Playing the Paris Game…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Each time we are on the Paris ring road, we play a game.

I’ve played the game for almost 18 years now,  many times: usually whilst travelling with Himself, on one occasion with a van load of  New Zealand friends visiting,  and now finally with my own children.

The game is called “spot le Tour Eiffel”  and is basically involves scanning the expanse of the Paris skyline until one of us successfully spots the Eiffel Tour.

For some reason it’s appears to be harder to see it if you are travelling north to south on the ring road, and easier to see it if you are travelling south to north, often it can only be glimpsed for fleeting moments and the rolling contours of the city do not make it easy.

Paris is a vast city, the ring road takes you down into tunnels, dips and bumps, a sort of semi subterranean motorway that weaves in and out of the overpasses, coming up for air at  bridges and where on-ramps and off-ramps are constantly appearing at odd moments.

Tens of thousands of cars changing lanes, and maneuvering around you are the norm, you need patience and wits to drive the Paris ring road.

Himself is concentrated on getting us through the maze,  I’ve introduced the kids to the Game, and each desperately wants to be first to see le Tour Eiffel, this will be their first ever glimpse of it.

I spot it first and nonchalantly say ” Did I see something over there maybe?” and point at a specific spot, Kiwi Daughter is quickest to see it next closely followed by Little Mr, but they are quick to squabble about who was really the one to have seen it first.

I’ll admit that I cheated a bit, because first in the front passenger seat I have the best view, and secondly I have the DSLR in my hands and have been periodically  using it’s superior telephoto to look further into the distance than is fair to the other players.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Kiwi Daughter has a tiny camera with half the zoom capability and Little Mr has nothing but his eyes and is at a further disadvantage because he’s far shorter and his eye level is probably closer to the  edge of the traffic barriers than to many objects higher up.

He does however manage to spot traffic police motorbikes remarkably quickly indeed.

Little boys appear to have radar for these things.

As an added bonus not only do we score le Tour Eiffel this time, but also far into the distance but crystal clear, De Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.

We also spot some interesting art installations on the ring road and, as we near the northern end of the city, the River Seine.

Tonight we have luck, we manage to move far more than we stand still, and like a tiny red blood cell being drawn into beating heart, we are sucked up into the artery and discharged into the northern outskirts a while later. Time to hunt for a bed.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Heading Northwards towards Paris…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

The van is packed, the kids have run around the gîte garden one last time and bid the two children who live in the farmhouse a fond farewell with hugs and lots of waving, and that’s how we head out under the archway and onto the roads amongst the vines for the last time this holiday.

Several of our friends have been to see us at the gîte, and we have been to visit several more, including one we fondly know as “Tante” (Auntie) who Himself has kept in contact with over many many years. Tante is currently 94 years of age, still sprightly and active but sadly now with only a smattering of relatives left.

She is the real aunt of the wife of the farmer for whom Himself picked grapes and she still lives in her own house. Sadly she’s had to become more reclusive and cautious these days after a con-man would-be burgler tried to trick her into letting him into the house, asked many personal questions about her and her possessions and got aggressive when she wouldn’t unlock the gate to let him in.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Luckily the neighbours do a lot for her and it was a delight to see her again. She doesn’t get many visitors these days and fondly remembers Himself from former times.

She didn’t make it to our wedding 16 years ago but, her niece and nephew did (the farmer’s wife’s daughter and her husband) and they delivered a set of saucepans from Auntie as a wedding present , all of which are still in service in my kitchen today.

We have always visited Auntie when we have been in the region and at her age now every time is “bonus”, she’s lovely and I admire that she still does so much herself.

The rest of our time has been quiet at the gîte, enjoying the garden, the stillness and the restfulness of the countryside here. The weather has been fabulous, wonderfully warm and we’ve loved it here.

Now we are making our way home wards, passing fields of  bright purple lavender,  fluorescent yellow koolzaad,  toll roads and more water towers… even even manage to spot a TGV racing past us at  over 200 kms per hour. Seeing one and managing to point it out to the kids before it’s long gone are two different things, but by attempt number four or so we managed. Getting a photo of a passing TGV is darned near impossible and although I tried, I only had photos of blurred trees to show for my efforts.

We get buzzed by a helicopter again but it seems to be quickly following the motorway and not the power lines this time so it could be a heli for traffic control or an air ambulance this time.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

The hours tick away with the kilometers  under our wheels and the afternoon is growing old as we approach Paris…

We have a Game to play…

There’s No French Toast in a French Breakfast…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Bonjour! Join me as I take you on an adventure to  France… …yesterday evening we arrived in Chartres, just south of Paris.

We have  managed to get past the Paris Ring road with comparatively few delays and been spat out the other end back onto the  main motorway south. I will sing  praises of any French government who can ever make as direct as possible motorway that would by-pass the Paris Ring road.

Presently if you wish to avoid it, the alternative north/south routes involve either going through Rouen,  adding a full 120 kilometers extra to your journey or taking the smaller provincial “B’ roads (or in the French case: “N” roads) which are slow, often single laned, winding and often already congested with everything from trucks to tractors wishing to avoid the toll motorways.

