Day 14- Last Day of FRANCE

Well, here it goes, day 14, the final day of the trip! :(

We are very sad it had to end, but we can't wait to get started on the holidays and making our store even better! We also can't wait to see our friends/customers! 

We miss you all. A day doesn't seem complete without the company of all of our regulars and our not so regulars who brighten our lives so much!

 We had our macaron making class at Le Cuisine Paris. 

We can't say enough great things about them! What a class company! We had so much fun and made, and ate a TON of macarons! 

 I think we are both good enough now that we will be constantly featuring macarons! So get ready!! 

We have made a pledge to not use artificial coloring in our food, ice cream or even our macarons, so they won't look like these.

 That being said, it sure was fun making them all those amazing colors! We thought our bright blue and purple ones were the best, besides the instructors tie-dyed ones.

 They were delicious! We made 4 flavors of fillings and are going to be even better with that then our macarons in the past, so get ready!!!! 

 After that, we went to a place I found on TripAdvisor called Kraft Hot Dogs.

 It was rated the 66th best restaurant out of over 13,000 restaurants here in Paris. It's a tiny place that serves like 5 types of hot dogs each day and they were SO good. If you follow our blog, you'll remember we went to a burger joint in Orange in Provence and it was a very similar experience. They asked where we are from and when they heard we are from America they were excited and thrilled, a lot like we are when French people come in to try our shop.  The owner followed us outside and asked what we thought of the hot dogs. We told him we loved them and he did a little victory dance that made us SO happy for him. We know that feeling very well and it's one of the things that keeps us doing what we do with the passion we still and will always have! 

We left there and walked through the Marais district and just wandered. It was fun and fascinating.

It's very alive! Even in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. We walked through the Jewish area and spent a lot of time looking and shopping at all the amazing Jewish bakeries and absorbing all the history of this very interesting neighborhood.

 We decided to head back to our hotel from there, but I HAD to stop at Berthillion, the most famous ice cream shop in all of France. 

It's VERY expensive for ice cream, but WOW the flavors were intense and SO good!

 I had chocolate, salted caramel and coconut. Emily had vanilla and honey nougat. 

We were very happy with our choices and felt satisfied with the experience. It's almost like a pilgrimage for me, and I'm glad I made it there! 

 Then we made it to our hotel and got ready for a late dinner with our friend in Paris again. 

For the first time we went back to a restaurant for the 2nd time.

 It was the steak place with the amazing frites and the crazy green sauce called Le Relais de l'Entrecote. It's my sisters favorite place in France and I can see why. It was good enough to go back twice that's for sure!! Amazing!!!

 So, we wake up early tomorrow and head for the airport and come back to Michigan. 

Then head back to Charlevoix to see how much if any smoke damage our house has suffered and to assess the damage to our beautiful town we love so much! 

We are so sad that this journey is ending, but, we are married, finally and that journey is just beginning. I keep telling Emily, our Honeymoon won't end until we stop talking about it! So please, come visit us in our little shop, see what we have learned, introduce yourself to the new Mrs. Emily Freund and talk to us about France and our experiences! That way this amazing experience never has to end!

  Thanks again for supporting us, helping make all of this possible, and following our journey, both at home and on our blog! I'm a very lucky man to have the life I have! I have a beautiful amazing wife. A business that I love and enjoy. A community that I adore. Friends that look after us and that we look after as well. And being able to share it with so many people makes it all the most amazing journey of my life. 

I love you all and I can't wait to see you all again, at the store and out!

 Until then...VIVA LA FRANCE!!!!!

Day 9 - The Million Dollar View!!!!

We were on a train all day today!!! It was tough. It made for a long day. We left Avignon at 9:00am and got to Mont St-Michel at around 5:30pm...

  Its a spectacular sight!! We are staying in our most decadent hotel of the trip, only for one night so we justified it... It has a private view balcony

Nothing short of breathtaking! 

 That being said, it took us climbing about a million steps to get to the room, while lugging all of our luggage with us!!. And remembering where it is, especially after some hard cider, in the pitch black, no outside lighting thank you very much, is a true challenge. But we made it!! :)

 Note to travelers, while Mont St-Michel is an amazing sight without a doubt, it's probably only worth a day-trip. The luggage, even with only carry-ons and the logistics of it was an incredible challenge no matter who you are! 

And the driving rain and cold weather this time of year isn't much of a help either. We get to tour the abbey tomorrow and the town so hopefully we will have amazing stories to counter-balance this difficult day. I've been around Europe quite a few times and I've run into some places that are true tourist traps. Places that only exist for tourists and nothing else. This is one of those.

There are only 33 people who actually live here on the island. It's not a working city in any way, it strictly survives because tourist flock to it and spend money, a lot of it, just to be here and see this spectacular sight!

