Chambord, Versailles, Paris, Lille & Ypres

Chambord continued…

We had to move the van from our original parking spot last night and found a place right next to a residential street. Naturally, Rach was worried we shouldn’t be there. She insisted we close all doors, block out all windows and be as quiet as possible. I had to turn off Michael Vaughan’s summary of the 2nd Test.

We woke up the next day and made our way to the chateau. Rach has this knack of getting asked to take peoples’ pictures. Happens quite often. It must be her nice friendly face. That's not sarcasm either, in case you were wondering.

We spent a good three hours exploring the castle. It was as impressive inside as out, a mix of medieval and renaissance, with a massive double helix staircase dominating the middle of the building and big towers shooting up from the terraces at the top. The building is oddly asymmetrical, as lots of these European palaces tend to be. It just adds to the fascination. I’d have to put it on a par with Bourges cathedral, and possibly even Northfield shopping centre.

On the way out of the grounds I got out to take a picture of the place with the van in the foreground. There was a couple in the mid-distance, sat on the grass. The girl was sat on the guy’s lap. It was only as I went to get back in the van that I noticed – they were shagging. Stealth shagging. On one of Francois’ grand lawns! The nerve. As we drove off, I saw the girl giggling and burying her head in the guy’s chest - they knew I knew.

We made our way to Versailles and parked up next to a forest where we planned to spend the next couple of nights.

Versailles

We ended up doing three nights in Versailles as I went absolutely flying coming out of the train station on the way back from the city the next day, spraining my foot and dignity. Had trouble putting weight on the foot so we hung around the van all day the next day so I could recover. It’s a shame I’m letting myself down with my walking because my French is doing okay – the ticket lady at the train station in Versailles felt it necessary to compliment me on it.

We do an awful lot of walking around all the different places we go so obliterating my foot and having to spend time at the van was a welcome pleasure. We had some local entertainment too – there was a little park area next to us, surrounded by forest. On the 2nd night, a couple of lads turned up for a little party at the bottom end of the park. They were blasting French hip-hop – some of it was great. One of them had brought a cat with them. This little grey thing. We’d first noticed it walking (hobbling if you are me) up the forest path on the way back to the van after the day in Versailles, and wondered what it was. When we realised, Rach was ecstatic. She never got to stroke it though which was a source of frustration to her.

The park was also a place where locals came to play boules. On the 3rd day dozens of old boys (and a few young) spent hours playing. It seemed really competitive, like a local league meeting or something. Rach wondered how they got the balls to curve on the gravelly surface. She thought they were playing lawn bowls, the daft bleeder.

Since I clearly had French mastered, we got out the Italian learning kit in the evening and made a start. Let’s see how we get on.

Paris

Thanks to my walking struggles we now only had two days for Paris, as we were meeting Rach’s family in Lille on the Saturday. We would have to be efficient. We’d decided on seeing the big boys – L’Arc de Triomph, Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. We also wanted to see Tarantino’s new film.

L’Arc is crazy. Amazing monument but the roundabout that orbits it is bizarre. It’s the most chaotic island I’ve ever seen. No lanes, just loads of cars bombing round, bibbing their horns, trying not to kill people attempting to get to the attraction. The thing is, there’s no way of getting to it without just picking your moment and running across the road. We made it across and marvelled at the building while a Chinese family narrowly avoided getting run over behind us.

We made our way to the Eiffel Tower, slaloming round the dozens of miniature Eiffel Tower model collections laid out on the floor not being bought.

We sat on the grass at the base of the tower drinking champagne bought off one of the hundreds of guys walking round shouting ‘’beer beer, cigarette!’’ We’d paid over the odds, despite haggling him down; I found out the actual price of the champagne on this wine app I have on my phone. You scan the label and it shows you reviews and the average price in shops. I decided the only course of action was to buy another bottle but this time show the salesman the actual price on the app first to get him to bring his asking price down dramatically, thereby making up for the price we paid for the first bottle. Let’s just say the price displayed on the app was under 2 euros. Upon showing the guy this, he claimed that the bottle shown on the app was ‘’a fake’’, which of course made no sense. We got our discount, and two bottles of beer thrown in. Wasn't bad champagne either considering it cost less than the price of two stamps.

Had a great meal at a local restaurant which I now can’t remember – we were very pissed. However, by the time we got back to the van that night, we were very sober. It took over two hours. There had been a line closure so we somehow ended up having to get two tubes, two trains and a bus back. It was only one train to get into the city so God knows what happened there. To quote Mark Corrigan, it was like we were ‘’trying to get to fucking Mordor’’. I nearly murdered Rach just to put her out of her misery, but decided against it after realising that would mean I had nobody to moan about it all to.

The following day we fought the hangovers while we made our way round the Louvre. It’s such a shame the Venus de Milo’s arms weren’t finished because it would’ve been a great sculpture otherwise. The Mona Lisa was a blur as we were zoomed past it so the hordes behind us could get their chance for a selfie in front of it.

Saw Once Upon a Time In… Hollywood on the evening. Quite possibly Di Caprio’s best ever performance.

The journey back to the van was more bearable this time. Although it did involve a walk through a suburban park in the pitch-black darkness and I nearly got destroyed by a crazy dog. Thankfully it was on a leash.

Lille & Ypres

We spent the weekend with Rach’s family in Lille and Ypres. It was great to see them. It was also nice to spend a weekend in a proper house, thanks to AirBnB.

I struggled to contain myself in the car on the way back from a Sunday afternoon in Lille whilst listening to Ben Stokes pull off his second cricketing miracle of the summer. It struck me that I was in Lisbon when we won the World Cup, and Lille for this Ashes miracle. I just need to make sure I’m in a place beginning with ‘L’ for the next match.

Rach’s dad suggested crossing the border into Belgium to visit Ypres on the Sunday evening. It was only half an hour away.

Lille was okay, but what a place Ypres is. So picturesque and clean. They hold a ceremony every night of the year for WW1 servicemen whose bodies were never found. Every. Single. Night. People from around the world come to lay poppy wreaths during the ceremonies, and the band play the Last Post at the end. So many British lay in Belgium, I didn’t realise. Thousands of names line the walls of the monument built to commemorate them, under which the ceremony takes place. It was a memorable experience.

Before they left, Rach’s mum did all our washing and her dad fitted us a 3rd leisure battery. God bless ‘em. I was waiting for Rach's sister, Zoe to offer to wash the van roof but she didn't, the waste of space.

Recommended park up in Ypres:

http://park4night.com/lieu/12765/