Wine and Roses

We were running a bit late because of the false starts launching our hot air balloon. Still, we had time for a brunch at a cafe in Amboise, seated outside practically in the shadow of yet another castle, Château Royal d'Amboise.

Then we were off to a nearby winery, Caves Ambacia. But first, we had time for a bonus misfortune. When we arrived at the winery and turned up onto the hill in front of it, what had looked from below like a parking lot actually turned out to be a patio restaurant. Without an obvious place to turn around, we decided to continue up the street. But well before we arrived at a turn that would take us back onto the main road, we passed into a residential area. The street kept narrowing and narrowing. Soon it was barely wide enough for the car, with the walls of houses and garages pressed right up next to us.

When the turn finally did arrive, there was scarcely room to make it. I ended up shimmying out of the passenger seat to direct a series of a couple dozen back and forth micro-maneuvers. My husband kept cool even as I warned him "you're about two inches from the wall right now, you can't keep going in that direction." Another car arrived, its driver giving us quite the wide-eyed expression. But after a few minutes, we escaped. Our nerves might have been a bit damaged, but thankfully the rental car was not.

So... Caves Ambacia. It's a relatively new winery, having been purchased by new owners in the last decade. They don't have their own vineyards, buying their grapes from local sources. But they do have a sizeable cave, the remnants of centuries-old quarrying of stone for the nearby castles. A perfect place to age wine.

They also had a great tour guide who led us on an hour-long experience. It was clear his rapid-fire English and heavy French accent wasn't working well for everyone else on the tour, but he had a lot of knowledge he was trying to drop in a short span of time. Among the fun moments: an area where you could inhale 16 different aromas from stainless steel tubes and try to identify them. (So many seemed so familiar, but I managed a puny 2 without being told what they were. Of course! Hazelnut! Leather!) Also, a walk through a wine archive, with bottles going back decades aging in different areas. (Our guide encouraged us to seek out a bottle from our birth year, but my husband and I both struck out.)

We were shown unusual vessels for aging wine -- a stone barrel and a large terra cotta one...

And then, of course, a tasting -- with accompanying cheeses and meats, advice on serving and pairing, and a quick answer to any question anybody thought to ask. No matter how inexperienced. (I'll always remember: "So, when do they add the hazelnut?" I'll also remember the guide's shocked expression.) 

Next, we drove east a bit to reach Château de Villandry. Among the many castles of the Loire Valley, this one is best known for its gardens. And indeed, they are striking. We walked a forested path up behind the castle for a better view, and then strolled a bit through the gardens themselves. Shockingly, I was perhaps beginning to reach a point of "beauty overload." A high-class problem, to be sure, but each amazing place we were visiting was in a sort of "competition" with other amazing places we'd already seen.

I was resting for a moment on a bench when an older couple walked up to share the seat. I had to ask about the "No Trump" stickers displayed prominently on their shirts. To my surprise, I learned they were from Florida. They told me that being from there, they felt compelled to wear these stickers publicly everywhere they go. "We buy them in rolls of 500," said the husband proudly, before offering me a couple. So I picked up an odd souvenir in an odd place, having had the unexpected opportunity to meet two sane Floridians.

We toured inside the castle for a bit. It's true that the gardens really are the star of the show at Villandry, but whoever is curating the art collection inside the château is definitely bringing their creepy A game.

We thought a good dinner option would be another picnic, this time at the château where we were staying. But it was Sunday, and we found no groceries were open in the afternoon or evening. So instead, we opted for a short hike on the grounds where we were staying, a quiet rest in the park chairs out front, and then a restaurant in Amboise for dinner as the sun set.

 

Third Time's the Charm

The Loire Valley is well known for two things: sprawling castles and amazing wine. We planned to take in both over the next two days. But first, we were going to take to the air. Several companies in the valley offer sunrise and sunset flights by hot air balloon, and we'd booked one to begin our next morning.

You drive out to the launch site, were you're invited to assist in the filling of the balloon, and then told to scramble into the basket when the time for liftoff comes.

Except this time... it didn't come. French class doesn't cover technical terms related to balloon travel, but you didn't need language to see what was wrong. Our pilot was pulling on a rope, but the flap at the very top of the balloon wasn't closing all the way to capture the heat inside. Something about a "knot" or a "valve" perhaps? Anyway... out of the balloon, everybody!

