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Added 27 June 2010. Pictures and stories from our trip to the Languedoc-Rousillon region of France, from May 15 to May 25, 2010.
So our prebooked wine tasting course really was this morning at 10:00 AM, so after breakfast on our own, that's where we headed first. The GPS did a pretty job in getting us there, except for taking the winery address too literally. The best (only realistic) access to it was off this big main road, but it tried to take us down this little country lane. We had left early enough to have time to figure that—also, the big sign on the main road was a clue!
We got there expecting to speak French, but we were greeted by a British fellow. (Again, this was all booked by a Winnipeg travel company, so I guess they look for English-speaking options.) He told us that five other people would be joining us. They ended up being about 15 minutes late, due to difficulty finding the place. They were also Brits, and seemed very nice. Enjoyable to spend a couple hours with.
The wine tasting did take place at a vineyard, but was actually presented by the Vinécole, The Centre for Wine Education in the Languedoc-Roussillon. That meant that we didn't only try wines from that vineyard, but from various parts of the region. The whole thing took about two hours, and we tried 8 different wines. And in a first for me at a wine tasting, everyone poured their own tasting size.
We were given sheets to take notes about each wine. This is what we tried.
So it was an educational two hours.
Apart from hosting this wine school, the winery also had a restaurant on-site, and that's where we had lunch. We had a beautiful view there. Cathy went for the lunch special of the day, while Jean selected another menu. They were both very good, each featuring duck as the main course, but Jean's started with foie gras and included a cheese course. Cathy's advantage, though, was that they kept offering refills on her glass of wine (a delicious Syrah). Every time they poured more, She'd say “I love France!”
Lunch at Domaine Gayda, with dual duck entrees, but only one refilable wine order
Our next destination is the Chateau Perpeytuse. Naturally, this means driving on more crazy narrow, twisty roads first. But we got there around 1:30 and paid our admission.
This is one of those tourist attractions that you figure were never fly in North America, because it involves walking up and around this rocky terrain, often near the edges of high cliffs, in high winds. We were both surprised that Cathy didn't freak out by the precariousness of it. But it was really cool. You got excellent views and a real sense of experiencing the castle terrain.
Climbing up to the castle
One of the views at the top
Even though we'd already done our share of driving on crazy streets, we nevertheless took up the advice from the Spanish couple at the B&B and next drove through the Gorges de la Galamus, a 3 KM drive through a narrow gorge of white rock. This road is a tourist destination and therefore had more cars on it, but nothing too hairy happened driving through. It is pretty neat, and there is a lovely viewing point at the end.
We then headed back, aiming for Cuiza and le Carnotzet, one of the restaurants we'd tried to go to the night before. It was open this time, and had a nice upstairs room. This was the first place we'd been to that didn't have a menu; instead, they had a blackboard of daily appetizers, entrees, and desserts, each to be ordered on its own. Jean started with a goat cheese appetizer, while Cathy had a salmon paté with salad. Mains were more salmon for her, duck for Jean, each accompanied with a really nice selection of veg. But we were too full for dessert.
Everything was good, but we noted that the prices were not really any better than at the Duc de Joyeuse. In fact, with dessert, it would have been more. This was notable because when we'd mentioned to our B&B host that we'd been to the Duc, he seemed shock, as he thought it was so expensive. And yet he'd recommended this place. Anyway.
So we were back at the B&B by 9:30—our earliest arrival yet!
It was the sunniest, warmest day yet, so we decided to head to the beach town of Collioure. Cathy wore her new dress, purchased at the market, and sandals.
We were finally bright enough to program the GPS with way points, such that we stayed on main roads for the trip there. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out how to program our way around Perpignan, and driving through that city wasn't that much fun. But overall not a bad drive, and it took about 2 hours.
Collioure is a very beautiful beach town, extremely popular in the summer. As we first got there, we just drove through it, then took a little walk on the outskirts before heading back in for more permanent parking. This was a little bit hairy, but we managed. We were told that later in the year, there would be no way at all to find parking in town at 11:00 in the morning.
We then just walked around the town, admiring the waterfront, the beaches, the old buildings and churches.
