Salty Dawg
New member
France is a very, very interesting country !
I'm now wondering, since you're from Canada, Parlez-vous français ?
I'm now wondering, since you're from Canada, Parlez-vous français ?
[YEAR 7!] Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...
- Thread starter lightcycle
- Start date
lightcycle
Nomad
A lot better now that she is surrounded by all her girlfriends back in Toronto. I think she was just a little bit lonely.
Un petit peu!
And not any kind of French that the folks in France understand. In Canada, we apparently speak a bastardized version called Quebecois which is unintelligible to the "real" French!Amazing! The turn-out was astounding, the hosts mentioned that over 70 people came out! It was so nice meeting people that have followed us on our journey and seeing some folks face-to-face for the first time - people we've corresponded with over the years over e-mail and on the forums. Everyone was so nice, asking lots of questions and making us feel so special!
lightcycle
Nomad
Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/224.html
Aaaand we're tired again.
We rode further north underneath grey skies, typical of early spring in France. Branches are bare, the air is cold and the boring straight roads dump our weary bikes onto the outskirts of Dijon. We're staying at another AirBnB and our host Alain greets us at the apartment. Alain speaks only a bit of English - unfortunately about as much French as I do, but when he sees our bikes, I can sense that he really wants to ask us questions about our trip, but discussing anything above and beyond logistics just devolves into pantomimes and hapless, confused shrugs.
I really wished I had paid more attention in French classes at school. This is turning out to be the biggest regret of this trip - that I had the opportunity not just to learn another language, but to do it at an age when my brain was way more malleable such that new languages would come easier later on in life, like the way it does with Neda.
This church looked interesting, so we stopped for a break
Neda is Shocked to discover her bike can't use these charging stations.
We've actually chosen to stay in Dijon because we're meeting a couple of Internet friends here! Colleen and Dan are American ex-pats living in nearby Switzerland just a couple of hours away and when I mentioned to them our planned route, they volunteered to meet us along the way. Colleen is very active on the forums and has written up several of her motorcycle trips, but since she used to live on the west coast, I've never actually met her. But that didn't stop her from greeting us at our apartment with a big smile and a hug! Funny how you can feel like you know someone without ever having seen them in person!
We spent a nice evening over dinner chatting about bikes, Europe, travel - all things near and dear to our hearts. This animated discussion continued over breakfast the next day and I realized we were so engrossed in the great conversation that I hadn't taken any pictures! So as they were leaving to head back to Switzerland:
Wishing Colleen and Dan a safe trip back to Switzerland! See you again, soon!
We had been in Dijon for a few days now, just vegging in the apartment that we hadn't even made it outside to see the old city. Supposedly it was quite pretty. We're really dragging our feet to do any kind of sightseeing, but before leaving Dijon, we made a half-hearted effort to see the historic centre.
Cobble-stone roads mark our destination
Aaaand we're tired again.
We rode further north underneath grey skies, typical of early spring in France. Branches are bare, the air is cold and the boring straight roads dump our weary bikes onto the outskirts of Dijon. We're staying at another AirBnB and our host Alain greets us at the apartment. Alain speaks only a bit of English - unfortunately about as much French as I do, but when he sees our bikes, I can sense that he really wants to ask us questions about our trip, but discussing anything above and beyond logistics just devolves into pantomimes and hapless, confused shrugs.
I really wished I had paid more attention in French classes at school. This is turning out to be the biggest regret of this trip - that I had the opportunity not just to learn another language, but to do it at an age when my brain was way more malleable such that new languages would come easier later on in life, like the way it does with Neda.
This church looked interesting, so we stopped for a break
Neda is Shocked to discover her bike can't use these charging stations.
We've actually chosen to stay in Dijon because we're meeting a couple of Internet friends here! Colleen and Dan are American ex-pats living in nearby Switzerland just a couple of hours away and when I mentioned to them our planned route, they volunteered to meet us along the way. Colleen is very active on the forums and has written up several of her motorcycle trips, but since she used to live on the west coast, I've never actually met her. But that didn't stop her from greeting us at our apartment with a big smile and a hug! Funny how you can feel like you know someone without ever having seen them in person!
