2 ~~~~~ Country Roads of France ~ May 2003 ~ Phil ~~~~~
In a time of frequent tour cancellations, we were fortunate to have taken the May 17, 2003, Country Roads of France tour with TD Virginie Gravier and driver Christian. We went on the tour with very high expectations, having read reports from past participants on this BB. The tour was everything we expected it to be and then some.
In the days prior to the start of 40-seat tours with Insight, the coach was lightly loaded with 42 passengers: 12 from Australia, 5 from Canada and 25 from the USA. We were fortunate to have contacted Nora from California on this BB prior to the tour and she travelled with her friend Houri from the US east coast.
With one exception, we followed the published itinerary. The exception was an optional visit to Monet's home and gardens in Giverney on the first Sunday of the tour. Those that didn't take the optional remained in the hotel in Paris until about midday. This change caused another slight change in that our visit and wine tasting in Chablis had to be moved to the next day but this worked in well with the scheduled visit to the town of Vezelay and its famous Romanesque church.
The weather on our first tour day was remarkable with heavy rain during the drive to Giverney, stopping just as we arrived there but recommencing as we left Giverney. The rain continued almost all the way to Troyes when the sun appeared just as we disembarked from the bus. Apart from some light rain the next day in Chablis and Vezelay and some rain in Avignon, the weather remained almost perfect throughout the remainder of the tour.
I am not offering a detailed journal for this tour: the definitive journal for the Country Roads of France tour is Narelle's Tour de France. [This is a very large multi-page topic and if you wish to print it or copy and paste it into something like MS WORD, you should select each page of the topic in turn and click on the "Printer Friendly Format" option in the Tools menu.]
Nell describes the Optionals offered on her tour in the topic: Optionals: Country Roads of France.
Our Optionals were similar and were as follows:
a visit to the country house and gardens of Claude Monet at Giverny.
private wine tasting at Clos St Louis (Philippe and Martine Bernard) in Fixin followed by a dinner at Les Trois Couronnes at the Chateau de Saulon.
dinner in Chamonix at "La Caleche" restaurant.
cog railway to Montenvers - La Mer de Glace (Ice Sea), France's largest glacier, and the ice grotto carved out inside it.
visit to Eze Village and the Fragonard Perfume Factory and free time for dinner in Old Nice.
guided visit to the Villa and Gardens Ephrussi de Rothschild.
private boat cruise along the coast from Nice and free time for dinner in Villefranche-sur-mer.
visit to the village of Les-Baux-de-Provence and an Olive Mill in Saint Remy-de-Provence.
dinner in Auberge sur le chemin restaurant in St Guilhem-le-Desert.
guided tour of the Louvre Museum.
Moulin Rouge cabaret show and dinner.
farewell dinner at Les Noces de Jeanette Bistro in Paris.
For us, the highlights of the tour were:
the French passion for good food and wine everywhere!!! Add to this Virginie's careful selection of menu choices for both included and optional meals so that we had the opportunity to experience the specialities of each region.
some of the prettiest villages you will see anywhere (eg. Sarlat, Collonges la Rouge, St Guilhem le Désert, etc., etc.)
Monet's garden and house at Giverney (and the Tarte Tartine in the coffee shop)
the wine tasting at Clos St Louis in Fixin followed by dinner at Les Trois Couronnes at the Chateau de Saulon
Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune (and the rabbit terrine and baguette in the town centre for lunch)
Chamonix and the cog railway to Montenvers
Annecy
Eze
Villa Rothchild
the cruise from Nice to Villefranche-sur-mer
St Paul de Vence
Aix-en-Provence (and Calissons)
Pont du Gard
Les Baux-de-Provence and the visit to the olive mill in Saint Remy-de-Provence
Carcassone and cassoulet for lunch in an open air restaurant
Rocamadour!!
the prehistoric caves at Lascaux
the TGV back to Paris
Paris, Paris, Paris!
