Wednesday, July 6, 2011

4. Chateau, trains and taxis





We decided to get out of Paris for awhile, so planned a trip to Chateau de Vaix-le-Vicomte, way out of town. We had to use feet, Metro and train to make the jump to Melun, a town near the chateau, then take the bus from Melun to the Chateau. It was really fun riding Metro to the train station at Gare de Lyon, then switching to rail train from there...we had a couple of mis-steps linking up with the correct train, but made it OK. We took a "local" which stopped at lots of little towns along the way, and gave us a chance to meet a lot of really nice people who spoke no English. Lynn had some great conversations, and kept us pointing the right direction. She visited with one lady who was holding  a small Jack Russel terrier on her lap with an injured leg and a big plastic cone around its neck...she told me it would bite so I stayed away. We arrived in Melun, to find that bus service is only on weekends. So we took a taxi, BMW 5-series diesel, with a nice driver who blabbed with us a lot in French. Beautiful countryside for the drive, can't wait to get out on my bike in this kind of stuff next week.

The Chateau visit was fun, very few people were there...perhaps because they were using the premises to film a French TV show, "Les Virtuouses"...a crew member told us it's a drama/spy/thriller. We saw equipment all over the place, couldn't go in some rooms while they were filming, and we always seemed to miss the chance to take pics of the actors. One actress' picture was part of the set, so I took a picture of THAT picture, so maybe we can ID her later. We walked all over the Chateau, including some underground rooms, one of which had just been used for a shoot-out scene in the movie being filmed. We got there just in time to see the crew packing away fake machine guns and weaponry. Hard working bunch, those filmies!

After exploring their horse-drawn carriage museum (hey, we paid full admission!) and getting some lunch, we taxi'd back to Melun in an Audi A6 diesel for the train back to Paris. This time we got the express train...no stops, trip barely more than 45 minutes. We passed several train yards with TGV's parked, looking aerodynamic and fast, TGV's are France's "bullet trains", about 200 mph between towns. We're taking one to Dinan Saturday. yay!

Tonight will be a walk on some of the beautiful bridges over the Seine, and hopefully some street-vendor eats for a light fun supper: Croque Monsieur and crepe Nutella are what I'm looking for. Let ya know how that works out later.

PIC Captions:  Lynn and our train from Melun at Gare de Lyon.
                        Lynn at Chateau de Vaix de Vicomtec. Note the dome!
                        John atop the dome.
                        Killing time waiting for the cab after Chateau'ing.
CLICK here for all photos and vids:
2011 Dinan and Paris French Adventure

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