Changing Chateauxs

One of the tapestries and the
Chateux de Villeveque

Most of the day was earmarked for biking to Chateaux Noiriex so that we could get in early and enjoy the hotel itself. For X-mas, Catherine wanted a night at a chateaux and so I found one outside of Angers that also had a Michelin star restaurant. Surprisingly there aren't that many Michelin star restaurants in the Loire, but this was one of them with a single star.

The bike ride itself was a little annoying. It started out nice as we had to make our way back over the river, but on the other side, we had to shortly get off the main Velo de Loire route and head north. This meant trying to piece together streets on Google Maps, which was only semi successful since the grades were inconsistent. One grade could either be a nice quiet paved road with hardly any traffic, or it could be a tractor path through a field. Another is either a busy a road with no shoulder or one that's much calmer and better for a bike.

We also ran into a little trouble with lunch. In France, restaurants are only open for lunch from noon to 2pm and really, they don't want you sitting down much after 1pm. So, we tried to find a restaurant around noon in one of the towns we went through. Using Google Maps, we kept striking out because either the restaurants were closed for the weekend, or just didn't exist. Mostly, these towns were crappy, small suburban towns with no character that apparently nobody stays in for anything commercial. Eventually, approaching 2pm, we made it to Villeveque and found a restaurant that was willing to sit us for a quick meal. It was a really cute place actually as it was inside an old water mill. Also, Catherine was very happy because she was able to get some duck confit and french fries to stave off the hangriness.

After lunch, we backtracked across the bridge to the Chateaux de Villeveque, which is actually just a small art/history museum containing the collection of somebody who died about 20 years ago. It is just a couple of rooms, but the highlight was the tapestries, which are in amazing condition compared to what we had seen before.

From the museum, we hopped on the bike for a quick 10 min ride to our hotel. We got hit by a flash of rain, but really, not a big deal. We'd been super lucky avoiding almost all the rain throughout the week that was swirling around us. It seemed that every morning it was sunny, but by afternoon, the clouds would roll in an threaten.

The hotel is definitely in the fancy category with a lot of staff, old school french decor and a terrace with a view of the valley that picks up the light both at dawn and dusk. Dinner itself was an experience. It's traditional white table cloth in the French style. Very different than the one stars in SF which are way more casual. However, the service was comical. It seemed like they really didn't have their shit together. They regularly forgot us throughout the dinner even though there were only about 15 tables and 10 servers, didn't give us the wine menu, but the piece the resistance was the desert course where they brought out a desert with candle and placed it in front of another couple, only to realize that they had served it to the wrong table. The whole dining room cracked up.

Though the service was bad, the food was well done, while a decent wine pairing. Probably not worth the price tag, but well done. I had a terrine of fois gras to start, followed by a white fish served over a shrimp paper that was very tasty. Then came the cheese cart, which was a unique experience for us. They come to your table with a large cart full of about 30 cheeses and you pick which ones you want for your cheese course and the waiter cuts off big hunks of each. I had seen a desert cart in Grenada Spain before but Catherine hadn't one before and spent a portion of the meal snooping at other tables to figure out how many cheeses were reasonable to order. She concluded that somewhere between 3 and 5 was right and spent the next half hour relishing her selection of everything from a mild, soft goat, to a funky Camembert style. Desert was a peach sorbet in a verbena syrup, but once again, the peaches in the Loire, just were not very flavorful.  The evening was definitely an experience that finished with stumbling up the stairs to our room.

Rain Creates Mushrooms and a Cozy Evening

We took our time getting out of Saumur. Originally, our plan was go to all the way to Chateau Noirieux for Catherine's X-mas stay in a Chateau and Michelin start dinner, however, that would have meant a 50km day if we went straight there, which was more than we really wanted to push for. So, I phoned the Chateaux and they were able to move our reservation back a day, while we were able to find another place about half way there in a gite. So we had more time.

After crossing the river back to the main bike path, we made our way to the Musee de Champignons. This mushroom museum is cut into the cliffs and had a lot of information & specimens about wild mushrooms in the area, as well as cultivated once. It's also a mushroom farm that produces a number of different kinds of mushrooms from your standard button ones, to ornamental red velvet ones, to the blue edible ones.