We are pleased to have left the Parisian morning commuters  behind us and to be past the half-way point of our journey.We have an excellent night’s sleep and are looking forward to breakfast in France.

Once again I am surprised and delighted to see that the level of service here is so much better than I would have expected. Maybe it was because I was on crutches?  Possibly,  … but  to be honest, judging from last evenings reception and room service experience I rather think that the management here have invested in some good staff training which the employees have actually taken to heart.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Little Mr., typical six year old,  is adamant that a novelty plastic spoon picked up in a Birthday party gift bag last week (and currently sitting filthy in the back seat of the van because after he ate yogurt with it  soon after we started out yesterday) is the only spoon he wants to eat this mornings yogurt with. He’s adamant he wants the yogurt too.

Himself  leaves the hotel dining room to retrieve it from the van and get it washed, so I’m alone in the dining room supervising what the kids are wanting to put onto their plates. I’m pleasantly surprised when staff offer to carry glasses of orange juice for me and offer to fetch anything that we might need bringing to the table.

They were an excellent help and made the whole breakfast procedure run far smoother than it otherwise would have and  they were even friendly and seemed completely happy to be of help too!  Bravo!

The kids do well with breakfast and in fact after the delight of the service I was rather surprised when the only thing that let this place down was the cooked part of the breakfast menu. Sorry, the bacon was only just “ok”  and those scrambled eggs and sasuages really were not palatable at all.

It wasn’t only Himself and I who thought so either, Little Mr has recently taken a shine to scrambled egg but refused point blank after the first mouthful. I don’t blame him, none of us found ours nice enough to persevere with.

The fruit, yogurt, pastries and rolls were however well up to the standards we have come to expect when in France, so we didn’t leave hungry at all, and the individual tea-pots are something that we have never seen before in all our French travels so well done there too.

I don’t usually start my day with hot chocolate but the French do it so well that it’s become a habit of mine each time we are there now and this does not disappoint: served in the typically French style: a wide mouthed cup/bowl sans handle  and truely, it is a divine way to start your day.

Who needs “French Toast” when you have this? (for the record, I’ve never seen French Toast on any French breakfast menu, …ever.)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Shortly after breakfast we are packed and ready for the road again…  I would highly recommend the Novotel Chartres, it’s clean, comfortable, good value for money and the grand bonus: the friendly Staff have made us keen to repeat the experience.

Hotel Review: Just South of Paris …Novotel Chartres

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

In continuation of yesterday’s post we are searching for a hotel on the south side of Paris.

Now Paris is a very big city and we could see various signs for all the major hotel chains as we passed though on the ring road but since the intention was to get past Paris’s traffic nightmare at that point and not get deeper into it, we refrained from taking any off-ramps at the time.

We  know from experience how bad evening traffic in Paris can be… and Himself and I know only too well how much worse morning traffic can be in Paris too, having foolishly found ourselves standing still in it for almost three hours a year or so earlier.

The good thing about motorways is that there are few exits and entrances and you can cover large distances at greater speeds resulting in a smoother journey.

The bad thing about  motorways are that there are few exits and entrances and you can cover large distances whilst still looking for a place to sleep.

Consequently we were in  Chartres before we finally saw signs that major accommodation sites were available without having to drive a further 20 kilometers off the motorway and back.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

We wanted a Family room and since rooms in Europe tend to be tiny because the land is expensive, thought that we would have more luck with this if we went to a larger chain brand name.

There were several, side by side and  first one we went to was fully booked ( it was now 9:00  in the evening) but the securely gated one next to it was a Novotel and after Himself had made a few enquiries at Reception he came back to the van: we had came up trumps.

The room has a double bed for Himself and I and a double pull out sofa bed for the kids to share. They put us on the first floor and there is a lift, so I have no problem getting to the room.  There’s a bath in the bathroom with a shower over it ( not always a standard item in European rooms also due to the room sizes being small, so this is bonus).

Whilst Himself and the kids are dealing with bags I contact room service and order hot chips (fries) for the kids and a Caesar salad for us and it arrives promptly, chips hot and with a smile. We are impressed. The French  (like the Dutch) have sadly never been renowned for their “service with a smile” mentality, so this is a very welcome change.

Our small bite is tasty and satisfies the rumbling tummy problems within the clan. A short while later, teeth brushed etc both kids  are tucked up and fast asleep in the fold-out bed. The bathroom is behind the lighted panels next to the bed and the toilet is separate.

Himself and I are tired after the long drive, I’ve tried to keep my foot elevated on the extra front seat in the van but it’s not comfortable all the time so I have to put it down part of the time. It’s swollen up considerably and after taking some pain relief, a good night’s rest is inviting.

We all sleep brilliantly, and in the morning the kids enjoy a bath… we have two massive showers at home but no bath so this is a novelty they love.  A look out the window in the morning light gives us an idea of the view we missed last evening.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Refreshed we head off to breakfast…

Escaping the rat race… kind of …at first.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

What do you do when you have emptied the freezer and fridge because the electricians are playing with the electrics in your house and everything in the house is more “off” than “on”, your kids are on their Easter break and you can’t negotiate most of the house because of all the work in progress?