WINE TASTINGS:
Chablis wine cellar: generous tasting of their full range of Chablis wines with nibbles
Clos St Louis in Fixin (Burgundy region): tour of winery, generous wine tasting with gougères
Chateauneuf de Pape: nice wine but very limited quantity, also had local nougat for sale with free samples
We never bothered to buy any additional bottles of wine because for all of our evening meals, we either had a selection of wine included or a comprehensive selection of wine was available for purchase. A good many of our lunches were in regional villages and we frequently bought wine with our lunch by the glass.
We took every optional excursion (see above list), a great many of which were evening meals. So, apart from our first night in Paris when we ate at a cafe just down from the hotel and nights in old Nice and Villefranche-sur-Mer, when we chose excellent seafood restaurants, all other nights were included or optional meals.
Phil Smiler
POSTSCRIPT 1
It looks like the itinerary is marginally improved this year with slightly better hotels. Links to all of the websites for the hotels nominated in the 2004 itinerary are included in the BB topic Weblinks to some Insight Premium Tour Hotels, 2004. Insight now provides hotel weblinks in its brochure (in the hotel listings towards the end).
The tour inclusions are defined in the itinerary. Here is list of potential priced Optional Excursions for the 2007 tours.
POSTSCRIPT 2
We were offered an optional trip on the cog railway to Montenvers - La Mer de Glace (Ice Sea), France's largest glacier, and the ice grotto carved out inside it.
Departing from Chamonix, this famous rack and pinion railway brings you to the Montenvers site at 1913 m. and provides an imposing panorama of the Mer de Glace glacier, the Drus and the Grands Jorasses.
We were offered an optional dinner in Chamonix at the "La Caleche" restaurant where we had an excellent meal. The decor has to be seen to be believed!
The weather forecast for Chamonix is available on the Chamonix valley official website.
POSTSCRIPT 3: OUR CRF TOUR FOOD & RESTAURANT EXPERIENCES
This postscript has been added in response to the topic: Restaurant recommendations on CRF. I'm not sure how relevant or beneficial our 2003 CRF tour food and restaurant experiences will be for those travelling on the 2007 version of this tour (who are seeking to independantly visit alternate restaurants) for a number of reasons:
it is a "Country Roads" tour and passengers don't spend a great deal of time in major cities with many restaurant choices.
our Tour Director (Virginie Gravier) carefully planned every meal (included and optional) to allow us to experience the food specialities of each regions we travelled through so we were very much inclined to stay with the included and optionals meals throughout the tour.
two of the optionals took us to places (Old Nice and Villefranche-sur-mer) where there were no included meals but Virginie had provided us with detailed briefings on the different food types and best restaurants in each of these areas.
apart from the evening of our arrival in Paris, there was only one other night (in Avignon) where we didn't have either an included or an optional meal.
I have no idea of how the other Insight Tour Directors manage this tour but for us, our TD certainly offered several optionals that were not in the normal optional list for that year and she also rescheduled part of the tour visiting Giverney on the first morning (an optional), requiring the postponement of our visit to Chablis to the following day.
this is a tour where tips on lunches are also quite relevant.
there are two slightly different itineraries for this tour in 2007, related to Saturday or Sunday departures.
What follows is the accommodation and meal schedule from the current itinerary with my comments on our experiences on this tour in 2003, given that our itinerary was slightly different to the current itinerary in terms of where some of our nights were spent:
DAY 1 – PARIS AT LEISURE: [Concorde Ambassador / Paris Rive Gauche]
We stayed in the Paris Rive Gauche. Soon after arrival, we crossed the boulevard Saint Jacques (under the Metro line) and walked about 400 metres to the right and found a really good patisserie. Much later, after the "Meet the TD" session, we walked out of the hotel and to the right a short distance to Au Reveil Samaritain restaurant where we had a reasonable meal. We were severely jet-lagged and wanted a quick meal before retiring. If we had turned to the left instead and walked about 800 metres along the boulevard Saint Jacques to the Rue Daguerre, we would have been in what is sometimes called an "eat street area" with many small restaurants.
