For vacation this year we flew to Paris, then took a train to Toulouse, and then walked to the sea. We followed the Canal du Midi, a canal built a few hundred years ago to provide a shipping shortcut between the the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. We backpacked, carrying all our "luggage" on our backs. We did not camp, however. We stayed at hotels and ate at restaurants (when we could find them!) so we did not need really big packs. We walked 200+ miles and although it might seem hard to believe, we had a lot of fun. We had no disasters, although to be fair things were not always perfect. The whole experience has given us the hiking bug and we hope to do something similar again. You can see some pictures of our "adventures" at Picassa.
We decided this year that we wanted to do a little something special for our vacation. After all, this year we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, and one of us had a 60th birthday. Our usual vacation is a driving trip or a cruise or some combination of the two. Our first idea was to take our tandem bicycle to Europe, and tour the countryside. We pursued that idea for some time before deciding that biking would be more hassle than we wanted. But while reading about biking trips, we got another idea. How about a hiking trip? That would be a dramatic change for us. Joe began looking into possible routes, and came up with a hike through France that followed the route that Robert Louis Stevenson had taken back in 1878 - the trip that inspired his book, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. That looked interesting and doable, but further research indicated that the weather might be too unpleasant during the time we could travel (late November). Looking further, Joe came up with a hike along the Canal du Midi. If you followed the link, you know the Canal du Midi was constructed in the late 17th century as a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. It begins in Toulouse in southern France and ends about 150 miles later in Sete, on the Mediterranean. It is no longer used commercially, but in season it is busy with pleasure boaters. We couldn't find much about walking the Canal, but we found a book on bicycling the Canal, and figured wherever a bike could go, we could walk. We made plans, did some research on accommodations, bought some hiking gear, did a little training, frantically raked leaves, tried not to pay any attention to those who thought we were nuts, and left for France on November 11. The weeks before we left France had been hammered by labor unrest caused by Sarkozy's pension reforms, but that seemed to be settled by the time we departed.
Debi had some clients who needed a ride to Chicago the day we were leaving, so we rented a van and we and four British businessmen made the run to O'Hare. We were flying on American. Our first question was answered when we realized that both our packs could easily pass as carry-on luggage. We had planned to have them shrink wrapped if we had to check them in, but that wasn't necessary. We had no problems at security. This was just before they enacted stricter screening rules and we were not "groped." The plane, a 767, was only half full and the flight was about as pleasant as an 8-hour flight in Coach can be. We arrived in Paris at 8:30 in the morning, and since we didn't have to pick up checked-in luggage, we were off the plane and through passport and customs within minutes. We had tickets to take a TGV (fast train) to Toulouse a little after noon. There was an earlier train at 9:15, but we had not thought we would be able to catch it. It turned out we had plenty of time, but the earlier train was full so we had to wait for the second train. We passed the time reading. Our train was on time, and it was a very comfortable ride to Toulouse. We chatted with only one passenger, a Canadian woman who now lives in the south of France. Two children near us were playing video games on netbooks - while using pacifiers! They looked a little old for pacifiers to us. We pulled into the Toulouse station at 8:00 p.m., walked out the door, and right there across the street was the Canal du Midi. We had a hotel reserved at the very beginning of the Canal, and we knew to get there we just had to turn right and follow the Canal, which we did. It was 1.79 miles to the hotel (We had a GPS), so our walk had officially begun. The hotel was an Ibis, a chain of basic, inexpensive hotels. It was our first stay at an Ibis, and what it lacked in charm in made up in price, cleanliness, and convenience. The hotel was not quite on the beginning of the Canal as advertised, but it was very close. We took a little walk around the area, visited the Canal's "headwaters," and since we didn't spot any restaurants, we returned to the hotel for a modest buffet dinner, mostly cold items, but with hot soup.
