Shirley's birthday weekend in the Loire Valley

Paris to Tours

We just returned from a wonderful two-day visit to the Loire Valley, famous for its chateaux, to celebrate Shirley's birthday.  I have never been much good at organizing these kinds of things, so this time I tried to make an uncharacteristic effort to do something special.

We drove the 2.5 hours from Paris to the centre of the Loire after Jemma's Saturday morning cross country meet (yes... Jemma is doing cross country!).  Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperative to my plans and it rained the whole day.  Nonetheless we took the scenic tour down through Orleans, Chambord, Blois and Tours, arriving at our chateau hotel in the late afternoon.

Le Domaine de la Tortinière Hotel

The tower bedroom in our suite

The Domaine De La Tortinière is an 19th century chateau that looks across the Indre river valley and the lovely town of Montbazon, just south of Tours. We had a suite in one of the corner towers looking out over the valley and river.  The whole experience was a cross between Disney castle and Downton Abbey, and we were all excited to be in "our own" chateau.


After a brief bit of lounging and exploring at the hotel, we went to dinner in nearby Tours at La Maison des Halles. With an unforgettable combination of delicious food, menu variety and creativity and ridiculously reasonable prices, this might have been one of the best meals I have ever had. We all had a wonderful time enjoying each others' dishes of foie gras, scallops, duck, and steak. They even had a child menu for Pips!  We rolled out of there very happy and several pounds heavier.

Walking in the hotel woods

Wild cyclamen in bloom

With no cat-cockerel to wake us at 6 am, the girls slept in and I managed rally for a little dawn run down by the river in Montbazon. After a grand hotel breakfast, we packed up and headed out for a day of chateaux viewing, but not before a walk through the quiet woods around the hotel.  The wild cyclamen were in full bloom made the whole experience rather magical.

Chenonceau over the Cher River

The queen surveying her minions

By the time we finally got going it was already around 11am and so we decided to only do one chateau, and so chose to go to Chenonceau, famous for its beautifully restored interior.  We spent a lovely couple of hours touring the 16th century chateau that housed Catherine de Medici among others.  We took the excellent audio tour and learned about all the skulduggery that went on throughout the chateau's history.  The chateau's most notable feature is the 2 storey hall that spans the Cher river.  The gardens were also beautifully maintained and manicured and there was also a maze for the girls to play around in.

After that we were pretty exhausted and jumped back in the car to head back to Paris and our lovely modern home - such a contrast of glass and steel to the richness of the Chenonceau's silks and gilded furniture.

After we got home, I showed the girls a picture of the last time I was at Chenonceau - July 1989. Plus ça change!

Mark at Chenonceau in 1989

Jemma in the maze

You can see a few more photos here.  Thanks for reading.

Vélo Vie

I saw this guy while on an early morning run - I guess
he didn't make it home after a boozy night.

Paris has become one of the great biking cities in the world (up there with Amsterdam and Kisumu, Kenya). Our arrival here in the holiday month of August has given me, and to a lesser extent, Shirley and Jemma, a chance to enjoy getting to know Paris "en vélo".

The easiest part of cycling in Paris is Velib - the city-wide bike share program. By paying a low daily, weekly or yearly fee you can go to any one of the thousands of Velib bike stands around the city and just get going.

We have 6 stations with 180 bikes within 5 minutes walk of our house, and there are 180 stations with 20,000 bikes all around Paris and the suburbs. Paris is about 8 km north/south and 12 km east/west so it takes less than an hour to bike from one end of the city to the other.

While I love going places by metro, bus and tram, I get a special joy getting around (and inevitably getting lost) by bike.  It feels like a better way to get to know my way around and to enjoy this beautiful city.

There is a large number of bike lanes and bikes get to use the safer bus lanes as well.  Cars are just a little more aware of cyclists as well because there are so many of them about. This is good because most people don't wear helmets, which would have been unthinkable for me, not to mention Shirley and Jemma, back in Toronto.  In Paris, it's the way things are done here. 

Coulée verte bike path

Bike path on a bridge

There are also a growing number of "coulée verte" or green corridors that wind their way through the city.  On Friday, I took one of these routes on a 45 minute ride coming back from getting our residents parking permit sorted out (Paris bureaucracy stories for another post). It was absolute bliss pedaling easily through a well paved, tree-lined bike path in the middle of town.  Even some of the bridges over the Seine have bike paths down the middle.

Road rash or impressionist
masterpiece?

As well as cycling to get from A to B in the city, I am getting back into cycling as part of my triathlon training.  After a bad start with a fall on my first big ride into the countryside, I am back on the bike again and enjoying one of the most popular French sports after football, boules and cigarette flicking.  

Less traffic early in the morning

They take road cycling pretty seriously here.  I was out this morning doing a few laps around the outside of the Longchamp horse race track.  When I started around 8:15, there were only a few dozen riders going around the 3.6 km circuit. It was fun to hang onto and occasionally lead the medium speed peletons, while watching the faster pace lines zip by (I was averaging low- to mid-30's km/h, the fast guys were up above 40 km/h).  But by 9:30, the number of riders grew so large that at one point I was caught in the middle of a peleton of at least 50 riders with at least a couple of riders on either side of me: no way to speed up, slow down or turn left or right. It scared me so badly that I called it a day after that. I won't be joining the Tour de France any time soon!

Thanks for reading and as always, you can see additional photos at my Google+ photo page.