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| And so it ends, as I'm returning to the US today. As appropriate, I spent some of yesterday drinking, mostly beers that I've wanted to try but hadn't had the opportunity. I did participate in my final tour of the trip, another session of walking around Brussels, but this time with an emphasis on its food. And, in case I haven't mentioned this before, Belgium has awesome food. Going to keep this short so I can finish final packing. Since I've had very few problems on this trip, I can expect the flights back to be horribly delayed... at least. Look, it helps to expect the worst, right? Well, delays aren't the "worst," but if the worst happened, I wouldn't be around afterward to crow about being right, now, would I? I'll just leave you with the dog version of the Manneken Pis from yesterday:  |
| Lots of cities have a recognizable symbol, an icon which represents the city's, and sometimes the country's, character. Paris has that Tower. Sydney has the Opera House. Washington has the Phallus- errr, I mean Monument. Hell, even my city has one, the Rotunda at UVA. Brussels, ancient economic powerhouse, capital city of the European Union, world culinary treasure... Brussels has the Manneken Pis.  Like the Mona Lisa (reportedly), the statue/fountain's size can be shockingly disappointing to first-time visitors. As that link notes, it's a bit over half a meter in height, and it's set in a relatively large fountain so it seems even smaller. Please feel free to make your own jokes and insinuations about that last paragraph. I'm too tired to bother. The first connection one might make is to those pissing-Calvin stickers rednecks used to put on the back window of their trucks. Usually, if it was a Ford, it'd be pissing on the Chevy logo; or vice-versa. This is different, though I suppose that if it were mischievously pissing on anything, it'd be France. No, the Manneken Pis is more heroic than delinquent. Anyway, you can read more about that that at the Wiki link above, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering with the background here. According to my guide, they used to replace the water in the fountain with beer during their beer festivals, which, like the Manneken Pis itself, is a very Belgian kind of thing. I suppose the only more Belgian thing to do would be to replace it with liquid chocolate, but I'd imagine that'd be even harder to clean up, later. When I was there, the statue was dressed up as a little graduate, because Brussels is having a graduation ceremony this week. Why Brussels schools graduate people in October, or exactly which schools are involved (high school or college or whatever), I never did find out and can't be arsed to look up. But this is the condition in which I found it.  |
| Antwerp yesterday. Not a lot of beer, though, but a quick tour of the very interesting historical areas, or at least the highlights thereof. I didn't really expect to spend any time in Antwerp this trip, so the few hours I did spend there were a pleasant surprise. Well, except for all the goddamned cobblestones. While I was there, a couple of women biked past me. I heard one of them comment, "I've never come this way before." The other replied, "I know, right? It's the cobblestones." Okay, okay, some variation of that joke is older than I am, and obviously, it's just a joke. Back to being semi-serious, an entry from back in July discussed this city: "Let Me Give You a Hand" . I didn't get to see (or drink) anything mentioned there, but my tour guide did relate the "Silvus Brabo defeated a rent-seeking giant and lopped off his hand" mythological origin of the city as if it were fact. This would be akin to a Roman tour guide taking the Romulus and Remus wolf-adoption story seriously.Still, myths and legends are powerful things, and they lead to very real things like paintings, statues, and cathedrals. I've deliberately avoided a lot of purely tourist-bait photos in here during this trip, wanting to focus (pun intended) on a more street-level and personal experience. But I thought this shot of the Silvus Brabo with the severed giant's hand fountain/statue in the market square outside the city hall was worth sharing.  |
| Compared to the previous couple of days, yesterday was easy: Walk around Bruges, drink beers. The rescheduled private Bruges beer tour happened, and the Ukrainian guide introduced me to more beer. We started at the Beer Museum, and yes, there is a Beer Museum in Bruges and it contains a taphouse. You might think, "But Waltz, haven't you tried them all already?" No. No, I have not. I haven't even tried all the ones that make it to the US, let alone the good stuff they keep to themselves here. Tant de bières, si peu de temps. There exist over 400 breweries here. Most of them produce more than one brew. And things keep changing, so I don't think I could try all of them even if I wanted to (which I do). It's enough that I have the impossible dream of visiting every brewery in the US (we're up to around 10,000, but we keep losing and gaining them). The ones I did try, though, were generally good. There are some styles I just don't enjoy as much, so mostly, it's a matter of personal taste, not a reflection of actual quality of product. In addition to this, I fulfilled a long-standing fuck-it list item and visited the Torture Museum here. What they don't tell you at the link there (Atlas Obscura) is that you have to walk down a flight of dark, ominous stairs to get to the museum in the basement, and that there's a cheery café on the ground floor which doesn't seem to have any connection to the museum... or does it?Unlike with beer, I have no desire or inclination to try all the devices in the museum. Still, it was a good reminder that humans can really suck, sometimes. And sometimes we can do great things, like create beer. Pictured: La Corne du Bois des Pendus, another beer with unique glassware, on a table on a terrace by a canal.  |