DAY 2 – PARIS – DIJON/BEAUNE: [Sofitel La Cloche / Hotel de la Poste] (BB,D)
We started the day with an optional to Monet's property, Giverny. I can recommend the little tearoom outside the property (to the rear of the house) in which to sample a speciality of this area, Tarte Tatin. We stayed that night in Beaune and dined in the hotel, starting with Kir (a cocktail made with a measure of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liquor) topped up with white wine), followed by a meal of regional specialties (can't remember exactly but probably included escargot and beef bourguignonne).
DAY 3 – VéZELAY EXCURSION: (BB)
We started the morning with a generous wine tasting in a cellar in Chablis. We travelled on to Vézelay and with the weather threatening, grabbed a ham and cheese baguette at a boulangerie on the road leading up to the basilica. Later in the afternoon, we took an excellent two part optional: a private wine tasting at Clos St Louis (Philippe and Martine Bernard) in Fixin where, after a tour of the vineyard and winery, we were served Gougères to accompany a good range of their wines. This was followed by an excellent dinner at Les Trois Couronnes restaurant at the Chateau de Saulon.
DAY 4 – DIJON/BEAUNE – CHAMONIX: [Alpina] (BB)
After a tour of Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune, we had free time to wander around the shops and lunched on a selection of items purchased from the Charcuterie and the Boulangerie (including rabbit terrine with baguettes). That night in Chamonix, we took an optional dinner at La Caleche restaurant. The meal was very good but was somewhat stuffed up by the fact that several people, after preordering their selections earlier in the day, took different menu items as they were being distributed. We were sitting at a table at the end of the service path and were brought items we hadn't ordered causing some confusion. We then had to wait whilst the kitchen prepared the items we had ordered. This all lead to a lecture on the coach the following day with the suggestion from Virginie that people should write down what they have preordered so as to avoid this type of confusion. Unfortunately, it still happened on another occasion but on a lesser scale.
DAY 5 – CHAMONIX – AIX-LES-BAINS: [Radisson SAS] (BB,D)
After a morning travelling up to Montenvers (optional), we arrived in the beautiful lakeside town of Annecy where we found many very tempting little cafes, icecreameries and patisseries. We stayed overnight in Grenoble where the included meal was in the hotel.
DAY 6 – AIX-LES-BAINS – NICE: [Radisson SAS] (BB)
Lunch today was in a beautiful little village called Castellane. OPTIONAL: visit to Eze Village and the Fragonard Perfume Factory and free time for dinner in Old Nice. My wife and I chose the seafood restaurant recommended by Virginie and it was excellent, particularly the Salade Niçoise (a specialty of the Nice region).
DAY 7 – NICE AT LEISURE: (BB)
We started the day with a visit to Monaco and bought some take-away food there: it was very expensive and awful! OPTIONALS: guided visit to the Villa and Gardens Ephrussi de Rothschild followed by private boat cruise along the coast from Nice and free time for dinner in Villefranche-sur-mer. Virginie had recommended La fille du pêcheur restaurant, a premium seafood restaurant but it was full so we dined at a nearby restaurant which was quite good.
DAY 8 – NICE – AVIGNON: Hotel: [Grand / L’Horloge] (BB,D)
On arrival in Aix-en-Provence, we explored a patisserie in the Cours Mirabeau and sampled a local specialty, callisons. We then looked for somewhere to eat lunch. Virginie had recommended a famous 17th century restaurant, Les Deux Garçons, but there was a large group waiting to enter and our time was limited. We chose a small cafe for a very hurried and very average meal. The included dinner that night was in our hotel.
DAY 9 – RHôNE EXCURSION: (BB)
After a morning at Chateauneuf de Pape and the Roman bridge (Pont du Gard), our lunch was a very tasty crepe in a little cafe on the walk back in from the coach park to our hotel in Avignon. OPTIONAL: visit to the village of Les-Baux-de-Provence and an Olive Mill in the Alpilles region of Saint Remy-de-Provence [Moulin du Calanquet]. This was a fantastic optional! After our return to Avignon, we chose one of several restaurants near the hotel in Avignon for our dinner and it was quite good. Various members of our tour group tried two or three other restaurants in the area around the hotel and everyone was happy with their meals.
