France – Waiting for the Train

Paris

After leaving our rental car at the train station in Tours, we boarded a very crowded train for Paris. We arrived late afternoon and made our way to our very cute Airbnb in the Eighth arrondissement, an area I hadn’t spent much time in before. We were exhausted after a long day of travel, so for dinner we stayed local and had a cheap Lebanese meal nearby the apartment. When we got home, we cracked open one of the delicious natural wines that we picked up at Le Sot D’Ange while we were staying at La Jagée.

On Sunday morning we’d planned to go back to one of our favourite spots from our last visit to Paris, Holybelly. Truly the home of the finest pancakes on earth. Despite unbelievably heavy rain, the line for Holybelly was ridiculous. We had a quick coffee at a coffee shop that doubled as a beautiful design and homewares store, before having breakfast at Blackburn. The vibe was teetering towards Faulty Towers, with new wait staff still learning the ropes and an understaffed kitchen drowning under the influx of weekend brunch orders. But, it was good enough to keep body and soul together (as S Power would say).

We continued the greatest hits tour on Sunday evening, eating dinner at the bar at Buvette. It somehow manages to have a much softer, calmer vibe than its New York counterpart (perhaps due to the French capacity for patience that Kerri and Kerry were telling us about) and the food is better too. We had a delicious cauliflower gratin, a salty potato, lentil and smoked trout salad and hachis parmentier. Dan and I go in for tiki drinks and I think it’s safe to say that piña coladas are our thing so after dinner we were happy to return to another favourite from our last trip, Dirty Dick’s.

On Monday, we were determined to get our fill of pancakes so we headed back to Holybelly. We thought we were sure to avoid a line by by going for a late Monday lunch but we still waited 10 minutes or so for a table. Even so, it was very much worth it. You always worry going back to a favourite spot if it’s going to live up to expectations. The pancakes I remembered were so impossibly good that I was certain we were setting ourselves up for disappointment by returning but they were so! good! Ridiculously good. Paired with an oat milk piccolo, we were so happy to be back in Paris. (In fact, we ended up going back to Holybelly three times during our stay). I love the area around Holybelly, and we spent lots of time here during our stay, revisiting Du Pain et des Idées for my favourite croissants in Paris, and La Fontaine de Belleville.

We were enjoying hanging out in familiar spots so much that we decided to extend our stay in Paris. We’d originally planned to visit for only a few days, but we ended up staying for almost two weeks, seeing some new things, revisiting old favourites and doing lots of cycling. With the luxury of a long stay, we didn’t feel much pressure to go sightseeing. Instead, we got to take it easy, and do lots of exploring in the area around our apartment. We had a late breakfast one day at Léandrés after spending the morning attempting to bring the apartment’s hot water heater back to life (we finally succeeded). The empanadas we had were fine but the cakes were delicious. We had a chocolate banana loaf and a carrot coconut loaf. The latter was served with a slick of barely sweet cream cheese frosting on top. Such a genius idea. Other highlights included lots of cheese from Fromages et Ramages, wine at Comestibles et Marchand de Vins, and coffee from Cuillier Abbesses.

Mostly, we spent our days doing a lot of walking and cycling. We discovered Le Petit Grain, a lovely little boulangerie that we went to after a supremely disappointing lunch at a Vietnamese cafe. They make a fantastic lamington (what a thing to stumble across in Paris). From there, we walked to Père Lachaise Cemetery, a Parisian tourist staple that neither of us had ever been to before. Another lovely find of our stay was Mokonuts. I loved the walk to this spot – there are so many interesting shops nearby, and we picked up delicious pastries around the corner at Blé Sucrée (although they didn’t displace Du Pain et des Idées as my favourite in Paris) – and the vibe is lovely. The light is beautiful, and the food was delicious.

On Friday afternoon, after lunch, vintage shopping (Thanx God I’m a VIP is great!) and lots of walking, we found ourselves at one of our favourite stops from our last trip to Paris, La Barav. It’s a wine bar with a wine store attached. You can choose a handful of wines by the glass or a bottle from the store and they’ll serve it to you in the bar. It’s super low key and friendly and our experience this time around was just as nice as it was in 2016. We tried an unfiltered wine from Greece (delicious and the sommelier asking me it was ok to try a non-French wine was very funny) and a natural wine from Alsace. We drank our wine with rilletes for Dan and a whole steamed artichoke for me. We decided to split a baba au rhum for dessert and it was so good we ended up skipping dinner and ordering a second round of baba au rhum.

