Author: Tim

From Chevanceaux to Óbidos. A stop over in Donostia-San Sebastian.

On Wednesday we said goodbye to Mairead, and James, Finley, Isaac, and Ruby. Mairead came over to help finish the lemon tart I made two days previous, which everyone ,but Ben, enjoyed. (He thought it tasted metallic).

We got on the road at 5:20, and went to about 7:30, then we stopped for an hour, ate a pasta salad we had prepared for dinner, and then continued on till about 10:00 when we stopped at a B&B Hotel in Donostia-San Sebastian for the night. That was about 350 km covered that night. We woke up at 7:00 and got a buffet breakfast (have I mentioned I love buffet breakfasts? [So much chocolate stuff!])!

We hit the road at 8:10, and drove for a couple hours, when, for a toll, we slowed down and the trailer started squeaking. Mom and Dad fiddled with the brake and it fixed it for the time being. Another couple hours later, we checked on it again and it was squeaking, but they fiddled with the brake and it was fixed again. This happened several times more and every time it was fixed with a quick fiddle of the brakes. At round 1:00, we stopped at a motorway services station and grabbed a few long thin breads that do not deserve the name ‘Baguettes’. Continuing along we got to Portugal. Portugal is hillier than most of the part of Spain that we had driven through, and greener. We stopped for dinner (just sandwiches) eventually. After 12 hours of driving that day, and 891kms, we had finally reached Óbidos. Our house. I’ll explain why that says 11h 20 min and I said that just the second day took 12 hours — we take 50% longer than Google’s estimate, because of the trailer.

This was an expensive & busy weekend. On the 12th and 13th of October we went to Paris. We got there on a TGV which went to Paris from Bordeaux and we caught it at Angoulême. For most of the journey it was traveling around 300kph. We left at 9:27AM and got there around noon. We got there and went to the Eiffel Tower. We walked around it once and waited for our bus tour. There were a LOT of people selling little model Eiffel towers, all the exact same. They came in, large, gold ,silver, blue, and rose gold, Medium, gold ,silver, blue, and rose gold, Small, gold ,silver, blue, and rose gold.

The bus tour was a disappointment, as it was stop and start traffic, it cut off a lot of our route, due to closed roads, the seats were cheap plastic, and the earbuds malfunctioned as often as not, When they did work, the info was rare and far between. We got off at the Arc de Triomphe and climbed the 291 steps (I counted) up to the top, and stared out across the city for a while, and looked down the Champs-élysées. As we were about to go down we saw a bunch of bike protesters and heard police sirens. A bunch of riot police then jumped out of their vans, (after going up the wrong side of the street and doing a U-turn into traffic then stopping on the Champs-élysées) and warded off the cyclists. Then the cyclists snuck up through smaller streets and came out farther up. Then a drumming band started up, also part of the protest. It was very entertaining, and we were watching it all when more police arrived and blocked traffic even more. A couple guys then came up next to us and threw a massive banner up and over the wall of the Arc de Triomphe, which promptly came back up at them. They tried again and again and it hung there. Then they started yelling “Extinction rebellion” and then some more cyclists had snuck up to the arc, and were yelling back. The police were then sick of it and came and evacuated the Arc, which we had just vacated. It was all very exciting.

We then walked to the nearest metro station and went to the area of the Catacombs. We waited a while and got some really good bread, and then got in line (the priority line is WORTH it. Otherwise we would have been in an hour long line, as it was we were first in line and got in the line only a quarter to 6, the time of our tour being 6). We got in and went down. First there were a few info boards, telling us that we were below the waterways and the metro and even the sewers. We walked for about half a kilometer I would say, through old quarry tunnels and then got the the entrance to the bony Catacombs. The sign above the entrance said,”STOP THIS IS THE KINGDOM OF DEATH”, it was supposed to deter any miners that stumbled upon the entrance. There was supposed to be 6 million skeletons here. They lined a tunnel about 1 kilometre long to my reckoning, and up to 20 meters deep and stretches up to 30 meters back. That is a LOT of bones. It was cool but not really cool and the hour down there was about as long as I would have wanted. Dinner was next and we found a really good and cheap Thai restaurant. Then we headed to the hotel and I found it nice and luxurious, but it was only 1 out of 5 stars for luxuriousness. (I wonder what 5/5 stars would be like?) Breakfast was nice, because Mom would never buy chocolate cereal, or practically infinite croissants. I also liked the coffee (and hot chocolate) machine.

Now day 2. Up at the crack of dawn, and down into Paris and into the Louvre at 9:30. We saw loads of Italian paintings including the Mona Lisa, and many others. Other pieces of note are The The Winged Victory of Samothrace, and The Venus de Milo.

Then we walked by Notre Dame, and talked about the burning. Then we went to a natural history museum. That was nice, but rather small and sparse then we went to a museum of languages and that was boring to me, (languages are not my thing). And that was it. We got on a metro, had pizza near the train station, and went on another TGV at 7:30.