After the mushroom museum, we backtracked to town for some wine tasting before they closed for lunch. We found a large sparkling wine house that was still open called Akerman that makes mostly Cremant de Loire and a very reasonable price. The whites and roses were excellent and crisp, while they also had a sparking red that was like putting a fistful of raspberries in your mouth.

Following the wine tasting, we picked up some bread for lunch and continued on our way following the bike path. After a while, we stopped for lunch in a picnic area on a lake just outside of Gennes. It was threatening rain, so we ate under a tree, but fortunately, only got hit with a light sprinkle.

From there, we continued on towards Saint-Rémy-la-Varenne and eventually on towards our hotel, which was an old manor that had been refurbished by the owners as part of their retirement. It sits up the hill from the river and so has a great view. Inside, it is full of a collection of mounted animal heads, and old furniture. It feels exactly like a 19th century hunting lodge, with some modern conveniences (like plumbing). The owners, Catherine & Patrice are a charming couple that live in the house and rent out rooms when they are around and their kids aren't visiting. They are big hunters, mostly using dogs, to hunt rabbit, foxes and sometimes wild boar. Patrice still works at the salt farms on the coast as a manager, but is about to retire to the lodge full time in a few years.

We arrived right before the rain as about a half hour after we got there, it came down like cats and dogs. Unfortunately, one of their cats was hiding from the rain in the garden and one of the dogs got confused and attacked it, killing it.

Since we arrived on bikes, Catherine was willing to make us a dinner at the house instead of having to go into town to a restaurant. Normally, they want people to pre-reserve the dinners, but she was able to throw something together, which turned out delicious. It started with a smoked salmon and dill pocket with salad. Followed by chicken roasted with Provencal herbs, roasted potatoes and zuchinni and finished with an apple crumble for me. All of which had wine.

We fell asleep to the sound of the rain caressing the countryside. 

Sauntering to Saumur

We started today with what was probably the best continental breakfast I've ever had. It included crepes, homemade pot-de-creme, bread and even a flourless chocolate cake that our host made because Catherine can't eat gluten. After stuffing our faces, I mean getting energy for the day, we packed up and headed to the train station.

We decided to hop on a train to Chinon in order to cut out about 15 km from the trip for the day. On the train, which we were only taking two stops, the conductors stopped us. Apparently you can take bikes on the train, but you can't take bike trailers, which we were doing. Also, I apparently didn't know how you had to use tickets. We bought tickets from the machine, but didn't validate them because I didn't realize we had to. So they fined us 40 euros, but said that obviously, based on my accent, we're foreign and so they will write up the situation on the ticket and said that I had to take the ticket to the office in Chinon to get a refund. Of course, he still had to write the ticket in the first place. How very French!

Biking by the Troglodyte Houses

In Chinon, we stumbled across a farmer's market where we bought some snacks for lunch. We found sausage, cheese, bread, pears and a bottle of rose. To get out of town, we first wanted to take a tour around the castle. The map said that there was a bike route around it, so we tried to find it and ended up biking up a very big hill and putzing around for 45 min, trying to get back to the bridge out of town. We found out that there was actually an elevator we were supposed to take. I don't know why I didn't think of that!

The best view of the castle was from across the bridge where you can see it overlooking the town. After admiring the view, we followed a great bike path for about 15 km that went along the Vienne, and about when it got to the Loire, stopped for our picnic lunch. One of the things we noticed along the way is that there are a number of poplar plantations along the path. After some digging online, it turns out that they are planted in the area traditionally when a girl is born. Her father plants the trees, which are harvest when she gets married to pay for the wedding. The wood is used primarily to ship wine.

After lunch, we continued along the bike path on what was probably the most interesting stretch. The path from Conde-Saint-Martin to Saumur goes through a sequence of vineyards and little towns, some of whom are cut into the hillside. At one point, we were taking the scenic route up to the vineyards. Catherine was zooming ahead on her e-bike and I was trailing behind slowly cranking our baggage up the hill. I passed an older couple walking the other way, who looked at me, looked at Catherine, then looked at me again and just smiled.

