Le Louvre

Jen wanted to visit the Louvre, so we opted to go for the Wednesday late-night visit.  We read that it tends to be less busy with tourists at night and fortunately for us, this turned out to be true!   We saw some great collections from around the world, and of course the Mona Lisa (and whichever other exhibits we could remember from reading the Da Vinci Code :)).  

We travelled the world to visit all of the various ruins and other amazing ancient sites and discoveries.  When you go to these places, you notice a lot of missing statues/carvings/buddha heads, etc.  Turns out they're all in a museum!  

So.. by coming to the Louvre, we actually got to complete our journey by seeing a lot of the excavated items that have been removed from the ancient sites we visited over the past year! ;)

Paris

We spent about 1 week in Paris and used Airbnb for the first time to rent someone's apartment.  It turned out great, as we got to stay in a slightly a bigger place (relatively), with a kitchen and a homier feel.  Funny enough, the girl we rented from was actually in Montreal for vacation while we were staying at her place :)

During our week here, we didn't do many tourist visits.  We mainly walked around and occasionally ventured nearby the major attractions like the Tour Eiffel, l'Arche de Triomphe, l'Église Notre-Dame de Paris, l'Opéra, Le Louvre, Père Lachaise, etc.


Did we mention, we saw the Eiffel Tower? ... Look!  A tower! ;)


Avignon

On our way to Paris, we stopped for a night in an old French town called Avignon.  Here, we said goodbye to Sheena & Oliver.

Avignon is know for 2 things: 
1)  the song "Sur Le Pont d'Avignon", and
2)  the Palais des Papes (the palace of popes).

Palais des Papes
Rome was not always the home of the Popes.  At one time in Catholic history, the popes moved to Avignon.  During these years, 9 popes oversaw the Catholic religion from here.  The 8th Avignon Pope eventually returned to Rome.  The French didn't like this, so they elected their own Pope, resulting in a few years where there were 2 Popes simultaneously: 1 in France and 1 in Italy. 


Le Pont d'Avignon
According to legend, the bridge (pont) was built as a result of a miracle performed by a shepherd named Bénezet.  He was led to Avignon by an angel and he told the locals that God had commanded him to build the bridge.  The local authorities, not believing him, said that if he had the power to move a gigantic rock to the site of the bridge, then they would build it ... And what do you know, he did it!  So they built the bridge  ;)

The original bridge was built in 1185 and contained 22 arches.  Today, after years of neglect (and a feisty river), only 4 arches remain. 

The song "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" was inspired by a cafe that played music on the island on weekends, so locals would go there to picnic and dance sous le pont (under the bridge).  At some point, the song was changed to sur le pont (on the bridge) and was later popularized this way... so it stuck.  Anyway, we didn't dance on or under the bridge.... we ran.  Just as we arrived, a huge storm blew in and started dumping rain.. so our visit was short and fast! 

In the Palais des Papes, we found Jen's next Halloween costume :).

Rhône Valley Villages

We were told that the weather in France this year has been unusually cold and rainy.  On one of the few sunny days we had, we went with Sheena and Oliver to visit a few of the Rhône valley villages.  

Creset was our first stop.  It's built on the side of a mountain, with a really great view of the region.

We stopped for lunch at the Le Baroux castle and ate our delicious bakery-fresh sandwiches and, of course, shared a bottle of wine!

After lunch, we made our way to Suzette.  Don't think we found what we were looking for there.. but they had a nice church.

Our next stop was Gigondas.. where fun fun began.  We mapped the route in the GPS software and decide to follow it... it led us across a mountain, along a tiny one-lane dirt road that was so bumpy the bottom of the car was occasionally scraping.  We eventually made it to the other side and had to pull over at a winery so that Oliver (who was driving) could take a break :).

Our last stop was Seguret.  It was a really cute town but we had to run through it really fast since we only had 45 minutes to visit (we had to get home in time for a skype-meeting for work).

This area of France has so many nice little villages with stone houses, castles, wine tasting, and bakeries.... what a great day!

Grignan

Southern France is filled with so many cute towns and castles.  About four kilometres from our gîte, there is a cute little town called Grignan which has its own castle.

The cool thing about this place is that they built the castle's terrace on top of the church.

From the castle terrace, you can see the tower of Chamaret.

And we checked out their weekly market to buy some goodies: local cheeses, vegetables, olives and one sausage (for Dom).


Wine Tasting in Rhône

On one day, we decided to take break from working to join Sheena and Oliver on a wine tasting tour with Andrew, the owner of the gîte we are staying at.  We visited 3 vineyards and bought a good share of bottles.. it's a good thing we have 2 weeks here to appreciate them all! ;)

Working in Chamaret

Our year came to an end at the end of May 2013... we didn't count the unexpected 1-month return to Calgary to have Dom's broken hand checked out :).  We can say without any doubt or hesitation that every part of our journey was absolutely worth it! 

At the same time, we are happy to be starting work and feeling productive again.. not to mention, travelling at a slower pace, and enjoying a bit of routine.  We are super fortunate to have found a job that will allow us to continue travelling while working at the same time, so for the next part of our trip, we will be staying for about a month in different countries and doing contract development from there!

Our first stop is Chamaret, in the South of France, where we met up with our friends, Oliver and Sheena, to share 2 weeks of wine, cheese, fun and... more wine!

Chamaret is a very small town.. it pretty much only has a bakery.. and a pub.  But it also has a really cool medieval tower that overlooks the region.  The tower-keeper was a really good story teller and told us the really interesting story and history of the area... mostly in French :)  From the top of the tower, you can see a view of Mount Ventoux.. one of the mountains along the Tour De France route.  The weather was unusually cold, rainy, and windy for this time of year in France, so we ended up spending a lot of time hiding inside working, rather than hanging out at the pool or site-seeing.