Reflections and considerations for future travel

 

I learned alot in Barcelona and finally got to sit down for a nice plate of paella and a LARGE glass of paella on my last night. A month is the right amount of time to be gone...longer is too long.  Shorter is ok, but not too short if the travel is long.  Travel is a good opportunity to enjoy, but also to learn and be exposed to new things.  Traveling with Saliou was an education.  Traveling alone and navigating on my own opened possibilities for me in life.  

I will definitely travel again, alone.  

I will definitely pack much lighter.  Do more homework ahead of time.  Do tours of monuments/etc alone, if possible.  Take the time to purchase the correct tickets.  The phone worked out really well, just buying data with Airalo.  Next time, be sure to purchase for all the countries at once if possible.  I did Spain and France separately, which was dumb.  Remember that train lines can cross each other more than once.  Riding bikes is a great way to go.  Cars move slowly in Paris so it's less dangerous there than here in Colorado.  

 

Go find dinner in the immigrant communities.  It's less expensive and more interesting.

 

Spend time on the Seine.

A few moments in Barcelona and Paris

 

How cool to stumble across a street parade on La Rambla.  

 

Sagrada Familia...go alone next time.  

 

Children  ; )  On the Seine. 

 

Always seek new friends.  Lilliane who I met at the baguette vending machine. We exchanged info and I rode a bike to her miniscule rental apartment on the other side of the Eiffel Tower.  She worked on it and we chatted.  I hope to see her again. 

Reflections on why I am not writing a travel log

It's an odd thing that 

I am not writing a daily blog, photos, thoughts, adventures, practicalities.

At MIT, we'd say the education was like drinking out of a fire hose, too much, too fast.

The pictures don't capture it,  they are sharp and yet, I am in a blur.

Dropped into this little hostel with the two twin beds, a balcony that looks out

over an urban canyon, the ratio of building height to street width unimaginable

in my country.

The blur of packs of tourists, English, French, Catalan, Spanish, Italian,

packs of gay men, naked breasts on the beach, young white men puking,

the waft of marijuana, African street vendors, the Arabs competing.

I don't read other people's travel blogs. I can't write my own anymore.

I can't even write my history, tangled as it is with Devaud sensibilities, 

the traumas, the lonliness, the determination, the mistakes, marriages, divorces,

poverty and success, my way of seeing the world, my generosity mixed with 

naivety, nearly 65, my whole life seems a blur, just as the street outside

is a blur which cannot be captured in any meaningful way by a series of 

photographs.

And so I spend this time with a Senegalese man who lives in his world,

of deprivation, family drama, poverty, endless obstacles, within his society of 

lying to stay alive.

What a disappointment on so many fronts.

How exhausting to be constantly impoverished, spending a day on the street

going hotel to hotel to see if you can get a better deal.

Maybe if you just speak louder in a foreign language, or say, "My friend"

with a too big smile, just to get by.

And so, all of a sudden, I knew that this post would be written without

a crisp photo.

Travel is not crisp.  

Terrified to enthralled in Barcelona, Spain

 I admit that I was WAY out of my comfort zone coming to Barcelona on my own.  I was also kind of embarrassed that I was afraid - aren't I an independent woman?  Saliou had suggested meeting in Barcelona when he was here on business. 

Biking to Chateau de Chenonceau to kayak!

We rented a couple of electric bikes to ride the hour or so to the Chateau and to finally kayak!  So much easier to navigate without heavy panniers!  Beautiful weather, a mix of clouds, sun, a little rain.  

A little headwind, some current, but we steadily approach the castle and pass underneath!

After passing underneath, we stop for lunch and a swim.  

and, of course, we had stopped to wait our turn at the patisserie to get pastries and eau gazeuse.  

Amboise: Leonardo da Vinci

We escaped the cave in the last town and are in Amboise, a more touristy town.  It's hot today...very hot after so much cool weather and I'm very tired.  We rested on the thigh of Leonardo da Vinci and looked across the river to the beautiful chateau on the other bank.  The room is nice and, even more lovely, is the beautiful garden in the back, where we had tapas for dinner.  

We missed our opportunity to rent a kayak - apparently no one answers the phone to take reservations and when you show up, their schedule is already full.  In an unusual feat of organization, we have rented bikes for tomorrow and also reserved a double kayak in a town about an hour ago.  

Ugh - no more sleeping in caves! Azay-le-Rideau

 I thought this would be cool, this hotel room/cave at Azay-le-Rideau but I really disliked it.  There is no getting away from the clammy feeling, and the toilet/shower/did not even have a doorway. The whole cave was basically one whole space.  We also could not have wi-fi (it's a cave, dummy...).  I was glad to leave. So, it was kind of cool, in a clammy, creepy way, but I'm glad I can say "been there, done that".  