We spent a nice evening over dinner chatting about bikes, Europe, travel - all things near and dear to our hearts. This animated discussion continued over breakfast the next day and I realized we were so engrossed in the great conversation that I hadn't taken any pictures! So as they were leaving to head back to Switzerland:
Wishing Colleen and Dan a safe trip back to Switzerland! See you again, soon!
We had been in Dijon for a few days now, just vegging in the apartment that we hadn't even made it outside to see the old city. Supposedly it was quite pretty. We're really dragging our feet to do any kind of sightseeing, but before leaving Dijon, we made a half-hearted effort to see the historic centre.
Cobble-stone roads mark our destination
lightcycle
Nomad
Rows of chimera on the Church of Notre-Dame
Inside Notre-Dame, beautiful!
And my favorite - candles.
We walk around the old city and stumble upon a merry-go-round
Buildings showing off their half-timbered frames are examples of "colombage" architecture which is very common in France
And of course, when you're Dijon, you have to try the Dijon mustard!
They say the best Dijon mustard is Edmond Fallot. We have never seen so many flavours of Dijon mustard! We visited the factory store downtown. It was a lot of fun trying all the different flavours until the store kicked us out when it was evident we weren't going to buy anything... So expensive! We're planning to pick some up in a grocery store where we know it will be cheaper than in the tourist district!
lightcycle
Nomad
Hobos 4 Life! Window shopping...
Well, that was nice. Let's go!
Leaving Dijon
Onwards to Paris!!! Well, not quite...
We're still so tired, so we've booked into another AirBnB apartment in Vauréal, a suburb just 40 minutes north-west of the city. We've waited all winter to see Northern Europe and now that we're here, we don't really feel like going out. I don't feel so bad hibernating inside because the weather has been so grey, cold and rainy.
Our little suburban hideaway
Marielle, our AirBnB host, has welcomed us into her apartment by leaving us with a bottle of wine and a tub of something called terrine, which looks and tastes like pâté. I asked what the difference was, she couldn't explain, but she said it was *definitely* not pâté! I looked it up later on the Internet and still couldn't understand the difference. It seemed to be one of those funny Parisian je-ne-sais-quoi-mais-il-n'est-pas-pâté-certainement!
But terrine turned out to be one of our favorite foods, and we kept going to and from the grocery store to buy more tubs of I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Pâté....
lightcycle
Nomad
Neda has found a new hobby!
For a while now, Neda's been plagued with a lack of a hobby. Unlike the blog, which I pretend to keep updated (but actually never do), she needs something to occupy herself. She's read over a thousand books while we've been on this trip, she's on Level 9,372 on Candy Crush and she's slowly going out of her mind. While I'm content to read and write, take pictures and edit videos, my wife is more of a hands-on kind of person and needs something physical to do, which is why she likes cooking, hiking, yoga, etc.
She's found the perfect hobby in needle-point. It's keeps her hands busy, is portable enough for motorcycle travel and she really enjoys it. Neda told me it was something her mom used to as well.
I've been so worried about Neda's mood for a long time now, but already I sense a change from her previous bouts of restlessness.
Dropping Neda off at the airport. In the rain, of course...
Since we're staying in Vauréal for a while, we looked into flights to Italy so Neda could visit her sister and niece for a long weekend. I knew RyanAir flights were cheap, but I didn't know that it literally costs €19 to fly from Paris to Milan. It cost us more in gas to ride from Vaureal to the airport and back... Crazy!
So off she went! And while Neda spent time with family, I had a grand ole time not updating the blog and gorging myself on terrine!
With Neda back from Italy, our social calendar fills up in Vauréal
Marielle moved into her boyfriend's place while we stayed in her apartment and she invited us over for dinner one evening. They just lived down the street from us!
