Juste un petit mot pour vous annoncer que j’ai (enfin) mis des photos de Grèce sur mon site, ici. J’ai mis à jour Athènes, et la plupart des villes que j’ai visitées sur Santorin. Ma préférée est toujours Ohia!

Just a quick note to let you know that I have (finally) uploaded some pictures from Greece, here. These include Athens and most of the towns I visited in Santorini. My favorite is still Ohia!

I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know France as well as I should, having lived there for … almost 20 years? I don’t really know my way around Paris in a car, nor do I know my way around much of the country either. My best excuse is that I have never had to drive by myself: I have always traveled by public transportation (metro, bus, train or plane) or been driven around. This last vacation definitely hit me pretty hard as Romeo and I traveled almost 1,500 miles in our fancy Renault convertible and I was struggling with general directions.

Then again, come to think about it, I don’t believe I know my way around Boston or DC by car too well either. Could it be time to buy a car? My very first car at age 27? After driving Romeo from de Gaulle airport to my parents’, getting lost along the way and searching for directions, he seemed to think that I need practice. Nothing happened and we got there safe, but he said he was worried about the accidents happening behind me (that’s not really true as far as I could tell from the rear-view mirror). I agree that I may need practice, but in all fairness, my latest driving experience before then had been Greece! And as far as I can tell, the Greeks’ driving reputation is one of the worst out there and I did just fine. Unless… I just blended in

Trouver un nom pour le bateau aura pris probablement plus que de temps que de choisir le bateau lui-même. Cela dit, ça se comprend: Papa en a rêvé depuis si longtemps que l’on n’était plus à quelque minutes près. Nous avons donc baptisé Grain d’Sel la semaine dernière tous ensemble, au champagne, en mer et sous-spi.

Dans les annales de la famille, nous noterons aussi sûrement que mon copain américain a trouvé le nom pour l’annexe alors qu’il ne parle pas français. Nous ne l’avons pas encore baptisée, mais nous avons étrainé demi-sel à l’île d’Yeu.

Once we got to Pornic (late again), the plan was to go sailing on my Dad’s new boat. He is retiring at the end of the year and this boat is his retirement present to himself. To be fair, my Mom also got him the harbor slip that goes with the boat. This boat is actually more like my Dad’s life-long dream: he has always wanted to have his own boat.

Growing up, I didn’t just get to visit castles on my summer vacation, my sister and I also got to go sailing with our parents, usually around Pornic, but also in Corsica and Turkey. My Dad would take the family out sailing on a rental sailboat and always dream of having one of his own. The time has come and Grain d’Sel is now his (and my Mom’s).

This was Romeo’s first time on a boat with a French flag and as usual, he did a great job. Thanks to him, Dad took the spinnaker out for the first time, and the *sleeping beauties* (that includes my brother-in-law) all got to sleep in while Romeo and my Dad took the boat from the harbor of the Island of Yeu to a mooring at 6am. We really had a great time altogether: my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, Romeo and I.

Growing up, every year my parents would take my sister and I on vacation to Southern Brittany and usually stop to visit a castle in the Loire Valley on the drive back. I can’t say I remember the names of the castles, or the history behind them but I certainly remember it being a lot of fun and decided to take Romeo through the Loire Valley on our way from Ardèche to Brittany.

If you were to fly over the Loire Valley, you would probably see castles all over. It isn’t quite as bad when you are driving around, but the frequency remains pretty high. Romeo had accepted to drive to my grandparents on the condition that we rented a convertible, so I figured he would have no objections to spending one night in a castle. I did check with him before reserving a night in the tower of a XVIth century castle and his only concern was that I might “go medieval” on him!

Talk about a romantic get-away! This was fabulous, except that thanks to my poor planning and an emotional difficulty to leave my grandmother alone, we got there very late (i.e., maybe 1am?). Once we got to the top of the dungeon, we slept very well, and woke up to a beautiful castle the next morning. Having missed breakfast and not found the menu all that exciting for lunch, we took our time to check out the rest of the castle and I came back to the room for Romeo to take pictures of me playing Rapunzel through the window overlooking the woods.

If you are ever around Montrichard looking for a place to stay for less than you’d pay for a crummy hotel downtown Boston and you like the idea of a Renaissance castle to spend a night, check out the Chateau de la Menaudière.

The following day, we continued to the Chateau de Chenonceaux, another *slightly* more impressive XVIth century castle built right over the Cher river; and the medieval (there we go) city of Angers. The original intent was to visit the castle of Angers too, except that we got there a little too late — again!

Ok. You may be tired of reading the words “significant other” in this blog. I know I am definitely tired of writing and mis-spelling them. Rest assured, we are still talking about the same guy but following his suggestion, I will give him a “nom de plume”, or pen-name (actually, the direct translation is feather-name, but nobody really writes with feathers anymore). I refuse to spend too much time on searching for the perfect name and am having issues finding a name that would fit both his Swedish and Italian origins, so here it is, like it or not:

ROMEO

To some, there may be no excuse at all for not seeing the game when you are a French citizen with some partial Italian origin on vacation in France. Except that I am not a soccer fan (ok. how dare I?), and it felt more important to take my grandmother out for dinner to celebrate her 80th birthday. So while my country was bravely playing its last chip at a chance to win the World Cup; my cousin, significant other, grandmother and I were sitting at dinner on a deserted terrace attacking French dishes.

My cousin and I had discreetly asked if it would be possible to get a cake for desert and when that time came, there was a procession of a candle-lit cake, a guitarist and a few singers from the entrance of the restaurant to our table. It seemed that my grandmother wanted to sink very low in her chair, and she hid her face in her hands for a while. The grin on her face gave her away and I have no regrets whatsoever of having given up watching the game. 

By the time we were done with dessert, Italy and France were tied and there were just a few minutes left before the penalty kicks. Given all the eating we had been doing, I offered to take my grandmother for a walk, but she preferred to walk to the next bar and watch the penalty kicks. It was great to see her cheer for France: she was probably more disappointed than me when France lost…

You go Grandma!

Murphy almost ruined it all… by casting some rain (lots of it) on Saturday morning when the picnic was scheduled for noon! Luckily, many of my friends still believed in a luck fairy of some sort and almost everybody showed up: thanks guys, it was great to see you all.

The luck fairy won, the clouds cleared away and the sun even showed up as we were sitting down for an improvised picnic party. Not improvised for everybody, as one of my friends had brought fresh pastries and Champagne, another one a bottle of red wine. It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon and perfect weather for a picnic in one of the most beautifully kept gardens in Paris.

My significant other and I flew back from Athens to Paris today and it almost took us more time to rent the car than the actual flight time. We have some extensive driving to do throughout France over the next week so we decided to go for a comfortable and trendy car. The original idea was to fly back from Athens and drive directly to my grandmother’s 80th birthday in a sports car but that would have blown our vacation budget for the next couple of years so we settled for a convertible

After we finally got the car, we organized the luggage in the back-seat and opened the hard-top to drive from the airport to my parents’ place. Traffic was terrible and it started raining as we were on the highway traveling under 10 miles per hour. The speed would have been fine for the roof-top mechanism to close except that it cannot be activated without the hand break on and pulling a hand-break on a highway, even at 5mph is just not a very good idea! By the time we got to the next exit, we were a little damp, so was the luggage and the rain continued all the way home.

Once we got home, my Mom had prepared a really nice meal for us and had invited my sister and her husband for dinner, so this was quite the family meal. It is amazing how much catching up we had to do in just a few months: yet another late night!