 For example, we went to dinner at our hotel's restaurant. We checked TripAdvisor for our best options but when we got to the main drag, only 2 places were open. We chose the best looking of the two. These are pictures of our dinners, and like we have been taught our whole lives, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. 

So, moving on, we are waking up with the sunrise and will be trying to get to the abbey before any of the tourists wake up and hopefully get out of dodge before it gets too nuts!!

 We will have more to report tomorrow when we make it into Brittany. Until then, we will make the best of the situation with our amazing room and our 3 bottles of Chateauneuf-Du-Pape we were given yesterday as a gift! :)

Until tomorrow, off to drink some amazing wine!!

Day 8- Wineries!

Well, it's our last day in Avignon, Provence. We returned the car and not gonna lie, it's a little sad to leave here tomorrow morning. We have loved it! What a wonderful place that really feels like home in a way!!! Everything about our time here has been amazing. 

But, I'm sure the next leg of our journey will be amazing also.. We will miss that little car though! That was fun. I DROVE IN FRANCE!!! 

Even if French drivers are maniacs!!! 

 Today we had two awesome winery tours in Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

 That was where the Pope's wine was grown 700 years ago! It is one of the best wine growing areas in the entire world and we got to taste our little hearts out!! It was a blast. Both wineries were run by amazing interesting people.

And while people here are very unhappy and uneasy about the election results in America and keep talking to us about it, the wine business, especially in this region is fascinating.

It's amazing how much these gnarled vines some of which are over 100 years old, are worth. Just an acre of land in this region is worth so much money, where if you go across a dirt road that is the border to another region, the same grapes that are grown in virtually identical soil are worth so much less!

Just as an example. A hectare of land in Chateauneuf-du-Pape costs in the area of $175k if you could find one for sale. Yet across the road in another region that same hectare may sell for around $10k. How crazy is that???

The wine is wonderful. Unfortunately, it's so late in the season we couldn't buy any wine from either winery. . It's all been shipped off for the rest of the world to enjoy. But we still learned a lot, met some amazing people and drank amazing wine! 

 Between our visits we drove to the city of Orange. It has one of the finest preserved Roman Theaters in the world. It's stunning. Unfortunately we didn't have time to visit it, but it looked incredible from the outside. 

Trip Advisor Rocks!

We really only went to Orange for lunch because it's close to Chateauneuf-du-Pape. We checked TripAdvisor for a good restaurant and the #1 rated restaurant in Orange is a burger joint!!! It's run by two young guys who realize that good ole American hamburgers and fries done right are a big thing in Paris, so why not try it in Provence? It had a real diners, drive-ins and dives feel to it. They had loud music playing and it was just a funky little joint! But WOW was that burger good. They were SO interested to see what we thought of it, being from America and all. 

And when we told them how much we enjoyed it, they were just beaming with pride!!! It was a great moment and really cool to see people doing things the right way, like we always try to do! 

Great ingredients prepared great! Always a winning combination! 

 DINNER TIME!

Tonight we ate at a fantastic restaurant, what else is new? We haven't had a bad meal this whole time in Provence! This was at a restaurant called Fou de Fafa. I had a steak and Emily had a beet risotto. We had amazing wine, of course and it was the perfect way to end this great adventure in Provence!! 

Talk to you tomorrow from Mont St Michel!!

 

Avignon Today, Tomorrow I Drive!!!!

Today we explored Avignon! 

 The weather was beautiful!  We started with a tour of the Palace of the Popes, the French Vatican from the 1300s.

It was amazing. It's kind of a shell of what it once was, but still awesome!

It's huge and ornate and, with a little imagination you can really get an idea of the true glory and majesty it once was.

  It took a good portion of the day due to its immensity! 

Then we went to a beautiful church from the 1500s and Emily lit a candle for The Virgin Mary and prayed.  

It was beautiful just like her!

After that we went and saw the St Benezet bridge, or the broken bridge of Avignon which is the subject of a famous French nursery rhyme that everyone in France knows.

 It's really cool.  And it's also very windy! It made it tough to build a bridge across it. Especially like 600 years ago!  

The Rhone river is big and fast!

After that we went to the Petite Palace. The place where all the goodies that still exist from the palace of the popes are kept. It was interesting, but hard to put the two pictures together.

 Now to the food!  

Pastries and quiche for breakfast, as per usual!  I snacked, but Emily had a ham and cheese sandwich on a baguette. But for dinner... WE COOK! 

 For dinner, we made pasta and sauce that we got from the local market and had a delicious Cote du Rhone red wine, because you know, when Emily and I have a kitchen, we have to cook at least a little!!!

  Tomorrow we rent a car and I get to drive in France for the first time ever! 
 I'm a little nervous, but I'm sure I can handle it!  Keep on checking back or bookmark this blog, I won't say where we are going yet, but tomorrow will be full of some amazing pictures!!! :)