Happy New Year and welcome to the French Alps, Chrysa!

After celebrating the Christmas holiday with C's family in Maryland, we drove a couple of hours to the French Alps, near the scenic town of Briançon. The tiny and winding road going straight from Nice was blocked because of snow falls, so we went through Italy and the area of Torino. For an overview of our travels, check out our itinerary on Tripline.



We had booked 3 nights in a hotel right on the ski run front in Saint Chaffrey, a few miles up the road from  Briançon. We had not been on skis since leaving Colorado, so it had been a while! Luckily as we all know this is pretty much like biking or driving, it's still there (stretching was quite a requirement though). We skied on both January 1st and 2nd. Our first day was sunny and lovely, and our second day was powdery with some fresh snow flakes that made us look like snowmen. We loved every second of it!

And we ate twice for dinner at restaurant Le Triptyque, the kind of modern/traditional fusion bistro that we both enjoy. Unforgettable!

Back in Nice, we celebrated Epiphany with Sascha...

Wine tasting in the heart of Provence

C caressing grapes

B and B backyard

The first time that Chrysa visited France,
Q&C visited a winery in Alsace. About halfway through the wine tasting, C declared "We have to live in France" and this was the beginning of a long relationship with French wines.

Now that we have an address in France, we thought it was high time to visit our local vineyards and plans for a romantic weekend getaway were made. C had heard of the famous Chateauneuf-du-pape (which translates to new castle of the pope) wine region and was quite happy to realize that Nice is just a 3 hour drive from there. C did a bit of research online to find some "vignerons independent" or independent winemakers that had won awards for their wines to visit, and Q found a very scenic bed and breakfast place to stay for the weekend. We left after work on Friday and three hours later we were in the heart of Provence, enjoying some wine.

apricot cake + lavender

When we arrived at our very scenic bed and breakfast we enjoyed a lovely French dinner accompanied by some red wine from the owner's vineyards. We eagerly accepted their invitation to a wine tasting at their cave the next day, together with John, an American who was treating himself to a trip to France. At the Chateau du Mourre du Tendre they only age their wine in stainless steel tanks and not in wood so that the taste of the grapes really comes through (although this is uncommon in Chateauneuf).

After our morning (!) wine-tasting, we visited a quaint French town nearby, Gigondas, where we had a lovely lunch under the cool shade of the trees. After walking around the town and exploring their herb garden with a fantastic view of the Chateauneuf-du-Pape region, we came back closer to town for our second tasting of the day.

C + wine

At Vignobles Mousset-Barrot we really enjoyed the fruity reds that they made and picked up even more wines for our cellar! We ended the day with a driving tour around the little mountain with breathtaking views of the countryside. When we came back to our B&B, we were invited over for a glass of champagne by our hosts and their family which turned into a lively discussion with more bottles of liquors, one made by some nearby monks in an abbey. A plan was hatched.

Q in the sunshine

On Sunday we had to leave our newly found slice of paradise and return to our other slice of paradise on the French Riviera. We decided that on the way back we would stop at the Frigolet abbey to buy some liquor and then stop at another vigneron for a wine tasting in the Coteaux d'Aix en Provence appellation. So we arrived at the abbey just before the end of mass and waited for the shop to open afterwards. The abbey is really very peaceful especially with the monks singing and C felt just a little bit guilty for driving all the way up the mountain to buy alcohol on a Sunday. But hey, we're still supporting the monks, right? [note from Q: Q did not feel guilty]

View with lavender

We then moved on further into the mountains and came across a perfect picnic spot next to a windmill [note from Q: missing the Danish winds, perhaps...]. After lunch, we visited our last vigneron independant, the Chateau Petit Sonnailler, which is located well into the hills and mountains of countryside, very far from the hustle and bustle of life. It also happens to be a B&B (next time! :-). Here, we enjoyed all of their wines, but we have to say that their Rosé was the best of the trip.

the happy couple

vines + mountains

vines in lines

a first glimpse of the Abbey

windblown trees

lookout! here comes Don Quixote!

Provence...

With the car now riding low in the back (!), we returned to the Cote d'Azur, very pleased with our weekend getaway to the French countryside in Provence.

Cours Saleya and Villefranche-sur-mer

So! Having arrived in Nice just the day before, we started to explore the area. The first stop was the famous Cours Saleya flower market. Why a flower market you may ask? Because in addition to flowers, it has pretty much everything that you could want to eat and more.


Located in Vieux Nice, everyday except Monday, local producers setup their stalls to sell fruits and veggies, spices, eggs, sausages, bread, honey (made from bees that pollenated lavender fields) and jams. This is definitely C's favorite place in Nice.


