Well, to be exact, we left and came back already. From June 29-July 11, we were on vacation! Andrew and I traveled with my dad and his wife, Kelly, to France. For a week and a half we explored the country side of the Loire Valley, Le Tour de France and Paris.
My plan for blogging is to have several posts about our trip. I took 2,900 pictures and I want to be sure to show you each and every one, well not really, but at least a lot of the good ones.
So let's get this blogging started.
On Wednesday June 29th, Andrew and I drove down to Chicago to catch our direct flight to Paris. We met Dad and Kelly in Elgin, had lunch, then headed down to O'Hare via limo. On 90 there was a ton of construction and would you know it, we had a blow out. Like a real, tire blew and we had to swerve to the side of the road for safety. The driver called for a back up car, but to no avail, he had to go out a change the darn tire himself. We left with plenty of time so we weren't going to miss our flight or anything, but it still kinda stunk. We sat there for about 45 minutes as the driver changed the tire in 90 degree heat.
Rockin' in the limo.
Ange could get used to this limo thing.
To make a long story short, we made it to O'Hare, had plenty of time to get through security and had a lovely 8-hour long flight to Paris. We tried to get as much sleep on the flight, but only got about 3 hours to last us the day, as we landed at 9:00AM. We had a nice airplane food dinner, then was served breakfast just before landing. It was a pretty uneventful flight.
We made it to Paris!
Once in Paris, we had to wait an hour and a half to get our luggage. There was some sort of mechanical issue, but we got all of our luggage and that is all that mattered. We then took a cab to get our car that we would use for the next week to travel the country side.
About 2 hours later, we were headed on our way to our gite, Le Bois-and 18th century farm house that we stayed in for the week. Before we left we looked into a GPS system to use in France. We thought it would be very helpful, but with no such luck, we would have had to buy one that had French roads. So, Dad bought a France book of maps and mapped everywhere we were going. Let's just say, it could have been a completely different trip if we hadn't have found Navi-gail. About an hour into our drive, after already having gotten out of the crazy driving of Paris, and taken a wrong way, we figured out that our brand new CR-V like Peugeot with only 9km on it had a navigation system. Thank goodness, because we were already not sure where we were or where we were headed. After a day of traveling and no other ideas, Dad came up with Navi-gail, and let me just tell you, she was a trip saver.
After about a 4 hour drive, we made it to Le Bois, our gite, just outside the small town of Meigne le Vicomte. And boy was she beautiful-everything we had hoped for. 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, lovely patio, great kitchen and comfy living room. It was perfect.
I was so happy to be there.
So after getting settled in, we headed out to find some dinner. We headed to Saumur, and enjoyed a nice French dinner at Brussel's. Nothing too special for our first dinner, but we were pooped and ready for some rest.
Look how tired we look. We didn't even have dessert.
Here's the plan for blogging the rest of our trip:
*Amboise
*Le Tour de France
*Chenonceau
*Wine Tasting
*Chinon
*Chartres
*Versailles
*Montmartre
*Eiffel Tower
So it looks to be more than several posts, hopefully I'll stick with it and show you everything we experienced. It was an incredible trip and I wouldn't want you to miss anything.
Hop on the train, and let's go for a ride through France....
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