Eating all the pastry in Blois and Lyon

We are writing this blog during our first dorm experience at a hostel in Lyon. So far we have managed to have private rooms or hotel rooms so this is a new experience. 

It’s been a while since we showed a photo from the road, so here is Simon getting his hair cut in Lyon. Yep we only bring you the good stuff. 

Following Paris we are doing a little more of France, this post we discover Blois in the Loire Valley and Lyon the second biggest city after Paris. 

Blois

We took the early morning train to arrive in Blois at 9am, giving us a full day to fill. For breakfast we enjoyed possibly the best croissant we have ever eaten, and must admit we are eating far too much pastry - but when in France… Our mornings are always starting with pastry which is a divine treat, but is not a sustainable practice. 

It is evident that Blois was once a royal city, situated on the Loire river it boasts well-kept Renaissance buildings and stunning little winding narrow backroads. We chose to stay in Blois as it is one of the bigger towns in the Loire Valley. The Loire Valley itself is famous for all its 42 chateau which make up a UNESCO world heritage site. In summer the Loire Valley is meant to be spectacular just to hire a bike and ride around some of the 800km of bike paths through the forests and to the chateaus. Given its winter we chose not to ride a bike around, and to keep it simple choosing just one chateau to visit. We have seen a lot of beautiful houses, palaces and castles and there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. 

We spent the morning walking the medieval part of town, these streets were quiet and were ours alone to explore – it was almost magical. We finished up at Saint Nicolas which was built in the 11^th Century.

For morning tea (this has only become part of our routine now we are in France) we indulged in sharing a chocolate éclair. It was everything we expected an éclair in France would be, so so so delicious and filled to the brim with chocolate custard. 

Today Simon let Amy navigat

As we chose only one chateau, we went for one of the most extravagant - Chambord chateau. It is 156 metres long, 56 metres tall, has 77 staircases, 282 fireplaces, and 426 rooms, so it took a little while to explore. This was good because in low season there was only one bus every 4 hours, so we were there for 4 hours whether we liked it or not. 

The chateau apart from being huge, is stunning.  There is an ingenious and unique staircase that is in the shape of a double helix, so if 2 people take one flight they will see each other through the openings but never meet. This was cutting edge architecture but unfortunately the architect is unknown, but it is strongly believed to be Leonardo DaVinci who was friends with the king and living in Loire at the time. All of this is nice, but for us it was the detail on the roof which made this place special and unique. This extravagant chateau is situated on 5440 hectares full of wild animals and can be explored at length if you want. On a winters day exploring a forest was the farthest thing from our minds, and chose to have hot wine in the bar.  

The roof

Inside the middle of the staircase looking up

We had a late and relaxed dinner at an intimate traditional French restaurant where we pampered ourselves with a 3 course meal and a bottle of red (rouge) from a local winery. It is tricky to tell what you are ordering with wine as they don’t come with the same names we are used to e.g. Shiraz, Cab Merlot etc. Perhaps they use different varieties of grapes? The menu was all in French which means you know you are eating where the locals do, but at the same time you have no idea what you are eating. Yes you can always ask, but there is no guarantee they can speak English and you’re lucky if you can figure out what type of meat it is. We had the most superb dinner with mains of confit pork and venison, we still don’t know what sauce was with them because we don’t know French, but it was delicious – whatever it was. We confirmed that the French know how to do a magnificent chocolate mousse. 

We had a lazy breakfast in a well reputed patisserie and set out to explore this beautiful little town some more. We took another town walk, again through a set of winding back streets but this time in the Renaissance part of town. We stopped at the Jardins de I’Eveche for one of the best views of Blois. It was nice to have time to actually be present in a little town and see it properly, often we are in cities and have no chance of seeing everything, and are running around constantly. 

This is just in the back streets

For afternoon tea (yes we know we will probably get fat), we stopped at the well reputed Eric Saquez Patisserie which had some of the most exquisite creations we had seen so far. We chose what looked good, given that we can’t read French we hoped for the best (as you can see they were beautiful). As far as we can tell the big one was chocolate and hazelnut and the orange one was mandarin – they were both full of unbelievably delicate and rich layers.  