Bar Hemingway is another place we loved returning to. It must have some of the most expensive cocktails in Europe – 30 euros each – but for that you get a great vibe, lovely service, delicious snacky things like toasted almonds and olives, and great drinks. This time I had a whiskey, apricot and bitters cocktail. Served with a cherry, my favourite thing, it’s one of the best cocktails I’ve ever had.

On our last full day in Paris we caught the subway over to the 11th to try a sandwich place called Chez Aline that Dan found. This turned out to be one of the best meals we had on our travels; I think about it often! Each day they offer a handful of baguettes, a few salads salads, and dessert – all pretty simple and a bit messy but so delicious. Dan had a baguette with mackerel rilletes and pickled cabbage, I had one stuffed with thinly sliced chorizo and the most incredible tortilla, and we shared a bowl of rice pudding with vanilla and citrus for dessert. It’s not glamorous – the pudding was served in a plastic pink bowl – but even Dan, self proclaimed rice pudding sceptic, loved it.

We were lucky to have incredibly warm autumn weather, so from Chez Aline, we walked over to the Promenade Plantée. We had planned to walk from there, to the Pantheon, through the Luxembourg Gardens, and finish our day at the Musée du Quai Branley. But it was so hot, we reversed course and headed for the air conditioned museum instead. I wrote a paper about this museum as an undergrad, so it was great to visit for the first time. The space, and particularly the gardens are lovely, and it doesn’t really seem to be on the tourist trail so it was so quiet.

From the museum, we walked into the Seventh, picking up treats from two more spots we’d enjoyed back in 2016 – Aux Merveilleux de Fred for insanely light meringue and cream puffs, and Sadaharu Aoki for macarons (the yuzu – so good!). From here, we actually jumped on metro hoping to make it to the Pantheon before it closed, but we were too late. Still, we had a really nice evening, walking back to our apartment past Notre Dame and through the Marais.

On our final morning in Paris, we had breakfast at Holybelly, picked up lots of pastries from Du Pain et Des Idées, and then headed to Gare du Nord to jump on the Eurostar – we were London bound!

A beautiful weekend at La Jagée

We dropped our bikes off in Tours and picked up a rental car for the next few days so that we could see some of the quieter and smaller villages of the Loire. We took the back roads home to Saumur (slower but prettier and I wasn’t keen to brave the motorways on my first drive on the wrong side of the road in over a year). For dinner we decided we deserved an indulgent meal so we headed back to Le Pot au Lapin. Dan had a steak with the best fries, I had salmon and we shared a bottle of local red. If there ever was a day to have dessert, it’s one where you’ve ridden 80km so we didn’t hesitate to order creme brûlée and panna cotta.

The next morning we had coffee and breakfast at home, packed up our car and headed off. Our destination for the next few days was the gorgeous La Jagée (more on that in a moment) but we wanted to make the most of having a car so we again opted for the back roads and headed to Chinon. The drive through vineyards and tiny villages was beautiful, particularly as we were hitting peak fall. Chinon was lovely too. We enjoyed walking around the medieval town before picking up some a few things from an unfussy and delicious local bakery and sitting down to lunch. Lunch was fine but obviously not memorable as I have absolutely no recollection of what we ate. But sometimes a mediocre meal that keeps body and soul together is all you need – the pressure to make every meal of your travels an outstanding one is so overwhelming!

After lunch we set off on the short drive to La Jagée, one of the stops we were most excited about. La Jagée is owned by Kerri and Kerry, the parents of one of my friends back in Sydney (hi Ash!). They’ve spent the last year turning the 17th century manor (perhaps the hunting lodge for the local château) into a beautiful and relaxing getaway in the Loire. Our king size bed was a dream (ha). After over two months on the go, we enjoyed staying in such a comfortable, warm place and Kerri and Kerry couldn’t have been better hosts. They were so generous, inviting us to eat with them for both nights of our stay and giving us great tips on what to see in the area. They are both fantastic cooks and we ate and drank so well (it was also so nice to have company as we’d been travelling solo since Shanghai!).