Beautiful beach town of Collioure
As per Cathy's usual schedule, she got hungry and therefore somewhat grumpy around 12:30 PM. Of course, there are plenty of restaurants to choose from, and we finally settle on one offering Spanish food, as that seemed like a nice change. We were first seated outside in the sun, but that quickly came too seem to hot for Cathy, so I asked that we be moved just indoors and rolled my eyes, but that turned out to be a good move!
This area was known for Banyul, a sweet, spicy wine fortified with eau de vie and aged 3–15 years, so we started with a glass of that each—white for Cathy, red for Jean. It was quite nice, served cold. A food specialty here is anchovies, and Jean has those as a starter, prepared three ways. They're very good. As mains, we both had sardines. Though smaller than the ones we'd enjoyed in Portugal, they were still bigger than what we get in Canada. And also prepared very nicely. We had a rosé with that.
So next we visited the Chateau Royal (there are more castles—and wineries—here than in any other part of France). It was not as grand as some of the others we'd seen, but still interesting to walk through. We ran into some people putting up art for an exhibit starting the next day. We got to talking to them, and got an invitation for the grand opening. We accepted, even though it seemed unlikely we'd be driving back to Collioure again the next day.
We left at this point and headed to the nearby Banyul sur Mer. It's another cute beach town, though not quite as nice as Collioure. We walked around there for a bit, then stopped for some gelato.
We then decided to head back. Not too far along, we did stop for a coffee, whereupon Cathy realized she was definitely developing a sunburn on her shoulders and back. Not too bright to wear a sundress to a beach town on a sunny day (her words not mine), with no sunscreen. Thank goodness we didn't have lunch in the sun, though!
With our improved GPS programming skills, the rest of the drive back was not too noteworthy. We were back in Esperaza around 8:30, and pretty hungry. Amazing, the local French restaurant is finally open! So we ate there. We were the only ones. (Maybe being frequently closed is not the best approach to building a clientele.)
However, the food was actually really good. We each started with a glass of that bubbly Limoux wine we'd enjoyed at the wine tasting. Cathy had this nice couscous appetizer, while Jean had escargot. Cathy's main was a very tasty tarragon chicken. Jean had excellent roast lamb. And we shared a dessert of apple pie and creme caramel ice cream. And drank a full 2 L of water with dinner (along with some red wine) to try to offset the sunburn effect.
The waitress/owner was a little flustered, but in a kind of charming way. She didn't know quite what to do with our unchipped credit card, so Jean had to show her how to use the machine. (We realized that in France, everyone had chip cards only, so ours was an oddity. And everyone had to hunt down a pen for us to sign, because no French people had to do that anymore.)
Our last full day in the Languedoc, so we wanted to start with any priorities we hadn't yet visited. That turned out to Rennes-le-Chateau, which was not too far away.
One of the “biggest mysteries in France” is how abbé Saunière could possibly have afforded the construction costs for the large castle in this city. And were the Knights Templar involved, somehow? (the story goes on & on, but is of interest only to Knights Templar fans... which I am not really)
So though it's fairly grand and very old, the most interesting thing about Rennes-le-Chateau is learning more about this abbé and the rumors swirling around him as you visit the various sites and museums. He was a pretty weird guy. One thing I remember is that he was frequently caught up digging up old graves; the townspeople had to band together to put a stop to it. And nobody ever found out exactly why he was doing that.
The view at Rennes-le-Chateau
After touring through the castle sites, we visited some of the shops in the town. There are many bookstores here, with some focus on history, conspiracy theories, spirituality. One book that looked especially interesting to Cathy was on the Gospel of Judas. It paints Judas in a different light than the other Gospels. But we didn't actually purchase any books.
Cathy did get another necklace, a really pretty silver chain with tiny red roses on it. And she did wear it later in the trip. That's good, because it got damaged on the trip back (a link broke), and so far, I haven't figured out how to repair it.
After that, we drove to the nearby Rennes les Bain, yet another “hot spring” town (though we did no actually bathing in said hot springs on this trip). It was fairly small, but had a few restaurants, and we settled on one to dine at that had a nice patio overlooking the water.