Off to the train we went…

Lyon

Our journey to Lyon was one of style going first class all the way. Somehow, we don’t know how, the first class tickets were on this occasion cheaper than the 2^nd class tickets so we snapped them up without hesitation and enjoyed a very comfy ride. 

It is always strange arriving in a new place at night and going straight to where we’re staying without a clue of what the place around you looks like, but that makes the morning more interesting. For our two nights in Lyon we had our first dorm experience of the trip so far. We always try and stay close to centre of town to avoid too much transit time but Lyon was prohibitive for a hotel so we went classic backpacker. Overall our experience was not bad, certainly not compared to some of the horror stories we’ve heard from friends. Whilst we are not keen to do it again and we certainly are glad we are staying in hotels for the most part of our journey, but you can see the merits of a hostel.

We were both unsure what Lyon had to offer, we knew it was a gastronomic powerhouse boasting some spectacular food but that aside we had no clue. Simon had a quick look online and found a few things to go see along with a French cooking school that offered day courses. With much excitement we booked on for the A-Z croissant course for the next day’s afternoon.

Our first nights ‘sleep’ was a chilly one, cuddled up in the foetal position to conserve warmth, and somewhat uncomfortable on the cliché bunk beds. When we walked out we couldn’t believe how cold it was! It had been below freezing the night before and everything was iced and frosted including the footpath making for a slippery walk to our first destination.

Our navigation was successfully thwarted by the surrounding landscape of incredibly steep hills and sheer cliff faces. A small frustrated Simon tantrum later we found our first stop, the main square of Lyon. Featuring an incredible and very large fountain.

Heading north again we made our croissant class led by our teacher, Lucy. Lucy has immigrated to France from the US where she then studied and became a patissier before opening her own cooking school. Living the dream there! In an intimate class of just six we set about learning the art and science of croissant making.

It would seem there is a heck of a lot of effort that goes into making those delicious buttery scrolls of delight. We spent the next 3 hours learning how to fold, make a butter rectangle, roll correctly and many handy hints and tips that aren’t in a recipe. There is no way we would have attempted to do this at home, but after Lucy’s instruction I think we will give it a red hot go at some point on our return.

Simon was first up on demonstration, here he is showing you how to make sure the dough doesnt stick to the bench

The key is to roll the croissants loosly, so they rise perfectly

Lucy showing skills of a champion laying perfectly rolled out butter onto the dough

The folding is a hugely important step in getting your croissants just right - if you fold it wrong you comprimise the integrity of the dough, and your butter may not be evenly spread.

Doing a French cooking class was one of the big things on our to do list in France and whilst croissants is not a main meal and to the uninitiated it does not look like a complicated task we learnt that there is more to baking them than just throwing some ingredients together, mix and heat. There is an awful lot of science and chemistry that goes into croissants along with love and a gentle touch!

With our freshly baked croissants in hand we said farewell to Lucy and the wonderful group we met, and determined to come back to Lucy's school to do all the other classes she has available. Check out her website and incredible blog if you like French food.

You must focus on everything - especially remembering to brush excess flour off your dough

Simon egg washing like a pro

Voila! The finished product - very very yummy!

We had intended to do a traditional Lyon restaurant but we ended up at a Creole restaurant which was a fabulous fusion of Caribbean and French.After another nights ‘sleep’ this time melting away (they had over compensated the heating after complaints of being cold last night) we set out to cram in as much as we could in the 3 hours we had before departing.

First stop of the day with the basilique notre-dame de fourviere placed on the top of a hill on the edge of one of the three rivers that pass through Lyon. To get to the top we took a funicular the same as one we took in Norway. Being a foggy morning the views were a little spoiled and in typical European fashion the front of the place was covered in scaffolding! Heading inside though we were blown away by one of the most ornate and beautiful interiors we have seen to date. The colour scheme was very different, it was full of vibrant pastel pinks and blues with touches of gold. 

A cloudy view of Lyon

Heading back down the funicular and back on the metro we went across town to see the Ampitheatre of the Three Gauls. Which is a 2000 year old Roman amphitheatre. On arrival though we had to look through the gates as an art display was being set up for the Festival of Lights that is on this weekend. The most busy and massive thing on the Lyon calendar and we missed it by two days… Putting it on the list for next time. It is essentially like Enlighten in Canberra only much bigger and better.

