France Road Trip

Over the next 2 weeks I'll be embarking on a road trip through all of France for my big trip this summer.  I plan to eat and drink like royalty from Burgundy, to Bordeaux, to San Sebastian!

Burgundy

Wade and Sally arrived on 6/25 in Geneva from their UK choir trip to begin the first leg of the trip.  This was Wade's first time in Geneva so I gave a quick tour of the highlights (jet d'eau, flower clock, and chez moi cuisine) before beginning the journey with the first stop being Burgundy.

In Burgundy, we stayed in Beaune (2.5 hour drive) and our first night we had drinks near hotel d'ieu where there was a ford model T gathering.  For day 2, we went on an all day wine tasting in wineries between Dijon and Beaune (Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune); tasting the many Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays of the region.  For Day 3, we went to the various landmarks of Beaune, a mustard tour where we made our own mustard, and another wine tasting (Patriarche).  Patriarche was an old women's convent opened to the public in 2000 with wines dating back to 1904; very cool place where the tastings were in the cellars that were so large that they ran beneath the entire city.  The process of tasting was also quite until unique as they had all of the tastings set up where you would progress at your own pace and pour all of your own drinks.

On our last night, we discovered the fact that various of the city landmarks are illuminated at night (path of lights) to summarize the history of the building so I was able to see 4 of the 7 exhibits from 10p-1am.

Of the entire first city, our only faux pas involved ordering the wrong dessert at a restaurant so I was pretty impressed by our ability to navigate the French countryside.

The following day we started our drive to Paris with a slight detour to through Hautvillars (champagne region).  Hautvillars is where champagne started and Dom Perignon's tomb is located.  The city was very small, on a hill in the vineyards, with only a handful of restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and at least 80% of the remaining buildings being wineries.  After seeing the church and a few tastings, we started or drive to Paris.

Paris was a fun driving experience that I would recommend avoiding at all costs ha.  The drive took 3 hours when it was originally estimated to take 1.5, we sat within a 10 km radius for at least an hour, and I also almost killed a motorcyclist that was going between the car lanes passing stopped cars.  Once actually getting into the city, it was quite fun to drive in the 5 - 9 lane traffic circles in/around the Arc du Triomphe with unmarked lanes.  After dropping off Wade and Sally, I ran around the city to see the Eiffel Tower, Cathedral of Notre Dame, and the Arc once again before grabbing a late dinner with Wade and Sally and heading to my hotel near the airport to pick up Noah the following day.

Normandy

I picked up Noah at the airport and we started the journey to Bayeux and Normandy; CDG is slightly less confusing by car as it is when flying in/out of the airport if you're flown through there before you should understand my point.

When reaching Normandy, we went to Port du Huac, Utah beach, Omaha beach, and the American cemetery.  Very eery experience, but something that we felt we had to observe and witness. 

At night, we had some Normandy cuisine (seafood and an apple tart) followed by calvados and cider; cider was good, but the calvados taste like pure gasoline ha.

Mont St. Michel

The following morning, we drove to Mont St. Michel.  Driving the countryside is quite pretty as its full of small French farms and greenery and then out of no where Mont St. Michel rises on the horizon; there were several cider/calvados farms while heading to the expressway.  While we were in Normandy area, I also wanted to note that the Tour de France started on July 2nd here (so two days after our trip) so we were contending with that traffic quite a bit.

Following Mont. St. Michel, we had a 5.5 hour drive ahead of us to Bordeaux to meet up with Kevin for the next leg of our trip.  First impression from the drive was when reaching Southern France it was the first moment we'd seen the sun in since leaving Paris.

Bordeaux

We arrived after the long drive with enough time to catch dinner and the last soccer game of the night.  The following day we spent in St. Emilion visiting wineries. The wine tour was very interesting as the city is located on limestone quarries so all of the cellars are in the old queries that run 100+ kilometers beneath the city and vineyards.  That night we made it back to Bordeaux and found a bar to watch that nights Euro game and play some foosball aka baby fut.

The next day I did a run and we prepared ourselves for the Euro game; check out my other post for more information on that.