The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel. It was surprisingly good. They even offered cold meats, something that most French establishments don't do. We porked out, shouldered our packs, and started out. We went back to the beginning of the Canal, took a few pictures, and headed towards Sete. It was crisp but clear, beautiful walking weather. we re-traced our route from the night before, passing the station. The Canal was filthy at this point. We noticed a homeless "settlement" under one bridge. Because it was such a nice day (and a weekend) the trail was very busy with walkers and bikers. The trail in the center of town was simply sidewalk, and as we moved out of the downtown area it became a nice paved path. Around noon we stopped at a restaurant in the old lock house at Castanet Lock. It turned out that all the outside tables were reserved, but they were able to squeeze us into the interior. They seemed to specialize in foie gras, so we had some of that and Debi had salmon and I had duck. We continued walking, finally getting out of the city. It was very pleasant countryside, but nothing that would be considered spectacular. For much of the trail, we were close to an interstate highway, close enough to hear and usually see the traffic. Trail traffic lessened as we got further away from Toulouse, but it was still a pretty busy place. We left the Canal at Donneville. This was a small town that had at least one B&B and a hotel/restaurant, according to our research. We looked for the B&B first, and finally found it, but nobody was at home. So we went to the hotel. A cleaning fellow was there, but he didn't know where his boss was and he couldn't help us. We went outside and realized that what we had here was not really a hotel, but a motel. There were a bunch of little "cabins" out back, and a man and a woman were working out there. We investigated, and discovered they were the owners. Yes, they had a room. We took it and moved in. Comfortable enough place, but the door didn't lock. We figured the chances of a home invasion out here were pretty small, and didn't worry about it. We had dinner there at the restaurant, sat around and people watched for awhile. It was a big restaurant for such a small town. Hit the hay soon after dinner. The day's mileage was 16.0 miles.
We had a fine breakfast the next morning, then shouldered our packs, and set out. The day began cloudy, but it soon cleared off and got warm - we were down to our lightest clothing in no time. We did not find any open restaurants near the Canal around the noon hour. Fortunately, Debi had packed a stash of granola bars, so we got by on those. It was well after noon when we left the Canal at the little town of Gardouch, looking for a restaurant. No restaurants that we could find, so we trudged on back to the Canal. On a road running by the Canal we saw a sign for a B&B at Renneville, the next town up. We didn't pay much attention, because there was a bigger town nearby with three hotels - we would stay at one of them. We walked on to the next town, Villefranch-de-Lauragais. It turned out to be nearly 2.5 miles off the Canal, so it was a good hike to get there. The first hotel we got to was locked up tight - perhaps closed for the season? But no problem, there were two more in town. We got to the next hotel just as the owner was locking the doors. Sorry, he was closed tomorrow, we couldn't stay. Hmm, by now we were getting a little nervous. Went to the third hotel. They were open, but no, they wouldn't be open tomorrow. We couldn't stay. We asked if she had any suggestions for lodging. She suggested going back to Toulouse! Not really an option, so we hiked the 2.5 miles back to the Canal. There we spotted signs to the same B&B we had seen advertised at Gardouch, and although it was going to involve backtracking, we headed in that direction. The path took us off the road, through farmland, and we eventually found the B&B. We were relieved when we saw a car in the driveway and people sitting on the porch. We asked about a room, they said yes, asked if we could wait a minute while they got things ready. We plopped down on the ground, happy to wait. Soon we were comfortably situated in our room. They offered dinner for 17 euros, and of course we took it. Dinner turned out to be cassoulet, a dish famous in the region. Every establishment seems to have its own variation - it is basically bean soup with sausage, ham, duck, or some combination of the three. The lady brought out enough cassoulet to serve a small expeditionary force, but darned if we didn't manage to eat it all! Great stuff. The day's mileage - 17.7 miles.
Morning brought...rain! Drat. Well, no point in complaining about it. We had breakfast, donned our rain gear, put up our umbrellas, and set out. It really was not bad. We had rain pants, rain jackets with hoodies, waterproof hiking boots, and the umbrellas. We were not particularly uncomfortable. We passed some sort of jurisdictional line (county, state?) and at that point our beautiful paved path ended. For the rest of the trip the path varied between pavement, stone, and dirt. It was muddy at places, but never very bad. We never were in much over the soles of our boots. Again, no restaurants for lunch, so we had granola bars. We did find one restaurant right on the water, but it was closed and set to reopen in three days! Timing is everything. We reached the high point of the Canal. We would be going downhill the rest of the way. This was also the source of the Canal's water. It was brought in from the nearby Black Mountains. We were somewhat surprised to see that the Canal was empty at this point, and for the rest of the trip there were many dry stretches. I presume this was so they could work on the Canal in the off season. Our goal for the day was a relatively large town of Castelnaudary. We arrived there and found a hotel right on the Canal. And it was open! We walked in and I asked the two ladies, "Parlez-vous anglais?" and one said, "Non, parlez-vous francais?" and then laughed. It seemed to be a good-natured laugh, and we managed to get a room despite the language barrier. We found a restaurant, had another delightful meal (cassoulet for Joe again!) with all the bread we could eat. Have we mentioned we loved the bread? At all our meals, breakfast included, they kept the bread basket full, so we never left a table hungry. After walking around a little and admiring the boats (Castelnaudary is a major Canal port, and there was water in the Canal here) we headed back to our hotel and called it a day. The day's mileage - 17.1 miles.