| One thing I insisted upon during trip planning was to visit Brouwerij Bosteels. This is an ancient brewery which creates two of my favorite Belgian beers: Tripel Karmeliet and Pauwel Kwak. (The link there goes to the English website.) The difficulty: the brewery is located in a small village called Buggenhout, kind of between Brussels and Antwerp. And I'm still in Bruges, to the northwest. Yes, Belgium is a relatively small country, but it's not that small (about the size of Maryland, though more compact), so trains were involved. This meant that I had to walk the mile (roughly 1600 meters) from the hotel back to the train station and, yes, my nemeses the cobblestones were heavily involved, though at least I wasn't rolling luggage. From there, I caught a train directly to Ghent (or Gent), then switched trains at a heavily-under-construction station to a stoptrein (which I gather is the equivalent of a "local" in the US) going through Buggenhout. All while being mostly unable to read signs or understand announcements. While this is part of the adventure of traveling, I was on a schedule; I had to be at the brewery by 1:00pm (or 13:00 in the superior Euro style). I managed. But then I had to walk again, this time about half a kilometer, to the gigantic brewery, and here, Google failed me in a way that signs in Dutch did not, giving me the wrong location of the entrance. As the brewery is, as I noted, gigantic, this meant walking around an enormous block to find the tour location and, yes, there was a preponderance of cobblestones. I found it, albeit a few minutes late, but they let me in anyway. After a quick taste of a beer, the guide (who resembled Mirror Universe Jean-Luc Picard, in that he was bald but had a goatee) took us around the brewery operations, which, it being Saturday, weren't active at the time. This is a good thing, because we didn't get in anyone's way and I could actually hear the guide because the machines weren't operating. Point is, you know the Wonka movie? Yeah, that was me gawking at this enormous brewing operation. Now, my appreciation for Bosteels wavered a bit a few years ago, when AB/InBev bought them. (AB/InBev is an enormous Belgian company, but it's best known for its first initials, which stand for Anheuser-Busch.) But they didn't change the beer in any noticeable way. I'd hoped, because of the big corporation's greater reach and distribution network, that this meant we would be getting more Kwak in the US, but I still can only rarely find it in Virginia. I see Tripel Karmeliet quite often, though, so that's okay. Interesting thing about Kwak. Each Belgian beer has its own dedicated glassware for serving; this is one of the delightful aspects of Belgian beer. Most of them are variations on a theme, though; something resembling a goblet or Holy Grail, or perhaps a pilsner glass, or, you know, another kind of glass you'd expect to find beer in. Kwak glassware is unique, resembling instead a test tube on a wooden stand. Today's photograph, below, is of a serving of Kwak, so you can see what I'm talking about. I possess two such glasses back home, because on those rare occasions that I do find the beer near me, it's imperative that I use the proper receptacle, and there are two of them because, sometimes, I share with friends. The funny thing is that a bartender here told me that the glassware, being so different, tends to get stolen from bars. So the bars here, he said, require that you put up one of your shoes as collateral to ensure they get the glass and stand back when it's empty. This would definitely be a deterrent for me because, well... cobblestones. I didn't have to get one of my shoes taken hostage at this brewery, but they did let me have a Kwak, and yes, it is much better to drink it at the source. Between the opening beer, a serving of Tripel Karmeliet, and the Kwak, I was pretty far gone by the time the tour/tasting ended (I'm no lightweight, but Belgian beer tends to be high-octane), and I had to retrace my steps, and the trains, back to the hotel. Easier said than done, because I was still kind of out of it when I got off at Bruges, and had to walk the mile back to the hotel. Along the way, I gave up and had dinner (and a beer) at one of the many sidewalk bars in the old town. All of which is to say: Mission Accomplished. I only have a few days left here, and rumor has it there's a hurricane (yes, a hurricane, though "only" of tropical storm intensity) coming, but I've now done what I most wanted to do. As promised, a picture of how Pauwel Kwak is served (bonus: Mirror Universe Picard):  |
| Even on the TGV, it takes a while to get from Lyon to Brussels. Worst, Brussels wasn't my actual destination; I had to hop on an intercity train to Bruges. Those trains are open seating and run frequently; they're more like NYC subways than what I'd expect from intercity (IC) trains, only without the piss, buskers, and giant Saks sacks. Well, I guess technically, they're more like NJT trains, but more people know the subway. Anyway, I was concerned about time, because I had to be at a certain statue at 6:30 pm or I'd miss a beer tour (and of course I couldn't let that happen under any circumstances). So I ran to catch an earlier IC train, which I barely did because the TGV was late getting to Brussels. Then, once in Bruges, I had to get to the hotel even though the meeting place was kind of between the station and the hotel, because who schleps travel bags on a beer tour? You'd think I'd have learned my lesson back in Tours, but, apparently, we ugly Americans just won't take a hint. Once again, the hotel was 1600 meters from the train station. Once again, the terrain between was mostly flat. And once again, I cursed every single goddamn cobblestone in Europe. I got to the hotel at 6, exhausted. My left knee is still wonky, and so is my right ankle. Of course it can't be one leg; it's gotta be both so I can limp with every step instead of just half of them. Now, the hotel is older than European colonization of America (unless you count the Norse