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French Country Travel Life Tips
French Country Travel Life Tips. Da Bg has given you many – has he not? So, in the interests of perspective (I LIVE HERE, remember)thought it might be interesting AND informative to get some French Country Life Travel Tips from another American. The kind who DOESN’t live here. But visits a lot. His name is Jerry Lanson.
Here’s his rant( from the Huffington Post):
1. Pace yourself
Today, the 17th of our 32-day adventure, Kathy and I sat by the pool of our lovely mountain chalet, Les Skieurs in the Chartreuse Mountains above Grenoble, and read. Then we took an hour walk, stopped at an outdoor cafe for a glass of wine, had a light dinner on the deck downstairs and called it a day. It was rejuvenating after a week of too much driving and too fast a pace: two nights in the village of Sarlat in the Dordorgne, two nights in the city Montpellier and two in Ansouis in Provence’s Luberon Mountains.
As a rule, we find it’s best to stay three nights at each stop — the first day to arrive and get our bearings, the second to unwind and take in a sight or two, the third to poke around and map out our next day’s travels. Two-night stays can work, but it’s best not to bunch them as we did this week.
A series of one night stays means too much tension, too much driving and too little time to explore. As a rule, see less and stay a little longer at each stop.
2. Use maps, not a GPS
A GPS can get you from here to there, but it doesn’t tell you what you’re missing along the way. Michelin maps are the best and, of these, the yellow maps give the most detail.
3. Be open to diversions
The best moments on any vacation invariably are those that are unplanned. We spent more than an hour at Rocamadour Fermier, a lovely goat farm in the Lot countryside we didn’t know existed. Had we been hellbent on getting to the hillside town of Rocamadour, just a few miles further down the road, we’d have missed it. And despite its dramatic cliffs and photo ops, Rocamadour was a bit disappointing because of its crowds of tourists. The only crowd on the farm was the goats and geese.
4. Try your hand at the language
The French may correct you or answer your most carefully crafted French question in English. But trying to speak their language opens doors, especially outside of Paris. Here at Les Skieurs, after we had a brief chat in French with Madame Jail, the owner, she offered suggestions on where we might eat and stay in Chamonix, two stops down the road on our trip. (She also promised that next time we visit, we’ll rate a room with a balcony.) At Un Patio en Luberon, our B&B in Ansouis, conversation came out in a melange of English, French, German and Italian as guests from four countries found a way to share stories as well as a three-hour meal. On this trip, my 10th or 11th to France, we’re finding many more intermingled French and English conversations than ever before, perhaps because English increasingly is the international language, but the French remain enormously proud of their own. We keep speaking French, even when the answer comes back in English and even though we’re far from fluent.
5. Don’t overeat
This is easier said than done in this country of gastronomy. But eating full meals at lunch and dinner is tantamount to divine death (I’ll spare you the digestive details). Often we skip hotel breakfasts, saving money at a local bakery by grabbing a croissant and an espresso (these cost half of an American coffee with milk). Or on getaway days we’ll pay the $10 or $12 each for a hotel breakfast while Kathy saves enough rolls to carry us through lunch. We eat one big meal a day, either dinner or lunch, depending on where our travels are taking us. Which leads me to No. 6.
Tip No 6 (and more) can be found HERE.
THROW ME A BONE HERE,PEOPLE!
What are ya thinkin’?
5 French Wine Tasting Tips
5 French Wine Tasting Tips – wot – ONLY 5 you say? Well – truth be told – Da Bg would say that they may well be more than 5..but sommelier Magandeep Singh has narrowed ’em down…to get ya properly started in French Wino -dom.
Here’s his rant – from The Financial Express:
“RECENTLY, I returned from judging two very prestigious wine competitions. Like all such exercises, it involves a lot of discipline, a lot of late nights and early mornings, and lots and lots of wine. But the one thing that’s to be imbued in absolutely unbelievable amounts is not the number of business cards or canapés, but humility.
Now, what business could such a mute outdated virtue have at an event, where it’s all about impressing others with your vast knowledge and standing your ground when it comes to awarding a wine? Yes, I, too, have always wondered that. In fact, I also wonder just how they manage to fit in all those big egos and massive heads into spaces as small as stadiums!
And yet I turn up every year, relentless in my journey to hone my wine tasting skills, drinking in the knowledge that seems to brim over from the many gathered luminaries—even ones who are absolute tosspots. As long as they know something more than me, I am happy to tolerate them for some time.
So how does humility help in a wine tasting, especially in a blind one, where nobody will know any better? You could cry yourself hoarse that the previous flight of wines were from Bordeaux and you could be entirely wrong, but by the time the results are compiled—and you find out the percentage of Merlot in one particular wine wasn’t the stated 80%—none would be the smarter. And in spite of it all, you may still be invited back next year to inflict more judges with your egotistical brand of self-promotion.
Trouble is, to do that is to miss out on the joys that a blind tasting can offer. It is best, I believe, to keep your head down, mouth shut and ears and nose open. The lower your head, greater are the chances you will be closer to the glass and will smell something that you may have missed earlier. A shut mouth will automatically open up the other sensory faculties, which could help you listen and learn more about a region or a grape—someone else is sure to be elucidating on such. And an open nose helps just in case you catch that Brett-riddled wine before others do—or worse still, award it a gold medal! Brett smells like discarded Hansaplasts/Band-aids or an unkempt barnyard in case you need a reference point!
So in all humility, here are the five things I picked up from my recent stints as senior judge at the International Wine Challenge and the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles:
1) Never be too sure, for what you may think is one wine could be entirely another. It was one thing to guess styles and regions when most wines were French and Italian, but today, with wines coming in from China to Bulgaria (and even India), there is no telling who will churn out what wine styles.
2) Never be presumptuous. Just because the first sip didn’t go down well, don’t be quick to write off a wine. Give it a second chance.
3) Objectivity over subjectivity. You may abhor a wine style or a grape, or you may eschew oak, but it doesn’t justify marking down a wine because of it.
4) Be pleasant. Most people who make wine—leaving aside the greedy corporate types—make it out of love. In such, they are artists, so their expressions may be askew to you or at a sheer tangent to your tastes, but it doesn’t mean they are wrong. Try and award personality and character rather than culling for consistency and conformity.
Check out Tip#5 HERE
Da BG’s Tour de France Canal Treasures
Da BG’s Tour de France Canal Treasures are just some of the uber-cool and marvy sights at which you will gasp at and drool over on Da Bg’s Tour de France Photo Course Workshop 2015.
Here Are Three:
Which will lead you to Gustave Eiffel’s OTHER masterpiece..
2. The Point du Canal at Briare.
3. The Canal du Midi – winding it’s way through a very big and booty -ess slice o’ this here corner o’ paradise. (but then – I AM kinda prejudiced. – as you’ve probably noticed.)
THROW ME A BONE HERE, PEOPLE!
What are ya thinkin’?
