Paris

October 15, 2013

We were flying out of Paris, so we spent the afternoon of our last day in Europe being tourists. Our first stop was to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. The Père Lachaise is not only beautiful, but the resting place of a number of famous people including Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison of The Doors.

Jim Morrison’s grave

Grave of Oscar Wilde

It was fascinating walking through the cobblestone paths lined with mausoleums and above ground graves. The placement of graves seemed to be completely random. Graves from the early 1700s were right next to a graves from the 2000s.

Above ground graves

Mausoleums

I think a person could spend all day at the cemetery, but we had limited time. Next we headed to the Eiffel Tower. Our route took us by the Louvre and L’Arc de Triomphe. We might have stopped to look around, but there was a massive traffic jam that took awhile to get through.

A little traffic around the Arc de Triomphe

We opted to battle the traffic to find parking near the Eiffel Tower. We walked around for a bit and even got a few photos without anybody else but us and the Eiffel Tower.

Eiffel Tower

The required kissing photo

Finally, it was time to return the rental car and go to the airport. Everything went surprisingly smoothly. Chandler was able to convince the ticket agent that we did in fact get 2 free bags and would not need to pay for extra baggage. Our flight to Mexico was overnight but on an airplane so old, there were still ashtrays in the armrests. I thought the plane might come apart a few times during the flight. It was “fun”!

French roadtrip

Nov27

October 11 – 14, 2013

Not wanting to leave the farm just yet, we stayed through the morning milking. Once last time with the ladies, Alex and Matilda before it was officially time to be on our way. We didn’t really know what we wanted to do, so we decided to head to Chamonix-Mont Blanc.

Our roadtrip turned out to be a little less exciting than planned. We spent 2 days driving to Chamonix which turned out to be cloudy and snowing. We were unable to get a clear view of the mountain and were not able to camp in the area, because we didn’t have gear for camping in the cold weather. We figured we would keep driving until we found a place to camp and went up and over a mountain, into Switzerland.

The Aiguille du Midi

A dam high in the hills

Our first view of Switzerland

The filter brings out the colors

It was raining really hard once we got down out of the mountains in Switzerland, but beautiful. There were absolutely no campgrounds open so, we figured we would just do a little loop around Lake Geneva and head back into France.

On our way towards Paris we headed to Riems. Riems is a historically important city. The unconditional surrender of Germany to General Eisenhower and the Allies occurred in Riems in 1945. We spent an hour or two in a small museum dedicated to the incident. The room that the actual event took place in has been preserved and we were able to get a good look at it.

The Map Room

A surrender souvenir

Airplane remains

Riems is also home to the impressive cathedral, Notre-Dame de Reims. The current cathedral was built in 1211 to replace an earlier version. The previous cathedral was built in the 400s. It is crazy to imagine that a cathedral has occupied the same site for almost 2000 years.

Notre-Dame de Reims

Gargoyles

Beautiful details

After a lovely afternoon in Riems, we headed in the direction of Paris through the Champagne region to pick up a bottle of bubbly.

Champagne region

We had a hotel room for our last night in Europe. It was nice to have a dry, large area to make sure our boxes were properly packed and strong enough to handle a few flights.

Chèvres encore

Nov25

October 9 – 10, 2013

After a lovely 3 weeks in the UK, it was time to head back to France. We took a quick flight to La Rochelle, rented a car and drove back to the farm. We needed to pick up our bikes, return Alex’s suitcase and spend one more day on the farm. We had missed the work on the farm while we were gone.

It was great to see all the goats, some of them seemed to remember us. The ladies were immediately affectionate, whereas it took a week before we received that kind of attention when we first arrived. We were surprised to see a noticeable difference in the size of the babies. Isatis, our favorite little one, was no longer able to escape by squeezing through the slate of the fence.

Chandler and some friends

We were able to spend a lot of time catching up with Alex and Mathilde, an intern, and we all worked together very well. It was nice that everyone knew the routine, so we could get the work done quickly and focus on having fun with the goats.