On that stretch, the bike path does a detour in Turquant that actually goes through some of the old roads carved into the cliff side. They actually go for kilometers and were used to move from house to house, while staying hidden. We also stopped at the pommes tapee museum/factory. These are a specialty of the area that were primarily used back in the day to preserve apples for long sea voyages. The apples are slowly dried over 3 days in a kiln and then smacked flat with a special hammer. The entire operation is done inside the caves. To eat them, you rehydrate them, preferably with something warm and tasty, like mulled wine.

A couple of towns past the museum, we stopped quickly for some coffee and then headed into Saumur in time to go to the maison de vin, which is a tourist tasting room to showcase the wines of the region. It was interesting to get an overview of the Saumur and Anjou wines although our guide wasn't that good.

We then dropped off our stuff a the hotel across the river and went for dinner at a small restaurant right in downtown. I had terrine as an app, while Catherine had some mushrooms roasted with local goat cheese. For mains, we had steak and Catherine got some french fries. Finally, for desert, we had Cointreau creme brulee, which is also a local flare since Cointreau comes from Anger, just down the river.

Green Grottoes to Cozy Caves

Before leaving Tours, we had to deal with our bags. Thanks to the concierge at the hotel we were able to arrange that our two bags would be picked up and boxed by Mail Boxes etc. and then shipped to our hotel in Nantes for less than 30 euros. Way less than the 200 euros that the bike outfit was asking (they wanted to use a taxi).

We set out on the bikes heading down river and by around noon, reached the Villandry. We decided to get some lunch before going into the chateau and picked a small place one street back from the main one. They made a classic gallet de sarrasin or buckwheat crepe, which Catherine was able to eat since it was 100% buckwheat. It turns out that those crepes are specifically a Breton specialty and the Loire is close enough that we saw a significant amount of Breton influence. So we had them, an appetizer, and I got a sweet crepe with some glasses of excellent Breton cider.

After lunch, we visited the Chateau de Villandry, or really, it's gardens. They were rebuilt in the 1800s from the style of the time of the original gardens  and are now maintained year round by 10 gardeners. They are supposed to be the most extensive gardens in the Loire, and it's not hard to see why. There's a hedge maze, a large herb garden, a swan pond, a statue garden and even large vegetable gardens. The vegetable and herb gardens aren't your typical ones though because the vegetables are chosen and arranged for their ornamental value along with crop rotations. So you have things like purple leaved peppers contrasting with golden celery all in a very geometric design. The herbs are also setup geometrically, but are generally more permanent since some of them are perennials. So there were little hedges of things like mint and rosemary.

After the castle, we followed the bike route to our hotel outside of Azay-de-Rideau. the hotel is actually a Trogdolyte hotel carved out of the limestone cliffs. Catherine wanted to stay in a cave hotel, so this is the one I found, however, upon arriving and seeing the room (which even had a little entertainment chamber) realized that caves don't have airflow and are thus musty. So we had to switch to one of the rooms built using stone blocks where they were able to get some air to dry it out.

We were originally going to try and see the chateau or to go up the street to the exhibition trogdolyte village, but upon unpacking, we decided to just relax and sit in the hot tub before dinner. For dinner, we went to a restaurant right besides the castle that the concierge at the hotel recommended. It was a great little spot that was truly bustling. I had a fish & zucchini lasagna, which was a lot like a casserole, while Catherine had a piece of white fish in beurre blanc. For desert, I had a peach tart. It was a great crust, but the peaches were tasteless. I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that peaches in this part of France just suck. Catherine had pears poached in Chinon wine, which was delectable. 

Cycling to Chateaux de Chenonceaux

Today was our first real day in France. It was also our first trial of biking. We started the day by picking up our bikes from the bike rental place. We had concluded that if it was possible to do day of baggage transfers, that would have made our lives easier because both of our bags would not fit in the one trailer we rented. However, they are only willing to do that if you have it pre-booked and know all your locations along the way. So, we left our bags in the hotel and headed off on a day trip to Chenonceaux.

The official bike trail to get there requires going out of the way to Amboise and then going south, whereas the direct way is straight east of Tours. That would add about 10km to the ride. So, we followed Google Maps and took a more direct route. This started great as it was a bike bath following the river out of town. However, after a while, it turned into a very bumpy tractor route. We were also paralleling a semi-major road, so we gave up on the river path and cut over to the road, only to find a real bike path. The rest of the way alternated between a paved side road and proper bike paths. I wish these things were marked properly either on the tourist maps or in Google Maps as we were really just guessing.

