It's not a full vacation but….

Hey, we'll take it!  Taking 3 days off work while not quite as good as a whole week and definitely not as good as two, is still a very good thing given how busy things have been.  Two people who did take the whole week off to join us in Paris and the South of France were our friends Ehren and Julie coming from DC.  Julie having lived in Paris for a year herself was excited to be back and show us a few of her favorite places in town.  

Arriving early on Saturday morning and after getting a refresher nap in, we started out on a gorgeous afternoon to do one of everyone's favorite things to do in Paris - Go to a park with cheese, wine, and meats to sit in the sun and simply enjoy.  Meeting up with some of Julie's friends in the Jardin de Tuileries we spent several hours outside in the park before moving on to spend that evening sitting along Canal Saint Martin which was packed end to end with people given just how nice the weather was.  Literally the best weather all summer long.

Jardin des Tuileries

After a nice lazy Sunday Ehren and Julie left Paris on their own for a few nights in the South of France while we worked the first few days that week.  Cleaver and I left Paris Wednesday morning on the train to the town of Nimes where Ehren and Julie picked us up on our way to île de Porquerolles which is a little island town just off the coast.  On our way from Nimes we stopped in a medieval town of Arles for lunch.  We then headed to Hyeres on the coast where Porquerolles was a short 15 minute ferry ride away.  It's a small town with a nice little town square and several beaches you could reach easily en velo (or bike). 

île de Porquerolles

Our few days there were quite relaxing, starting with a breakfast we made in our hotel room, then renting bikes and heading out to the various beaches.  The first day we found this great little cove where we just sat and took in the scenery for a bit.  Leisurely we worked our way back to town by late afternoon for happy hour consisting of the usual bread, cheese, wine combination before heading out for dinner.

Looking out over the water

The island had maybe 15 or so different restaurants and given that we were there in the middle of the week post-vacation time in France it was all fairly empty which added to the relaxing feeling we had.  We enjoyed this lifestyle for a few days before heading back to Paris on Saturday morning.  I would be remiss without mentioning on this train ride back to Paris that we had probably the loudest screaming crying baby right next to us for the entire ride.  This was unpleasant.  Very unpleasant.  But let's not dwell on that and just move on.

Back in Paris Saturday night for one last outing before Ehren and Julie had to head back home on Sunday after a great week in France!

Mischief and Mayhem - Just a day in Burgundy

Well after all of the craziness going on in our lives these past few months, we finally had a day where we could go explore beyond Paris.  Louis was in town....a quick weekend stopover in Paris between work trips in Portugal and Geneva....and he had a request that we leave Paris and explore somewhere else.  After presenting a few options, we decided on Dijon and the region of Burgundy.  More specifically, we went to Beaune which is a small town about a 20 minute train ride from Dijon.  We did just a day trip although if we had it to do all over again, I think we’d be better off spending the night.  We headed out on the TGV early on Saturday morning and just a little over 2 hours later, we were in Beaune.  It was a chilly day but at least it wasn’t raining, which was good because our plan was to rent bikes and explore the wine region of Burgundy.  Our friends Stacey and Alex recommended a bike shop in Beaune and Cedric (the guy who worked at the shop) helped us out by not only renting us bikes but also giving us some great suggestions on where to go for both tastings and lunch.  We headed off on our bikes and shortly after leaving the small town, we found ourselves amidst the vineyards of Burgundy.  It was pretty amazing and surreal.  I mean here it was just a regular old Saturday and we were bike riding through Burgundy.  Amazing!

We just happened upon a small little winery called Mischief and Mayhem where the lady was from the UK and spent some time telling us a bit about the wine region.  The wines were only ok although Nate and I bought a courtesy bottle.  The strangest part at this winery was when this lady poured us the reds she told us that she wasn’t sure how long they had been open and if they would be any good since she hadn’t been in the tasting room for a while.  Umm, ok?  Perhaps she wasn’t interested in really selling wine and more interested in getting to her lunch (after all, the wineries all close from about 12:00 to 1:30/2:00 for lunch).  So yeah, as nice as she was, it didn’t leave a great impression.

We headed off to our lunch at a restaurant recommended by Cedric.  It was a very homey feel of a restaurant and very typical French food.  The meal was delicious and we met a fellow bike traveler visiting from Boston.  All in all, a very lovely lunch.