Leisure afternoon

I also had the opportunity to watch the “marriage” of several ladies with two of the billies. At one point, Alex had explained the mating rituals of goats to Chandler and I, but the act sounded strange enough that I needed to see it for myself. To attract the females, a male will urinate on himself, slap the female’s belly with his hoof while simultaneously tickling her ear with his tongue. Not the most romantic courtship, but it worked.

Gangster, the lucky groom

We also made sure to eat enough cheese to last us a long time. Alex makes the BEST organic goat cheese! I would highly recommend that if you are in her area, check out her farm, La Ferme des Croq’Épines, and get some of her cheese.

Being on the farm was a great choice and a highlight of the trip.

Alex, Mathilde, Me and Chandler

A change of pace

Nov15

September 18 – 19, 2013

All of the sudden, we found ourselves on a train to La Rochelle and then on a plane over the English Channel. This rather abrupt departure from our original travel plans arose because my sister Alyssa needed an overnight babysitter in London. This was an attractive opportunity because we were on the brink of unintentionally being illegal immigrants in Europe!

Here’s how that happened: beware it’s a bunch of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo so feel free to skim. It turns out there is this thing called the Schengen Zone which is a collection of European countries (which predates the European Union) who dissolved border controls between themselves while unifying the border controls between Schengen and non-Schengen countries. So no border guards between Germany and the Netherlands for example. As US citizens we don’t need a visa in advance of traveling in the Schengen Zone, but the catch is: in any 6 month window we can only be in the Schengen Zone for 3 cumulative months. We looked at the calendar and the map and realized that if we stuck around in France we’d over stay our time by two weeks and technically be illegal immigrants subject to fines, deportation and a ban from future travel in the Schengen Zone. The actual degree of enforcement of the rules is pretty unclear though and really up to the immigration officer who checks our passport when departing. We read about a few people flying out of Switzerland who were hit with over $1,000 in fines and deported for being over by just a couple days. Luckily, the UK is not part of the Schengen Zone, so we could just hide out there for a couple of weeks then come back and not have to worry about anything.

We spent the entire day getting to London, but it was worth it. Especially since Alyssa ordered delicious Indian food when we arrived at her flat.

The next day we laid around the flat doing nothing. I had picked up a little cold en-route, so we didn’t feel like venturing too far. It felt good to be lazy after a month of good, solid work.

Around the farm

Nov8

August 24 – September 18, 2013

Feeding, milking, herding and making cheese were just the basic jobs that needed to be done every day to keep things moving. As with most farms, there was a long list of projects that needed attention. Once we had the basics down, we were able to tackle some of the project work each afternoon.

Once she found out that we enjoy building, she put us to good use. We helped her friend add an addition to on of the barns for the young. We also re-roofed the horse’s shelter and built her a little wood shed.

The barn addition we helped build

We also experienced death. Two goats died while we were there, both from sickness. One of the billies died from worms and diarrhea, so we got to help vaccinate all the remaining billies. This entailed Chandler putting the billies in a modified headlock, while I filled syringes and Alex performed the shots.

Vaccinations

A big highlight for us was learning to drive the tractor. Alex had mentioned it casually after about a week, but we didn’t take her up on the offer for another week. Basically, we just moved rotten hay bales to the compost. Not that exciting, but we thought it was cool. The tractor was pretty easy to learn, the joystick moves one way to raise and lower the bucket and moves another way to open and close it. Balance was important, because the tractor could tip over if too heavily loaded and the bucket too high.

Tractor lesson with Alex

Jenny and the tractor

Our month on the farm was a really wonderful experience. We learned a lot about running and maintaining a goat farm. Now, instead of talking about owning animals, we have a decent idea of what that would actually entail.

Chandler and his herding cat

A Few Days Off

the things that we do

Tag Archives: France