incursion, which I don't because they didn't make a lasting colony), so it has a few... interesting features. One of them is an abundance of stairs. Another is that, in order to get to my room, I had to take an elevator up one floor (or carry bags up a spiral staircase, which, well, no) then walk down a hallway, up a ramp, bounce up two steps, take a few twists and turns, and then get on a separate elevator to take me up half a floor. At least the hotel has been retrofitted with electricity. I barely had time to throw the bags in my room before I had to turn around and make my way to the statue. One of the streets on the way was called Steenstraat. Now, I don't know very much Dutch, I'm afraid, but "steen" and "straat" are two words that I am familiar with: Stone Street. Even without bags, cobblestones are a pain in the ass. When I got there, the guide was waiting impatiently, tapping his foot. Apparently, he'd messaged me to meet at 6 instead of 6:30. I'd never gotten any such message. Fortunately, his English was excellent, and I showed him that no, I'd received nothing. Unfortunately, the reason he'd wanted to meet earlier was that the best beer places closed at 7, and now we wouldn't have enough time. All that running and stumbling on cobblestones... all of that... for nothing. Well, not completely nothing. We agreed to try again for Sunday at 2:30. And the guide pointed me at a nearby restaurant which he said was good. Now, I'm pretty sure it's the law in Belgium for every restaurant to be good, but in this case, he was definitely right. I managed to hit the entire Belgian flag  in one dinner: Beer, chocolate, and waffles. And meatballs for the main course, but meatballs aren't on the flag. All, incidentally, delivered to the table by a Japanese nekorobot . No, seriously. This thing had cat ears and a screen with an animated cat face. I felt like I was in a Black Mirror episode. Or at least Doctor Who. I should write a book: Cobblestones and Advanced Robotics: A Study In Contrasts.Oddly enough, even though the beer I had was very local to Bruges, I'd had it before; somehow, a keg had made its way to my hometown in 2021, and, as I keep meticulous beer-drinking records (okay, it's an app), I was able to determine that I'd sampled it back then. Of course, I didn't mind drinking it again, and there are plenty of other beers here that never make it out of the EU, so it's not like I wasted the trip. I could have done without all the quaint fucking cobblestones, though.  |
| For my final full day in France, I took a small-group tour to the wine region of the Côtes du Rhône. In contrast with the previous day's trips, I wasn't very familiar with the Côtes du Rhône vintages. This, of course, is why I went. I find that, when traveling, some mixture of the familiar and the new is ideal, though I expect the proportions would differ for everyone. While I don't think I'd ever had a wine from this region before, some of the grapes they're based on are fairly popular to grow in the US. The tour group itself was pretty interesting. Some of us ugly Americans, a couple from Quebec, and three people from Australia, who, while initially distrustful of my Americanity, quickly warmed up when I assured them (out of earshot of the tour guide) that I very much enjoy Australian Shiraz. While the guide insisted that Syrah, one of the grapes in Côtes du Rhône, is not the same thing as Shiraz, it totally is; it's just grown on very nearly the exact opposite side of the world. The tour guide himself, who looked a bit like Kiefer Sutherland, was otherwise very knowledgeable, and spoke good enough English that all of us varied Anglophones mostly understood him. The problem comes in when some unknown place name, or grape name, pops up in spoken French. Like, if someone comes up to me and says "Bonjour, peux-je vous aider?" I can work out what they're saying. But if I'm at a wine tasting, even if it's mostly in English, it might go something like this: "This wine comes from the pl***du*** region, near B***on and the S**** river valley. If you visit there, be sure to go to D****de*****, a fine restaurant that serves bl*****, v*******de la *******tion, and many very good wines, including Petit ********tre, Vo******** Blanc, and sparkling Dr*******" It's tiring, to be honest. I started asking for spellings. To make things worse, my hearing isn't that great thanks to 50 years of rock concerts (no regrets), and I'm not asking you to repeat yourself because I don't understand French; I'm asking you to repeat yourself because I literally can't hear you over the ambient mumbles. Ah, well, soon I get to complain about the same thing in Dutch (or at least the version of it known as Flemish; I don't know the details there), as I'm leaving for Bruges today. It's a tight schedule: catch a train to Brussels, transfer to a train to Bruges, get to the hotel from there somehow (Uber seems to be wonky in Belgium; apparently, only taxi drivers can do Uber, thus defeating the whole purpose but providing job security), then find a certain statue in a city saturated with statues to meet a beer guide who will take me... well, I don't care, as long as there's Belgian beer. I'll wrap up with another landscape picture, this one of the Rhône Valley.  |
