Category Archives: Driving in Europe

Reims to Paris

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Day 80, Thursday, November 16, 2023

Today we drove to Pairs, in the rain!  This will be our last stop before we fly home.  It is a two and a half hour drive and we both just want to get to our next airbnb and get settled.  Sightseeing in the rain isn’t much fun.

There is no way I would want to be navigating using a paper map.  The roads can be very complex…like this interchange below.

We pass through several tunnels with lots of traffic. Bob does an excellent job following my navigational instructions, but I think we will both be quite happy to return our car tomorrow and use the metro to get around Paris.  

These two buildings, or maybe it is just one, looked so wonky.  Not sure why anyone wants a build a high rise that looks like it is falling over?  It is still pouring rain. but we are almost to our destination.

On our way to our bnb we passed a church with four angels high on its steeple.

I wasn’t able to find out the name of the church, but really liked the angels.

This lovely house with its beautiful fall colours was just down the street from our bnb.  

We parked on the street close to our apartment to unload but needed to move the car for the night.  As Bob pulled into the parking spot the car made a strange noise.  Upon investigation we realized that a rough curb had caught the side of the tire, tearing it and scraping the hubcap.  We return the car tomorrow morning…we almost made it the whole three months without any car issues….this little incident problem ended up costing us $500!

Our twelfth and last Airbnb on this trip.  It was difficult finding a place when we were booking last Spring.  Our apartment is very small, probably the smallest that we have had on this trip.  In the photos it actually looks a bit bigger than it is in person!  Not ideal for the end of our trip but it will do.

 

Dijon to Reims

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Day 75, Saturday, November 11, 2023

I wanted to go find the Reims owl that is on the Notre Dame church near us before we leave.  There is a little story about an owl saving the town from a fire by sounding an alarm when everyone was sleeping.  Rubbing this little owl is supposed to bring good luck.  There are owl  medallions set in the road that lead tourists to the sights in Reims, kind of like the medallions we followed in Arles when we found the spots where Van Gogh painted.  Too bad we didn’t get a chance to do that here.  I didn’t get to see much of Dijon but Bob was able to do more sightseeing.

One more photo of the Notre Dame church with all the gargoyles, and the little owl.   At the top of the church tower there’s a clock called the “Jacquemart de Dijon.” Jacquemart means “bell-striker”.

This clock has mechanical people who hit a bell with a hammer to signal the hour. This one has  a whole family.  The mom and dad are Jacqueline and Jacquemart and their two children are named Jacquelinet and Jacquelinette. The parents strike the hours and the children strike the quarter hours. ~ Photo from Wikipedia.

Bob says he can drive today…I must say that I am relieved.  I am sure I could have driven if  needed but I am very happy that I didn’t  need to. We take the toll highway and it is a three hour drive and a 30€ toll, but it is the fastest, easiest way to get to Reims.  That is what we need today. Taking photos while we are driving helps pass the time and keeps me occupied when I am not feeling great.

We have seen these growths on trees before but now that the leaves have fallen they really look strange.

This looks much like the fields we see in Alberta.

The trees have really turned colour in the last couple weeks.

We stop at one of the rest areas along the highway to have our lunch and then we both have a sleep for about an hour!  Feeling somewhat refreshed we are on our way again.  The sun comes out for a bit, so much better than driving in the rain!  We have not seen many animals in the fields on this trip, but we see quite a few dairy cattle today.  I like cows…one day I will find a herd and spend the whole day drawing them.

We see several of these big modern grain elevators…

and lots of wind turbines…

After just another hour of driving we stop for another break, and another wee nap!  There are lots of little towns and villages on the hilltops in the distance.

It rains on and off again and we see lots of interesting clouds…

and just before we arrive in Reims we see a rainbow!

I like these trees all in a row.  There have been so many beautiful shades of green on the drive to Reims.  I think that there are winter crops that are just starting to grow so the greens remind me of the the fresh spring green colours I see in Alberta.We are both tired and thankful that we our Reims Airbnb host is letting us check in early.

 

Lyon

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Day 66,  Thursday, November 2, 2023

When travelling for such a long time it is essential to schedule in some down days.  Today was one of those.  We drove to a big grocery store to replenish our supplies, did a couple loads of laundry, researched and planned activities for our stay here in Lyon, and worked on the blog…I seem to be forever playing catch up with my posts!  It is also cold, wet and windy so it is a good day to stay home.

