Yes this is a little late - we have been in Spain for a month or so now. But better late than never, I guess..
We have spent about a month in France - one week in Paris, a few days in Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier and Marseille. And it was fantastic! Except that one guy from last post.. But it wasn't that bad just weird. Starting with Pairs we planned to stay for three days or so and ended with eight! Our host had some spare bikes we could borrow for sightseeing in Paris. If I had decided we would have biked all eight days, but Jess' bum was to painful and she was cold (it was minus 10 and 14 two days). Biking is the best way to see a city if you avoid accidents:) You can stop and turn in to the small alleys and streets you would never discover when you are stuck underground in the Metro or fighting to figure out the bus system. And it is a lot cheaper or in other words I don't have to feel paranoid after jumping the gates and cheating on the public transport. We saw the Louvre, Tour Eiffel, not up though to expensive and three times is too much, Center Pompidou, the D'Orsay, possibly my favorite museum, Sacre Cour, various neighbour hoods and Montmatre cemetery. The first few days we went to bed early, tired from sightseeing all day. But we also went to an amazing concert/burlesque show friday night. It was a kind of a punkish concert with a band I have no idea what is called, but the lead singer is one of the best burlesque artist in Paris. At the same time as the band was playing different artist performed with them on stage. Brilliant show! Another epic thing about Paris was the vast amount of cakes, pasteries and butter that we ate. Together with our amazing host Arnuad we ate 500g of butter in four or five days! And we didn't bake and cooke with it, we just ate it! Baguette and other sorts of bread with a thick layer of healthy salted butter:) Oh yeah we tried frog legs here. They are not bad at all. They taste a bit like chicken but more delicate.
After Paris we tried for TWO days to hitch hike out the city to Nantes in minus 10ºC or so. Don't worry we went back for the night at Arnauds place. He got so excited when we gor back that he brought us delicious pasteries and suggested that we stayed at his place untill it got warmer... which in middle of January can be a couple of months.. The plan was to go to Nantes from Paris but after freezing our behinds off in -10-14 degress we ended in the lovely Bordeaux (see previous post). I will probably never LOVE Paris but it can be very nice.
Toulouse was great, even if the "pink city" of France is more of an orangy red. Again or hosts very amazing. They cooked us a traditional tartiflette, which is a lot of cheese covering potatoes, bacon, onion and fromage frais. Yummi! They introduced us to foie gras as well. It's delicious but maybe a little overrated.
We absolutely loved Montpellier with it's small town feeling and lots of small streets to get lost in. Montpellier was also the city wcich started our baking cookies flip. I got a fantastic recipe for rosmary heidesandes from a host in Germany and we love sweet things!
After that we headed to Marseille for a weekend. Jess made yet another guy fall madely in love with her:) But they all do - so it's weirdier when nobody is trying to charm her of her feet. Marseille itself is pretty cool. It's very differnt from what I imagined but I don't really know what was actually expecting.
Next thing has been a stop over in Spain (will go in another post someday) before going to Pau. Pau is a city many many peole have talked about and recommended. Yeah it's an okay city but I don't get all the fuzz. We liked the little village, Oloron-Sainte-Marie, south of Pau way better. We accidentaly found the most amazing house there. Almost 700 sqm for only 500.000 euros, close to the Pyrenees and it "just" needs smaller repairs.. We even talked to the real estate agent about buying it :D
Originally I wanted to write more, but seriously it takes ages and I am a shitty writer anyway. Next time you might get a bit of Spain, no bull fighting but a LOT of oranges.