As the pilot and ground support staff deflated and re-inflated the balloon, we milled about near the two other groups of passengers with us. There was a group of six speaking such rapid French I couldn't possibly keep up. Then there was a group of four from Italy, with one woman who spoke English as their interpreter.

Soon, all 12 of us were told to get back in the basket: they were ready to try again. But once again, the troublesome flap wouldn't close! Was this today's "travel misfortune," that our one balloon out of a half dozen wasn't going to take off today?

Not to worry, we were told. They'd called in "the big boss," the owner of the company, who knew everything about these balloons and was sure to get to the bottom of the problem. But by the time he arrived on site (perhaps 10 minutes later), the team had figured everything out and reinflated the balloon a third time. And indeed, the third time was the charm. The "big boss" arrived just in time to confirm that everything looked good... and to then hop in the balloon with the pilot and accompany us on our voyage. It so happened he was trilingual -- from Italy, operating now in France, and also fluent in English. He was the perfect guide for the voyage.

It turned out that winds were perhaps a bit too calm that morning. We ultimately didn't travel very far. Still, even a simple up and down afforded us spectacular views of the area, including a look down at the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire, a lovely sweep of the Loire River...

... and a "big boss"-snapped photo of the sun rising behind us.

If you've never ridden in a hot air balloon, but think to yourself "there's absolutely no way I could do that," know that it's nothing like flying in an airplane. There's absolutely no turbulence at all. The basket rises and drifts so gently that you truly aren't even aware of movement. I felt less vertigo than I do when looking out from atop a skyscraper (that you can sometimes feel swaying ever so slightly). I mean, if you simply cannot do heights, I hear you; but if you only think it sounds scary, I highly recommend choosing a picturesque spot somewhere, someday, and booking a memorable experience for yourself.

Castles!

For the next day of our France trip, we visited a screen saver. A fairy tale. A place that if you saw it in a fantasy television show or movie, you'd say, "that looks cool, but nothing like that would actually exist." Mont-Saint-Michel.

The existence of this place dates back to the 8th century, when an island near the coast was first used for a church. Except... it isn't always an island; as the tides go in and out, the location can be reached for part of the day by a land bridge that emerges from the receding waters. This made the location highly defensible. It took many centuries for the abbey and surrounding village to be built, and in modern days a more durable bridge was added to connect to the island for all but the most extreme "supertide" every two decades or so.

There's a lot to experience in a compact area. Of course, there's the fantastical visuals of just approaching the place.

Then there's meandering about the cobblestone streets of the walled city, almost like a visit to what seems like the most authentic Renaissance festival you'll ever encounter.

Then there are the spectacular views from the abbey ramparts. 

Finally there's the tour of the abbey itself. The interior of the building is all the more impressive considering when it was built and how long it has endured.

There was even an interesting art exhibit, showcasing a beautifully detailed map of the area woven as a tapestry...

... by the imposing "Mimi Cake":

As wonderful as Mont-Saint-Michel is, it is quite the journey away from Paris. We'd ventured as far from the capital city as we planned to go, and now it was time to slowly work our way back. We were staying in the Loire Valley that evening, but had allotted ourselves the day to get there.

For lunch, we decided we really wanted to find some savory crepes. We'd been wanting that for a meal for the entire trip, but had only managed to find places serving sweet desserts (invariably, after a satisfying meal that needed no encore). I searched for a place along our route, and at random found Crêperie  Tivabro in the town of Fougères. 

I regret that I have no picture of Fougères -- and the fact that I don't feels emblematic of the way we could just happen upon something amazing on this trip. There's a huge walled castle dating back almost a thousand years, right there in the center of town. We were looking for crepes, we're driving by modern stores, and then for a bit through old and narrow streets... then we just turn a corner and there it is, a sprawling medieval castle. Because of course there would be. So commonplace and expected that I somehow don't even manage to get a picture.

The crepes were everything we'd been hoping for, though. I had a delectable one with ham, cheese, and a "mirror egg" (sunny side up egg) on top.

Our drive then took us through Le Mans, where we stopped a while to stretch our legs and look around for a bit. And, of course, we turned a corner and discovered yet another sprawling cathedral that on any other trip might well have been the architectural highlight.

By the early evening, we reached our destination in the heart of the Loire Valley, Château de Perreux. We weren't just visiting this castle; it was our hotel for the next two nights. Our room was on the second floor of a corner tower, with a lovely view of the grounds.

