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After saying goodbye to half of our California friends in Lisbon, Lindsay and I left for Paris. It was my first time in Paris and Lindsay hadn’t been there since her freshman year of college (before we even started dating, 8 years ago, wow).
We stayed at a nice hotel called Grand Hotel Leveque about a 20 minute walk away from the Eiffel Tower, which was nice because we were right in the center of all of the major sights. The street our hotel was on was pedestrian only and made up of a mix of small grocery stores, restaurants, and cafes, so it was perfect for us. I think next time we go back we’ll probably stay there again.
During our last trip to France in February, one of the highlights was food. I think we ate our weight in cheese when we visited Annecy. There was also plenty of good food on this France trip, but not the same mountain style food we had before. The highlights in Paris were international food selection (Japanese, Italian) and other traditional French foods. We had coffee and croissants every morning, some of which were just about perfect, and even
when we were doing a quick lunch while sightseeing in Paris, we usually found some pretty good food.
During our three days in Paris, we spent most of our sightseeing time at the most popular places. We went by the Eiffel Tower a few times, sometimes at night to check out the flashing light display and sometimes during the day, but we never took the elevator or stairs to the top because of the long lines. We visited the Louvre our first night, which worked really well because they were open until 9:30pm. We spent a few hours seeing the highlights at the Louvre and after we walked around outside the museum around the pyramids and reflective fountains. It was one of the highlights of Paris for me.
Our second day in Paris we spent the day sightseeing and then met up with our friends Tom and Tina for dinner. We had a good dinner with some interesting dishes at a restaurant just down the street from our hotel. Afterwards we walked by the Eiffel Tower again and did one of the mega-tourist boat rides down the Seine. I felt a little bit like we were at a
theme park because there were so many people, but it still fun to do I think.
After our few days in Paris, we picked up a rental car and started a drive north through Normandy. Along the way to our hotel in Rouen, we stopped off at Monet’s house and garden in Giverny, which turned out to be really nice. You could visit the house where Monet lived for around 40 years and there were plenty of beautiful flowers and a walking trail around the pond that he painted.
We didn’t have too much time in Rouen, but this turned out to be OK because there wasn’t too much to do there. Rouen is a university town and it was pretty lively with lots of people sitting out on the plazas having a drink and hanging out, but it felt a little grimy - may just have been the area we were in, though. We had “burritos” at a French/Provencal restaurant (tasted kind of like sloppy joe in a flour tortilla - not what we think of when we think of burritos, but pretty good) and walked around town a bit.
We stayed two nights in Bayeux,
Lindsay's salad
With duck, camembert, and foie gras. Healthy, right? and visited Mont St. Michel and the World War II D-Day landing beaches from there. Bayeux was a great place to stay because it was right near everything we wanted to see and the town itself was fairly pleasant. We found some pretty good restaurants there and the Bayeux Cathedral and Tapestry (about William the Conqueror’s conquest of England in 1066) were interesting to see as well.
Mont St. Michel was one of the more unique places we’ve visited in Europe. Apparently most people visiting France also know this, and so there was an amusement park volume of people there. Mont St. Michel is made up of an abbey and fortified town that was built on a small hill surrounded by tidal waters. It makes for some pretty, almost lunar-looking landscape because this huge town and abbey look down on fields and tidal flood plains, so you can see it from miles around. The Mont itself was filled with more tourist kitsch shops than we’ve seen in awhile, but the abbey was fun to visit.
We visited the D-Day landing beaches where the Allied Forces attacked on June, 6, 1944, and one of the American cemeteries near Omaha
Beach. It was very moving to visit this cemetery and the beaches nearby where so many people lost their lives. The cemetery we visited had almost 10,000 graves of American soldiers and this was just a portion of the people from all over the world who died in the Battle of Normandy. At the beach, the Nazi bunkers and mounts for the guns were still there, which was one of the most real reminders of war history I’ve ever seen.
After driving around a bit more in Normandy, we headed south to the Loire Valley to visit some chateaus. We stopped off at a few of the most popular ones including Chenonceau and Chambord. It’s pretty amazing how much went into building these palaces. We stayed in Amboise, which has a French language school that we considered going to before we decided on Coimbra (and Portuguese) instead. It was fun to check out the town and think about what might have been, although I think that we made the right choice in coming to Coimbra. We stayed at a cool hotel that was an old farm, and we took the half board option (breakfast and dinner included) because we
had heard the restaurant was so good. That turned out to be a great decision and we had a really nice dinner for Lindsay’s birthday, complete with a bottle of the local white Muscadet wine.
- Jason
*** Make sure to click on page 2 to see the rest of the pictures - we have lots on this entry!
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Andy
non-member comment
Great Pictures
You took some great pictures on this leg of your trip. We're looking forward to your return to America. Lindsay, your hair is getting long (longer than it has been in a while, anyway).