We were back on our bikes and ready to explore and find another winery.  We again just happened across this one winery that seemed interesting.  It was called Edmond Cornu & Fils.  A lady greeted us and took us down into the wine cellar where she proceeded to pour us a few tastings.  Now she didn’t speak any English but luckily Louis is French Canadian and therefore could help translate.  She spent quite a bit of time with us and the wines were fantastic...as evidenced by the 7 bottles we bought between the 3 of us.  And we would have bought more too but there was only so many we could fit into that empty backpack we brought along.  It was overall a great experience and she even gave us a special taste of their Corton Grand Cru.  We are all still kicking ourselves for not making room to buy a few bottles of this one.  

Nate & Louis learning all about the region from this sweet lady

In any case, we had a wonderful experience here and in fact spent so much time there that we needed to start heading back to the bike shop to return our bikes and catch our train back to Dijon and then Paris.  Again, it would have been great to have had more time....there is so much to explore!!  We were mainly in the Aloxe-Corton and Ladoix areas but the southern part of the region was highly recommended as well.  I think it will definitely be on our list of places to head back to.  All in all it was a brilliant day and one that I think we will all remember for a long time to come.

9-1

“9 -1-1 is a joke in your town” is a little shout out to those of you who appreciate some good old fashioned late 80’s militant rap which in this case may have also come complete with a giant clock.  What may also be a joke starting with “9-1” is the month of September, as in how can it possibly be September 1?  Been awhile since we contributed to the interwebs, kept meaning to for about the last 6 weeks, but what can I say, it’s been busy!

So what have we been up to? Um, well, more than just a nice little Saturday so to speak.  As most people by now know, at the beginning of July (yeah, like 2 months ago, I know) we left the friendly confines of Zurich, Switzerland and made the move to the big city of Paris.  As has been documented on this blog we loved our time in Switzerland but were faced with the choice to either come home to SF or move to Paris.  It wasn’t a difficult choice.

Having obtained the necessary paperwork, off we went and thus begins our past two months.  Start with the arrival at a new city / temporary apartment.  Nothing to really note regarding the temporary apartment, wasn’t bad by any means but not too exciting either, other than some creative engineering on the appliances (see stove from previous blog).

Finding this place to be nothing more than ok and obviously temporary, we then had our day of apartment searching with a person we worked with directly to get us set up.  A full day of looking at 8 different places and naturally the first one of the day was the one we liked the best.  We still could not move in for a few more weeks but at least got a place secured and could check that off the long list of things to do after a few rounds of back and forth with the property agent and owner, took some time but we got it done

Next up – Bank account.  This should be easy, open account, deposit money, get ATM cards, on line set up, and off you go.  Not so fast mon ami.  They make this process much more difficult than it needs to be by forcing you to come into the bank twice and receive codes via mail that may never arrive.  So this took about 4 weeks to do what should taken about 4 minutes.  But we’re set up, so moving on.

Work – since neither of us had any changes to our jobs, just simply working in a different office, this one was pretty straight forward.  Well except for me and the visa / transfer process.  I would tell you more but honestly, it was so painful I just can’t relive it.  Maybe sometime later on over a beer or two I can fill you in, but for now let’s just say we’re both settled in at our new offices and work is going along just fine now that we’re here.

Moving day – relatively painless getting into our new place on August 1, took all of our suitcases, got the keys, had the rest of our stuff from Zurich delivered and we’re in.  Still took a few weeks to get settled in, buy all the little things you always need when moving into a new place and finally as of about a week ago, starting to feel like home.

About a week after moving in we needed to take a week and go back to San Francisco and get our life there in order, meaning packing up our apartment and moving all our stuff into storage in SF.  This week in SF was great, very good to be home, but a very busy few days of packing, moving, property manager meeting and taking care of all that we could to keep things organized.  Our apartment in SF is now being rented by someone – so for those of you who stayed there the past year without us knowing because you got a key from somebody else – don’t go back.  Somebody else lives there now.  You have been warned.

Week in SF, make the trip back to Paris, back to work, work trip that week in late August blah blah blah and that friend is how two months goes by and we get to 9-1 without even realizing it. 

So one last question – when does summer vacation start?  Doh!