Hanging out with Marielle and Stefane
Our hosts were so friendly and gracious and although their English was not very good, it was still better than my French, and we were able to share a little bit about all of ourselves. I really like seeing how other people around the world live their everyday lives, how some things are so similar to us, and how other things may look and taste like pâté but are not.
Sorry, I can't let it go. It's pâté.
Stefane cooking us a traditional French meal from the region with cornish hen. Merveilleux!
We were introduced to Stefane's little boy, and they both encouraged him to practice his English with us. We spent the evening huddled around an iPad and an atlas sharing the pictures we had taken and pointing out where we had gone on the map. I realized that Marielle and Stefane were seizing the opportunity to demonstrate to Stefane's son how important it was to learn English.
And if things go according to plan, there'll be an additional future world traveler able to learn and converse in multiple languages wandering around this planet!
Salty Dawg
New member
Gene, remember that Google can be your friend and that Google translate can be used to communicate. As long as both of the people can type in their language,Google will translate it for you back in English. https://translate.google.com/#
lightcycle
Nomad
Yes, we use many different apps on our iPhones for translation. The problem with Google Translate is that it needs a data connection and we are not guaranteed wi-fi wherever we travel and we don't buy a new SIM chip every time we enter a new country.
Instead, we use apps that download a local copy of the dictionary to the phone. SpanishDict is one of them, and I use a French Dict a lot. However, I've found that these dictionaries are only good for looking up words. It is difficult to construct whole phrases (unlike Google Translate) so some knowledge of the conjugation and sentence structure is needed.
Also, for French, I have a child's knowledge of the language, so although I can have a conversation, it's frustrating trying to convey complex thoughts and experiences about our trip using kindergarten words. And using the dictionary interrupts the flow of the conversation when instead I can use lots of baby words...
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Arlo
Adventurer
Marielle, our AirBnB host, has welcomed us into her apartment by leaving us with a bottle of wine and a tub of something called terrine, which looks and tastes like pâté. I asked what the difference was, she couldn't explain, but she said it was *definitely* not pâté! I looked it up later on the Internet and still couldn't understand the difference. It seemed to be one of those funny Parisian je-ne-sais-quoi-mais-il-n'est-pas-pâté-certainement!
Pâté is baked inside a mantle of pastry, terrine is baked inside a terrine.
The yummy good stuff inside might be the same.
I like both of the two very much!!! :chef:
Any plans to head north?
The rain here is as wet as in Paris.
lightcycle
Nomad
Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/225.html
So we've been here in Vauréal for over a week now, perched 40 minutes away from the most famous city in the world and we still haven't left the apartment to go visit it.
Everyday we find some excuse not to ride in to see Paris: "Looks like it's going to rain today", "We woke up too late", "Gotta go to the grocery store to buy more terrine..."
But one day we ran out of excuses, so we hopped on the bikes and headed into the city
The landscape here is fairly flat, the smell of fresh manure wafting up through our helmets as we ride by the green fields that lie between all the quaint towns between Vauréal and Paris. We picked a weekday to go, staying off the highway, and we're rewarded by having the roads all to ourselves.
The back roads to Paris
Traffic is not so bad in the big city!
Marielle had advised us beforehand not to ride in Paris because of the congestion and the crazy drivers. We've heard this warning before in every major city we've been to and no offense intended to those giving us this advice, but they're probably not aware of all the places that we've ridden in and that our definition of "bad traffic and crazy drivers" is very different than theirs.
After riding through the pure pandemonium they call traffic in Delhi, Bogotá and Mexico City, motorcycling through Paris and Rome is like strolling carefree through an open field.
Basilica of the Sacré Cœur in Montmartre
One of the places Marielle recommended for us to see was Montmartre. Situated on top of a hill overlooking the rest of Paris, it used to be an area of the city that was filled with bohemians and artists at the turn of the last century. In fact, Montmartre is right next to the Moulin Rouge. But any of the low-rent, ramshackle buildings occupied by writers and painters who voluntarily gave up their aristocracy to pursue "la vie boheme" have now been replaced by restaurants and souvenir shops catering to the hordes of tourists who visit every day.
