Vogler Parents' Visit: The Loire Valley

Monday: the scenic route (a.k.a.-avoiding tolls)

We came across hundreds of piles of these mysterious root vegetable on the "scenic route". What could it be? First we thought potatoes, then maybe parsnips, then it was celery root...

Until we saw large piles of them in front of this factory

In front of this sugar factory. The mysterious piles on the main [non-toll] route from Metz to Paris are sugar beets.

We arrived that night in Blois (pronounced: bla) and came across this majestic beauty while on a "night" walk (since dark comes at 5:00 already, not that I'm complaining Alaskerella!). 

Tuesday: the Loire Valley

On Tuesday morning we walked around Blois in amazement at the trees that were probably there before the Revolution.

Then we went to check out this hunting lodge. No, really. Château de Chambord was built as a hunting lodge by François I.

And because it was made as a temporary royal residence, everything was collapsible

 And beautiful.

The roof even looked like it's own city.

Dad and his baguettes, he just couldn't get enough. 

That night we walked around the picturesque town of Amboise and at dinner at the delicious L'Alliance.

Wednesday: we woke up

To these outside our B&B window. The chickens made all kinds of noise when our host, Alex went out to swipe eggs for our breakfast.

On to another Château with a tree lined drive. Excuse me while I suppress my wishful thinking...

Interesting Fact #1: This one (Château du Chenonceau) made history when in 1547, it was given by Henry II to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. At Henry's death, his wife, Catherine de' Medici reclaimed Chenonceau and forced Diane to move on to a lesser Château. (I love that story)

Interesting Fact #2: During the Revolution, while the revolutionaries were destroying all that related to power and religion, the owners filled the chapel with firewood, tricking the revolutionaries into believing that the room was just storage.

We got to see the kitchen in this Château and being a cooking family, we were all intrigued and perhaps imagining taking some things home. 

For example: Michael wanted to take this hand-cranked rotisserie (a form of punishment for our future children?) but instead, had me take many, many pictures so he can one day replicate it. 

I wanted to take home the stove but didn't think it would fit in the Twingo.

Did I mention that this Château was built over the river?

I think I also forgot to mention the labyrinth

Where you can pick escargot.

After another yummy picnic lunch we went to the Marc Brédif wine caves to sample the wine and walk though part of the 2km long storage caves.

For dinner that night we went to the beautiful town of Loche. While working up (walking up) an appetite we came across the Château de Loches, particularly it's defensive buildings.

After dinner we headed back to the B&B (here's our room, by the way) for a rousing game of hearts and a good night's sleep.

Thursday: 

We played with the resident donkey before packing up and 

 Taking the Twingo to Versailles,

 Which was oddly filled with Japanese art (but still beautiful).

 

Postcard reads: "Greetings from Versailles!"

the cleanest pumpkin carving in history

After spending the entire day cleaning the apartment top to bottom what do you think we decided to do? Obviously, we thought the best idea would be to perform one of the messiest of all holiday traditions: carving the pumpkin (at 11:30 pm no less). As we were drawing the design onto our pumpkin I had a flashback to the layer upon layer of newspaper that covered our floor every year as pumpkins were carved and I began to panic.

 Rest assured, we miraculously managed to keep the pumpkin off the floor; notice the meticulous bowl of pumpkin shavings.

We carved our version of Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas while listening to the soundtrack.

Field Trip #4: le Centre Pompidou

In it's heyday (if the term "heyday" can even stretch for almost 2000 years) Metz was a very important city. It is located smack-dab in the middle of Europe at, like Pittsburgh, the confluence of two rivers making it both a strong hold both in trade and military. But also like Pittsburgh, as the end of the industrial time ended, the lull began and it has been a bit of a struggle to keep the city relevant, at least to non-messins (people from Metz).

Enter the Centre Pompidou - Metz, our new branch of the famous Parisien modern art museum which was completed and opened this past May. The idea behind this museum branch (and the corresponding TGV (high speed) train line directly from Paris to Metz) was and is to bring more notice and more traffic to the area; to bring back to life what was once a bustling and popular city, which we are all for. As if I haven't mentioned enough in this blog what a fantastically overlooked area of France we live in and our fingers are crossed that the Centre Pompidou-Metz is just it needs to spring up from the metaphorical ashes.