We slept well. The next morning we had a good breakfast and took off hiking. It was chilly, windy, and cloudy, but no rain. We had a nice trail near Castelnaudary, but it soon reverted to dirt/stone/mud. While hiking we were passed by two cyclists, whom we recognized from the restaurant the night before. Debi yelled, "Hey, those are the two guys from the restaurant!" and they stopped. Turned out they were from Spain, and they were following the Canal, too. The one's girlfriend's brother lived in Lexington, Kentucky, so he knew where Indiana was. They were very friendly, and we made small talk for a few minutes. They were one of only two other couples we had seen who were hiking or biking long-distance. The day before we had seen another couple on bikes, and from the looks of their gear and packs they were also doing the whole Canal. We had started early this morning, and soon after noon we were ready to stop for the day. We knew there was a relais near Bram. Our guidebook said this was like a truck stop, with rooms and food. We found the place, but we had a little trouble finding the entrance. We finally figured out where it was, and went in. The room we were in was a combination bar/restaurant/reception area. There were lots of truckers sitting at long tables eating, and a few hanging around at the bar. We got some curious looks. Our guess is that this is not the kind of place very many tourists stop at, so I suppose we stuck out like sore thumbs. When the lady at the bar realized we didn't speak French, she called for the owner. The owner was a really friendly lady, just nice as she could be. Sure, she had a room for us. The rooms were in a separate building, and the guidebook had it right. It was "basic." But comfortable enough. We went back to the restaurant and had a good meal, then took a nap. (We never had trouble sleeping.) After we woke from our naps, we hiked into Bram. The relais was about a mile north of the Canal, and Bram was at least that far south of the Canal, so it was a little hike. There was not too much happening in Bram, but we wandered around, then headed back to the relais for dinner and bed. The day's mileage - 15.0 miles.
The next morning we had breakfast at the relais. The owner asked about our trip, and offered to call ahead to see about the availability of a room in a town we intended to stay in later in the trip. She called two places, one of which said they were open. That was a great, if ill-founded relief. We began walking. It was cold, right at freezing, but as long as we kept moving we were mostly comfortable. Debi did have some problems with her hands. At one point the trail was blocked, so we had to detour through a vineyard. Fortunately, we were not gunned down by an irate French farmer. Our goal for the night was Carcassonne. Carcassonne was a large city, and we had no worries about a room. We found a hotel soon after entering the city, and it was a nice, but small, room. After checking in, we immediately set out to visit the Cite, the old medieval fortress. Since we were off-season, most of the "attractions" were closed, but we wandered the wee alleys, admired to massive walls, and then managed to find an open restaurant. We had a good meal and a pleasant evening, but we were tired and soon were ready for bed. The day's mileage - 17.4 miles.