We then discussed what to do next, and determined that we didn't really want to undertake yet another big expedition, to Minervois or whatever. So we actually just went into Limoux, a town we'd driven through a number of times, but hadn't actually visited. It was quite a warm day—over 30C. But we still felt like getting some kind of a walk in. The guidebooks and some of the signs around town suggest that there are various museums about that seem at least moderately interesting: one on pianos, one on robots (?), a Catharama on Cathar history. But all attempts to find any of these led to dead ends. It almost became comical.
However, it did achieve the aim of getting us some exercise. When we did find ourselves again, we stopped in for a coffee before heading back to the B&B.
This left us with plenty of time to prepare for our next day's trip to Paris, plus some reading and such.
For dinner, we were planning to go to the previous night's French restaurant again, but it was closed! Again! On Saturday. Quite amazing, really.
So instead, we went to the local Creperie. And that was actually very good (and Cathy enjoyed, looking at, a cute blonde waiter). We each had a salad to start (for both of us, our consumption of salad was just hugely increased on this trip compared to normal. Compensating for all the fatty duck and desserts, maybe?), then two different types of main course crepes. To drink, we went with sweet cider, which was very low alcohol and quite nice. Then we shared a dessert crepe of honey and cream.
Today was market in Espéraza. I had been concerned about where the car was parked, and was right to be—it was right where they wanted to set up the market. So I got up early to move it.
At breakfast, we were joined by some Americans from Oklahoma—the people who had been on the computer the day before. It was an older couple and their two daughters, one of whom now lived in the area.
We packed up and checked out, and our host said that we were the quietest, most polite guests they'd ever had. That's good—I think!
But we had some time before we had to get to Toulouse for our flight, so we did visit the market a bit first. It was much like the one in Mirepoix, only smaller. I guess a lot of the vendors just travel around from town to town. We also ran into the American gentleman there, and talked to him some more. His daughter came to be in this part of France by marriage, as her husband was a missionary. He first worked in East Germany (during Communist times), then they ended up here.
Funny you don't think of Frane as a place missionaries go.
We then headed off toward Toulouse. The original plan was to just go straight to the airport, but we made really good time, so we decided to attempt going into Toulouse a bit and maybe have some lunch there.
That worked out pretty well. After we parked (and marked on the GPS where the car was) We got the bright idea of heading toward a museum, figuring there would be restaurants around there. We ended up eating at the museum, since they advertised “service continue”. We did end up having to wait about 20 minutes for the switchover from brunch to lunch, but that was OK. They had a nice outdoor seating area, where we could look on a nice park and see some unusual birds and such.
Lunch was part buffet, but you could also order a hot entree for them to bring you. Everything was quite good. We both had the cassoulet entree, and it was quite different from the style we'd had earlier—lighter, and more vegetables.
We then headed to the airport. We were still in lots of time, and had no issues returning the car, checking in, going through security. The flight was on time and brought us to Paris.
From CDG Airport, we had figured out what train we needed to take to get to our hotel, and we didn't have too much trouble finding it. It did get increasingly crowded, though. We put our big luggage on the upper racks to free up some seats, but as our stop approached, we were kind of worried about getting that down without bumping everyone on the head, and actually managing to get through the crowd and off the train.
But really, everyone was very nice. They helped Jean get the bags down, allowed us through—we had no issues. Then, when I was struggling a bit with carrying the suitcase up the stairs at the metro stop, some guy picked up the bottom half for me to make it easy! I don't know why Parisians have such a reputation for unfriendliness, because that has never been our experience.
Once on the street, though, we realized we hadn't been quite as organized in mapping the walking route to our hotel. We knew it wasn't far, but we weren't exactly sure where to go. Obviously, we eventually figured it out, with the help of a street map and the hotel address.
The guy at the hotel was very friendly in checking us in. And the room was very nice; probably the nicest we've had in Paris. The only thing that quickly became apparent, though, was that the cooling system wasn't all that effective.
But anyway, we didn't stay in the room too long. After refreshing and changing, we headed out, with general target of the Saint Germain des Pré neighborhood. On the way we walked through part of the Jardin Luxembourg, and found the Bastide Odéon restaurant we'd eaten at five years before. Turns out it wasn't open the two days we were there, but that wasn't a huge disappointment. (It's a bit expensive.) It was just nice to have found it again.