 

The place had everything from garage of classic cars, canoes you could take out onto the river, and a debonair concierge with suggestions and his own hand-made strawberry jam to serve at breakfast. We had dinner in the nearby city of Amboise at a French-Moroccan restaurant, then ended the evening somewhat early. We had a particularly early start planned the next day.

Strange New Worlds: Once La'An a Time

I'm going to pause France stories again, and go back once more to collect an episode from season four of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the perplexing "Once La'An a Time."

The strange fairy tale setting that Dr. M'Benga once encountered, populated with doppelgangers of the Enterprise crew, has returned. But this time, it seems that La'An is the one who must learn something: a way to reconcile the disassociated feelings about herself that have been building deep inside. As she goes on a storybook adventure of self-discovery, some of the fairy tale characters cause havoc aboard Enterprise and with the rest of the crew.

In a season built mostly of one-off genre episodes, it's a curveball of its own that one of those genres would be "sequel." But in a season built on wild swings in tone, it kind of makes sense to revisit the wildest tone shift from season one of the show, "The Elysian Kingdom." 

Except... does it make sense? Not in my eyes. When M'Benga found himself in this storybook three seasons ago, it was very specifically about him -- pulled from his personal history with his daughter, and specifically crafted (both by the writers and within the four walls of the story) to teach him a valuable lesson he needed to learn. Take M'Benga out of the center of it all, and it doesn't work. This episode barely even tries to make it work, giving us a half-hearted exchange between M'Benga and La'An in which he just hand waves the whole premise away: it looks like La'An has something to learn too.

Except La'An has no real stakes here. She's not after something as M'Benga was in "The Elysian Kingdom." She doesn't even want to be there -- which is an attitude you can give to a protagonist... but then you'd better make sure the audience doesn't empathize with them too much. (Otherwise, why are any of us here?) It feels both accidental and incidental that La'An is changed at all by these experiences.

Instead, the episode feels more about the storybook characters. Will Prince Dashing confess his secret? Is Queen Neve an actual threat to the Enterprise? Will Sir Amand and Pollux actually pull off their con? It's difficult to care about the answers to any of these questions, when none of these characters feel like they were ever meant to exist beyond one episode released four years ago. It just feels like an excuse to let the actors cut loose and have a little fun -- yet it's unclear if they're actually having fun after a season that's already given everyone ample opportunity to break from their usual characters.

Well... maybe Anson Mount and Ethan Peck are. As ridiculous as it is that no one notices Pike's strange behavior, the two actors are funny as the alter egos of their regular characters. The jokey references about Carol Kane and The Princess Bride are worth a smile. (Except.... did they just write Pelia off the show with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it line of dialogue?) The visual effects of a dragon attacking the Enterprise are admittedly awesome.

But those are the few pleasures I could find in this tedious slog. Every Star Trek series has to have its worst episode, and we surely must have just gotten that for Strange New Worlds. I give "Once La'An a Time" a D. For people who have already been feeling about this season the way I felt about this episode, I shudder to think how this installment felt to you.

From Orchards to Omaha

Our morning in Honfleur was the first morning of the entire trip where we didn't have to set an alarm. We had plans of course, but nothing at a specific time. No tickets purchased in advanced, no rental car to pick up. Plus, we were now far enough into the trip to have conquered jet lag and be more or less on local time.

As an added bonus, this hotel room was nice. (If you ever find yourself in Honfleur, consider staying at Le Rituel.) The room was spacious, had decent curtains and a shade on a switch to keep the lights out, and the most comfortable bed we'd find on the entire trip. (Maybe even more comfortable than our bed back home!) This was the perfect occasion to sleep in, right?

Wrong! Around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, the fire alarm went off, another "trip misfortune." After taking a moment to investigate, then another moment to realize the alarm wasn't going to stop, we decided the responsible thing to do was evacuate. We got dressed, made sure we had the backpacks with our passports, and were about to reach for the door... when the alarm stopped. As you'd expect, we were back in that bed as quickly as possible, though sleep was not quick to come again.

When we checked out a few hours later, the apologetic hotel employee informed me (in French, but I was able to understand) that someone had left their shower on too hot for too long, and the steam had triggered the fire alarm. (Our room had no shower; instead it had a nice big tub with a spray nozzle on a long hose. I'm not sure if she was being literal or figurative, but I know she said "shower." When they teach you that word in junior high French, you never forget it: "douche.")