We were hoping to make it to Chenonceaux in time for lunch, but it didn't look like it would happen, so we stopped in Blere for lunch. In France, you have to stop for lunch between 12 and 1:30 since that's the only times that restaurants are open. I had a delicious confit duck sheppards pie while Catherine had some fried ham steaks and a salad. It was a nice stop.

After lunch, we went to the castle, which was really neat. It's listed as THE castle to see if you come to the Loire Valley and for good reason. It is built over the river Cher with the main gallery being a long narrow room that straddles the river itself. Apparently they had balls and other big events in there, which would be interesting because of the space. Great for line dancing, that's for sure. It was also used as an infirmary during WWI and the soldiers would fish out the windows to entertain themselves. The chateaux was primarily built by Catherine de Medici and Diane Poitiers, who was Catherine's husband's mistress. There were three stories of your typical French royal bedrooms and studies. I found the kitchen area most interesting. They still had all the old tools from a well worn butcher's block, to dozens of copper cake pans to a rotisserie device that worked by having a weight out the window over the river. It would slowly lower, keeping the meats turning for hours before needing to be rewound.

After visiting the castle, we hopped on a train back to Tours and went to dinner at a wine & cheese restaurant. I bet you can guess what we ate! A large selection of cheeses and an appetizer of escarcot baked with cream and cheese. For desert, we shared a glass of desert Vouvray from 1989 that was delicious.

F-ups in France

Today was mostly a travel day. We got up early and made our way to the Oslo Airport where we grabbed a flight to Paris. Once in Paris, it was lunch time so we tried looking for a restaurant in the airport. No luck for anything that Catherine could eat. Apparently CDG terminal 1 hasn't gotten with the trend of more & better restaurants in airports.

Getting out of CDG proved a challenge. We had to wait for half an hour to buy a train ticket into town as our train to Tours left from Gare Montparnasse. The machines kept breaking and there were only a couple of them. It was a zoo.

We finally got on a train into the city and connected over to the train station via the metro. For some reason, there are a tone of small staircases in the metro, which was hard for Catherine. I have no idea what disabled people will do.

We arrived at the train station about an hour before our train (even though we had over 3 hours to make the transfer) and found a place where we could at least get something edible even if it wasn't very good. Canned tuna salad Nicoise and a reheated Croque-Monsieu.

The train was a high speed TGV that blasted us to Tours very efficiently. Once in Tours, we checked in to our hotel and walked around the old town of Tours a little bit. It was busy because the university just started so all the students were at the bars, but the town was really beautiful. There were a ton of old houses made of brick and big, exposed, wooden beams.

After exploring, we went for dinner. It was a little unfortunate for Catherine because all of their sauces were thickened with flour so she could only get a basic piece of steak as a main course. She did get a broiled local cheese with maple syrup as an appetizer and a creme brulee for desert, both of which were excellent. I had a piece of duck with chanterelles, which was great, and for desert, some peaches floating in a verbena syrup, which was terrible. The peaches were hard and tasteless. The house wine was great though, especially the red Anjou, which was delicious even though it was made with Cabernet Franc.

Navigating Norway

We arrived in Oslo around 8pm local time after a stopover in London. In our more recent travels, in places like Vietnam & India, it would be a no-brainer to just take a cab from the airport, but Catherine's friend Ryan had recommended we take a train downtown and then a bus to their place. A quick search showed that yep, that's the obvious, best thing to do. The airport is 60km outside of Oslo and so would have cost over $100 and taken over an hour, whereas the train was $20 and took 45min. We haven't been to Europe in a while.

We arrived at Ryan and Bente's place where they had graciously made a dinner for us of cod and mashed sweet potatoes with a chile, ginger, soy sauce. It was some of the best cod I've eaten because it was very tender and not tough the way cod can get. It was also great to see Ryan and Bente again since the last time was in San Francisco when they visited for AGU.