Saturday, we drove to Dune du Pilats (Arcachon), which is the largest sand dune in Europe.  Quite a bit different than my typical 4th of July weekend at the Ludington State Park and having House of Flavors.

For the last night with Noah in town  we watched the France v Iceland game at the local bar and then prepared to drive to Spain following day.  Along the way we stopped for lunch in Bayonne, the capital of the French Basque region, to try the local seafood and see the local church:

San Sebastián

This was probably one of the few times where I wish had been more French words around me as everything was in Basque, which is apparently different than Spanish.  I spent the first day running and then Kevin and I went to a Petritegi cidreria; the place was great as they had 15+ 15K gallon barrels where you would fill up your glass to try each of the ciders.

The next day we hiked to the top of the mountain where there was a statue of Jesus (similar to Rio) and spent our night eating through the city.  The specialty food of the region are Pinxtos, which are their version of tapas; quite an interesting ordering process as places serve lunch, take a siesta break, and then re-open for dinner where it is packed shoulder to shoulder and food is on display and ordered directly from the bar.  All of the food was quite tasty!

On July 6th, we went to Pamplona for the opening ceremony of San Fermin.  During the opening ceremony, everyone was crowded into the city square awaiting for the Mayor to launch a rocket to signify the beginning of the festival.  Everyone wears white clothing with red scarves and the culmination of the start of the festival is everyone being doused in Sangria either from other people in the square or dumped on from balconies.  We stuck around for some time and then took the bus back to San Sebastián for the night as we would have an early start as we wanted to see the actual running of the Bulls.

On July 7, we went to the running of the Bulls and watched the event from the outer balcony of the arena before watching the Bulls in the arena.  We got up at 5am to get to Pamplona by 6:45am; while walking to the arena it was quite obvious there were a few people who had partied all night strung about the streets.

Watching the running was quite interesting seeing the thousands of runners in front of the Bulls and the piling into the Plaza del Toro to see the short show.

We didn't stick around long before grabbing lunch and heading to Lourdes as we did have a relatively long drive ahead of us and after the running in the morning (8AM) there is not much to do if you plan to drive later that day.  I do want to point out that I got randomly breathalyzed for the first time in ages as they flagged many drivers and I was wearing a shirt from the prior day already stained in red wine and while wearing the red San Fermin handkerchief so this was no surprise...it was non and I obviously passed lol.

After lunch we started the road trip to Lourdes, which is a city halfway between San Sebastián and Marseille.  Fun fact is this city has the highest amount of hotels in France after Paris.  The city is famous as someone sited a vision of the Virgin Mary in the 1850s and then built a church here that I understand has become a Catholic pilgrimage.

Watching the France v Germany soccer game I was quite the outcast being the only German fan, but felt I was in no really danger compared to being an away fan within the big ten.  It was quite unfortunate they did not win though.

Next day we started the largest leg of the road trip driving to Marseille with a pit stop in Carcassonne and we toured the castle.

Marseille

Marseille I'm told is the Detroit of France; not quite.  City has a very different vibe from the other places on the road trip as it was extremely hot and had a beach culture compared to the wine region and/or WWII historic site.  While in the city, I had a sightseeing run (@95F), we visited the church, and tried the Pastis in the region.

On our way home we took a few pit stops and had lunch in Provence and went to the Chartreuse distillery; surprisingly, this was open on Sunday!

Note worthy facts from the road trip are the following:

1) We spent more money on tolls compared to gas (150 vs 200+).
2) We added 3,697 KM to our Renault Megeve.

3) I leveraged more French in the two weeks of that trip than all my prior time in Geneva

4) The French use their hazard lights to signal a hazard, traffic jam, and to warn other cars; rather than in the US where it's typical use is to for illegally parking.

5) I took advantage of the time off and grew the largest beard of my life, which was still not that impressive; I then proceeded to run into a coworker after returning the rental car and received a few looks.

All in all, the road trip was a blast and fun to spend time with family and friends; in retrospect, the only regret would be to spend more time at leach location.  Therefore, I need more time off I think!