President Hollande has an affair

Speaking to a French colleague it would appear that in the UK we are as obsessed  (if not more so) about Hollande's affair than they are in France, The general feedback from the French has been that they are not really surprised, not sure if this is because of him, or because they don't see anything unusual about someone having an affair, but it certainly seems to be of more curious interest than the shock we are treating it with.

Still I have at least learnt a new phrase gauche caviar (The Caviar left) basically this is the french equivalent of our own champagne socialist, which just goes to show that wherever you live socialism exists to take money from the poor and give it to the rich.

What I Did on My Holiday - Part 7 - Monet's Garden

On our final day we visited Monet’s Garden or Le Jardin de Monet (See I learnt something) this is in the small town of Giverny and only about 15 miles from our Hotel so made a good morning stop, on arrival we joined a reasonable sized queue that although not very long took about 45 minutes to go through as it was simply not moving, some friends of my Parents had tried to go on three previous occasions and found a similar lack of queue entry and so abandoned entrance, on the way out however at just before 12 (11:55 to be exact) there was no queue whatsoever so I would suggest that this is the best time to go. Anyway after navigating the highly inefficient entrance and paying the 6€ fee (12€ to combine the ticket with the nearby Museum of the Impressionists – unfortunately we didn’t have the time) we fought our way through the gift shop and people looking to leave to get out into Monet’s Garden, if you are familiar with his work then you know the garden as the artist painted it extensively, it is actually two gardens, the first is the main garden and sits adjacent to his house, it is very colourful and relaxing with paths (only some are open to the public) through the lines of flowers. The Second garden is a Japanese water garden that is across the Railway line and Road from the main house, thankfully unlike Monet we could take a tunnel rather than running the risk of being run down. The Japanese Garden was by far my highlight of the visit especially seeing the Water Lilies which would be like stepping into a painting, if you had a bit to drink anyway, it was a very tranquil setting and if you could find a patch tourist free for long enough you got a real feel for what it must have been like to sit and paint. Back in the Main Garden we visited the house which was very interesting, it was a quite traditional farm house being very rectangular with each room following on from the last rather than our squarer housing design so the rooms felt like they went on forever, Like most things worth visiting the house was not designed with tourists in mind so it was quite cramp and hectic in there but was still a quite remarkable house, although the copies of His famous works were set out a bit like a gift shop. Talking of the gift shop, this was like a celebration of merchandising, as Monet’s greatest works were available on anything Prints, Canvasses, Key rings, Coasters, Mugs etc... even having frames where the pictures continued over the edges of the frames.
We were on a bit of a time budget so we could not really spend as long there as I would have liked but we still had 130 miles to Calais so had to get on.

What I did on my Holiday - Part 6 - Chambord

We left the Farm House early on Friday hoping to break up the journey home a little with a stop at the Royal Palace in Chambord, Near to Blois on the way back, It is 2 hours from Châtellerault to Chambord and we booked a hotel at Evreux which was a further 2 hours north so we could break up the drive into more manageable chunks. The Palace itself is set in a vast parklands where if you are a fan of Walking or Cycling I imagine you could spend weeks and not find the need to traverse the same paths more than once. However we didn’t have weeks so headed straight for the castle, Tickets were 9€ 50 for an Adult and we joined the large queue to buy the ticket from the little kiosk that is at the main entrance to the castle grounds. We then walked around the outside of the building to find the main entrance (Where we discovered two cash desks with no waiting at all selling tickets.) The Palace itself is designed around the same scheme as a traditional castle although as with most of the Château in the Loire valley more attention was given to decoration than to defence however the Palace does have a main keep surrounded by turreted walls. In the Keep there is the Château’s most famous feature a double Helix staircase, this consists of two spiral staircases that were intertwined so that as you walked down through the staircase you can see people on the other staircase and yet you never meet them.

As well as the various rooms which have been preserved to give you an idea of the “relative” luxury that the French Kings lived in (And also how short they all were.) there was a very interesting exhibit on the Art in the Second World War, basically when invasion looked imminent the Department of Arts in Paris set up plans to move the most important works of Art into hiding, including the Mona Lisa, Chambord was one of the sites chosen. Personally I would have buried them under a small shack rather than place them into a 90 roomed palace as I would have thought that a giant palace would be the first place you would look for valuable art, but that’s just me.
Anyway it was interesting the role that this French Civil Service took in protecting these works of art, even having double agents working for the Germans keeping track of where they were taken, credit also has to be given to Chambord for not trying to hide the fact that after surrendering to the Germans the French Government handed over the works of arts created or owned by Jewish, or deemed unsuitable, in return for being left with the rest in their control. I have been to several exhibitions in France about the Second World War and think this is the first that in anyway acknowledged that there was a collaboration with Nazi Germany, I should point out that I do not necessarily blame the Vichy Government for collaboration with the Germans as they had very little alternative with France falling and continuing the war from North Africa likely to incur massive retribution on their citizens, however it is important that the decisions made in history are not hidden from scrutiny where they may then be made again. Anyway after looking around we entered the massive gift shop where we bought a sample of the Chambord Liquor before heading off to our Hotel in Normandy.