You run away to France of course.

We have friends in France and for the last three years Himself and I have made short long weekend trips there, combining a little business with pleasure and making sure that we stopped by three families that Himself has kept contact with over many years.

Each time in the last three years they have complained that our children have not accompanied us, so last year we promised them that next trip they would.

With one thousand kilometers of distance between us it was not a road trip we really relished making with kids, but it was time for them to prove that they could be a bit more grown up in the back seat and to get used to the idea that if they could sit still in an aeroplane for fourteen hours at a stretch, it was about time they proved that they could do six hours or so in a car.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

I needed to get permission to take Annual Leave and to travel since I am still recovering from my accident  and still only working part-time, and we needed to figure out how I could travel with my foot raised as much as possible. We managed to sort and solve both issues by hiring a van for the trip since our very little car is both too small and too old to be reliably  gallivanting around on such long distance travels.

A few years ago I bought two little magical boxes… they are called Nintendo DS’s and they live in a special drawer, only coming out as our “travel toys” . Our kids may pine, doe eyed for them the rest of the time, but sorry, in our house they are let out only for long distance plane and car trips.

The novelty  and excitement  factor of even getting their paws back on these is guaranteed to keep the kids busy (and silent!) for several hours or more and whilst the traditional game of “I spy” would be far more educational, I have found that on a practical level these little machines produce less stress and more family harmony in the end.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Modern motorways have evolved into busy mega traffic-moving corridors with man-made or organic barriers for soundproofing and  rarely made with great scenery in mind and  after all, there are only so many “T is for truck“  in the I spy game that you can handle. Thus I bow to modern technology and Nintendo comes to the rescue of parental sanity.

Since the kids have a half-day school on the Friday, we have the car packed and ready and with a chilly bin  (that’s a.k.a. “cooler”, “cool-box” or an “esky” to some of you) we head out into Dutch Friday traffic.

Trying to get through Dutch and Belgium traffic on a Friday afternoon may or may not have been the wisest travel plan we have ever made, but the hope was that they would be less of a problem than the dreaded Paris Ring Road.

The Paris Ring Road is monster of a road that inhales vast volumes of  motorised vehicles and reduces their speed to  close to zero for the duration of it’s length. Himself and I have had the dubious pleasure in the past of crawling though it’s mass of choked lanes at a snails pace and wasting hour after hour of our lives on it, usually looking up the backside of a large truck…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

…but at various intervals the beast breathes a little and this massive artery whooshes traffic though in a respectable time so we were trying to gamble that if we could survive the  “relative” small madness of traffic-jams of the big cities of the Netherlands and Belgium leading there, that we would be passing the Paris beast in time to be sucked though it during one of these quieter traffic windows.

We progress  steadily south… passing the old border posts between The Netherlands and Belgium and those of Belgium and France, the kids do some plane spotting when we pass by Orly airport, and later, Paris’s bigger airport Charles de Gaulle.

There are a few childish squalls in the backseat, but they are tiny waterspout moments rather than the whirlwind wars of the past and we have to make allowances for normal evening tiredness, so all things considered we are doing well.

The Paris Ring Road sucks us in… with the pulse of traffic exiting and entering, we go slow, then faster… fortunately the Parisian dinner hour is soon approaching and the traffic thins accordingly, speeding our way…  we are exhaled by this beast of a road on the other side and start looking for a bed for the night.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Why on earth am I in Paris when I’m not going TO Paris?

I suppose that some time, some where, when traveling from the Netherlands to anywhere rather Southerly in France, that all main roads lead you though Paris and that it was the quickest route available. By some strange anomaly all these centuries later, the biggest roads apparently still do only go though Paris, only now it is clogged to high heaven with enough traffic to fill ten cities and not one.

It would be so much more convenient if there was a dead straight road in between (for instance) Beauvais and Chartres and you just left the Paris Ring Road to the Parisians.

Hummmm.. maybe that thought will occur to the French one day too. Our little Tom Tom apparatus assured us that the Paris route was not only the shortest but also the quickest way South so we sucked in our doubts and headed out as directed.

Hubby has driven in Paris quite a few times over the years, but not particularly recently and not during the French Summer Holidays.. yes we are avoiding the August 1st nightmare that Paris is (in)famous for, but still, we are still seeing a lot of heavily laden cars, caravans and trailers.

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

Soon it becomes apparent that our decision to follow TomTom’s advice was not the best of choices. Traffic is barely moving for entire stretches and it takes us almost four and a half hours to get from our day’s starting point slightly North of Paris, to where the southern road branches out to Orléans . The French city of Orléans is pronounced ” Olly on” … (add a French accent and you will almost be there !) as opposed to the city in the United States of America called ” New Orleans” ( pronounced ” Ore leans” ) Grrr, that equates to more than two hours standing still in traffic. Bad move. We will definiately be planning our return trip differently.

Note to self: Sat. Nav. systems are not always correct in their logic. Yes, Paris probably does have the quickest and shortest route, but is the stupid system allowing for hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks, caravans and motorbikes using it all at once? It seems not. If your gut feeling was to do things differently based on past experiences then maybe sometimes your gut feeling might just be correct.