| The weather decided to give me a break, just in time for another wine tour out in the countryside. Yesterday's excursion took me into the nearby wine region of Beaujolais, source of one of my personal traditions. I've talked about it enough in here before, but, in brief: Beaujolais Nouveau is released on the third Thursday of November, just in time to ship it to the US for drinking with Thanksgiving meals, which it accompanies very well. I try to get a bottle every year. This is not, of course, the only wine produced in the region, and their more traditional offerings are very good. But the funny thing I found out on this trip is: the French consider it a trash wine. Which probably explains why the US gets so many bottles in November; they unload their stock on us so they don't have to drink it themselves. Every year when it's released on Beaujolais Nouveau Day, though, they get together and party to drink the stuff and complain about how bad it is. And probably to laugh at the Americans who they can pass it off onto, but for some reason none of the tour guides I talked to would admit to that.Thing about it, though, is the wine may be crap, but it's cheap crap, and to me, the price of the stuff figures into the taste. So yeah... I like it. Deal with it, France, because I have to deal with beer drinkers claiming to love Bud Light. In other news, today is my last full day in France, but I'll talk more about today's events tomorrow, which is when I'm scheduled to get on a train to Belgium. I'm of the considered opinion that no trip to France is complete without at least one decadent, elegant, crazy expensive formal dinner. So I had mine last night, in the restaurant on the top floor of my hotel. The only thing more boring than hearing about someone go on about their dream last night is hearing them talk about their decadent and crazy expensive French dinner, so I'll spare you most of the details, only to say it was everything I expected and not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be (and that neither snails nor frogs were involved). I accompanied it with a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, which is not from this region, but what the hell, I like it and it was on the menu. When I say bottle, I mean bottle. Damn right I polished it off. Today's vacation photo was from an overlook where we stopped on the tour for a glass of wine. You will note that it's not raining, and that the view was incredible.  |
| Dealt with rain all day yesterday. I can't complain too much, though. Had I stayed home, I would have had to endure many days of rain, mostly spun off from Hurricane Helene. We didn't get anywhere close to the worst of it where I live, and being in other parts of the South would have sucked even worse. So I try to keep things in perspective. Still, rain on vacation isn't ideal. I walked around Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) anyway, slipping and tripping on ancient cobblestones and occasionally juggling my umbrella and camera phone to get a shot of something interesting. As I mentioned in my previous entry, the travel agent had lined up a food-tasting tour for me. This involved more walking (in the rain) around Vieux Lyon, trying to keep up with younger, healthier tourists while cramming ourselves into tiny shops. The food and wine were worth it, though. This place has its own traditional cuisine, which mostly involves cured meats and cheese, and, needless to say, both pair really well with the local wine. I'll have more to say about the wine in future entries, but I did want to share this lucky pic I caught on the way to the food tour. I've censored the faces for privacy; what's important are the words on the woman's umbrella. It may not mean much if you're not familiar with French, and, as with anything funny, explaining it negates its impact (though I might comment with the explanation later, if people want). But it made my entire day and almost made up for the relentless downpour.  |
| Another kind of slow day yesterday, partly because of another run on the TGV. This one took me from Dijon south to Lyon. I should note here, as a bit of a warning to other Americans who want to visit France: while many people, especially in the travel and hospitality industry, speak some English, and many signs are multilingual, the vast majority of the train announcements and postings are solely in French. While I have some facility reading the language, it's not as easy for me to follow the spoken language (yet). To be fair, I can barely understand train announcements in English. Ever been on the NYC subway system? The announcements there only add to the confusion. The hotel that the travel agent arranged for me in Lyon is a step up from the others I've been in here. Five-star instead of three or four. For this particular hotel, part of the upscale amenities is a really remarkably well-stocked bar on the top floor. Naturally, it became incredibly important for me to check out the bar. And oh, man, was it worth it. While many of the spirits are also available in the US, they're a bit cheaper here. Even the Scotch, so it's not just because of the EU. The menu featured several interesting-looking cocktails, too, some of which I, of course, had to try. I was the only one sitting at the actual bar, and the bartender did the whole bartender-showing-off thing with the flipping behind his back and squirting drinks from an arm's length away and juggling shakers and all that. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was flirting with me. Or at least angling for a tip, which really isn't done here, from what I've been told. They also have an 18-year Yamazaki (Japanese scotch-style whiskey), which I've had in the US, but only rarely. I restrained myself, though; I'll be here for a few days, and I'll have other opportunities to drink the really expensive stuff. With all that, I haven't yet had much opportunity to explore Lyon, which is a really quite large city compared to all the others (except Paris). Today isn't looking good, either, with rain in the forecast, but I have a food-tasting tour lined up for later. That's for tomorrow's entry, though.  |