Our apartment is on the sixth floor of an older building on the outskirts of Lyon.  On the way to Lyon we were commenting on how great it was that there was an elevator…but when we arrived last night we discover that it was out of order!  Yesterday was All Saint’s Day, which is a French National holiday, so there were no repairs scheduled until today.  Last night we only took up the bare essentials with the hope that the elevator would be repaired today.  We were lucky and by mid afternoon it was once again in working order.

Our hosts are an older couple who took great pride in explaining everything we needed to know about the apartment. They only spoke French and I was pleased that I was able to understand and respond in French.  All that Duolingo online French is paying off!

We had a very frightening experience last night.  In the dark last night we drove past the gate to the apartment complex and had to turn around so we could get back to the gate.  Bob put his signal light on and just as he started to turn left a young man on a standing electric scooter came flying down the hill past us.  He swerved and barely missed hitting us…literally by inches.  He was going very fast and he was out of sight in seconds.  It  really shook us up.  If he would have hit us it would have been an awful accident.  What an idiot!  He was dressed all in black, had no lights, was going way too fast, and he was very lucky he wasn’t seriously hurt or killed.

 

 

Chauvet II, Caverne du Pont d’Arc, France

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Day 61,  Saturday, October 28, 2023

Today we are going to visit another UNESCO World Heritage Site to see the oldest prehistoric cave paintings known to date in the world!  The cave is an hour and a half drive from Nîmes, so we leave early.  The drive to the caves is interesting as the countryside is constantly changing.The Sycamore/ Plane trees are starting to show their fall colours.

As we drove into the hills it got foggy…

and we were soon below the clouds.

The Chauvet cave, or Caverne du Pont d’Arc contains exceptionally high-quality paintings dating back 36,000 years.  It was discovered in 1994 and has never been open to the public. Only a very small number of scientists are allowed to visit each year to study the Chauvet cave.  The lessons learned at the Lascaux caves helped prevent any damage being done to the amazing art discovered in the Chauvet Cave.

Construction on the replica cave began in October 2012 and it was opened to the public in 2015. Chauvet II is located 9.5 km from the original cave.

All the photos of the building and the inside of Chauvert II, Caverne du Pont d’Arc are by Patrick Aventurier and can be found on the Chauvet II website. https://en.grottechauvet2ardeche.com/history/

An arial view of Chauvet II.

The building that holds the replica cave.  It has a viewing platform on the top of the building.This is the view from the top of the building.We have time to watch an immersive sound and light experience called ANIMAL before our cave tour begins.

Here are two videos I took during the show.  I don’t know how to edit videos, but they are not long, one is just over 2 1/2 minutes and the other is 3 minutes long.  It really was a spectacular show.

https://youtu.be/n9nf7gZ3V1M.     

https://youtu.be/tsU3uZaAuPI

Before we enter the cave our guide asks us not to ask questions about the construction of the replica cave until after our tour, to help us feel as though we are in the real cave.

The Chauvet caves contain a masterpiece…the oldest known artwork in the world.  They are over 36,000 years old…that is 18,000 years older than the Lascaux Cave we visited earlier.  These handprints tell us that the right hand of the artist had a crooked little finger, perhaps it was broken at one time and didn’t heal properly?

These red dots are palm prints.  If you look closely you will see that there are a few prints that show the fingers and the little finger of the right hand is crooked.  These palm prints were done by the same artist as the previous handprints!

One of the first charcoal drawings that we see.  Because charcoal was used the paintings were able to be carbon dated to determine their age.

Some of the engravings were made by pressing into the soft mud walls of the cave with the artist’s fingers.There are very few owl depictions in prehistoric cave art.  We get to see one here.

As we walk further into the cave there are more animals on the walls.

The next four photographs are all part of a panel showing the largest collection of animals in the cave and it was located in the very deepest part of the cave.

We are in front of the Lion Panel: a12 metre-long fresco of a lion hunt that takes my breath away! We stand in awe, as the flickering lights reveal these drawings.

The lighting mimics flickering firelight and the animals almost appear to move.

Of course the lighting is set on a timer and all too soon it is finished.  I tell our guide that our time here is too short and I don’t want to leave… she asks if we would like a  bonus viewing and when I say yes, she turns the lights on again.   We all got an extra 20 minutes in front of these magnificent paintings!