Anyway... the focus for the day was on something Normandy is famous for, cider! At least, that had been the expectation. Things took a surprising but welcome turn when we arrived at the first of a couple planned stops. Christian Drouin, it turns out, isn't a cider maker! Instead, they make calvados. Essentially, what whiskey is to beer, calvados is to cider; after going through the steps to produce an alcoholic cider, you then distill it into calvados.

A friendly employee took us through a guided tasting, teaching us just what calvados is and explaining the different gradings used for the spirit (most of them hilarious English abbreviations for the thoroughly French drink). Calvados is certainly not cider -- it's less sweet even than the driest cider you've ever tasted. But it's not quite whiskey either -- there are definitely subtle flavors and aromas of apples and other fruit that aren't common to the average whiskey.

Christian Drouin is large enough to distribute its calvados in parts of the United States, yet felt like a small family farm dedicated to one particular product. Our next stop, on the other hand, felt like "apple Disneyland." A very short trip down the road brought us to another distillery, Père Magloire. We were aware that a tour kicked off here once every hour, alternating between French and English. We bought tickets and waited the 10 or 15 minutes for the tour to begin.

When the time arrived, it was only my husband and I. Well, I thought -- I guess we better have some pretty insightful questions for the tour guide, since he'll be going to all this trouble just for the two of us. Nope! No tour guide. This experience was something akin to a family-friendly theme park ride. You leisurely made your way from room to room, each one a darkened theater with lighting effects, projections, and movie clips to explain the manufacture of their product. Here too: not cider, not even pommeau -- calvados. Without quite intending it, it felt like we'd found two very different experiences centered on a spirit we hadn't really known before. We even got to snap a picture with (a mannequin of) the man himself, Père Magloire. (A Colonel Sanders sort of figure to the French, it seems? Or at least, they wanted you to think so.)

A tasting followed at the end of the tour with a friendly young woman from Ukraine who spoke at least four languages -- Ukrainian, Russian, French, and English. She claimed not to be very good at English as she seamlessly explained different calvados "expressions" and pointed out half a dozen different tasting notes in each one. (Her facility with English, paired with her insistence on how bad she was at it, made me feel almost too embarrassed to want to attempt French for the rest of the trip. If this is "bad" at English, then neither English nor French has the words to describe how "bad" I am at French.)

The next leg of our drive brought us to the Omaha Beach, a site of the D-Day landings in Normandy during World War II. After lunch at a nearby cafe, we visited the museum near the shore. It featured displays of World War II artifacts, including weapons and vehicles, plus a half-hour film about the pivotal day in the war. It was the one time on the entire trip where answering "America" when asked "where are you visiting from?" didn't feel like an embarrassment. (Also, though not specifically planned, we were there on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.)

After the museum, we went down to the beach itself. Aside from a somewhat modest monument and art installation honoring D-Day, Omaha Beach is... well... a beach. A beautiful, but unassuming beach. That's perhaps part of the odd power of standing in the place -- it could be any place. Americans in particular don't have much concept of a war that happens in their own backyards; war is a thing that happens in "faraway places." Not so in France. World War II happened in every corner of the country -- including this random beach that happens to be a strategic landing point for a sea invasion.

We made a brief stop at a farm in the area, Ferme de la Sapinere, where we actually tasted a little cider rather than calvados, but soon had to move along to our stop for the evening. The town of Avranches was where our hotel was this night, for its closeness to our main event for the following day. The hotel manager recommended a local restaurant for dinner called L'Atmosphere, and while it wasn't bad, it wasn't great. Or maybe it was just that we decided to roll the dice on another famous bit of French cuisine for the appetizer. Foie gras? More like "full gross." Anyway, check off that experience.

And the next day, check off a much more pleasant one.... 

Stones Carved by Hands and Water

There's more to France than Paris, and we wanted to see it. So after four days in the capital city -- already a fun and satisfying vacation of its own -- we essentially began a second vacation by renting a car, a Ford Puma that would be our home away from home for several days, and leaving Paris behind.

The first adventure was just getting out of the city. It would have been a stressful obstacle course through traffic for me, but my husband actually enjoys driving in general (and in new places in particular), and so I didn't have to do any of the hard work. Soon enough, we'd left Paris behind and were working our way gradually northwest.

It would actually be days later in the trip that we'd realize our smartphone navigation was ignoring tolls (and thus, for France, any major highways between cities). For now, at least, that made for a quite novel trip through the French countryside, occasionally passing through a small town and not-so-occasionally passing through a roundabout. (A few roundabouts are nice. Hundreds get to be a bit draining.)