| For my final full day in Dijon, I didn't have anything planned out—no wine tours, no mustard discoveries, not even a "let's meet for lunch" (because unlike Paris and, by lucky chance, Tours, I don't know anyone here). So, as the day was fine and sunny and neither hot nor cold, I took a walk. Dijon, like most European cities, is really quite incredibly old (from a US perspective). And, as with other cities, there's only so much one can do in a day. Turns out that Dijon has a self-guided walking tour embedded into it. Literally; there are brass plaques with engraved owls  on the sidewalks, pointing the way.Why an owl? Well, on the side of the cathedral here (also named Notre Dame, because Catholics weren't very original) perches a small stone owl, barely recognizable as such from the accumulated wear of people touching it. Supposedly, touching it (but only with one's left hand) will grant a wish. Apparently, no one has yet wished for "restore the Notre Dame owl to its original carved glory." Or maybe they have, and it's just another silly superstition. Following the trail eventually gets you to the owl, and then it moseys on along through other historic sites. It's like following the quest markers in a video game, which made me want to play a video game, but that can wait until I get home again. I didn't touch the owl. For one thing, it's a silly (if mostly harmless to everything but the owl itself) superstition. For another, even if there were something to it, making a wish is tantamount to acknowledging that there's something missing in my life, and there isn't. For yet another, over half a century of reading and writing stories, and playing fantasy role-playing games, has instilled in me a deep, abiding distrust of wishes. And, for a final thing, some beggars were approaching with their cups out, so I hoofed it out of there, continuing to follow the brass owl arrows. These led me next to a mustard shop, on the same street (Rue de la Chouette, naturally), where I finally got to see the thing Dijon is most famous for and holy condiments, Batman, there's a lot of mustard there. At some point, though, around the Ducal Palace, I lost the trail and never did pick it up again, despite looking and even trying the internet. All I could discover was that it was not, in fact, the end of the trail. Oh, well. Much later, in the evening, I returned to the palace area (Palais des Ducs) and its accompanying semicircular courtyard, Place de la Libération, which is surrounded by cafés, bistrots, restaurants, bars, and brasseries, the differences between which are subtle and very French. (Brasserie also means "brewery," but not all brasseries are actually breweries, much to my disappointment.) Point is, I went back there for dinner because it's pretty, and I sat outside with a beer and a burger as the sun set and the Palais des Ducs lit up, and the shifting, multicolored lights in the Place's fountains illuminated their waters. This sort of thing is one of the reasons I wanted to go to France.  |
| The association of Dijon with mustard is universally-known and inescapable, but I'm not here for the condiment; I'm here for the wine, because Dijon is also part of Burgundy. As I mentioned a few entries back, Burgundy (or Bourgogne) has a connection with wine that's also universally-known and inescapable. Oddly enough, despite it lending its name to a particular shade of red (as detailed in an entry I did a while back, "Burgundy" ), the majority of the wines here are white; mostly Chardonnay. It makes a much better wine here than in the US.In that entry, from way back in February, I said, "Incidentally, these blog entries are inadvertently helping me plan a trip to France." Et voilà, here I am. But back to Beaune, which isn't actually pronounced like bone: it's south of Dijon and the road takes you through a multitude of vineyards and wine-producing villages. There, while others in my tour group grabbed snacks and ran through some historic sites, I dined at a very French restaurant. Well, I say "very French," but they have an English-language menu, so they do cater to tourists. We only had two hours in Beaune, and, ideally, I'd have liked to seen the old stuff as well as enjoyed the food, but I couldn't do both. Faced with a choice, it will always be, in order: beer, wine, distilled spirits, food, history. And this place, naturally, offered wine with the food, which included the famous dish bœuf bourguignon. That dish is, of course, another famous cultural export of Burgundy. The truly amazing thing, though, is this: the meal started with an apéritif, then an entrée with a glass of white Burgundy (recall that in French, entrée is like appetizer), then the bœuf bourguignon with a glass of red Burgundy, and, finally, a cheese plate. I was shocked that it only cost about 80 euros. So, yeah, I wish I'd seen more of old Beaune, but I have my priorities. I hope to make up for it today by seeing some historical crap here in Dijon. And maybe pick up some mustard.  |
| Most of yesterday was taken up by traveling. To get from Tours to Dijon, apparently there's no direct way, or at least not one that gave kickbacks to my travel agent. So it started with me taking an Uber from my hotel to the Tours train station, because now I know better than to roll luggage for that mile. Then the TGV back to Paris, during which, for some reason I absolutely cannot comprehend, my assigned seat was right next to someone else... while there were maybe 2 other people in the entire car. But the real fun was when I got back to Paris and met the chauffeur for the ride from Gare Montparnasse across the Seine to Gare de l'Est, which is the station with the train to Dijon. The chauffeur didn't speak very good English or French, but he spoke excellent Ukrainian. At least I assume he did; I know almost nothing about that language. But he was very good at pointing out the Paris sights along the way, in some version of English with a Ukrainian accent. "There is Tour Eiffel. And this building on left?" He indicated one with scaffolding. "Ukrainian mob has construction contract." We drove a bit further. "There on right is Notre Dame. And over there, building by Ukrainian mob." I wanted to ask him if the mob also did the Notre Dame reconstruction, but I knew better. He pointed out other important Ukrainian construction jobs along the way, too. Now, look. It's entirely possible that "mob" was a bad translation of something else in Ukrainian. Something innocuous like "Fine Upstanding Ukrainian Construction And Renovation Company And Not Mob At All We Promise And Pinky Swear." But I choose to believe