The Aurignacian Gallery is a complementary area to discover on our own after the cave visit.  There are life size replicas of prehistoric animals.  Wooly mammoths, Megaloceros , the huge deer in the background, …

Aurochs…

Cave Bears and Cave Lions…and Bob’s favourite, the Wooly Rhinoceros.

There are interesting interactive panels, including this photo of a baby wooly rhinoceros that was found in a mine in Russia in 2007…

and one of this steppe bison found in Alaska in 1979.

Something I didn’t know before this trip and all the caves we have visited is how like us Prehistoric Cro Magnons were.  They were hunter gatherers and were anatomically very similar to modern man “but more robust, having larger brains, broader faces, more prominent brow ridges, and bigger teeth. They were well renowned for creating a diverse array of artistic works, including cave paintings, Venus figurines, perforated batons, animal figurines, and geometric patterns. They also wore decorative beads, and plant-fibre clothes dyed with various plant-based dyes. For music, they produced bone flutes and whistles, and possibly also bullroarers, rasps, drums, idiophones and other instruments. They buried their dead, though possibly only people who had achieved or were born into high status.”  ~Wikipedia

After our visit at Chauvet II we drive to the location of the original cave along this narrow road with lots of tunnels.

It was quite the experience.

We park and this is our view.

The cave was located near the  Pont d’Arc, a natural stone bridge.  We would have liked to walk up to the location of the original cave, but it is getting late and we still have an hour and a half drive before us.  Too bad but we don’t want to be driving home in the dark.

The cliffs here are full of what appear to be cave openings, and there is a sandy beach alongside the river that is a popular spot for families.

Bob spots this rock formation in the distance that looks like a horse’s head.  He is good at finding rock formations that look like people or animals.More tree lined roads on the way home…the leaves look golden in the setting sun.

All too soon the sun sets…and we are driving in the dark, but only for the last half hour or so which isn’t too bad.

Cannes to Nîmes, France

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Day 58, Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Time to move on….today we have a four hour drive to Nîmes. We have been using the toll highways for these longer drives as it usually saves us a couple of hours of much slower driving through little towns with lots and lots of traffic circles. Most intersections use a traffic circle here, so Bob is now a traffic circle expert.  I finally took a photo of this beautiful big tree that was in our back yard garden in Cannes as we were leaving.   It had huge limbs that arched all the way down to touch the ground.  Unfortunately a photo just doesn’t do it justice.  

We are only on the road for a short time before the landscape changes, and we drive past red rocks that remind us of Arizona…and cypress trees that make me think of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings.

Now instead of Sycamore/Plane trees lining the roads, there are Cypress and coniferous trees.

We were going to visit Cézanne’s Studio in Aix en Provence, but it didn’t work out.  When we tried to book a ticket online the site wouldn’t allow same day bookings, so we decided to drive there and hope to get tickets.  That proved to be a very difficult task.  Between one-way roads, a couple missed turns and crazy rerouting, we finally gave up.  We weren’t even sure we would be able to get tickets and I was getting frustrated…it just wasn’t meant to happen today.  We get back on the highway and we are soon at our new home in Nîmes.  It is quite small with a cheery hot pink sink and shower and it will be our home for the next five days.

 

Carcassonne to Cannes and The Fonsernes 9 Locks

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Day 49, Monday, October 16th, 2023

Today we travel from Carcassonne to Cannes.  It is a 4 1/2 hour drive if we use the toll highway and 7 1/2 hours without so we decide to pay the tolls.  We make a side trip to Beziers to visit the Fonsernes 9 Locks.  On our way there we drive by a very strange design on Google maps… I wonder if it might be some sort of irrigation system?

A bit of research solves the puzzle.  Who knew?

‘The Étang de Montady, or Pond of Montady is a drained pond or lagoon.. It was built by monks and wealthy Béziers landowners during the second half of the 13th century. The Étang de Montady was drained to provide farmland by making radial ditches from a single center point out to the extremities.  The water flows to this center point and is then drained by sixteen vertical shafts to an underground culvert.’~ info from Wikipedia.

It was a bit of a challenge to find the locks.  First of all we drove to the town of Beziers where we thought we would find the locks, but there were no locks in sight.  We did find a spot to have our lunch though, overlooking a pretty river and the Cathedral Saint-Nazaire.

We check at the location again and this is what google maps tells us!  Really??  We need to get from the blue arrow to the red pin…and we do it!  Pretty impressive navigating and driving I think! I wanted a photo of this pretty bush covered with orange berries, and Bob hams it up by giving himself an orange moustache.