The next morning, we slept in until 9:30 and had a slow breakfast on the deck of the apartment. Their appartment is very close to downtown, but it's right on a little river & path of greenery which was georgeous in the morning sun. You can even hear the waterfall loudly from the apartment, which was great for sleeping, and quite unique in such an uban setting.

After breakfast, we went for a walk slowly downtown following the river. Catherine was having a hard time, so we just took it very slow. Eventually, we got to the central train station and the Opera house, which is a beautiful while marble building made of slopes going back and forth for the roof which you can walk up. At least in the summer. In the winter, apparently a little bit of snow fills in all the divots and turns it into an ice rink. Pretty dangerous, especially for toursits who aren't used to walking on ice & snow.

Downtown is largely under construction. There are a ton of unique, modern, architectural buildings going up to try and give the city some character. Apparently, the city center is traditionally very boring and utilitarian because for the longest time, Oslo wasn't really a major city as Norway was just a poor province of Denmark or Sweden. However, with independence, and with a lot of oil riches, they are now trying to make more of a name for themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the equivlant of Chicago in the 1920's and 1930's.

After seeing downtown, we took a tram up to Vigeland sculpture park to meet Anne Kristine and her daughter Ingrid. The park itself is quite large, with lots of open space where people were just relaxing outside in the great weather (sunny and low 20's), grilling on little portable barbecues, or just seeing the sculptures. Most of the sculptures were done by Gustav Vigeland and were either in bronze or stone. Many of them were just a little crazy, like a guy holding two kids on his shoulders and a third like a hacky-sack on his foot.

We met Anne Kristine and Ingrid while having a coffee and snack at the cafe. Ingrid is a doll. She's only two and speaks a combination of Norweigian and Spanish because her father, Pedro, is from Gran Canaria. She spent the whole time eating, talking up a storm (which of course I couldn't understand) and enjoying herself.

After the sculpture park, we headed back to the apartment to change and then went to dinner at a tapas-like fusion place. It was quite expensive (but so is everything in Norway, except maybe fish), but was interesting and quite good. We had a fixed price menu with a number of entres, like roasted corn with lime & chiles cut in half lengthwise weirdly, some truffle quesedillas, some tuna tacos with a passion fruit vinegrette. The meal was finished off with a strawberry shortcake in a pot where the cream was made of this very tangy goat cheese/milk. After dinner, we went for another drink at an old firehouse, which really just had bottled beer for way too much. It turns out that many American microbrews have taken over Norway so we didn't really see any local craft beer scene. Just the same one we see at home, complete with lots of IPAs (or ee-pa-s as they call them).

The next day, once again we slept in. Jet lag really hadn't hit us much for being 9 hours off but getting lots of sleep was refreshing. After another leisurely breakfast, we hopped on the metro out to the outskirts of town to meet Ola, Hong and their son Ludvig to forage for mushrooms and blueberries. Yes, we took the metro to the forest. People are used to their public transit and so it is super reliable and goes out to places of low density. Well actually, I guess the forest wasn't that low a density when we were there. It was swarming with Norweigians with the white wicker mushrooming baskets looking for chantrelles and porchinis. In the winter, it becomes a cross country ski area with hundreds of km of trails through the woods that people will pop out to at the end of the day for their daily workout. Norweigians definitely love being outside!

The afternoon was a lot of fun, even if we virtually struck out finding edible mushrooms. Some of it was that they were picked out and some of it was just that it had dried up a bit and so it was apparently a little thin. That being said, there were still more mushrooms of a wider variety than I have every seen. Everything from bright purple and white ones to red ones with red spots, to white balls that poof with a spoor cloud when you touch them. Of course, some were definitely poisonous, but both Ryan and Ola knew what to look for.

After getting back from the forest, we ordered some takeout sushi and fried up what mushrooms we did find. Both were delicious. The salmon sushi was, not surprisingly, specacular, while the fresh mushrooms had such a clean flavour. I think I'm going to try one of those mushrooming classes in San Francisco. I know that at the right time of year, you can go into the forest and find a ton of morels, chantrelle's and others.

The next morning, we bad Norway and friends farewell and hopped on a plane to Paris. It was definitely a weekend of nostalgia for Catherine seeing all her friends from Trondheim, while providing a view at a different life if she had decided to stick around (and not meet me of course). It was definitely worth the stopover!