The next morning we walked back to the Cite to a hotel we had seen advertising what looked like a pretty good breakfast deal. Ah, but it was one of those tricks the French like to play on us tourists. They weren't serving breakfast. And the sign we had seen? Well, there are signs everywhere, but you have to know how to read the signs. Anyway, we found an Ibis, and had breakfast there. We felt a little guilty. An Ibis has all the charm of a Motel 6, but you can't argue with their breakfasts. Great stuff, and all you can eat, of course. And reasonably priced. We had dressed for yesterday's weather, but soon realized we were overdressed. We stopped at Carcassonne's port and stripped down to our essentials. It was very pleasant walking, once we got out of Carcassonne. We had the path to ourself. We were now further from the main highway, and it was very tranquil. Around noon we stopped at an Internet cafe owned by an English lady. Technically she was closed, but she let us in anyway. We approached the town of Marseillete, where we had planned to spend the night. We "knew," thanks to the kind lady at the relais that there were two B&B's here, and at least one was open (but we weren't sure which one). We saw a hotel sign right after we left the Canal, so we stopped there. Nope, they were no longer a hotel, just a restaurant, but there was a hotel further along. Way further, as it turned out. Anyway, we walked up to the next hotel. From a distance we could see a large "OPEN" sign, so we were quite optimistic. But when we got to the door, it had a small "CLOSED" sign on it. Drat. It appeared that they might just be closed for the afternoon, but we weren't sure. Decided to investigate the two B&B's in town. We found one, but there was nobody home. Couldn't figure out where the other one was. Just before we had left the Canal we saw a lady walking a couple of big dogs, and now we saw she was getting ready to load them up in her car and leave. So we asked her if she knew where the other B&B was. She offered to take us there, so we hopped into her car, the interior of which was completely covered with dog hair. It was a very intimate ride - me, Debi, Dog Lady, and her two big pooches - German shepherds, from their appearance. She drove us a couple of mile out of town to the B&B. It looked closed, but we got out to look around. While we were around the corner, we heard the Dog Lady taking off! Ack! The place was closed, and now we were a couple of miles out of town. One of us, I'm not saying which one, was unhappy. We walked back to town, and sat down on the steps of the other B&B waiting for somebody to come home. Eventually, somebody did, only to tell us they were closed for the year. So back to the hotel, which we really, really hoped would be open by this time, and indeed they were! PTL. The place was run by two sisters, very friendly ladies. The room was nice, the food was good, all was right with the world. The day's mileage - 19.3 miles.
We started out with a fine breakfast. We appeared to be the only patrons at the hotel. I guess it is no surprise that most of the hotels in the small towns are not open during the winter. Again we had a very pleasant walk. It was sunny but cool most of the day. We spent some time watching a farmer tear out a vineyard. One of the architectural highlights was passing over a wee, narrow 11-arch bridge over a spill water. Our goal for the day was Homps, which looked like it might have some accommodations. We got there, and we found the hotel listed in our guidebook. It was right on the Canal, and they had a portable sign out on the trail advertising the place. But of course, that was just a joke. The place was locked up tight. Debi struck up a conversation with a lady who lived next door. She was an artist, and she said there was nothing in town. She gave us her card, and told us to call her if we got desperate. She would put us up somehow. We continued walking further into town, and things seemed to be closed. We did find a pizza place just getting ready to close. The lady seemed a little reluctant to let us in, but did, and we had a meal of lasagna. We asked her about a hotel, and she referred us to the nearby town of Olonzac. We walked there (only a couple of miles) and found a hotel that appeared to be closed. We wandered around town for a few minutes then came back to the hotel. This time we saw somebody inside, so we knocked on the door and he let us in. Yep, he had a room, so we dodged the bullet once again. The hotel was kind of shabby, but nothing we couldn't handle. After a nap, we walked downtown for dinner. It seemed to be a busy little town. We stopped at a grocery store and picked up some supplies for the next day. Day's mileage - 13.9 miles.
