Skip to main content

Here we go again!! (subtitle: If we are traveling to Europe, of course Kathy is writing another blog!)




France...again?!?  Well, let me explain...

Two years ago we explored much of France with Gary's brother John and his wife Babette https://4huntsinfrance.blogspot.com).  We spent one month and covered a lot of ground; our main stopping points were Amboise, Sarlat, Carcassonne, Collioure, Avignon, Annecy, Colmar, and Paris - spending 3-5 days in each town.  Now, if you were to plot those cities/towns out on a map, you would see that we were only in central, southern, and eastern France. So it only seems fitting that we round out our French explorations with another trip to France, this time covering more of the western side of the country. And this time we are adding another brother and sister-in-law to the group. We have previously travelled to Europe twice with Ron and Lenore and had great fun traveling with them on a Mediterranean cruise/Barcelona/Istanbul and also Norway/Ireland/Scotland.  So now 3 Hunt brothers and their wives will be exploring Bordeaux, and Dinan (in Brittany), before ending in Paris.  It sounds grand, and I hope you will follow along!

I was originally going to call this blog "THE DAYS OF WINE AND OYSTERS"; a fitting name for our blog as we will be going to 2 areas known for their fabulous oysters...and isn't all of France known for wine?!   But recently Gary and I had lunch in SF at a French restaurant called "Bon Délire".  I knew "bon" means good, but I wasn't familiar with the word "délire".  In reading the menu it explained that the phrase "bon délire" means "good fun".  That is a loose translation, as the word délire actually translates to "delirium", which makes me like the phrase even more!  I'm sure the 6 of us will have fits of delirium (in a good way!) as we live and travel together for 18 days!  We will fly into Paris, take the train to Bordeaux where we will stay for 5 days.  There are 2 little day trips that we plan to take - we will visit the town of Saint-Emilion which is a quaint town known for its wine, and we will visit the towns of Arcachon and Cap Ferret which are right on the ocean and are famous for oysters! We will then take a train to Tours and pick up our rental car (actually a van, since there will be six of us and all our luggage!).  We will drive west and make our home for 5 days in the little medieval  town of Dinan.  While in Dinan we hope to take day trips to both Mont Saint-Michel and the WW2 beaches in Normandy.  After 5 days, we will return the car in Rennes and take the train to Paris for 5 days. (It's been 25 years since Gary and I and our boys went to Versailles, so we hope to spend one of our Paris days actually in Versailles.)  I'm already wishing we had more time in each place because the more research I do, the more cool things I find that I want to experience!

France '25 travel route (Paris/Bordeaux/Tours-pick up car/Dinan/Rennes-ditch the car/Paris)

I had been debating getting us matching luggage tags as a little kick-off to our trip,, but I couldn't settle on anything fun to print on them.  "the Hunt family travel club" seemed a bit much, and just our names seemed too boring.  But when I learned of the phrase "bon délire", I knew it had to go on our matching luggage tags.  I am anticipating tons of "good fun" as we explore the land of wine and oysters, and experience bon délire along the way!! 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Our first wrinkle!

And no, I'm not talking about facial wrinkles - although between the 6 of us seniors we do have just a few  of those! I'm talking about a transportation strike wrinkle!!  The French LOVE a strike so I guess we should be embracing the upcoming strike action as part of the "true" French experience!  Last week it was announced that there would be a one day transit strike on Sept. 10, and a one day nationwide strike on Sept. 18, backed by France's eight major unions...and if anybody loves a strike it is SNCF (the French national train company) so I'm pretty sure they will participate.  This announcement has left us all scrambling a bit.  John and Babette were set to arrive in Paris on Sept. 10, and we have already purchased train tickets for travel between Bordeaux and Dinan on Sept. 18.  One good thing about French strikes, they are required by law to announce exactly who will be striking 24 hours ahead of the called strike.  So far, we have heard talk of...

September 11-12 Travel day!

 Here we go (or as the French say, "on y va"!  All that planning and the day is finally here!  We were picked up by Ron and Lenore and the chattiest driver you ever saw!  Tons of traffic getting to SFO and I was so glad we had built in "extra time" to get to the airport. We have flown French Bee several times to France.  If you are not familiar with this airline, it is a budget airline, prices can't be beat, but it is NOT fancy.  This time however, we opted to travel in the "Premium" section of the plane.  I wouldn't call it "1st class", but by budget airline criteria, its as close to 1st class as you can get! As soon as we walked into the International Terminal at SFO we headed to the Premier check-in counter and we were the 1st ones there, checked in super quickly and headed toward our gate.  We knew the airplane food would not be gluten-free for Gary so we opted to spend our time eating an early dinner at the Gott's Roadside Diner ...