A day in Chinon

 The weather has been cool, cloudy and breezy. Thus, don't necessarily believe that it will be warm!

We arrived in Chinon around 4 o'clock, as usual. Our place is a three bedroom apartment on one of the old streets in town.  We have a very nice table where I can spread out with my iPad and various shopping treasures.  The treasures today from the Chateau of Chinon included the book on Chateaux (on the table, describing not only the Chateau of Chinon, but also the Sleeping Beauty Chateau that we will see tomorrow), a Fleur de Lys necklace for Mimi, a book in French on Joan of Arc, various postcards of Joan of Arc, a book of maps of the Middle Ages).  We had sandwiches up at the Chateau from a boulangerie and two tarts, one of a fruit I do not know, but so yummy, and one of pomme with a wine reduction sauce, very yummy.  For dinner I made reservation at La Table de Jeanne. I had coq au vin (not that great, good to know) and Opa had a fish dish, very beautiful and  yummy.  Too much wine, how much is too much? ; )

Our dinners

The diorama of what remains of the Chinon Chateau

Lots of stairs

Taking a break, there was a break in the clouds and I basked in the sun.

A view from the top of the keep.

What the Chateau looked like at its height...the different colors correspond to what was built when.

Walking up to the Chateau

Saumur, a grand chateau, triglodytes, en route to Chinon

 

This is the palace of Saumur. It's enormous, spectacular, unreal.  It's a steep, but short walk, up from our hotel.  The hotel was lovely (except for the courtyard which had a big party of 12 the first night).  We had a delicious breakfast the second day before leaving.  A nice present from Stephanie.  

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The path has been quite variable:  forest, small towns, river, ....

This was inside the Saumur palace.  An enormous cavern with a hole at the top.

I can't even keep track of all the churches......

Along one of the routes between Saumur and Chinon.

Saumur Palace

Inside the "cave" of a restaurant en route to Chinon.  15C all the time.  Hundreds of bottles of wine.  He and his wife completely restored this trigolyte space.

This was in a square at Saumur.

What we ate in Saumur:  

We had ice cream when we first got there... I had vanilla bourbon.

For dinner, we ate in the large square

Angeline Hotel, quel bel hotel!

A Parisian couple converted this Maison des Pretres to a hotel. We had dinner with them, and breakfast.  Dinner out in the garden, under a large umbrella as an occasional spurt of raindrops gently serenaded us.

  

There were TWO sitting rooms, this one is where we had breakfast.  

This is the church next door that was "de-sanctified".  It is no longer open.  

The fields are relatively small and have different crops...it appears that crop rotation is common here, and one of the crops is poppies. We also saw wheat, corn and other crops.

A vending machine that sells ...baguettes!!  1Euro20 and good, too!  We were hungry after our lunch of Pringles, beer and two waffle cookies at the Troglotte farm.  Not sure of the spelling on that, but it was cool. A whole underground farm!  

I love these small towns that offer interesting items for sale.  

and who would have thought that a child could be trained to walk in similar manner that horses were used to drive machinery to grind flour.  ; )

 

Finally on the bike, to Gennes

 

The Loire River right below our hotel, Angeline, in Gennes.  A beatiful sky.

This dog, Alfonse, belongs to the daughter of the owner's.  He is a complete nut, first barking and growling at Stephen, then inseparable from us both.  He puts his stick on my foot, or Stephen's. 

This was enroute.  It was raining on and off...we were lucky to find shelter during the heaviest rains.  I had a good discussion with two of the local guys. They were plastered, drinking 3,4,5 pastiches.  The one in the picture was born in that small town.  He worked in some sort of agriculture but said that there weren't really any jobs, and this was a bedroom community to Angers.  They were both grandfathers; this guy was a proud Catholic. Meanwhile, Stephen was speaking English with a couple who were doing a more lengthy tour.

En route under cloudy skies that broken into rain, heavy at times.....

The church next to our hotel.  Until a couple of years ago, the hotel was housing for the priests. Now it is permanantly closed. The structure was built in the 11th century.

The plan was for Stephen to take a photo of me in front of every church. We definitely missed some. This one seemed more feminine, with the Virgin being in the primary position above the altar.  There were a number of more feminine/family statements on the walls.  I liked it.

In spite of my weak determination to drink less at dinner so as to improve my sleep, we drank a half bottle of white wine, half bottle of red, both excellent, regional wines; strawberries drenched in rum, and a dessert drink.  Thank goodness I would walk down to the river to see the beautiful sunset.