Check out the video Steve made of our home away from home.  Note, though, that although he is an excellent photographer, he still needs a little more practice with a video camera and narration 🙂

 

Au revoir to La Maison de la Vieille Vigne and Bourgogne. A la prochaine!

Our drive up to Paris was uneventful – we followed the autoroute for the entire distance, for ease and to ensure we had plenty of time to check into our hotel, return the car, eat dinner, and get to bed at a decent time for our very early alarm tomorrow morning.

We got hungry and decided to take our chances with one of the “Aire”, a pull-off centre similar to the service centres along the 401.  But that’s where the similarity ended.  Some Aires have only rest areas with picnic tables and toilettes; some are full service with gas, kids’ play zones, tranquil green rest areas, and food – full course hot meals, sandwich bars, serve yourself microwave stations.  We opted for the sandwich bar and I don’t think I’ve ever had a better sandwich – real roasted chicken with lettuce, tomatoes, and a tasty mayonnaise, all on the freshest bun ever!  Autoroute service stops could actually be a destination.

The Aire did give us reason to pause, though.  The French are supposed to have a zero tolerance for drinking and driving, yet they offer wines and beers at these stops, which are only accessible by car – hmmm…  I guess their reasonable and respectful attitude about drinking supersedes their laws.  Seems it’s their god-given right to drink what they want, when they want, where they want – period.  It works for them – why can’t it work for us, too? Enough said!

With the help of our GPS, it was reasonably easy to get through/around Paris on the Peripherique and find our hotel.  I’m glad we were traveling on a Saturday afternoon, as traffic was bad enough.  Returning the car was also fairly simple although, in my opinion, there could be better signs at the airport (I think I’ve already said that!).  Following our accommodations of the past two weeks, our Novotel hotel room was a big disappointment, but functional.  The only upside was we were still in France, so dinner in the hotel restaurant was excellent.  Ah, back to reality tomorrow.