On Saturday morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast, including muesli (which I was so excited to see after a couple of months without it!) and incredibly creamy local milk (heaven after the uht that is everywhere in Europe) and some of the best croissants we ate in France. After a pretty slow start we made our way to the local castle, Le Château d’Azay-le-Rideau. It’s smaller in scale than Le Château de Villandry but no less lovely. Both the building and the grounds were beautiful and I loved getting to peak into a very old school kitchen. We stepped just outside the castle grounds for lunch at Restaurant Côté Cour, recommended to us by Kerri and Kerry. We’ve loved the set lunch menus that we’ve encountered in France. For 15-20 euros, you get at least two courses. It’s generally a pretty simple and quick affair but always satisfying and it’s so great to see what feels like the entire country pause for a proper lunch. Lunch at Côté Cour turned out to be one of the best lunches of our time in France, with lovely service, beautiful fresh food and such a light and modern space.

The beautiful grounds of Le Château d’Azay-le-Rideau

Wanting to squeeze as much as possible into our stay, after lunch we stopped at Le Sot de l’Ange to try some natural wines. We ended up taking half a dozen bottles home with us. It was a few more bottles than was sensible given that we had to get them to Paris on the train but it was worth the hassle as the wines were delicious. Over a month since we left the Loire and nearing the end of our travels now and we have one last bottle to share this weekend!

After stopping at the winery, we had the stamina for one more stop so we made our way to Le Château de Saché to visit the Musée Balzac. Not having read any of Balzac’s works, some of the museum’s exhibits were lost on us but we did enjoy the lovely home and the beautiful gardens. We crammed quite a bit into our day so from the museum we headed home to rest before dinner and make more travel plans (including a pretty last minute decision to cancel our Italy trip and head for London instead!).

On Friday night we sat down to another fantastic dinner cooked by Kerri and Kerry, including delicious local wines, huge bowls of mussels (just coming into season!) and an incredible dessert of tiny sweet strawberries, fresh cream and meringue. We stayed up much later than we usually do chatting with our hosts and so we slept in on Saturday morning. After finally mustering the energy to get up, we had another delicious breakfast of croissants, baguettes and butter, and muesli. After packing up the car and saying a reluctant goodbye to La Jagée and the Loire, we made our way to Tours to drop off our rental car and hop on the train to Paris. We had a very squishy and sweaty train ride as the train was so crowded and we were lugging our backpacks and that box of wine but we made it to our Paris Airbnb in one piece by early evening, excited to hang out in one of our favourite cities.

Loire Valley – Saumur

For the past couple of months we had been traveling at a mostly breakneck pace. Along the Trans-Siberian, we had a relatively structured and organized journey, pre-purchased and non-refundable train tickets made that a necessity, but after leaving Russia, arriving to Copenhagen then Barcelona, the rest of our trip was up in the air.

One constant of our trip was that wherever we were, irregardless of nation or continent we were in the city. Me and Anna are without a doubt city slickers, but after months of concrete and right angles, with the warmth of the Indian summer waning into the fall and winter, it only made natural sense to want to spend some time in the natural world. Ill-equipped for going camping or mountain climbing, we unfortunately had to settle for a couple of weeks of relaxing and drinking wine in Loire Valley.

The Loire Valley is quite a large area (in fact most of the central Loire has become a UNESCO World Heritage site) and there are many places we could have ended up, but we decided on Saumur, small enough have a rural feeling but large enough to be able to get around without needing a car. The place we chose in Saumur also had bikes for us to use (cycling about cities is one of our favorite past times).

On our first night of dinner in Saumur (our first destination), we overheard two British expatriates discuss (rather pretentiously) how the French spoken in the Loire is French at its most beautiful. Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder, but perhaps the French spoken in the Loire is perhaps the most pure. Due in part to its central location, the Loire is often known as the cradle of the French, and has remained very French throughout much of history, uninfluenced by the Brittans in the Northwest, the Germans in the Northeast, and the Italians throughout southern France.

The next day we decided to give the bikes a try. After carrying them out of cold and cobwebby cellar we were off to the town center, but then we weren’t. My bike pedal fell right off after going about 10 meters. Bikes put back, and we marched by foot to the city center.

