There is no love sincerer than the love of food. - shaw

Two weeks in France was amazing, as well as being more than enough time.
My first week was spent sharing a small apartment in Paris with Chandra, and her sister Penny and family (Partner David, 11 month old son Luke, and crazy mother-in-law Katie). As much as they yelled to make up for my annoying quietness and pushed me to be bold I learned to appreciate the amounts of free food they forced on me and the amount they taught me about fine foods. Plus the conveniently located flat near the Bastille put everything within walking distance.
More than anything, I have learned to appreciate food in this country. I know the difference between a loaf of French bread that looks much like a baguette and a real baguette. Am learning about cheeses - having doubled the amount of types of cheeses I'd previously experience. Am a connoisseur of Parisian pastries. And have never had so many different types of chocolate as Penny has bought for a single week in Paris.
There was so much to do here as well that I didn't make it to the Louvre until our very last day. Before that was days filled with sites (the Arc de Triomph, Eiffel Tower, Champs d'Elysees, and everything in between was one day) and days dedicated to exploring smaller areas (the catacombs, a cemetery, or some markets and gardens) On the sunday all the museums were free and after returning from Versaille I made it to the Musee d'Orsay and the L'Orangerie where I saw the most wonderful of Monet's masterpieces.
After Paris, France went quickly. The day we left Paris we saw his gardens in Giverny and then spent the night in the wonderful little town of Orleans. And whether or not this is how one may want to spend time in France we then saw Jackpot at the local cinema. a guilty pleasure. And still funny in French. The next day was Amboise and its chateaux and a night in a local community center on an island. Then a long train trip to get to La Rochelle -the white city - on the Atlantic Coast. A quite touristy, but still pleasant quaint town on the Atlantic coast. Centered around an old harbor with medieval towers and turreted walls the city has a couple small beaches and lots of expensive restaurants. We had a small ‘studio’ – a room with a bed, a desk and a stove – which was right in the centre and provided us with the means of cooking our own dinners. In the morning we rented bicycles and followed the coast past the yacht club, the beach, through the park and along the fields and increasingly rock coastline. Eventually we turned in to come back into town and realized we were completely lost and seemed to be in a different suburb or town all together. But we managed to find our way back, and worn out spent the rest of the day on the windy beach.
Although hoping to leave La Rochelle early in the morning and making good time… we spent an entire day getting from there to our next stop – Biarritz – mostly waiting in train stations.
Biarritz is a surfing town further along the coast in Basque country where French and Spanish culture mixes. From there we also took the bus to St-Jean-de-Luz, a small fishing town.
Traveling next along the south, the Mediterranean coast we went through Arles, Marseille and from Toulon –Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, and Nice. Arles, my favorite place in France, was poor and dirty. The streets were largely empty, with locals wandering and biking through the narrow streets. Knowing that Van Gogh had lived there, although the house is gone and he did most of his paintings in the countryside, added to the mystery and splendor of the town.
From Toulon we did a series of day trips, and spent the time in Toulon exploring at night, and doing laundry in the morning. We were meant to go to Chamonix next, and when we made reservations the only train we could take left at 4:30 in the morning, but we found upon arriving then that there was a strike and the first train to leave the station would be at 5:30 –for Paris. So we got on the train for lack of anything else to do and figure things out from there. We had to spend a day in Paris, and then we took a night train to Munich, another train to Vienna where we spent an afternoon, and then another night train to Bucharest Romania…