What I did on my Holiday - Part 5 - Chauvigny

Day 5 and we visited the medieval town of Chauvigny, there is a ruined castle in Chauvigny but we were there to see the display of falconry, Geants Du Ciel. The falconry display is in one corner of the ruined castle and has great views over the modern town, the falconry display was entirely in French which obviously limited my understanding of what was going on, but it was not a real barrier to the event.

The show lasted about 90 minutes and featured many different birds, (Eagles, Owls, Hawks and Vultures.) the vultures were the stars of the show due to their pure size and misbehaving, but the Eagles and Owls also got a lot of attention. The show was very different from the ones we have in this country as the handlers were walking amongst the crowd and on more than one occasion an audience member was hit by a bird (Including me at one point when I was getting a shot of one of the birds and another landed on my head.)

What I Did on My Holiday - Part 3 - Le Vallée des Singes

Le Vallée des Singes was our destination for the next days outing, this Valley of the Monkeys was actually a really good Zoo, I have been on a few occasions to Monkey World in Dorset and was expecting roughly the same kind of zoo, however the valley was much more open with monkeys running around very large enclosures you could walkthrough. Luckily there are park guides available in English so we could navigate around the slightly confusing 13 zone map.

There was also a petting zoo where my daughter had a good time looking at the various goats and chickens that ran around (Although she wanted picking up when a goat took a bit too much of an interest in her.)

Here is the website (in french)

What I Did on My Holiday - Pat 2 - Chinon

On our first full day we went to Chinon to view the castle there it is very impressive as you drive into the town as it sits on the top of a large hill and looks very interesting, We parked up and started the long walk up to the Castle, The castle was previously owned by the Kings of England as part of their French holdings but remained loyal to the King of France throughout the 100 years war, it was in fact at one time Chrales VII’s only possession (The Rest of France being divided between the Burgundies and the English. It was at this castle in fact that Joan of Arc correctly picked Charles VII out of a crowd of his courtiers and encouraged him to start the campaign to regain France from the English. It was a slight disappointment however when on taking the quite impressive glass elevator (Which looks a bit like they forgot to attach it to a building.)




We discovered the Castle was closed; we followed instead the signs for the Tourist Office and having walked to the top of the hill we found a sign saying that the castle was going to be closed for at least a year. So instead we walked down to a Wine museum, which was also closed so we took a walk across the river so I could take some shots of the Castle,





It was a real shame we didn’t get in but still impressive building none the less.

What I did on my holiday - Part 1 - Driving

Our first day was spent driving; we left Crawley at 8am and arrived in Châtellerault at 18:30 CET so quite a drive not sure how many miles but we racked up over 2000 in total and the majority of this was on the journey there and back, I hired a car for the journey as it was a 7 seater and I thought with 4 adults and a baby we could do with the space. Also as it was a Manual and I have had an Automatic for three years there were gears to compete with as well as driving on the wrong side of the road, perhaps the most surprising thing is that I actually struggled more with the gears (A couple of times stalling as I simply didn’t push the clutch down.) than with driving on the right, after all if you just point your car behind the car in front you can’t go to far wrong, the only dangers were as you left the farmhouse and no one else was around, or approaching an empty roundabout. But otherwise it was fine. I had purposely not filled up with Fuel before going to France as we are always told that our petrol prices are ridiculously high, I was shocked therefore to be confronted with a cost of £1.40 a litre for unleaded, I was just starting to feel aggrieved at paying this ridiculously high cost for motoring when I reached the first toll booth and was charged 8€ for driving down the road, at the second Toll Booth I got my 10€ not ready to pay only to be asked for 24€ in total we paid around 45€ in Tolls and 65€ in Fuel costs for the journey down, so next time someone tells me that the Councils in this country are useless as they had the same bad weather in France yet do not have the potholes I will be telling them where to go.

We eventually arrived at our destination however it was a very tiring trip and was hard work keeping our daughter occupied the whole time so we pretty much just went straight to bed.

Return of an Over Active Blogger

I have returned from my holiday in France, (In case the 1 person who actualy reads my blog was wondering.) I spent a week in a very rural setting near Chatellerault, it was very tiring as I racked up over 2,000 miles of driving (On the wrong side of the road too.) anyway I will post some updates later on from what I got up too, but for now I am simply going to relax until I have to head back to work.

Italy follow the French

With one day of the Group Stages left, another of the 7 former winners of the competition have gone out, this time the Champions Italy, like France earlier in the week, Finished bottom of their group. So at least there are two "Major" football nations where there are bigger ramifications than our team should face if they are to return this weekend.