The edge of Saumur is end capped by a large Chateau along a hill, we were told to admire it from the outside (we did) but not to bother going inside, we spent most of our time instead going about the town center about a 1.5km walk from the apartment. With lots of cute shops and restaurants, we could tell we had arrived towards the end of the season, a lot sparser than would be during the high tourist season we walked about at a relaxed pace exploring the city comfortably amidst a sunny, crisp fall afternoon.

Having lunch at we think the Pot du Lapin in Saumur

After walking about we picked up some general groceries at a nearby Carrefour, and I picked up some artisanally made pork rillettes at a local butcher, while Anna acquired some hard comte at the cheesemonger right across. Arriving home in the afternoon we spent the evening drinking wine and cooking a lovely pasta dinner.

One of the nice things about the Loire is that they’ve built long stretches of cycling lanes that allow visitors to cycle along the river and make excursions at many of the chateaus that are sprinkled across the entire region. Unfortunately our “included” bikes were (to quote Ken Pogson) not going to pass muster. Searching for bike shops ended up being much more challenging than expected, most had closed for the season! There was only one shop left open, and it was their last day. If we wanted to rent a bike, it would mean returning it to their headquarters in Tours, nearly 80KM away! We decided we could do it.

After getting the bikes we decided to do a ride to the Abbey de Fontevraud, about 15km away, of course if this was a struggle, getting Tours would be… questionable. Fortunately it was smooth riding for most of the journey, we decided to have lunch at a local restaurant just outside of the abbey. What we thought would be a relatively quick lunch ended up taking more than two hours. Course after course of meats, cheese and desserts served by the mere of the restaurant (who helped me with my awful french pronunciations) we were quite full, but had the perfect excuse of riding all this way to justify our gluttony!

Stuffed and puffed we biked the rest of the short distance to the Abbey a place Anna had been really wanting to see. The Abbey was a beautiful stop, constructed in a Roman style, the space has a history of nearly a millenia. A worthy stop if you’re ever in region. After riding to the abbey along a busier path north of the river, we rode back along a secluded path south of the river home, the red evening sky cutting through the fall leaves. Our test run was a success.

We spent the next few days relaxing in Saumur, while getting the necessary resources for a long ride to Tours, namely baguettes, butter and cake. The couple of days went quickly and the next morning we got up just at sunrise and set off on our all day bike ride.

Getting ready to ride as the morning light comes in.

The air was cool and crisp (ideal for cycling) and a light cloud cover kept the sun from beaming on us through most of the ride. The landscape more than we had expected, parts of the ride were through beautiful fall forest with the river beside us, other portions went through lovely small towns. Nearly the entire ride was along separated paths, and if not, along very small winding residential roads. After the journey it’s clear why its such a popular cycling journey.

We reached the halfway point after riding for a little under three hours just a bit after 10am and decided to stop along the road by a small open field to have some lunch, we were pretty chuffed to have made it all that distance. After some baguettes, rilletes, butter, cake and a lot of water, we were off again.

It was a relatively short ride for us to make it to our first and only stop, the Chateau de Villandry, which had an amazing garden, beautifully sculpted and vivid in color. The Chateau even had its own hedge maze (nothing to the level of the Shining, but still). We spent a bit there, I took a nice fall afternoon nap on a bench while Anna did the full walk. After leaving the Chateau, we rode a bit up the hill to a cute restaurant inside what looked like a small farm, the food wasn’t the best we had, but the service warm. Conversing with the owner we learned she had an American father and her daughter was currently in NYC. Small world.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, in a lovely way; calm quiet and relaxing. The only interesting point was when we reached about 10kms out of Tours we were spooked by the sight of black smoke ahead of us along the path. As we approached, we realized we were passing a Romani settlement, as there were a platoon of caravans leaving the area, with what looked like police that were clearing the space out. Some googling taught us that there were perhaps hundreds of thousands of Romani in France often setup in urban camps like the one we had just passed, with unsurprisingly, a conflicted history with the French government and local peoples.

Once we passed through the camp it was smooth sailing to Tours with heaps more traffic, but fortunately for us we were only a short ride to our return destination. We arrived, dropped off our bikes to a very friendly serviceman who wished us well and we were off to get our car and our next destination in the Loire.