After shopping, we grabbed a pissaladiere, a local specialty with bread, onions and a little sardine on top and headed to the promenade des anglais, which is the local "board walk" next to the sea to munch on our goodies. At home, we then had a feast, which started with a local melon and some prosciutto made in Corsica. So tasty.

Later on that weekend, we ventured to the small town next door, Villefranche-sur-mer. We imagine that Nice was like this town maybe 100 years ago, but now has been completely built up. In Villefranche we ate at the La Mere Germaine, a fabulous restaurant that we first discovered five years ago during our first trip to the south of France. Our table was right on the water by the little harbor and we thoroughly enjoyed our meal. Q would eat here everyday if our budget allowed! Afterwards, we went for a swim on the beach, a lovely end to the afternoon.

Making it into 2011... hidden in a closet...

After our exciting but busy trip throughout some of Europe's principal cities like Paris, Brussels and Strasbourg, we opted to spend New Year's Eve at our place in Aarhus. A fine meal made of fresh crayfish with home made mayonnaise, als home made carrot soup, and a cake from one of the best patisseries in town. We also had our bottle of Henriot champagne that we imported ourselves from France, naturally...

The big event associated with New Year here in Denmark is private fireworks looking like professional ones, and coming from pretty much every other household. Of course the peak was from midnight until 2am on New Year's Eve, but we started hearing them quite frequently after sundown (around 4pm these days) since December 30th, and way until January 7th or 8th. And on December 31st, people did not even wait for sunset to start lighting their firecrackers. On that day we heard the first bangs around noon.

With this increasing agitation outside, we quickly learned that Sascha was in need of special attention and care. Apparently fireworks are a well-known cause of stress for pets that can be quite traumatizing. Q knew this about his old dog, but we never really had a chance to witness this with Sascha earlier. Fireworks were not that common in Colorado (and more regulated). So we actually felt fortunate that we had decided to spend our New Year's Eve at home, in order to not make him any more anxious than he already was.

We actually found that the safest thing to do was to give him half a pill of the sedative we had gotten for him a year ago when we brought him to Europe by plane. Combined with organizing hiding places at the bottom of various kitchen cabinets, that seemed to do the trick. At least, he survived!

And so did we! From hearing the war-like explosions all around us at the turn of the year, we felt much safer to not have had to go anywhere... That may seem like an over-reaction, but we did hear on a daily basis the ambulance sirens shortly after the peak of fireworks festivals. We were also told that every year at least one house (only one?) gets set on fire because of poorly handled fireworks. Well, it was quite a windy night...

But fireworks were actually quite nice seen from the safety of our home, through our large windows. It was sort of non stop, so we'd regularly pause our meal to go check out what was happening. Sort of like a free show! Check out the movie to see what we mean...

Catching up on 2010: Christmas in Alsace - and an anniversary!!

Because of the cold, our train shuttling between Strasbourg and Paris arrived an hour late in Paris, and then by an additional hour late back to Strasbourg. Well, we just had a late dinner!

We celebrated Christmas in Niederbronn-les-Bains, just like the year before, thereby also marking the first anniversary of this blog!

Thanks to all of you for following us and for supporting us through your m

essages during this first year. We hope you are enjoying checking out our blog as much as we are enjoying putting it together. In that first year, we have not quite traveled completely around the globe yet, but we have covered some distance from Panama to Polynesia, and from our new home country Denmark to Southern Europe or to the US. Let's hope that in 2011 we can cover some of the missing distance to make it a full "around the globe" travel blog!

Alright, so back to the root so to speak (Q's roots) and our Christmas celebration in Alsace. We had plenty of snow—after nothing in Paris—not too surprisingly for Alsace at this time of the year. We spent a day or so in Strasbourg, to check out their actually much more awesome 25 meter-tall Christmas tree (no bias, no bias...) and hit another of C's favorite fashion stores, Desigual. They just had opened a new store in Strasbourg, so that was the perfect time to be there and get some freebies in addition to the cool clothe.

We headed out for Niederbronn, where Q's grand father has this gigantic home in the Vosges mountains. The snow everywhere was great, and made for a perfect Christmas scenery! Some more good times with the family, playing games around the Christmas tree, building a snowman, drinking some champagne, opening presents...

Then in the late evening of the 25th, we boarded our night train toward Aarhus. 14 hours total (most of them spent in our matchbox-sized compartment), with one stop in Hamburg, Germany.

It was quite bumpy, but we made it. Snow was covering the mostly flat landscape all the way back, which was truly reminiscent of some scenes of Doctor

Zhivago. The complete whiteness also made the dark deers quite noticeable everywhere.

Ah, back to the Northern realities!