After a couple of days where we weren't sure we were going to have a place to stay, one of us was getting nervous. So after breakfast we had the hotel man call ahead to the next town we hoped to stay in. He called every place listed in our guidebooks, and either nobody answered the phone or they weren't open. We had him call one place in the town after that, and again no luck. So, we decided we had better bypass this spot in the Canal. We had him call a taxi for us. In about half an hour the taxi driver showed up, looking like she had rolled right out of bed, into and out of the shower, and into her taxi. She was very friendly, spoke little English but spoke a lot of French to make up for it. We had her take us to Capestang, which was within a day's walk of a large city we knew would have a hotel. We bypassed Le Somail, where we had hoped to stay after Olonzac. The countryside away from the Canal was different from what we were seeing. It looked more like Provence, lots of vineyards and olive trees. When we arrived in Capestang, we realized it was bigger than we had thought, and we surely could have found a place to stay. We should have had the taxi just take us to Le Somail. But, too late now. We started walking. It soon started to rain, and it was cold. We found a little shelter of some sort and got out of the rain long enough to put on our rain gear. Properly attired, it wasn't uncomfortable. The day's highlight was passing through the only tunnel on the route. We used the tunnel as a shelter and had a fine lunch there (granola bars, yoghurt, and banana) and then continued to Beziers. Beziers is a large city. In terms of the Canal, it is most famous for the series of nine locks right outside of town where the Canal drops about 100 feet, and then crosses the River Orb on a large aqueduct. Other than that, Beziers is most famous for a massacre that took place there about 800 years ago during the Albigensian Crusade. In short, about 20,000 people (the entire population plus many refugees from the surrounding countryside) were slaughtered by Crusaders (mostly from the north of France and Germany). As was usual in those days, it was part religious war, and part land grab. You can read more about this uplifting chapter in French history in Wikipedia.. We left the Canal at the station, and wandered into town. We bypassed a couple of seedy looking hotels before finding L'Hotel des Poetes on a pedestrian mall. There was a sign saying 15 euros off for fourth floor rooms, so we took a room on the fourth floor. Debi said she was so tired that she was going to take the elevator rather than walk. Ha, ha, as if there was an elevator! We hiked up to our room, a small room but nice enough. After napping, we wandered around and found a Chinese place for dinner. Day's mileage - 15.6 miles.
The next day was going to be a rest day. We wandered around Beziers for a little while, visiting the bull ring, some historical sites, and the cemetery. We noticed that most street signs were in both French and Occitan. Occitan had been the language of the area many years ago, and many of the older people still spoke it. Apparently there is growing interest in the language among the young these days, too. It didn't make much difference to us, as we spoke as much Occitan as we did French! All-in-all, a nice restful day. The day's mileage - 5.0 miles.
The next day we took a final tour of the city, visiting the biggest church among other sites. Since our taxi ride had take a couple of days off our hike, we decided to finish early and go back to Paris. So we went to the train station and changed our tickets to Paris. I also emailed our hotel in Paris and said we would be there two days early. It took us a long time to get out of Beziers - it was a big town. At about two we stopped at a town called Portiragnes. We left the Canal and came to a public restroom. Oh, joy! Have we mentioned that public facilities were few and far between? It was a good thing Debi had brought toilet paper along with her granola bars, because many times we were forced to "improvise" when nature called. After a stop at the potty, we walked a little further and found a restaurant, right where we wanted one. Another lucky break. This was how we had envisioned our hike. We would get up, walk a while, then leave the Canal at some small town, use the restrooms, grab a meal at a small, quaint French restaurant, then continue on our way. But Portiragnes was pretty much the only town on the whole trip that really fulfilled our vision. Anyway, we stopped at the restaurant. Our waitress didn't know a lot of English, but she didn't let that slow her. She gave us a nice "Baaaaaaa" to indicate one dish on the menu was lamb. Joe took the lamb, and Debi opted for the fish. She was a little nonplussed when the fish arrived intact, little fish eyes and all. While cleaning up, the waitress's trick knee gave out, she stumbled and dropped some stuff on Debi. No harm done. We continued on our way, and soon we started seeing marshland. We were in the Camargue, a marshy area close to the sea. The trail was not real good in parts, but we were okay. The marshes are home to lots of wildlife, of course, but also cattle and horses graze there. We were headed to Agde. It was a big city, so we weren't worried about finding a place to stay. But we had started late and it was beginning to get dark. At one point we passed through kind of rough looking "settlement" consisting of some houseboats on the Canal and some tents and campers inland. This was probably the only time of the trip that we felt a little unsafe. We finally reached the famous round lock of Agde, and here we had to leave the Canal. The rest of the Canal did not have good walking paths. We arrived in Agde after dark, but we immediately spotted several hotels so we found a place to stay. Since we had had a good late lunch, we just snacked and crashed. This was our longest day yet. The day's mileage - 19.4 miles.