Lyon

We woke up early on Monday morning to get an 8.25am train out of Barcelona. Six hours later and we were in beautiful Lyon. We landed with the coolest Airbnb, complete with palm tree printed wall paper, beautiful high ceilings and windows opening onto a very typical French street. We were so happy to have ended up at such a lovely spot and we spent lots of time enjoying it over the next few days. We both caught bugs in Moscow and it really lingered for Dan so that by the time we arrived in Lyon, we were pretty sure that he had bronchitis. As Dan was sick and I had a work deadline coming up, we spent a lot of time doing not very much at home.

On our first evening in the city we walked a short way to dinner at Le Comptoir du Vin. Our meal couldn’t have been a better welcome to France. The atmosphere was so good – very local and very casual (by the time we left, the chef was smoking cigarettes with diners behind the bar). The food was great too. We ate steaks with a delicious mustard sauce, beautiful salad leaves and crispy roasted potatoes. Our meals were served with thick slices of bread that we watched our waitress cut from a huge loaf on the restaurant bar. We shared a carafe of wine (“un pot”) and for dessert we had a baba au rhum. The baba au rhum at Continental Deli in Sydney is one of the best things I have ever eaten and while this version was not quite so incredible, it was delicious – a rum soaked brioche with a drizzle of berry coulis and a thin custard. Sated and happy, we practically rolled home to bed.

On Tuesday morning we had plans to head to a nearby brunch spot but when we got there we realised that it is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We headed to a back up option only to be told that they do not serve food before midday. We had sort of better luck at option number three (La Boîte à Café), ending up with perfect coffee and an impressively good scone. Still hungry but realising that breakfast in France is rarely more than a coffee and some bread or a pastry, we decided to be patient and get an early lunch instead. We occupied ourselves by doing a very long walk through the centre of Lyon, along the river banks and through a well known food market at Quai Saint-Antoine. Food markets are so beautiful in France and this time of year seems particularly lovely, with late summer and early autumn fruits and vegetables to be found (artichokes, figs, stone fruit and raspberries as well as mushrooms and oranges).

We had lunch at a bouchon called Au Petit Bouchon Chez Georges. It was warm and cozy inside and we enjoyed chatting to a French American couple sitting next to us. But we did make a strategic error, going for a set menu lunch instead of ordering a la carte. None of the dishes that we ate were particularly good and as we watched the meals come out, we thought the other options looked so much better. The next day we had lunch at a contemporary, modern bistro called Bel Ami that was much more satisfying than Chez Georges. We again had an amazing set menu, this time for less than twenty euros. The fresh fig tart that we had for dessert was particularly delicious.

Dan slept in on Wednesday morning while I went for a walk. I love being out and about in a new city early in the morning. I picked up croissants and pain au chocolat from a boulangerie and more fantastic coffee from La Boîte à Café and we had a delicious breakfast at home.

As he was sick and I had work to do so we spent the afternoon at home, snacking on some delicious pastries that I bought at a boulangerie near our Airbnb (we were on a mission to eat as many croissants as possible while we’re in France). Again foiled by opening hours, the restaurant we had planned to visit for dinner was mysteriously closed. After lots of walking and stressing about every restaurant in Lyon closing before we found somewhere to eat, we ended up at Le Pailleron for a very traditional French meal. Lyonnais food is delicious but soooo heavy and I’ve found that being a vegetarian in France is much harder than anywhere else on our trip, with the exception perhaps of Mongolia.

We didn’t have time to do a tonne on our last day in Lyon – just pack and head to an early lunch. Thankfully we were able to squeeze this in, as lunch at Chez Paul turned out to be a highlight. Although bouchons originated in Lyon, so many of them seem to serve almost exclusively tourists now and they risk stagnating. But although no doubt Chez Paul sees its fair share of tourists, the food was good and the vibe was fun. When we sat down there were already three enormous bowls of salad at our table (a delicious white bean, a beetroot, and a lentil salad that even Dan ate enthusiastically) and we simply helped ourselves as we pleased. Our mains were great (a braise and a steak) and for dessert we again got to help ourselves from an enormous creme caramel and huge bowls of stewed apples and prunes in red wine. The prunes were incredible and I will never understand why people do not eat prunes more enthusiastically. They are so good. We finished up our time in Lyon with an excellent coffee at Slake and then it was off to the train station for our train to Saumur, a small town in the Loire.