France 2017 – Paris part 3 (he said)
10 Oct 2017 by KentSeptember 13 – October 7, 2017 – Paris to Auxerre. In parallel with all the tech museums, we found time to socialize at the port, take lots of walks around Paris, and visit St Denis Cathedral. St Denis is famous for having most of the kings of France buried in its choir (your “A”-listers) or down in the crypt (the rest). The list runs almost uninterrupted from Clovis I (in the early 6th century) to Louis XVIII (1824).
Interestingly, the stone statues that decorate the sarcophagi bear no resemblance at all to the actual kings and queens whom they represent. Because it was not a practice to paint likenesses until the 15th or so century, no one actually knew what the early monarchs looked like, certainly not the artist called in to sculpt the effigy. Thus, the carving of “Louis the Fat” looks almost exactly like that of “Pepin the Short”.
One other first-time Paris activity for us was visiting the Cligancourt flea market. This is the Mount Rushmore of flea markets; covering about 18 acres, with over 3,000 vendors, the Marché aus Puces is considered the largest flea market in the world. It is ludicrously big, and you can buy almost anything there. We found an entire shop devoted to lapel pins. Another shop was filled with vintage pinball machines, and yet another was all antique nautical stuff.
On our last full day we helped a friend move her 45-ton barge ten hours down-river to her winter parking place, then spent the night onboard and took the RER (suburban train system) back to Paris. Our cruise back to Burgundy for our winter parking went without incident, and ended the summer with only 74 more hours on the engine. In a normal cruising season, we spend twice as much time moving the boat, but this year’s combination of a short time in country plus spending three weeks parked in Paris means we’ll need to do some extra cruising next year to make up for lost ground.
Once we had the boat put away in Auxerre, we rented a car and did some touring to visit friends and wineries (not necessarily in that order). On the “friends” front, we drove to southern Burgundy and visited our friends Lynn and Ron, who live most of the year in France, but who recently came over to the dark side and bought a powerboat that they use in the winter, cruising the south-east USA. We also hiked to La Roche de Solutré, an escarpment that hangs over the wine-growing area of Pouilly-Fuissé.
Wine-wise, we visited several small Burgundy producers, but the standout, by far, was Domaine d’Ardhuy, which owns 42 separate plots all around the Côte d’Or. The taste of their various wines ranges from outstanding to exquisite, and, incredibly, they let us taste a Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru (pe. They have plots in some of the most famous names in wine, including the aforementioned Corton-Charlemagne, plus Clos de Vougeot, Puligny-Montrachet, Pommard, Vosne Romanée, and Gevrey-Chambertin. We of course bought some (of the less costly but still amazing Meursault) to bring home to our special stash, to the dismay of our wallets.
A final stop on our way back to Auxerre was to visit the Château de Savigny-lès-Beaune. If you click this link you’ll see why this is no ordinary, “I’ve seen 30 French chateaux before” kind if place: (https://goo.gl/maps/w8YfqaaVhHQ2). It should come up in satellite view, and looking south from the chateau itself, in the top-center of the image, you’ll see what I mean.
The owner is a collector, about whom serious collectors say, “wow, he has quite a collection.” Sure, he has the standard warehouse full of race cars, motorcycles, even a nice collection of fire engines, plus an entire floor of the chateau devoted to model cars. But the real attraction is his 98 (!) fighter planes (mostly jets, plus a few helicopters) from around the world. He has an almost complete collection of Soviet MIG aircraft, plus every variant of the French Mirage fighter, plus Italian, German, and American planes. In the courtyard in front of the main door, pride-of-place (so to speak), he has an American F-16, a Mirage III, and an F-104 Starfighter.
Even if you have no interest in military aircraft, you still need to see, in person, his acres of relatively modern fighter aircraft, in among the vineyards of Savigny. It makes for quite a strange combination.
Next up, our final week in France, where we visit our friends Marianne and Jean-Pierre, formerly of Dijon, who now live on the Med coast not far from St. Tropez.