This was to be our last day of hiking. We were headed for Sete. There was a major highway connecting Agde and Sete, but we didn't know if it had a hiking/bike trail alongside it or not. Our guidebook mentioned some obscure way to avoid a lot of the traffic, and we checked in with the Tourist Info place, and they seemed to agree with the guidebook. We say seemed, because she did not speak English. Anyway, we had our breakfast at a nearby cafe (this hotel did not serve breakfast), walked around the city for a bit, then headed towards Sete. We found the walking trail the guidebook seemed to want us to take, and things went well for a while. But soon the guidebook and reality seemed to diverge. After a couple of wasted trials, we figured out that a key intersection had been reworked since the guidebook was written. We got back on the road, and immediately came to another confusing spot. After going out of our way for a half hour or so, we realized we were mistaken and got back to the main road. We finally reached the spot we were sure the guidebook wanted us to turn, but the road we wanted to turn onto was blocked by paving equipment. We bypassed them via vineyard, and finally came onto the path marked by the little stone cross, just like the guidebook said it would be. This route took us through miles of vineyard. Part of the area was pretty muddy, but we managed. We finally came to a little town, back on a main road. Although we had started out cold, by now it was warm. We stopped at a bus stop to take off some clothes, then kept on going until we came to a major, and seemingly brand new, intersection. Alas, the guidebook was no use here, because this intersection had clearly been redone recently. Confused, we did what anybody would do. We ate. We found a couscous restaurant run by three African ladies. We have had couscous in France before, but we were a little confused by this one. They first brought us some chick peas and sausage. We weren't sure if we were supposed to eat that, or wait until the couscous came. We nibbled at it, and then finally they brought out some couscous. Okay, this was more like it, but generally there is a big bowl of stew to pour on top. Well, we mixed some couscous in with our sausage and beans and picked at it a little. Finally, along the waitress came with the stew. Allll right! We poured the stew on and ate. And ate. And over ate. Good stuff. We left the restaurant and took a road that seemed to be going in the right direction. It was soon obvious that we were on a dead end, but by then we were close to the beach. We thought maybe if we could get to the beach, we could just follow it to Sete. Eventually the road did end. We continued on a path right down to the sea. We could see Sete ahead of us, 12 miles or so in the distance. Right behind the beach there was what appeared to be a defunct highway. The walking was easy, the sea was beautiful, and although we weren't sure we would be able to have access to the beach all the way to Sete, we started in that direction. Eventually we came to a nice highway, again running parallel to the sea, right behind the beach. There was no traffic, so we continued towards Sete. Eventually the nice highway ended, and we came to a roadway that had the top layer of asphalt ground off. Obviously it was being rebuilt, but nobody was working today so we continued on towards Sete, having an entire highway to ourselves. It was chilly here by the sea, but beautiful. In that entire hike along the beach, we saw about 3 people. It was a lovely day. As we got closer to Sete the highway ended, but it was replaced by a wonderful biking/hiking path. We kept on trucking, and finally reached Sete, the end of our quest. We thought. We consulted a tourist map on a board and located the station. Looked like it was just up the hill and around the corner. We headed in that direction. Well, either we misread the map or it was not to scale, because we walked and walked. We saw way more of Sete than we would have had to. Finally, we began to descend (Sete is on a big hill right on the Mediterranean, and most of our walking had been uphill) and we reached the waterfront, near the station. We stopped and bought some groceries, then found a hotel right on the waterfront. We took a little walk around the waterfront, then crashed. No need for food after our couscous dinner! Mileage for the day - 20.8 miles.
