Our First Day in France

Today is a travel day, which means leaving the house early to get away from my 3 cats who have been locked inside on possibly the last 20 degree day of the year.  They are not happy, which means I’m not happy, so off Jim and I head to hang out at the airport so the cats will leave us alone.  

 

We check in 3 hours early for a flight to Montreal, we are the first in line and head over to the Sheraton for a glass of champagne.  Not a bad way to start the holiday.  Head back over at 4:30 and are boarding our flight to Montreal at 5.  Our connecting flight to Paris doesn’t leave until 10, which means we can have a nice meal and walk around the Trudeau terminal in Montreal.  Jim even gets to see Auston Matthews score 4 goals in his opening game.  Thank goodness we were back on the plane for the OT loss.  Lots of grumbling about the goalie.  I’m not interested.  We have bulkhead seats.  So excited to have all this extra leg room.  But you guessed it, always a downfall.  You don’t have a seat in front of you to put your junk under, ie kobo, water, chocolate, ear phones, they are all sitting on my lap. Also everyone who needs the bathroom uses your little area as a holding pattern.  Lots of wiggling going on. 

That great plan about getting 4 to 5 hours sleep just didn’t happen, the plane was too busy and we were too excited.

I was totally surprised about how many people seemed to only speak French on our flight and at the Trudeau terminal.  It was a very strange feeling and only got stranger.  When we finally landed we couldn’t find anyone who spoke English.  Not a problem everything seemed pretty straight forward.  Just needed to pick up our rental car and off we went.  NOT.  No one in terminal 3 knew where the car rental was.  Information, taxi stand people, police officer, janitor, other travellers, all pointed us in a different direction.  The police officer told us to just wait by the road and the car would come to us.  Yep, like that was going to happen.  We toddled over to Terminal 1, stopped at information, just follow the blue sidewalk and you will come to it.  Oops, NOT, but we did come to Terminal 2 and there in the distance was the car rental.  Took us 45 minutes to find our car.  YEAH, off we go, thank goodness it has GPS and it was in English. 

1.5 hours later we have arrived at our beautiful destination.  “Le Manoir Des Deux Amants” on the Seine River.  This is one very large river that seems to meander through a fair bit of France.  We have a beautiful 1 bedroom with full kitchen.      

 Everything is unpacked and we are feeling the need for a nap.  2 hours later we are up and at em, which means we are starving.  The place we are staying at is in Connelles which is a tiny little spot with not much going on other than a slowly meandering river and some ducks floating by.  Thankfully just 10 clicks up the road in Pont Saint Pierre is the amazing 5 star “Auberge D’Andelle”. 

The roads are just as meandering and windy as the river but much narrower thankfully they had lots of speed bumps to slow us down.  We were passing this marshy area and I said to Jim this would be a great place for deer when what to our wondering eye should dash onto the road.  NOT a deer, a gigantic 300 lb boar.  Remember the one in Game of Thrones that killed Robert Baraetheon bigger than that.  The way I was screaming I think Jim thought I was speaking french.  These things are like big squirrels, wasn't sure which way it should run, thankfully not at us as we came to a screeching stop.  This is not an actual picture of our boar, but definitely reminded me of it.  :)

Driving into town what should we pass but a bakery, wait did I say pass, nope park the car and out we got for an eclair and a quiche for the morning.  

I wasn’t really expecting a full French experience tonight, but the place was beautiful, the staff lovely and we managed to muddle our way through ordering without knowing what either of the 3 of us was talking about. 

 Jim thought he was ordering a red wine, said "Oui" and out came this amazing orange drink.  We think it might have been a calvado (apple brandy) or champagne.  Either way delish.  I may start every meal with this drink from now on.  :)

   I had a lovely chauteaubriand in a peppercorn sauce while Jim had a full 4 course meal with foie gras, lamb, 3 cheese walnut salad and a crumble.  They are famous for their apples in this area.  I did help him with the crumble.

My Chateaubriand

A much slower trip home in the dark and within minutes Jim was off to sleep at 9:30.  Whew, I had some time to play with my pictures and blog.  Can't wait for tomorrow.  Off to Rouen.  BonSoir