Evan!
Well-Known Member
- They like to make road signs here. I've never seen so many signs.
- They also like Phil Collins. He's like the David Hasselhoff of France! Ugh.
- Stay off the A-routes when possible. At one point, I approached an A-route, and they had a new roundabout there which confused my SatNav, and I ended up going the wrong way. With 30km between exits, it was awhile before I could turn around. Bloody hell. I've had so many problems with the A-routes here, it blows my mind. Nothing is clear...today, they simply had a whole portion of the A-35 closed. Just closed. Luckily, SatNav recalculates very quickly!
- Speaking of SatNav, I would leave my underwear at home before I would leave SatNav. Indispensible. I cannot express how necessary this is. It has saved us countless hours of mapping routes, and countless headaches from getting turned around.
- France needs to get on the whole "eggs and bacon for breakfast" bandwagon. "Petit Dejeuner", or breakfast, consists wholly of bread, jelly and fruit. Granted, the breads and jellies are awesome (especially quince jelly), but I'm hungry 45 minutes later. Eggs!!!! Bacon!!!! Vive Revolution!
- The Cote d'Or, or Burgundy Proper, sucks. It's a big tourist trap and the people are kinda dicks. I'll not go back.
- Marrowbone is just that: marrow. In a bone. With a bowl of salt. If you see this on a menu, don't order it unless it's a joke. Marrow is for soups, not for eating whole!
- Also, if the menu says "baitfish" it means "bait fish". I ordered this for the wife, while I was having marrowbone, thinking that "baitfish" was a local Saumur coloquialism for whitefish. I was wrong. It's minnows, deep-fried. I'm still catching sh*t.
- In general, people are VERY nice here, even to Americans. If you make the smallest attempt to speak French, they will appreciate it.
- Every town, no matter how small, looks like it belongs in a painting. I never thought it possible, but you actually do get desensitized to the beauty after awhile.
- Outside of the A-routes and maybe the N's, France apparently doesn't know how to build shoulders on the roads. There is very little room for error.
- Outside of Phil Collins, they play the same 6 or 7 songs on the radio here. It's worse than the US. And they never play more than 2 songs in a row without talk. I swear, the DJ's must get paid by the word! Now that we're almost in Germany, the stations are getting better, though.
- The TGV (electric superfast train) is badass. We went from Paris to Tours in about an hour, speeding through the countryside at about 330 kph.
- Roundabouts really do work.
- The metric system is the tool of the devil. But it's still better than imperial.
- I miss my dogs, and I miss bacon and eggs for breakfast, and I miss my beer. There's a lot of Kronenbourg here (there's actually a huge K-Bourg brewery 5 mins from here), but most places also have a blonde abbey ale like Grimbergen, which is very nice. I did find a couple bottles of artisan Loire beer, and they were pretty good. But overall, this is a K-Bourg and Wine Country. I had something odd tonight...didn't realize what I was ordering, but it was a biere with orange liquior added. Very odd.
- People are playing GTA IV right now, and even though I'm in Alsace and drinking unbelievable wine as I type this, I am jealous.
- It's good to be back in a hotel...bed+breakfasts, while nice, are strange after awhile. No teevee or intarwebs for 5 days? The hell you say!
- After almost 2 weeks of French food, it was so nice to arrive in what is essentially Germany. We were talking about Checrout Garnie (Alsacian dish of sauerkraut and various pork) all day long; we found a restaurant tonight in Obernai which had "Checrout Royale", which they said fed 2. It feeds 4. It was a 9X12 dish filled with enough sauerkraut to drown a baby, and topped with many pounds of pork. You can see my picture of it below.
I'm sure there are more...but whatever. I love it here. We actually got to see Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp today...a mecca for us architects. Hope this place hasn't fallen apart without me.
Oh, here are some pics from today, btw.
Bonsoir!