The next day we walked to the station right after breakfast. It was cold, and our train was a few minutes late. When it arrived, we hopped on (Second Class, First had not been available when we changed our ticket). We sat across from two businessmen who kept to themselves, so we did, too. This was a fast train, and unlike our train from Paris to Toulouse, this train made only two stops, at Montpelier and Nimes. We passed through some very nice countryside, long, rolling hills, forest and pastures. We saw lots of cattle in fields with hedge fences. It appeared to be wet - they must have had some heavy rains. The closer we got to Paris, the less interesting the countryside became. We arrived in Paris shortly after noon, and began walking to our hotel. It was a little further from the station than we thought - okay, a lot further than we thought, but we found it without any problem. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we were told they were unable to accommodate us. This was the place I had emailed about additional nights when we were in Beziers. I hadn't been able to check my email since then, so I didn't get his email saying he was full. Furthermore, he assured us, we were not going to find any place in Paris for less than 300 euros. There was some big convention or something and all of Paris was full. Perhaps in the suburbs we could find something for 150 euros a night. Ouch. This was not expected. We could have jumped on a train and headed to the suburbs and tried our luck there, but we found it a little hard to believe that Paris was completely full this time of year. We decided to hit the streets and start looking. We walked out the door and within a couple of blocks we saw a hotel that looked nice enough for us to stay in but not so nice that it would be terribly expensive. We walked in, asked about a room. Indeed, the lady had rooms for 170 euros. A little much for us, but not nearly the 300 euros the guy at the other hotel was talking about. We asked how much it would be if we stayed two nights. 150 euros a night, she said. How about if we stayed three nights? 140 euros. We took it. We signed in and she motioned us to the elevator. The elevator opened and Debi and I looked at each other. It was tiny! We were still wearing our packs and the elevator was so narrow that we had to stand facing each other so the door could close. Once we got to the floor, we had to exit through the back door. It was an accordion-style door, and we had to scrunch up so there was room for it to open. That was the only time we used the elevator in that establishment. We were on the third floor, so the walk up was no problem. The room was very nice, the nicest we had on this trip, and the location was great. It was located just a block south of the Blvd. St Germain, near the Latin Quarter, the Luxembourg Gardens, Notre Dame, etc. We unpacked, walked back to the first hotel to cancel our reservation for the one night he had open, passed through the Luxembourg Gardens and watched some chess games, found a place to eat (one of the courses was seemingly raw salmon, a big hit with Debi but for Joe, not so much). We wandered over the river to the Louvre, then headed up towards the Arc de Triomphe. The green areas around the Louvre and the Champs Elysees were chock full of little Christmas booths, selling all kinds of food and drinks and trinkets and yes, junk. Lots of people were out and about - it was very festive. Ho, ho, and ho. We spent a lot of time wandering through the crowds, and by the time we neared the Arc we were hungry again, so we found a little fast food place on the Champs and had soup and sandwiches. Warmed and refreshed, we headed back to our hotel and called it a day. Mileage - 9.9 miles.
We had purchased some breakfast goodies (bananas and yoghurt) and we enjoyed breakfast in our room (it wasn't included in our hotel stay). We headed to the Musee de l'Armee, a museum covering French military history. We covered the WWI and WWII exhibits in the morning. It was interesting to see the history of these wars from a French perspective. For one thing, they said WWI lasted from 1870-1918. Apparently they consider the Franco-Prussian war to be part of WWI. We had lunch in the museum cafeteria, then headed back to the museum for the exhibits from earlier times, mostly the Napoleonic era. After that we visited Napoleon's Tomb - quite a big resting place for such a small man. By now it was late afternoon, so we headed up to the Seine, wandered around a bit, stopped at a restaurant and had Beef Burgundy, then headed back to the hotel. Mileage for the day - only 6.5 miles.
Today was to be our last full day in Paris. We found a little breakfast place right on the Blvd. St. Michel. We decided to walk to the site of the Bastille, even though we knew there was not much to see there. We started out. We wanted to walk through the university district, and we stumbled onto the Pantheon. The Pantheon is where some of France's "great" men are buried. We hadn't planned on going through it, but decided to and it was interesting. We admired Foccault's Pendulum and looked around for some interesting graves. Joe was most interested in mathematicians, and we found the graves of Lagrange and Monge. There are some writers and philosophers interred there (Voltaire and Rousseau foremost among them), but it is mostly the resting place of various politicians. We left the Pantheon and stopped in at the Church of St. Ettienne, and wouldn't you know it, we stumbled onto the resting place of Blaise Pascal, another noted mathematician. We kept on walking, and soon we began seeing motorcycle cops blocking intersections. We didn't know what was going on at first, but finally we say a long column of horsemen, riding two abreast. They were wearing some kind of ceremonial garb, very colorful. There must have been at least a hundred of them, taking their sweet time heading up through some of the busiest parts of Paris. Horses being horses, two Paris street cleaning machines were bringing up the rear of the parade. Paris horse poop smells a lot like Middlebury horse poop. We reached the Bastille, and found just what we expected - not much! This was kind of an interesting place to walk. Much of the time when we walk around Paris we find ourselves wondering how people live there. There are lots of clothing stores and such, but no grocery stores or hardware stores or any of the little shops you need to actually live in a place. But in this area, we saw all kinds of shops. It was like a real big small town. We continued up to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. This is one of Paris' biggest and most famous cemeteries. We kept thinking we would find a place to buy a map of the place, but we never did, so we had to rely on a few signs posted around the place. We saw what is reputed to be the final resting place of Adelbard and Heloise (nobody knows for sure), the tomb of Oscar Wilde (totally covered with graffitti) and of course stopped by to see the most-visited grave in the whole cemetery, the grave of Jim Morrison. After getting our fill of the cemetery, we headed back towards home. We walked through the Place de Republique, wandered though a flea market area, what seemed to be the jewelry district, and finally stumbled into the Hotel de Ville just as it began to snow! From the reaction of the pedestrians, I'd say they were as surprised by the snow as we were. We ducked into Notre Dame until the snow stopped, then went home and caught our breath before heading out for dinner. Tried snails for the first time. Okay, but probably not something we'll eat routinely. Day's mileage - 9.5 miles.