Here it is in all of it's Chinese hat styled glory. The building was designed as a team effort by Shigeru Ban (Japanese) and Jean de Gastines (French).

In all the roof line is made up of 16 kilometers of laminated timber covered by a thin fiberglass layer which has been coated in Teflon.

Our wonderful (partially pictured) English speaking tour guide along with our French teacher Madame Serafin gave a wonderful tour of the facility.

The window provides an optical illusion making the cathedral seem much closer than it is in reality.

This was one of my favorites, it feels like you are looking through fog (or like I couldn't hold the camera still).

On this floor of the museum one wall held the masterpieces while the opposing wall displayed the "making of the masterpiece utilizing photos and even videos of the artists whilst at work.

A room of Laurel leaves

The enormity of some of the pieces was obviously striking; notice Michael looking up in the bottom right hand corner.

Such a well designed museum -- even the hallways become art. I am in the center-left of the photo looking up at the mirrors on the ceiling.

In conclusion: come, visit.

If you are ever in Paris, certainly check out the Centre Pompidou (which we still need to see). But if you have extra time in Paris, take the 1.5 hour high speed train to Metz. Visit the town. Visit the Museum. You won't be sorry. (Especially if you are under 26, which means you are admitted into the museum for free!)

The End is Near

Not to sound morbid or anything. What I intended to convey in the title is that the end of the semester is drawing near and we've been busy! Well...Michaels been busy, I spent most of the week either hugging the toilet (which I had thankfully cleaned the day before) or moaning in bed. But more on that later.

We made a first attempt at making the Indian fresh cheese, paneer, a couple of Mondays ago.

It's a component of our favorite Trader Joe's Indian-in-a-bag that we have been sorely missing.

Making it really made us wish we could attain some cheesecloth over here. It left one of our two kitchen towels stiff and smelly until the next laundry day.

But despite the smelly towel and the fact that it probably wasn't the most authentic paneer, it ended up turning this Paneer Curry with Peas into one of my all-time favorite Indian meals. 

My herb garden has been growing like weeds in all the glorious sunshine last week. Not that you can pick one bit of green apart from the other, but the plant on the far right is my bean plant. It is now 5" taller than the stick that is supporting it.

In my quest to convince Michael that raw veggies aren't the devil, we (read: I) decided to make ourselves some Vietnamese summer rolls.

 Don't ask me why our move to France spurred this intense yearning to make and eat all things Asian. I don't understand the correlation either. I just know that these were delicious.

We did indulge Michael's sweet tooth with these orange iced cinnamon buns for our usual Sunday brunch a few weeks ago. He still has one left to finish though and I want my tupperware back!

And we spent another day basking in the glorious sunshine. I read and Michael studied.

Then we fattened ourselves up again (must make up for all the lost calories in those vegetarian curries) with Thomas Keller's lemon-brined fried chicken. If you have a day, I'd highly recommend the recipe. However, unless you plan to make an early (2:00pm) dinner, I would suggest that you brine early in the morning for dinner later that day. The chicken ended up a little salty for us, and anyone who has eaten with us could tell you that the food would then be way too salty for the average human.

Just after the stalker incident, detailed in my last post, I took the little girls that I teach english/babysit to the Jardin Botanique (Botanical Garden) just down the street. I was attempting to take a new picture for the top of the blog but as you can see, my attempts were thwarted by Eleanora's Vanna While impression.

 Who knew of black swans' existence? I certainly didn't before our trip to the Jardin Botanique.

And later that night we made this deliciously ill-fated currywurst. Currywurst, for those of you who haven't been to Germany lately, is some sort of wurst sausage, fried then cut up and topped with curry flavored ketchup and a soft roll. It was ill-fated because I took some medicine later that evening that left me hugging the toilet while said currywurst came back up and subsequently led to me laying in bed, moaning about my burning stomach for the next 3 days. Sorry if that was tmi (too much information -- for the non 20 year old readers).

 This photo is just meant as proof of what an awful housewife I am.

 Oh, and I also rediscovered my love of drawing with this lovely rendition of

these sunglasses that Michael bought during last year's trip/wedding/honeymoon in Hawaii. Can you all believe that it's almost been a year?

*gasp*