Speaking of which...
So we've been here in Vauréal for over a week now, perched 40 minutes away from the most famous city in the world and we still haven't left the apartment to go visit it.
Everyday we find some excuse not to ride in to see Paris: "Looks like it's going to rain today", "We woke up too late", "Gotta go to the grocery store to buy more terrine..."
But one day we ran out of excuses, so we hopped on the bikes and headed into the city
The landscape here is fairly flat, the smell of fresh manure wafting up through our helmets as we ride by the green fields that lie between all the quaint towns between Vauréal and Paris. We picked a weekday to go, staying off the highway, and we're rewarded by having the roads all to ourselves.
The back roads to Paris
Traffic is not so bad in the big city!
Marielle had advised us beforehand not to ride in Paris because of the congestion and the crazy drivers. We've heard this warning before in every major city we've been to and no offense intended to those giving us this advice, but they're probably not aware of all the places that we've ridden in and that our definition of "bad traffic and crazy drivers" is very different than theirs.
After riding through the pure pandemonium they call traffic in Delhi, Bogotá and Mexico City, motorcycling through Paris and Rome is like strolling carefree through an open field.
Basilica of the Sacré Cœur in Montmartre
One of the places Marielle recommended for us to see was Montmartre. Situated on top of a hill overlooking the rest of Paris, it used to be an area of the city that was filled with bohemians and artists at the turn of the last century. In fact, Montmartre is right next to the Moulin Rouge. But any of the low-rent, ramshackle buildings occupied by writers and painters who voluntarily gave up their aristocracy to pursue "la vie boheme" have now been replaced by restaurants and souvenir shops catering to the hordes of tourists who visit every day.
Speaking of which...
lightcycle
Nomad
Moulin Rouge is where the Can-Can was invented. Here, you can pay €4 for a can-can of soda...
What is more stereotypical than street-side bistros in Paris?
Store all prettied up for the tourists
While walking around, we stumbled upon the market on Rue Daguerre, a pedestrian-only street with fruit and vegetable stands enticing passersby. You can duck in and out of all the fromageries lining the avenue. There are tons of these market streets all over the city and they felt a bit more authentic and local-oriented than the tourist traps that we came from.
Rue Daguerre
Obviously you can't see all of Paris in a day, which is exactly the time we've given ourselves to do. So we each picked a couple of places of interest and we rode around the city, crossing them off one by one. And once again, we parked pretty much anywhere we wanted without paying any fees! I love motorcycling in Europe!
Two-wheelers crammed on every square inch of sidewalk. For free!!!
lightcycle
Nomad
Catacombs
One of the places on my list were the catacombs underneath the city, the main reason being that I read about it in "The Da Vinci Code". There are many tours in the city based on the book, but they're all too expensive, so no Louvre for us, just the creepy catacombs, please.
Spooky skulls
Our tour underneath the city yielded some very interesting facts. The catacombs serve as a mass storage site for the remains of 6 million people who lived in the Paris area over the last 300 years. They were originally moved from cemetaries because of overcrowding of the bodies, leading to improper burial, bad smell and the spread of disease.
Some of the bones are placed in pretty patterns, like this heart-shaped arrangement
At many points, there are small signs pointing out the date of the bones. It was interesting seeing how the older ones from the 1700s were much more yellow and worn-looking. It was slightly creepy being around all these dead bodies, but yet strangely fascinating at the same time!
A shrine set amongst the bones
There are about 300 kms of tunnels that make up the catacombs, but only about a 1.5 km stretch is open to the public. The rest of it are not renovated for tours, but that hasn't stopped "cataphiles" from breaking in and exploring the labyrinths underneath the city. Some of them are urban explorers, but others hold parties or meetings in the darkened spaces under Paris. In 2004, police found a whole movie theater set up in the catacombs!
lightcycle
Nomad
We emerged above ground far from where we entered and had to consult a map to get back to our motorcycles. It was Neda's turn to pick an interesting Parisian spot to explore.
