Day 88: Paris to Nantes

October 17, 2015

We reluctantly left our spot at the Cerise, the hotel just down the street from Didier and Brigitte's place (only one spare room in the house, where Joni was installed). Cerise was kind of an apartment hotel, where we had oodles of space, plus a stove and fridge (which we did not have to use). With an average daily cost of 62 euros, it was a great deal.

At 8 o'clock on a weekend morning, it was a bit of an early start for Didier, who was enlisted to drag us to Montparnasse station for our morning trip back to Nantes. He did have a secret weapon, though, at least with respect to putting a "petit dejeuner" on the table. This is frozen croissants which can go into the oven in that state and soon come out, perfect. Brigitte quipped that early in a relationship a man might sally forth to the bakery for fresh croissants for his sweetie, but after a while it can fall back to frozen ones. Of course this is not the "get your own damn croissants" stage, which is further down the line.

The croissant secret - frozen dough that goes right into the oven.

Dodie and Joni at the petit dejeuner table that is now a mess.

The car ride from Maisons Lafitte in the north to Montparnasse in the south took us right back through Paris, in fact through the Arc de Triomphe roundabout, past the Eiffel Tower to our right, and with Les Invalides straight ahead. It was a little Paris teaser, and a reminder of just how great, how iconic, this city is. We have continued to reflect, though, on just how different Paris feels from the rest of France. It is a strange, if wonderful, world apart. But there are relatively few bicycles around, and really we feel much more at home in the villages and fields. As we sit just now on the train to Nantes, Dodie is poring over her villages of France calendar, and she seems to be making notes on it. Oh, oh.

On the car ride, Paris made a return cameo appearance. Here we are approaching the Arc de Triomphe

Even the Eiffel Tower popped out of the mist to say au revoir.

This is the Montparnasse Tower, kind of an eyesore on the left bank. There is an observation tower up there whose main advantage (say Parisians) is that from there you can not see the Montparnasse Tower.

Didier and Joni walked us to our train car, and of course there were warm goodbyes. Maybe we will see Joni in Victoria at Christmas. Maybe we will see Didier and Brigitte when we appear next at Notre Dame as pilgrims. We hope so.

Didier advises Dodie on "composter" the train tickets. It's kind of a strange word, since it is not as if you are grinding them up. The idea is that instead of a conductor punching your ticket so it can not be reused, you put it in this machine. The puzzling part is that a conductor comes around anyway.

Didier and Joni, have been friends for 30 years!

Once again, the TGV was smooth and comfortable. An added plus for me was a little girl of perhaps 3 years old or less, who was chatting with her Mom the whole way. I found it helpful for my French comprehension to listen to the kid, though I could not make out the low murmurings of the Mom. To put it another way, the girl was pretty close to my level and maybe we could have been friends.

Michel was there to meet us, and soon whisked us back to St Luce, where he had lunch ready to go. How nice is that! Included in the lunch was a box of pastries, among them a Paris-Brest. I did not have the heart to take a photo of that box, given the large number of pastries that have already graced these pages of late. Michel has a scale in our room, but I am avoiding stepping on it until tomorrow morning, when weight is as low as possible. That also allows tonight to polish off the pastries before receiving any bad news from the scale.

Michel had planned a tough cycling itinerary of 80 km for us for tomorrow, but it seems we have negotiated that down to a little more than 40. We may have trouble dragging our sorry pastry laden selves through even that. Michel has just asked what we would prefer on the menu for the picnic that will come in the middle of the bike route. We think we have agreed on something with salad. With some luck we will be leaving France with some of our arteries intact. Then we will land in ... oh,oh, Montreal - gastronomic capital of Canada. I think I will put this computer down and go out on my bike before I gain any further weight just thinking about it!

Back in Nantes, we had fun nattering at Michel for a whole afternoon. One of the subjects was the spare tire we have been carrying, which though a Schwalbe, is a lightweight folding "Racer" model. Here is Michel recording its specs to help in finding one that he might use on his own trips.

Special Feature: Une Balade Autour de Nantes with the Grampies

Michel is of course the famous author of the Crazyguy blog "Balades à Velo Autour de Nantes", which documents approximately 94 bike trips originating from Nantes. He has these broken down by 14 general destinations (labelled A thru M), like the Atlantic, or Brittany. But there is one category, category zero - basically just around Nantes, and the Grampies have now earned a place there, with their own chapter - 8. ( Chapter 8). Though written in French, English speaking readers might want to check out the many photos from our recent days here with Michel!

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