that my chauffeur, who was about my age, was an actual member of the actual Ukrainian mob and did the chauffeur thing as a day gig. Just in case, I gave him an enormous gratuity. As Skinny Pete said in The Italian Job, "If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with mother nature, mother-in-laws, and mother-freaking Ukrainians." After that, the train (the slow kind) to Dijon was a letdown. Hell, the rest of the trip might well be a letdown. Things picked up again, though, once in Mustard City. The hotel, this time, is like 100 meters from the station. It has a lovely little bar. I had dinner elsewhere, but came back for the bar, where I got acquainted, for the first time, with a regional (the east of France) custom: Picon bière. Mostly, they drink Belgians here, because, as I've said numerous times, traditional French beer is ass (also, it's wine country). But apparently, it's not flavorful enough for them (QUOI?!) so they add a shot of a kind of orange bitters called, you guessed it, Picon. And whaddayaknow, it's actually a pretty good combination. Sadly, Picon isn't generally available in the US, so I'll have to enjoy it while I'm here and then smugly brag about it every time I drink a Belgian beer back home.  |
| Mystery solved! (Maybe.) According to the guide yesterday, at least, the city of Tours is named after the Celtic tribe that used to live there. I guess it's kind of like America where we ran off or killed all the natives then named some towns and rivers after them. But it turns out that the city's coat of arms features three black towers. Yes, that's right, the city's heraldry is a pun. That sort of thing isn't unheard of. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head, though, is the Northern England town of Berwick, whose coat of arms features... a bear. This wasn't the only thing I learned yesterday, during my guided tour of some of the wine country east of Tours. Another cave was involved, this one belonging to a winery in Vouvray. Vouvray being some of my favorite wine, this particular tour was the primary reason for my trip, and it did not disappoint. Part of the reason Vouvray tastes like ambrosia of the gods, while other wines made with chenin blanc grapes in other areas of the world taste like piss, is that there's a unique combination of soil, climate, and process (among other factors) in this tiny part of France. What I learned was that part of the terroir is because they force the vines to dig their roots deep, very deep (the guide said something like 10 meters is possible) into the ground, where they delve into limestone. Limestone is a fossil rock. Billions of years ago, tiny sea creatures died and their skeletons built up and got compressed and turned into limestone over the eons. So the flavor of my favorite wine owes its greatness to the death of these long-ago organisms, thus demonstrating once again the circle of life. And also, it seems Tours has a thing for Rene Descartes, the scientist/mathematician/philosopher I'm sure I've mentioned in here hundreds of times. One example is here: "I Drink Therefore I Am" I understand he was born in Tours, or at least somewhere nearby. My hotel was, in fact, right next to a statue of him, inscribed with his most famous quote. |
| My schedule yesterday was pretty much: go on a tour. Now, I've been trying really, really hard not to make a joke about Tours tours. You have no idea how difficult that is for me. It's sitting right there; how can I not pick it up? I've been unable to find a reliable etymology for the city's name, for which, incidentally, the s is silent. Wiki says there's a "popular folk etymology" that it's named after a Roman named Turonus, nephew of Brutus (but not that Brutus). I've long thought that it comes from the French word that translates as "tower" in English, as in La Tour Eiffel. Far as I can tell, though, there aren't any significant towers here. Perhaps there were, once. Hell if I know. The point is, I'm trying really, really hard not to make a pun about it. What I do know is that it's wine country. Pretty much everyone has heard of Bordeaux to the west and Burgundy to the east, as well as Champagne, which is located between Paris and Belgium. I think the Loire valley, or Val de Loire, is not quite as well-known internationally, though it absolutely should be. Getting back to what I originally set out to write, the travel agent had arranged a small group tour to run outside the city. By "small group," I mean there ended up being three of us. Continuing my run of coincidences, the other two were a couple from Fairfax, in northern Virginia. The guide was this small French woman who'd prepared an entire booklet of illustrations, some quite amusing. First stop: Château de Chenonceau. I'd never heard of it before this trip, but apparently it's the second most visited castle in France, after Versailles. The really interesting thing about it is that it straddles a river. Like, the brief version is: someone built a castle on the bank of the river Cher. Later, wanting an easy way to get to the other bank, they built a bridge from the castle to the other side of the river. And still later, a massive three-story structure got built atop the bridge. The day was rainy and nasty, and I didn't get any really good pics of the outside, but you can see the bridge-castle here.  I was starting to gain an understanding of what might have led the French peasants to revolt in the 18th century. Then we went to a cave. Not just any cave, of course, but a wine cave. And yes, of course, a wine tasting was involved, complete with a brief tasting class led by a sommelier who supposedly passed on some of the "secrets" of his profession. I mean, they're not secrets anymore, now that I know them. What are they? I'm not telling. After eating lunch (with wine) just outside the cave, we went on to the next castle: Chambord. Sadly, it had nothing to do with the berry liqueur called Chambord. Or, really, with any booze. It was another example of the excesses of the French nobility, further deepening my understanding of why the guillotine was invented. Still raining (which the sommelier had assured us was a Really Bad Thing for this year's grape harvest, because apparently it hardly ever rains in the Val de Loire in early autumn, and I didn't point out that this was probably my fault because I've been known to end droughts in California just by visiting the place), so again, none of my photos are very good and I'll defer once again to Wikipedia.  So, with all the crappy weather, what pic from this tour can I share? Oh, I know! This dude was hanging out in a stable at Château de Chambord. You might need to enlarge it, but I promise the white streak on the right side belongs to a horse.  |