This washroom was self-cleaning. And free! Very cool.
Neda has very different tastes than most people. In restaurants, she's always ordering the more unusual items, and it's the same when it comes to sightseeing. What caught her interest was a park called the Promenade Plantee. You can actually see it in the picture above, the park is elevated above the city streets to give it a bit of isolation away from the traffic of the city.
The Promenade Plantee used to be an old elevated railroad which was torn out and replaced with a narrow garden that stretches through Paris. Stairs to get to the park are situated every few hundred meters and once you are strolling above, the big city seems to disappear.
Feels just like walking in the countryside!
And then you look over the edge...
Paris was nice, but we weren't in the right mood to truly soak up the City of Love. At least by foot. So we hopped on our bikes and just rode around town.
At one point, we passed by this structure. I radioed Neda, "Hey, is that the...? naaaah, couldn't be...."
But when I checked the pictures later on and cross-referenced it on the Internet, it was! We totally rode past the Arc de Triomphe. Kinda unassuming in person...
Little photoshoot on the streets of Paris
Being on bikes was waaaay more fun than walking around the city. The traffic in the middle of this weekday was light and it seemed it was too early in the season for tourists and their tour buses to clog up the streets. I consulted my GPS and headed towards:
The Eiffel Tower!
This was also an item on my list. Again, we approached the spot where my GPS said it would be and I looked over at the structure peaking above the trees. I radioed Neda, "I think that's the Eiffel Tower, but it looks kinda short. Maybe it's a miniature? And the real one is somewhere closeby?"
But when we got there, it turned out that it was the real Eiffel Tower. I guess we're used to "towers" being as tall as our CN Tower back home...? *shrug*
Sightseeing is soooo much better on two-wheels!
We're glad we got to visit Paris, especially riding around the city which was super-fun. Which reinforces the fact that although we might be tired of sight-seeing, we still *LOVE* riding our motorcycles! But we do need a long rest, and we know just the place to find it...
This washroom was self-cleaning. And free! Very cool.
Neda has very different tastes than most people. In restaurants, she's always ordering the more unusual items, and it's the same when it comes to sightseeing. What caught her interest was a park called the Promenade Plantee. You can actually see it in the picture above, the park is elevated above the city streets to give it a bit of isolation away from the traffic of the city.
The Promenade Plantee used to be an old elevated railroad which was torn out and replaced with a narrow garden that stretches through Paris. Stairs to get to the park are situated every few hundred meters and once you are strolling above, the big city seems to disappear.
Feels just like walking in the countryside!
And then you look over the edge...
Paris was nice, but we weren't in the right mood to truly soak up the City of Love. At least by foot. So we hopped on our bikes and just rode around town.
At one point, we passed by this structure. I radioed Neda, "Hey, is that the...? naaaah, couldn't be...."
But when I checked the pictures later on and cross-referenced it on the Internet, it was! We totally rode past the Arc de Triomphe. Kinda unassuming in person...
Little photoshoot on the streets of Paris
Being on bikes was waaaay more fun than walking around the city. The traffic in the middle of this weekday was light and it seemed it was too early in the season for tourists and their tour buses to clog up the streets. I consulted my GPS and headed towards:
The Eiffel Tower!
This was also an item on my list. Again, we approached the spot where my GPS said it would be and I looked over at the structure peaking above the trees. I radioed Neda, "I think that's the Eiffel Tower, but it looks kinda short. Maybe it's a miniature? And the real one is somewhere closeby?"
But when we got there, it turned out that it was the real Eiffel Tower. I guess we're used to "towers" being as tall as our CN Tower back home...? *shrug*
Sightseeing is soooo much better on two-wheels!
We're glad we got to visit Paris, especially riding around the city which was super-fun. Which reinforces the fact that although we might be tired of sight-seeing, we still *LOVE* riding our motorcycles! But we do need a long rest, and we know just the place to find it...
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lightcycle
Nomad
You'd never know what is was baked in because in the grocery store, both come inside cardboard tubs!
Yes, North, South and then East. Also west...