The Canal du Midi connects the Mediterranean Sea to Toulouse.  It has 360 navigable kilometers and there is a drop of more than twenty meters from this location to the town of Beziers.  The locks were built in 1676 to deal with that change in elevation.

We watched these two boats make their way through the locks.

The water level begins to lower…as the water pours into the basin below.

Soon the water levels in the two basins are equal and the lock gates open…

and the boats advance to the next basin and this process is repeated 7more times.

This boat with four couples from South Africa barely has room to squeeze through the open gates.

The 9 locks of Fonseranes have a total of 8 ovoid-shaped basins and 9 doors and in 1996, they were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as is the entire Canal du Midi.

At the bottom of the locks there is a gate that appears unused for some time.  It has grown a water garden on its backside.

Back on the highway we pass through yet another toll booth.  This one is pretty big.  The crazy thing is that on the other side there are no lanes.  Once you pay your toll the gate goes up and all the cars need to merge back onto the highway.  It is kind of crazy.

Bob says he can tell we are getting close to the French Riviera because there are expensive cars on the road.  A Lamborghini costs anywhere from $221,000 to more than three million dollars!  I can’t even imagine driving a car that is that expensive.

The turn off to Cannes is a bit convoluted…we have had a lot of strange routes on this trip.

We check into our next Airbnb…only this one has palm trees and a view of the ocean in the distance.

 

 

Sarlat to Carcassonne, France

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Day 42, Monday, October 9, 2023

We have a long drive to Carcassone today so we are up early.  Bob moves the car closer to our apartment so we don’t have to carry everything for three blocks, and no one is even up and about yet.  We have our breakfast and evening meals at home so we have accumulated quite a few groceries, along with our other luggage.

You can just make out the butcher’s stand on the street right beside the entrance to our apartment in the lower left corner of this photo.  He is the first merchant to open his doors, usually by 8:00 am and he is open until 8:00 pm, or even longer if there are still people on the street…and he works every day of the week!  When I told him that he works too hard he said only until today, then he gets two weeks holiday.

This is the paid parking lot near our apartment but it gives us an hour free time.  More than enough to load our car and get on the road.  I do love the Sycamore trees that we see everywhere in France.  They are magnificent, so huge, and they have the most interesting bark that looks like camouflage.  I have no idea how they survive in the middle of a paved parking lot… they can’t get much water.

It is a 3.5 hour drive to Carcassonne and we had planned to detour to Albi to visit the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.  Lautrec was born in Albi and this museum has artwork that can only be seen here. However we didn’t even think about museums being closed on Mondays when we planned our bnb stays, so the museum is closed.  I am quite disappointed as I was really looking forward to seeing this artwork and especially the large  collection of Lautrec drawings that are in this museum.  Of course other museums we were interested in Toulouse were also closed so we decide to just drive and get to Carcassonne a bit earlier in the day.

We have seen some interesting bathroom signs on our travels, this one made me chuckle.

As we drive south we start to see the odd cypress trees, which makes me think of Vincent Van Gogh and all the cypress trees he painted.

It is always an adventure, walking into a new Airbnb and checking it out…is it going to be what we were expecting?  So far we have chosen well and not been disappointed.

 

Rouen, France

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Day 10 Thursday, September 7, 2023

The countryside during our drive to Rouen often reminds our of back home in Alberta. Rolling hills, farmers fields, crops ripening…. except that we have no idea what these towers are, there are mile long stone walls around farmers fields, and I wonder what the giant tubes of paint are about?

This street is the highway to Rouen.  The buildings in the villages are so old, and so interesting.  I wish I had time to stop and draw some of them.

We see a sign on the highway for the Sainet-Marie church in Vexin and decide to visit it. There is reconstruction work taking place on the front of the church.  We have seen a lot of church reconstruction taking place on this trip.The church is old and has interesting side aisles with wooden beams and ceilings.  As we were leaving I managed to somehow spill most of my thermos of hot tea all over our iPad!  The iPad seems OK, but the keyboard case I think is toast.  Not very happy about that…

We see the first of many wind turbines, and a lot of houses and farms have solar panels installed.

We stop for lunch in a beautiful town called Ville de Fleury Sur Andelle.  There are flowers planted everywhere.

They also have bee houses for wild bees.

Did you notice the Swiss chard planted in this flower bed?

We arrive in Rouen, and check into our apartment. It is really cute and comfortable looking.

