mostly deserted apart from a couple of grizzled locals chain-smoking and propping up the bar at the local, and although we were sceptical of our chances we went wandering in search of food. Rounding a corner in a small back lane, we stumbled across a rather fancy-looking hotel, and upon investigation discovered it contained a Michelin-rated restaurant. It in fact contained two restaurants, a fancy expensive one and a slightly cheaper option, and after toying with the idea of splashing out, we settled on the cheaper option. Sixteen euros each for an entrée, main and dessert bought us the most amazing meal I’ve eaten in a long time. A bit extra for a bottle of wine and we were in heaven. I doubt very much the food could possibly have been any better in the expensive side of the restaurant, you just had more options from which to choose and white tablecloths. I chose cheese for dessert, and you should have seen the cheese trolley - it was wheeled over for me to select some morsels, and it contained cheeses bigger than a car wheel. Sated, we strolled back to our room, ready to take on the mountain region the following day. Next instalment to follow soon!

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