See you all really soon....
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Five days to the end.......
Friday, January 12, 2007
Bonjour!
We finally found a coin operated phone and managed to ring my brother who met us in Nice at 11:30pm after our flight was delayed an hour. The first thing I noticed about France was the crazy driving, for starters they drive on the right but wrong side of the road, white lines are just a guide (everyone veers all over multiple lanes), and indicating is just a courtesy. We spent a couple of days at my brothers apartment catching up, taking Fleur (my niece) to crèche, and relaxing; before heading off on a 10.5 hour drive to Angers in the north.
We arrived in Angers to colder weather (about 5 and below) than Nice (where it was about 12-15 degrees). Angers is a beautiful little town, we spent most of our time either shopping or with family and friends of Delphine's (Tim's sister in-law). It was great to see the different ways people celebrate Christmas. Before we started the marathon of eating at Christmas we all shared our Christmas present with each other.
For dinner we had about 6 courses, from memory:
Aperitifs – ports, sprits and liquors with a salmon spread on bread and a caviar type spread as well on bread. With chips and nibbles also.
Course 2 Foie Gras (I looked up the dictionary and that is how you spell it!) and toast – this is liver from a goose, I think, that has been force fed special palets until it bloats up and is then killed; a delicacy.
Course 3 Castrated Rooster – much the same as chicken just bigger boned, served with salad and balsamic dressing (homemade).
Course 4 Cheeses and Bread
Course 5 Dessert – A very tasty icecream/caramel?/orange? log thing
Course 6 Tea and Coffee with chocolates. And a really really full belly.
Mind you, this different culinary experience was only Christmas dinner, other interesting things we've had include:
Brains
Blood sausage (yes, it's just coagulated blood in intestines with a few other bits and pieces)
Milk sausage (the guys had blood sausage, the girls had milk sausage)
Prawns (wait ….. with hundreds of eggs attached, apparently a normal thing when they're fresh) Sea urchins (alive before being choppe d in half) - See in the photo below
Angers has become a blur of eating, drinking, shopping (great outdoor shopping and Vin Chaud (Warm Wine)), and meeting new people; an amazing experience! J
The day after Futuroscope we were off again in the car heading south to Marseille. We stopped off for the night at the Castle of Carcassonne which is huge fortified village where people still live (I have a funny photo showing a traffic light inside the castle!). We all had the dish of the region for dinner called the Cassoulet of Castelnaudary, which is a baked beans style soupy thing with sausages and duck and things inside of it, it tasted good but I can't imagine all of that fat being good for the body.
Marseille is on the south coast of France and has a massive port where we spent our final day. We took a tourist truck/train around the sights to try and squeeze as much as possible into the little time we had. It became more like a roller coaster than a gentle sightseeing tour, going up and down and around steep streets (with the driver cracking jokes about the last carriage still being attached), but we had fun and saw some things we wouldn't have otherwise.
For dinner we went to a nice little seafood restaurant were we had the prawns with eggs, and sea urchins I mentioned above. Back at our hotel Rhona, Andrew and I had a bon voyage drink and had some fun trying to get internet access to check our 6am flight to London (we had to get up at 4am!)
We will add all the other pics and details of our trip very soon.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Melbourne to Paris- Euro Disney
Our flights seemed to pass quicker than I thought with lots of distractions, we watched a few movies, I watched a few TV episodes I had downloaded to my laptop (all 6 Michael!) whilst Rhona slept (don’t get me started about the guy sitting in front of us on the first leg, he had his chair back as far as it could go for all of the flight! Except when the hostess asked him to put it forward for take off and landing and serving our meals). We had a dinner, a breakfast, another breakfast, and then a lunch J. During our stop over in Dubai we stumbled upon a raffle for a black Lamborghini (only 2000 tickets at US$140, I was tempted!) and we did the real touristy thing and got some photos J
From Dubai to Paris we had a great view of the mountains below. We took a few photos, it was really amazing.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Farewell Dinner For Nic
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Not long to go..
We can't wait to see everyone and spend christmas in France.