We stopped briefly near the commune of Les Andelys, where you can look down upon the area and see the medieval Château Gaillard, built in the late 1100s. We briefly considered a hike down to the castle itself, but opted to save our time for more things to come.

The first of those was a stop in the city of Rouen. We'd heard that the cathedral in Rouen was a real sight to see, and we were not disappointed. Outside, the building is so ornately detailed as to almost appear 3D-printed, and the three different towers are each built in a different architectural style.

Inside, the cavernous space is equally beautiful, with striking details both in glass and stone. I must say, I personally found this cathedral to be more impressive than the famous Notre-Dame de Paris.

It would have been well worth the stop all by itself. But we also had a fantastic lunch at a local cafe, Le Central. (Which had another great French whisky; and unlike the Bellevoye from the night before, my online searching has suggested that Rozelieures may be more available in the United States.) We even fit in some shopping, where I found a nice fall jacket so perfectly suited to the day that I wore it out door.

I could imagine staying in Rouen for the rest of the day, but we had somewhere to be: specifically, Étretat. This small coastal town is known for its breathtaking cliffs, France's own version of England's famous White Cliffs of Dover. And they did not disappoint. From the beach, you can see two of three arch features where the sea comes crashing in.

And it only takes a short hike of maybe 15 minutes to reach the top of one of those cliffs. From there, you get not only a beautiful panorama of the sea, a golf course (if that's your thing), and a stunning look back down on the village itself... 

... you also see a third arch feature a bit further beyond.

As afternoon rolled into evening, we made our way to our stop for the night, the small village of Honfleur. It has a picturesque harbor, the Vieux Bassin, lined with bars and restaurants. It was the first time I really was pushed to used my French on the trip. In Paris, it seemed like everyone spoke English. If a person said something to you in French, and you paused for even a fraction of a second before replying, they'd just switch over and start talking to you in English. But it was "French only" at the hotel, and mostly French at dinner (where our server's only English was to tell us that her English was "catastrophic"; with a word like that, I had my doubts).

Anyway, said dinner was a tasty seafood dinner (what else?), followed by a relaxing drink overlooking the water as the sun set on another great day.

 

The City of Louvre

If you ask the average person to name something famous in Paris? Well, they're going to say the Eiffel Tower, of course. But if this were a Family Feud question, you could expect to see the Louvre up on the big answer board. We weren't going to miss it.

Of course, the Louvre itself -- the palace that once served as the primary residence for French kings -- is an impressive building expanded over centuries. Its far more recent renovation, the glass pyramids designed in the 1980s by I. M. Pei, are even more iconic. It all makes for some nice photos as you make your way to the line to enter (at the sign for your assigned time).

What you can find in the Louvre could be its own "Family Feud style" question -- except that you'd probably only get one or two answers from those "100 people surveyed": the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Assuming you knew both of those famous pieces were at the Louvre, you'd probably expect that it's primarily an art museum. That's not quite the case.

The Louvre certainly does have its share of paintings, sculptures, and sketches -- and given its sheer size, it may well have more of those than any museum near you. But the vast majority of the museum's collection is archaeological finds and object d'art. On the whole, the place feels much more akin to the British Museum than I was expecting. Yes, the furnished palace chamber rooms were ostentatious (like Versailles the day before)...

And yes, the extensive Egyptian collection was impressive...

But overall, we thought we'd be seeing more "art" at the Louvre. Of course, we caught the two "headliners":

...but even our efforts to dig a bit deeper than that were thwarted. We were aware that the painting behind a popular internet meme, Self-Portrait in the Guise of a Mocker by Joseph Ducreux (seen here), was in the Louvre collection. We even looked up its specific room number online... only to learn that that area (and half the floor around it) was closed for remodeling. So no pictures of us next to the painting, copying the strange pose.

While we'd deliberately gone to the Louvre on a day it's open late, we didn't wind up taking advantage of those extra hours. Instead, we opted for a leisurely dinner. We'd been having a lot of French food, and decided to mix it up with an Italian restaurant. (It felt like we'd chosen a good one when a vacationing family from Italy sat down at the table next to us.) And for an after dinner drink? We skipped the more expected French beverages in favor of French whiskey, Bellevoye, that turned out to be quite delicious. (Here's hoping we can find a bottle in the States some day.)

We ended our night a bit early, but that worked well for our plans the next day: we were renting a car to leave Paris and explore other parts of the country.