We eventually found what we thought was the Saint Germain des Pré neighbourhood, only to find that not only was Paris much warmer in May than in February, but also much more crowded. It was almost overwhelming at first. But we persisted through, and found a place to eat that had a "fresh herb" theme. The waiters there literally had to run all evening to keep up with everything. But still, good service, and we did enjoy the food.
It was fairly late by this point, so we just walked back to the hotel and called it a day.
First, we slept in, because that's we do in Paris. Then we went to la Coupole for breakfast, because that's another thing we do in Paris.
La Coupole is a fairly famous, quite attractive, and somewhat pricey café. But their breakfast is quite delightful, with its delicious coffee (or hot chocolate), selection of pastries (croissant, chocolatine, raisin bread), and fresh-squeezed orange juice, all on an enormous silver tray.
The next destination was the Louvre, which we felt we could visit more of. The line-up to get in wasn't too bad; I think they may have a better "people-processing" system than five years ago. But we headed toward the Italian collection first and boy; so did a lot of other people! It was fairly unpleasant at first. But, at the Mona Lisa room (which we once again skipped), it thinned out quite a bit and the rest was quite tolerable. And quite the amazing collection, really.
On the way into the Louvre
Next we went to see the Italian sculptures, hoping for more Carvaggio. Sadly, they didn't have any of his. Though there were some decent pieces.
We visited the very small but very good British collection next. We headed toward one of the “decorative arts” rooms, thinking that was something else, but didn't stay there long to look at furnishings. Instead we headed to the basement where you can see Medieval Louvre—an exhibit of what the place was like when it was a castle rather than an art gallery. That was pretty cool, actually. Very different from the other parts.
We were hungry for lunch at this point (very nice not to have to worry so much about "lunch windows", though) so we headed out and away a bit, then selected a Japanese place for lunch for a change. It was nice sushi and brochettes, and unusually delicious Miso soup to start.
We were then pondering a boat trip on the Seine, as our B&B host had mentioned it and we'd never done, but walking along and seeing the various options, we couldn't really settle on one we wanted. It was a nice place to walk, regardless. (And a beautiful sunny day, though quite hot!)
View of the Senne River
So we went to a bar for a drink. Jean had a kir royale, and Cathy had another of those 2% alcohol ciders (She actually thought she was ordering a harder cider, but that's OK). We were somewhat sweaty at this point, and decided to metro back to our hotel to change to something lighter and decide on our next destination.
That turned out to be the Marais neighborhood, which we hadn't really visited before. It was really cool to walk around in—we partly followed a walk itinerary from a Fodor's book. The Centre Pompidou is there—very neat-looking building—along with historic buildings, some cool shops, and a generally fun and funky atmosphere.
Centre Pompidou—A photo not taken by us. It was much sunnier the day we were there. A night photo of the Louvre's Pyramid (also not taken by us. It was much more daytime the day we were there ;)
For dinner, we headed again toward the Germain des Prés area, finding another part that isn't quite as hectic. We ended up eating at a French restaurant, sitting beside a woman from Quebec, whom we talked to a bit. Jean went for the whole escargot and duck meal again, and it was really delicious, but we were upstairs, and it was warm, so Cathy just felt more like light food. I had salad and salmon, both quite fine, though nothing spectacular. But Cathy's dessert of violet ice cream was quite delicious and unusual.
Our flight back was at noon, so there wasn't time to do much more in Paris but one final café breakfast—not at la Coupole, but still quite fine, though it was just a bit slower than we would have liked. And then we got on the wrong train, not once, but twice. Fortunately, we at least managed to always be going in the right direction. It's just that the first two trains weren't actually going all the way to the airport. Once again a helpful Parisian saw our luggage and very nicely pointed out the the train didn't go all the way to the Airport.
With all that, though, we still made it in time. (And by the way, yet another Parisian helped Cathy carry her suitcase in the metro! Canadians are never this nice.) The flight was on time, all routine. We arrived kind of in rush hour, which wasn't ideal, but made it in. And no food poisoning (re Spain trip and Provence Trip!)
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