Pushing further up hill on foot we came to Chocolat! A very fancy chocolatier with a waterfall of chocolate down one of their walls. However we were greeted in the stereotypical snooty French fashion of disapproving looks up and down and disapproving stare that we really hadn’t experienced anywhere to date, given that we left without purchase despite intending to buy. We went around the corner to another chocolatier and picked up a mixed bag of gourmet chocolates to enjoy on the train.

Rushing back to the hostel we checked out and hoofed to the train station and boarded our ride to Nice… 

 

or so we thought.

Just a regular shop window!

The Train

Welcome to a bonus section that is being written live as it happens.

We were to catch a train from Lyon to Valence and then change to another train to Nice. However after boarding our second train an announcement was made in French and a girl bolted off the train at the speed of light dragging everything she had with her. We shrugged, thought she must be on the wrong train and left it at that. Turns out we think it was an important announcement that if in English or we spoke French we would have paid more attention to. Regardless we set off without a care in the world.

Two hours later the train slowed and everyone around us grabbed their belongings, Simon checked upstairs and in another carriage and everyone else had done the same, we weren’t meant to get off for another 2 hours, what is going on? We asked in our carriage and found that we were indeed on the wrong train and it was terminating in Montpellier. We were on the French Mediterranean coast, just the wrong side of France.

Frantically we rushed off the train and found an SNCF staff member who pointed us to a conductor, the conductor was unsure but mentioned a Marseilles train and pointed us to the ticket office, terrified we would have to purchase new tickets we went to the ticket office. The lady at the entrance was unsure and said we would have to buy new tickets and possibly stay overnight in Marseilles. That not being an acceptable option we pressed her for a better outcome and she pointed us to the information office. Speaking to a another woman in the information office who thankfully spoke very good English we eventually came to a fortunate solution, they gave us new tickets to Nice that would get us there at 10.30pm instead of the 6.30 we were initially meant to. She also made it clear this was a very special exception and normally we would have to pay. Thanking her profusely in both English and French we set about our wait for our train to Marseille (from which I am typing now) and then a 1.5 hour wait for the connection to Nice.

We’re still not completely sure what happened and how we ended up on the wrong train. The platform and coach were correct. We’re determined to not let it happen again though and thoroughly ask everyone we see up til we’re sitting down that we’re on the right train. In summary the trip that was to take 5.5 hours has taken 9.5 hours and added several grey hairs.

Frustrated - waiting for 1.5 hours in Marsaille we had been travelling for about 7 hours at this point.

Parting Thoughts

Blois was a great chance to slow right down and get into the depths of an ancient town. Wandering the windy narrow streets of bygone eras but still seeing traces and hints of that history in the buildings that still stand was really cool. We loved Blois sleepy feeling which we imagine transforms in summer. It would’ve been nice to get out to the countryside more and see some vineyards but without a car this is difficult. Adding it to the ‘next time’ list.

Lyon was somewhat of a mixed bag. I don’t think we came in prepared enough to see the right things and go to the right areas. The highlight was the cooking class and we did cram in some cool things before we left but we missed out on a heck of a lot. A valuable lesson in preparing our time carefully and checking many sources for what to see and do. A shame we are not in town for their light festival as the glimpses we saw of them setting up and rehearsing looked mind blowing. We will give Lyon another go in the future.

• Chocolate is very big here, perhaps because France is so close to Belgium? It’s delicious but nothing tops Belgium.

• Everyone should learn how to make croissants, just so you can learn how good they can be, and how much of baking is chemistry. 

• Whilst we found language a moderate barrier in Paris, it has rapidly become clear that very little English is spoken in the more regional areas of France. This makes things a little trickier, but its all part of the journey. 

• Spending a few days to ride a bike through the Loire region with the sun shining while stopping at a few local wineries would be perfect – and this is how we would do it next time.

• Every time you get a little faith in humanity restored, such as getting new tickets and a way to our destination you see something else that makes you wonder if people will make it another century. Please be the person who restores peoples faith in humanity!

Xoxo

Simon and Amy

NO SELFIES but plenty of our faces already in this blog :)