Today we had to catch a plane home. We went out to the same little breakfast place we had eaten at the morning before. My plan had been to walk up to the RER (local rail) station at Chatelet-Les Halles, just a little north of the Seine. But while eating breakfast we noticed that the Metro stop across the street also showed an RER sign, so after breakfast we crossed the street, descended into the station, bought two tickets to Chuck DeGaulle airport, and headed to the platform. We had forgotten how to read the info signs in the stations, so when the first train pulled in we weren't sure if it was the one we wanted or not, so we passed on it. Within a few minutes we had figured out what was going on and soon we were on a train to the airport. It stopped frequently in the heart of the city, but as we got a little further out it became an express train and we zoomed right out to the airport. We had a little trouble figuring out where we wanted to be (signage was a little sparse) but eventually found our place. There was a huge line at the American desks - well, maybe the line wasn't so long as much as it was just very slow moving. We finally got through that, then we had to go through passport control. We had a little incident there - a man who was waiting for his daughter to get through the control was blocking everybody else from moving on. At first we thought he just didn't realize it, but after we made our presence known he still refused to move. So we pushed on by him. He got really annoyed. Dunno, maybe we broke some cultural taboo, but from our Innocents Abroad perspective, we wondered, why wouldn't you just wait off to one side? He was kind of hot and made some comments, so I pulled out our nail clipper and slashed his throat. Just kidding, but that brings us up to our next adventure. Debi had brought some silverware, nail clippers and a small scissors with us. We had checked at security in the US and we were told they was fine, and indeed we were not questioned about them at Chicago security. Apparently the French have different standards, because they latched onto the clippers and our forks immediately. They had also spotted the scissors, but the guy going through the bag by hand couldn't find them. Debi offered to get them for him, but he refused her help, saying it was his job. After more fruitless searching, she offered again, and again he rebuffed her. Finally, he took her bag back to the scanner and ran it through again, noting the position of the scissors. He then brought the bag back to the table, found the scissors, and held them up triumphantly, acting as if we had been trying to hide them and he had outfoxed us. Whatever. Guess he was having a bad day and needed a victory of some sort. It was kind of was a bad way to end a trip, but not bad enough to spoil everything for us. The flight home was full, unlike the flight over, but it didn't go too badly. We arrived in Chicago in early afternoon, rented a car to drive to South Bend where Debi's dear brother-in-law and nephew had left a car for us. We headed home, safe and sound. Mileage for the day - not sure, Joe forgot to turn on the GPS!
All in all, it was a great trip. We covered a little over 200 miles as recorded by the GPS. There were a few times we forgot to turn it on, so we actually walked a little bit more than that. Yes, there were some moments of stress when we weren't sure if we were going to have a place to stay for the night, but we coped. We would like to do something like this again, although we would probably try to walk in a more populated area or make reservations in advance. We didn't make reservations in advance on this trip because we weren't sure how far we could walk in a day, and we worried about weather delays. We endured some muscle soreness in the early going, and some joint pain later in the trip, but for the most part, we felt good throughout the trek. We probably should have done something like this for our third anniversary instead of our 30th, but we would have never imagined doing something like this back then. We got too soon old and too late smart.
We've posted a few pictures with some comments.
| Created on December 25, 2010. Modified on December 31, 2010. Comments to joepye@pobox.com. | |||
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