So…we decide we will go get some groceries…was that ever a mistake.  Google maps  instructions are lagging a bit behind where we are, which causes some issues, then the road we need to go on is blocked by a huge crane and a bus in an underpass, so we have to go a different way.  It is a nightmare, we keep somehow missing the correct road.  Due to the lag in directions we miss making some of the correct turns,  and some of the directions try to take us down a one way street!  We finally find a spot to pull over and regroup.  We have tried to get to three different grocery stores with no luck whatsoever, so we go back to our apartment, which is also a bit of a challenge.  Not sure we have ever had so much trouble navigating and driving anywhere!So, we have toast, plums and a banana for supper, and lucky Bob gets a hard boiled egg

It has been long day and we are both exhausted. Oh, and did I mention that it is 34° today?  

Chartres Cathedral, Chartres

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Day 9,  Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Some street art on the way to pick up our car rental at the Gare de Lyon on the far SE side of Paris.

Finding the Hertz car rental is incredibly difficult.  We follow Google maps which basically takes us in a big circle right back to where we started, right beside this huge poster advertising the Rugby World Cup which takes place Fri, Sep 8, 2023 – Sat, Oct 28, 2023.  We think it is probably good that we will not be in Paris during this time.Finally after asking several people for directions a delivery man tells me that we need to go upstairs and cross the street.  Voila!  Success.  They do have our reservation but we have to wait 45 minutes for them to clean the car.  Once in the car we discover that our Peugeot does not have plug ins for USB’s, only some other strange looking plug.  Luckily a Hertz employee was walking by and I asked him for help.  Another 15 minute wait and he brings us a device that plugs in to the cigarette lighter that has two USB ports.  We are finally on our way, heading to Chartres to visit the cathedral.  We do amazingly well getting out of Paris and to Chartres, My navigation skills are still pretty good and Bob did a great job driving.

Our first view of the Chartres Cathedral, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. “Partly built starting in 1145, and then reconstructed over a 26-year period after the fire of 1194, Chartres Cathedral marks the high point of French Gothic art. The vast nave, in pure ogival style, the porches adorned with fine sculptures from the middle of the 12th century, and the magnificent 12th- and 13th-century stained-glass windows, all in remarkable condition, combine to make it a masterpiece.” ~https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/81/

Bob didn’t want to drive across this narrow bridge so we park on the far side of the river.

I think this is a river,or perhaps a canal?

On the way to the Cathedral we pass this window and I peek in to see a lady working.  We knock and a lovely bookbinder opens the door to her workspace.

We chat in French and I manage fairly well. I tell her about the St. Albert Paper Arts Guild and show her some of my work, but somehow only managed to get this one photo. I was a bit nervous, trying to chat with her in French about bookbinding, but she was very gracious.  Her name is Sylvie Le Jannou but I was not able to find a website.  She did give me a card but it only has her name and email.

The Chartres cathedral is huge!The view towards the altar.  We took several photos of the stained glass but it kept looking very washed out…

…when the colours are actually brilliant.

There is a lot of controversy about the restoration that is taking place.  The light areas in the photo below have been restored by covering everything with a sort of plaster, but it is not historically accurate. I think I prefer being able to see the old stones, they have a sense of age and history that the ‘restored’ areas do not.  In the photo of the altar you can see the faux marble pillars. The wall of the sanctuary is absolutely amazing.  The detail of the carving is incredible. The screen has forty niches along the ambulatory filled with statues telling the life of Christ.  I  particularly love the donkey.

We missed the tour of the crypt and the opportunity to climb on the roof of this cathedral by an hour.  I guess we need to do a bit more research on times for tours and opening hours when we plan our day.  We almost missed seeing this labyrinth.  The chairs are moved once a week so that people can walk it.

One more view of this enormous cathedral, before we head back to Paris.

The buildings in this part of Chartres are ancient.
And although some of them are in really bad shape, I have no doubt that they will be repaired rather than demolished.

I thought that this cat in the windows should be a painting. As we leave I notice another example of street art. I saw another walking back to the car and I thought it looked like a Banksy, and this one could be too?  Turns out there is an exhibit of Banksy’s work here in Chartres. We missed that too.

There are lots of cars on the road and the closer we get to Paris the slower they all go.  Our 75 minute drive takes quite a bit longer. It is busy when it takes 11 minutes to go just over 2 1/2 kilometres!  We are both happy to get home and glad our first day with the car went so well.