DAY 10 – AVIGNON – NîMES: [Imperator Concorde] (BB)
We were not able to visit Stes Maries-de-la-Mer because there was a major annual gypsy festival underway that week so we went instead to Aigues-Mortes for lunch. This part of France is not far from Spain and typical Spanish food (eg. Paella) was available for lunch in a couple of cafes. We stayed overnight in Montpellier. OPTIONAL: dinner in L'Auberge sur le chemin restaurant in St Guilhem-le-Desert (the young chef at this restaurant, Olivier Crossay, was a student of Paul Bocuse). This meal, starting with the anise-flavoured apéritif, Pastis, was one of the best meals on the tour.
DAY 11 – NîMES – ALBI: [Hostellerie du Grand Sainte Antoine] (BB,D)
We visited Carcassone en route and lunched on a local delicacy, cassoulet, in an open air restaurant. Fantastic! We stayed overnight in Toulouse and the included meal was in the hotel.
DAY 12 – ALBI – DORDOGNE: [Relais de Castelnau/La Truffe Noire] (BB,HD)
We first visited Cahors en route today and spent some time in the local market, sampling the fresh fruit, etc. We continued on to Rocamadour where there are several little cafes. The highlight dinner that night was in our hotel: La Truffe Noire.
DAY 13 – DORDOGNE VALLEY EXCURSION: (BB,D)
After visiting the prehistoric caves at Lascaux, we travelled to Sarlat where we lunched on probably the nicest omlette ever with local wine in an open air cafe in the Place de la Liberte. The included dinner that night was in le Relais de St Jacques de Compostelle restaurant in the village of Collonges la Rouge. The meal was good but the little village itself was the highlight!
DAY 14 – DORDOGNE – PARIS: [Concorde Saint-Lazare/Paris Rive Gauche] (BB)
Lunch today was a light snack in the railway station at Poitiers whilst we waited for our train. OPTIONAL: Moulin Rouge cabaret show and dinner.
DAY 15 – PARIS SIGHTSEEING: (BB)
OPTIONAL: farewell dinner at Les Noces de Jeanette Bistro in Paris. This was a reasonable meal with almost the whole group and was a lot of fun!
DAY 16 – PARIS: Transfers to Paris airport. (BB)
POSTSCRIPT 4: OUR SHOPPING ON THE CRF TOUR
Because we were travelling on to Britain for a Highlights of Britain tour after our CRF tour, as well as a period of self touring, and because Australia has fairly strict quarantine laws, we limited our shopping to light weight items and mostly excluded food items (like pate). Similarly, we never bothered to buy any bottles of wine to take home. Following is a summary of our purchases on our CRF tour:
Beaune
Pottery bowl. Cookbook of traditional Burgundian food.
Annecy
My wife was very tempted to buy some fine lace products here but our time ran out before the credit card came out.
Castellane
We bought some lavender soaps and tea towels.
Eze village
We bought a selection of perfume at the Fragonard factory. These were in small metal containers and are still in good condition. They were excellent for gifts for several members of our family.
St Paul de Vence
This little village is a goldmine of arts and crafts. We bought some pottery and tablecloths/serviettes (napkins). We could have easily spent a lot here but ran out of time.
Aix-en-Provence
We purchased some boxes of calisson d'Aix (almond candies) for family gifts.
Avignon
We purchased more tablecloths/serviettes (napkins)
Les Baux de Provence
We were very tempted to buy a large selection of exquisite marzipan fruits but resisted temptation.
Saint Remy-de-Provence
The Olive mill [Moulin du Calanquet] had a large range of olive oils and products derived from olive oil such as soaps. Their gift shop also had a good selection of local products.
Rocamadour
We bought several watercolour paintings by a local artist showing scenes of Rocamadour. We also met the artist's daughter in their other studio in Sarlat.
Limogue
We bought several porcelain plates in the Haviland factory showroom.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: phil, 29 October 2012 08:11
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