Why Computers Can't Read Maps
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
30
33
Trip End
Oct 10, 2008
Paris,
Île-de-France,
France
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
We had a few more chateaux to see first so we headed off along the Loire Valley in the other direction to Chateau Chambord. This is the largest and most spectacular of all the Loire Chateaux and was built as a hunting lodge of Francois I, one of the kings of France. No expense was spared and what resulted was an incredible display of wealth. Especially when you realise that it was only used by the Royal family for 42 days in total. Kind of makes the most expensive 6 star hotel look relatively cheap in comparison. We didn't have time to go inside but we did wander around the grounds and snap some spectacular photos of the chateaux mirrored in it's own moat
Chateau Chambord
. I am glad that we saw the chateaux in the order we saw them, as having seen the grand scale of Chambord, the others would have seemed a little less impressive in comparison.Heading back to Paris we experienced what was to be the final failure of the GPS. We were following signs to Paris with a journey time of 2 hours 10 mins on the GPS. Despite the obvious signs saying Paris, Tom kept suggesting we take the exit to Orleans. Thankfully we also had a map and we decided to go it alone and stay on the motorway with the Paris signs. Immediately after we didn't take the exit, Tom recalculated our route and adjusted the arrival time to 1 hour 40 minutes. In the space of 2 minutes and one "missed" exit we had saved ourselves 30 minutes off the trip. We have no idea where Tom was planning to take us but it clearly wasn't the most direct route we had asked for. Don't get us wrong, having the GPS has been great and worth every penny in preventing the inevitable fights that occur when one person is holding the map and the other is driving. Kind of like a marriage preservation tool if you will. It meant all the frustration of the driver was directed at Tom rather than the poor map reader. It proved most useful for route planning and finding hotels in big cities, but really seemed to struggle with anything much smaller than a B road. I guess even computers aren't perfect when it comes to map reading either
Blois
. Our last chateaux visit was to Versailles, just outside Paris. Versailles is the most impressive of all the chateaux in France, both for its size and the sheer decadence of its interior. Everything is covered in gold leaf from the eaves of the roof in the courtyard to every chandelier and ceiling in the building. It is quite a sight to behold but despite its abundance of glitter and extravagance you do get a bit blasé of it after a while. Oh look, another gold room! The other problem with Versailles is that it is overwhelmed every day by a plague of tourists with cameras. Even in October, when the crowds in the rest of Europe are thinning out, Versailles was packed. After lining up for half an hour just to get through the security check, we skipped the audio guide line which stretched forever and headed in to do our own tour. You could barely move in most of the rooms and it was quite amusing to stand to one side and watch the tourist procession pass through each room. A constant stream of people, viewing everything through their video cameras rather than their own eyes, and holding cameras up over the crowd to take photos of the parts of the room obscured from their view. It seemed like quite a bizarre way to experience such a magnificent building. The whole place is definitely worth the effort to have a look, despite the crowds. We were particularly taken by the Hall of Mirrors, not only for its picturesque nature but also because of the history that had gone on it that very room
Chateau Chambord peeking through the trees
. After all our visits to Belgium and the Somme Valley, and all the WWI history we had learnt, it was quite incredible to stand in the very room where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1919 at the end of WWI. We spent a little longer exploring some of the extensive gardens surrounding the palace but didn't have enough time to really do it justice. It would easily take an hour to walk from one end of the garden to the other, something we didn't have time to do if we were going to return our hire car on time. Much like the drive out of Paris on the first day, the drive back into Paris was a white knuckle experience for me. Matt was much more comfortable this time in a car he had come to know well in the last month, however the constant lane changing and crazy driving of the French was still enough to make me very nervous. We did take the obligatory video footage of us driving past the Eiffel Tower though. Thankfully it wasn't the other major landmark of Paris we were driving by, as the roundabout at the Arc de Triumph is not something I ever want to experience in a hire car!! Rene was returned without further incident, and without any mention of the lovely flash photograph we had taken of us 4 weeks earlier in our previous hire car.
Relieved to be done with the driving part of our trip, all 5500km of it, we retired to the pub next to our hotel for a celebratory beer
Us at Chateau Chambord
. Funnily enough, that pub next to our hotel turned out to be Café Oz, the French equivalent of a Down Under bar. It was actually quite nice to hear an Aussie accent ask us, "What can I get you mate?" Despite our usual theory to try and immerse ourselves in the local culture while travelling, I think I can now understand why people sometimes frequent these bars when away from home. After a hard few weeks of travelling it can do wonders for your spirits to just feel like you are at home, even for just a few hours. One beer turned into four and our dark moods improved so much that we headed out for dinner. On our first visit to Paris as a couple in 2006 we had had a very romantic dinner at a little restaurant in Montmartre, not far from Moulin Rouge. It had turned out to be one of the most memorable meals we had in Paris as we sat on the footpath drinking Kir Royales and watching the colourful locals of Paris pass us by. We decided to head back there and see if we could find the same restaurant tonight. Due to the miserable rainy weather, we had a cosy little table inside, but were pleased to find the place hadn't lost any of its character. The food was still great and we managed a three course meal of shrimp & avocado and foie gras entrée, entrecote steak and salmon pasta mains and crème caramel and espressos for dessert. Almost too full to walk, we stumbled through the rain down the road to O'Sullivans pub, next to Moulin Rouge, to meet our friends
Versailles
. We had hoped to come back here on this trip for old time's sake, and it was fortunate that a few of Matt's road crew buddies were in town that night having drinks there. Our three course meal eventually caught up with us, as we didn't actually have any more room for beer, so we headed home to our hotel just a short walk down the road near Opera Garnier. I have to give special mention to our hotel, the Mercure Hotel Ronchery, as despite being the most expensive hotel of the trip, it was also by far the worst one we had stayed in. We arrived to find we had been given a room on the 5th floor, not so much a problem except the lift only went to the 4th floor. We then had to walk past about 20 rooms to a tiny narrow staircase, barely wide enough for a suitcase, up into the roof to our room on the top floor. The room itself was fine but we did wonder how we would fare if the building was to catch on fire. We spent a second checking the fire escape plan on the back of the door only to find our only escape route was the narrow staircase or their helpful suggestion to stay in our room and put a wet towel under the door. Yeah, thanks for that! We very politely asked the gentleman at reception if we could move to a different room, at which he seemed surprised at our concerns. He did however give us another room which was half the size of the original and barely clean, but in a slightly more accessible part of the hotel. Sick of moving our suitcases we kept it and decided to we would just have to spend our time in Paris out and about rather than in our room. We have been really lucky with our accommodation until this point so I guess you can't win them all. We did have a laugh though, that we would have been a lot more comfortable back at the 3 star Hotel Ibis around the corner for a lot less money than our 4 star hotel.