| Yesterday's adventure took me on the TGV from Paris to Tours. Don't ask me what the letters stand for. You can look it up same as I could, but I don't really want to know. Far as I'm concerned, they stand for Train Go Vwhooosh! Out of curiosity, while on the train, I checked a website that used GPS data to determine one's current speed. Now, obviously, French high-speed rail can only move in km/h, and I can convert just fine in my head, but having spent most of my life moving at mph, I clocked in at 180-190mph. Upon arrival in Tours, I made the questionable decision to walk to my hotel. Google said it was mostly flat, and it didn't lie. What it didn't tell me was that it was also mostly tiled sidewalks. Try rolling two suitcases on tiled sidewalks for 1600 meters. The travel agent had some suggestions for what to do in Tours for the rest of the afternoon, and they were good suggestions, involving historic neighborhoods and buildings. I like that sort of thing well enough, but I have my priorities, so I set out to find beer. What I found was very good beer, and a couple of hours later, I staggered back to the hotel, only to find, upon logging in to WDC, that our very own Annette  was, by cosmic coincidence, also in Tours at that moment.So of course I had to stagger all the way to where she was staying which was, comically, right next to the train station. At least I wasn't dragging luggage, this time. Now, look, I don't just go knocking on random peoples' doors, even if they are regulars here on Writing.com. But I'd spent a week in the L.A. area a while back, being shepherded around by Annette and her husband. So it's not like we didn't know each other. I didn't knock on her door, either; we met in the lobby and went to have drinks. Soft drinks, because even I have my limits. I got back to the hotel just after midnight, which probably wasn't the best idea, either; I had to get up at some ungodly cow-milking hour this morning to go on a planned-and-paid-for tour of some of the catwaters in the area. Catwaters? Wait, no, I mean chateaux. (The best part about learning another language is gaining the ability to make horrible puns in both languages.) But that's a discussion for tomorrow. Pic posted with permission:  |
| So, yeah, I didn't go to the Louvre yesterday. Look. I'm not a young man of 55 anymore. Sometimes, my knee hurts. Yesterday was one of those times, because I'd spent the last two days hiking around Paris. Paris was never the purpose of my trip. I agreed to three days there because I figured I could use the time to get over any jet lag, and see firsthand how bad my French pronunciation is [Narrator: vraiment très mauvais], and also to meet my new friend there. No, the purpose of the trip was wine tasting in the countryside, and beer drinking in Belgium later. If I'd gone to the Louvre, that would have been more walking and standing and stopping and staring. I would have liked to have seen some of the art, of course. But not the Mona Lisa. There's only one reason to see the Mona Lisa, and that's to be able to brag that you've seen it, while complaining about how small it is and how crowded with tourists the room is. The obvious hypocrisy there is that you're contributing to said crowds. I can skip the seeing it bit and accept the information that the painting is surprisingly small and the room is extremely crowded. Besides, if I can't paint a mustache on it, what's the point? So, in an effort to preserve my walking ability for the really important stuff (chateaux and wineries and such), I kept things pretty low-key yesterday while my knee recovered. But I did get a bit of walking in. For instance: Remember how I said most French beer is ass, except for some breweries in the east? One of those breweries produces a lager called 1664. It's a fairly large brewery that exports, so we get bottles back home. I've heard it's pretty popular in England, too. I buy it to drink when I want a lager, because it's a better alternative for that style than the pisswater the big names try to pass off as lager. Anyway, I found it on tap at a restaurant near the hotel, so of course I ordered one, and it was even more delicious than the bottled and exported version. And also, if I'd wasted the day at the Louvre, I never would have encountered this delightful example of street art:  |
| Yesterday morning got off to an auspicious start as the really quite obnoxiously loud building alarm went off. Naturally, being American, I sat down to write an official letter of complaint to management, and prepared to give the hotel 1 star reviews on Yelp, Google, and Tripadvisor. How DARE they inconvenience a US citizen? ...yes, I'm kidding. Duh. I took long enough to put pants on, which may not have been the wisest course of action for myself, but you know me, always thinking of others' comfort. And then I proceeded down five flights of narrow, steep, half-spiral stairs that are probably older than my entire country. I'd been awake, though not for long, when the alarm went off (hence the pantsless state, as I was only beginning to get ready to go to the hotel breakfast), so at least I didn't have another heart attack from waking up to that. But on my way down, I got to wondering whether my travel insurance would cover the loss of all my