Ok two major cities we have visited recently, Bordeaux & La Rochelle. Bordeaux was first, on Sunday. We first dropped Dad off at the airport for a business trip, and then went into the city. It took us a good hour to get into the city and then we went along the estuary front, and saw a large cruise ship along the the docks. We drove down until we saw parking, which was right next to a massive skatepark that was buzzing with BMX’s, scooters, skateboards, and roller-skates. There was one guy inperticular that was on a BMX that was really good, he would go up the hill, and get 5 feet of air, swirl his bike around, and landed going. Another scooterist went up the hill at speed and did a flip!! One other thing I noticed is that they had strong knee pads, one even crashed and slid down the hill and was no worse for wear. After watching the skaters for a while we moved on to the market and strolled through it several times. It was nice, but nothing special. I had to go to the toilet then so we headed to a toilet a few minutes away it was weird, it sang to me while I was in there and I stuck my hands in a slot and it squirted water, soap, water, and HOT air in that order. Next we headed away from the water, down a shopping street, but none of us enjoy shopping much, so we headed away and to a quiet triangle an got bio (Organic) ice-cream. I got cassis, (blackcurrant), Nate got Framboise,(Raspberry) Ben got gingembre,( ginger) and Mom got Citron et basilic.(Lemon and basil). They were all really good and rich. Then we headed back to the car after getting cold water at a small grocery store.

LA ROCHELLE

In La Rochelle we went to a aquarium first, for 3 1/2 hours.

First was a room that looked like a really old submarine, that shook, and then doors opened. A tunnel of jelly fish was first. (Why does it seem that aquariums always have a jellyfish tunnel) They were moon jellys.

Then the cuttlefish. Have I mentioned that cuttlefish are my favorite animal? I got a really good photo too.

It looks so good with two of its tentacles up and ready to strike! There were a bunch of other exhibits in that area that were also cool.

The next ‘room’ had an octopus and sturgeons and several other things. I loved the octopuses!

We continued our visit with going by a large tank of many fish.

Then shark tank Jr.

Then more fish, moving toward the Caribbean section.

Then the SHARK tank. It was BIG. 1 250 000 litres!!

Then bioluminescence.

And jellyfish.

Mangroves.

That covers it all I think.

So recently my Grandparents came over for a visit for a week. For the first several days it was low 30s and then a nice comfy mid 20s. It was loads of fun having them here and got to see a called Jonzac with them. It was a ok town, but I thought it was drab and dead. I believe I phrased it on the day “It is like a old town that adapted badly to tech and then was abandoned.” It was mostly like that, except for one little medieval street that winded through town, called ‘Rue de Champanac’ It was a tiny little winding street that was sometimes nearly a tunnel that I really liked. And it was long to, maybe 1km long. Other than that we swum in the pool, went for walks and did (shudder) schoolwork! Today, the 27/9/19 we went again to Jonzac and got apples. There was a very large apple farm just outside Jonzac and we got, like, 3kg for 6.80 euro. They were really good to. We went to the town of Jonzac again afterward and went down Rue de Champanac again. Great last few weeks!
Tim

Hello friends old and new. Man so much has happened since we left cold, rainy Ireland. From swimming to eating, from eating to castle touring, from castle touring to electric scootering, from electric scootering to biking, from biking to eating pizza at a pizza vending machine that dispenses really good pizza. Ok I’ll start from the top down.

My Swimming Schedule

Week 1

Much swimming every day. All three pools lovely 1 pool for heat, 1 pool for swimming laps, 1 pool for all around fun. Rating 9/10

Week 2

No pool for a week. Rating 0/10 🙁

Week 3- 5

Small personal pool. At the start your average lake looked nicer. But it is better now, crystal clear. Lovely pool. Rating 8/10

As you can see lots of pools.

Castle no I’m sorry Chateau touring has also has been a large part of the month so far. We went and saw the Chateau of Rohan (Has Tolkien been there?) in our first week and spent a whole day at Guedelon in our second. Our second week was in a small town in the loire valley near Sully sur loire. you could not travel down a street for five minutes before seeing a Chateau. So many Chateaus!! Here in our long stay near Bordeaux we have only seen one Chateau ( jaw drops with horror)!!

At our stay in Carnac I noticed that the leaflet said that the campsite was a great place to hover board and electric scooter. I thought it was weird that they would say that if they did not rent them out. And I was half right. I asked at reception about it, and he said that they were rented out every night between 6-8 pm infront of the bar. I went down at 6 and there were loads of electric scooters, but no hover boards. 🙁 So I came back the next day and there was still only electric scooters. I kind of wanted one though so I shared the price with Nate. We got it for 24 hours and it was fun. it had a super big battery and we got to ride it all day I would estimate that it could go 30km/h I liked the speed, but I loved the acceleration! 🙂

Biking. There has not been as much biking as one would prefer. One would prefer four times more. But one must not be picky. One ride in Carnac. Two or three in Loire vally. Two here so far.

We were on our ride in Carnac when we realised we needed refuelling. We looked around an there was a pizza place. Alas it was closed. we turned the corner and there was a pizza vending machine!! Two pizzas later we all agreed that we were really surprised at how good it was. It was great!!

Tim