shit from the hotel burning down. Probably not, I reasoned, because insurance only covers whatever doesn't happen to you. On the descent, I was joined by other people who also had the good sense not to use the elevator during a fire alarm (one of whom had stopped to pack his bag), and we all spilled out into the lobby, where a receptionist explained to us, in perfectly good English, that someone had made smoke in the breakfast kitchen and it wasn't actually a fire threat. My fellow travelers grumbled and started marching back up the stairs (the elevator is one of those tiny European ones with the manual outer doors, obviously retrofitted at some point after electricity was invented), but I followed my original plan and slipped down to breakfast, where I specifically asked for le petit déjeuner bien cuit, or breakfast well done (in the sense of a well-done steak). Because I am, after all, an asshole, but at least I'm a funny asshole. The travel agent's plans for me yesterday were: Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs "Ulysses" [sic], and the Seine. But none of them involved tourist reservations; those were just their suggestions for famous shit to do while in Paris. So, instead, I did what I always do in a new-to-me city: I found breweries. You don't think of beer when you think of France, and generally for good reason. There are a few decent large-scale breweries in the east, adjacent to Belgium and Germany so that those countries' skill in brewing manages to spill over the border. But for the most part, French beer is, historically, liquid ass. But, like the Anglophone countries I'm used to, France has developed a craft beer scene. I only had time to visit three of them, but my overall impression is: just like the aforementioned Anglophone countries, some of the beer is excellent, and some is... well... less than excellent. I'd never know that, though, if I didn't try. I'm pretty sure I've said this before in here, but I enjoy tasting all beer, even the bad stuff, because, as the great philosopher said: "If everything was cool, and nothing sucked, how would we know what was cool?" (I can't remember if that was Beavis or Butt-Head.) Now, when I say "tasting," I don't mean I got pints (or, you know, 500ml, close enough) of each one, but did the small-serving flight thing. So no, I wasn't utterly wasted when I was done. But I had achieved beerenity, which has been elusive to me lately. I might have actually smiled as I walked back to the hotel, across the Seine, and through the courtyard of the Louvre, where I paused to snap what is surely the most French photograph I could possibly shoot.  |
| I don't use fitness apps, so I have no idea how many steps I took yesterday, or how many kilometers they added up to. But both numbers were very, very high. While I was still exhausted from the trip, my contact here texted me around lunchtime. We'd never met. A mutual friend introduced us. It's probably only the mutual friend that kept us from going "what if the other's a psycho killer?" Anyway, she's like "I'll be at [landmark] and we can meet at 1 o'clock." (She's American, incidentally, so we're texting in English.) At that point, it was 12:10. I checked Maps. Walking to [landmark] would take 45 minutes. I can just make it... ...except that I'd be walking through one of the most historic and architecturally interesting parts of Paris, and there is no way I would be able to resist stopping and gawking at something. Especially when the destination was on the other side of the Seine, and what foreign tourist can NOT stop and look at the river while crossing it? Maybe someone with more self-control than I have, but certainly not me. So we met here at the hotel and started walking. I won't bother you with all the world-famous shit I saw yesterday, but there was a lot of it and it's world-famous and it's still thrilling to see that shit in person. Just one example: my hotel is a couple of blocks from the Louvre. Well, a couple of blocks from one corner of it, maybe a kilometer from the opposite corner. It's that big. Even without going in, the building itself is a work of art. And we didn't go in anywhere; it was Saturday and the tourism was in full force, creating chaotic crowds. Hours later, we parted, and I made my utterly exhausted way back to the hotel. Along the way, though, I paused to snap a picture of perhaps the most culturally significant of all of Paris' landmarks, located on Rue de Rivoli. Because, though I may have gotten some of the details wrong, it was here where, sometime around 1990, famed American visitor Vincent Barbarino discovered that, in France, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is not, in fact, called a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, but a Royale with Cheese. Because of the metric system. These events were related in the documentary, "Pulp Fiction," which depicted quite the embarrassing and tragic ending for Vincent, but at least he got to spend time in fine Parisian restaurants.  |
| New country, unfamiliar keyboard, jet lag... so short entry. The plane out of DC got all the way down the taxiway when there was some sort of mechanical issue. As the jet was made by Boeing, they weren't taking any chances. So it went back to the terminal and then left late. Consequently, it arrived late, which I suppose is somewhat better than not arriving at all. First impression: if you ignore all the famous landmarks (like the ones Annette has been taunting us with lately), Paris looks a lot like any other big city. I'll give it this, though: the graffiti is way better, in keeping with the city's reputation as an artist paradise. The lines are sharp and, unlike the graffiti in, say, northern New Jersey, you can actually sometimes make out what some of the letters are. Not that the words make sense. I mean, they might, if I knew more French, but I doubt it.Now, let's see if I can find my way around. Maybe tomorrow, I'll have pics, too. |
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