Day 1 - Chateau de Chantore and Avranches (Normandy)

After years since we moved back to the US, we finally found our way back in Europe for a road trip in northwest France.  Here is how our first day went: flight arrived on time despite the delayed departure but we got stuck in the airport for additional time that was not expected. The customs line was extremely long, and it took over an hour to get through. Then, the airport exit was locked down due to an a suspicious piece of luggage that was forgotten. 😞 We were told later that this happens often. Things definitely have changed with security is now.

Getting the rental car was no problem, and so off we go towards the west. Before long, we ran into a toll booth. One after another and another... we probably went through 5 toll booths and spent about 20 - 25 euros. I totally forgot how expensive it is to drive in France but Josh remembered it. 😂



After a while, Jet lag kicked in and the little one felt asleep. Can't blame her since getting out of Paris wasn't exactly very interesting.

Finally we approached our first stop Chateau de Chantore. The view of the chateau was breathtaking and certainly kept Sophie awake. Of course  she was completely recharged and ready to explore while Josh finally needed to crash.

We were welcome by 2 extremely excited roosters who kacodoododo nonstop and 2 beautiful peacocks... quite funny actually... so french... totally free range chickens that roaming around as if they owned the entire property. Our host was very nice and also welcome us with homemade apple cider and apple juice from the property in the room below.

Sophie and I took a walk around the property and checked out their pets which included horses, swans, ducks, chickens, peacocks, bees... Here is another view of the chateau. Sophie was so happy that she felt like she was in "Disney" and "she was in the fairy tale." (her exact words)

On our way to the dinner...
Josh asked Sophie: is France like what you imaged?
Sophie: It's even more MAGICAL.
😁😂 That's our girl!! So glad she is enjoying it as much as we are.

Our dinner restaurant was recommended and the reservation was made by our host. It was a short drive to the town of Avranches directly in the city center.

First course was salad in cream liquidized form and it's in a tiny cup. Sophie's reaction: Salad?? 😲😂😄

Second course:

Beef cheek

Foie gras

Pate (from kids menu)

 

Mullet 

Stuffed Pigeon

Veal (from kids menu)

Here comes the main course


 Can you believe what's on the kids menu! PATE and Veal!!! We were not sure how big the serving size was so we ordered some for Sophie as well.

After main course was local cheeses and the then finished with desserts. We were completely STUFFED. 

Bolognese Meat Sauce

This recipe is modified from a cook book I got when we traveled to Italy. It's simple and straight forward and has been my favorite meat sauce ever since.

Ingredients:
1.5 lb ground beef
.5 lb un-somked bacon, chopped
2 brown diced onions
2 cups diced celery
2 cups diced carrots
4 cloves
1 cup chicken stock
2T tomato paste
1T black peppercorns

Directions:
Crisp the bacon in a dutch oven saucepan or pot. Scoop out the excess fat from the bacon. Add ground beef and cook until the meat turns a nice brown color. Add vegetables and cook for 5 minutes under medium heat. Add tomato paste, cloves, black peppercorns and just enough stock to cover the mixture. Bring up to boil then turn to low heat and simmer for 2 hours.

The secret is the more it cooks (without burning), the better it will be. Add more stock or water if it needs but without exaggerating. The sauce should be moist but not liquid.

I like to freeze half of it for when I don't have time to cook.

The Simplest BBQ Pork Ribs

Ingredients:
3lb  Pork spareribs or baby back ribs
1 bottle of any store bought BBQ sauce you like

Directions:
Put ribs in the slow cooker covered just enough cold water over them. Add 2-3T salt then cook for 4 hours in high temperature just as the meat is about to fall of the bones.

Finish cooking in the oven:
Preheat over at 400 F. Put the rib on baking sheet and generously apply bbq sauce on the ribs.  Bake for about 20 minutes. Flip the ribs twice and reapply sauce during cooking.

Finish cooking on the grill:
Generously apply bbq sauce on the ribs and cook them in the mid low heat for about 10 to 15 minutes. Flip the ribs twice and reapply sauce during grilling.

Beef Noodle Soup

Phyllis, this is for you. I hope you like it. Thanks to you, this is the first post ever since we moved back to the US. Compared to my first attempt of beef noodle soup posted back in July 2007, the recipe definitely has improved over the years. I don't exactly measure everything... so it's all my estimate. You can adjust the spices/ flavor to your like. 

Bundles of Baby Boy Choy, Noodles, 2 lb Beef Shank , 1 large Onion, 1 can 28oz crushed Tomatoes (I use San Marzano - less acidy) , 1 lb Carrots, 2 T or more Hot bean past (taiwanese style), soy sauce to taste

 Cut the beef shank to chunks.

Bring a pot of water to boil and gently put beef into the boiling water for about 2 - 4 minutes. Get the beef out and set aside.

 Cut onions and carrots.

Brown/ caramelize onions in a soup pot in mid heat.

Add beef (not juice) and hot bean paste to the pot and stir together until the meat is coated evenly with the bean paste about 2 minutes.

 Add tomato, carrots, and 8 - 10 cups water.











Add spices bag (from Taiwan, I think 99 Ranch has it) and soy sauce to taste. Bring the soup to boil then turn to low heat for soup to simmer for 3 hours until the meats are tender.  Scoop foam up if there is any.

Side dish - sour mustard

Mice garlic and julian the sour muster vegetable.

Heat 2 T vegetable oil. Add chili flakes and garlic for half minute then add sliced sour mustard vegetable and 1 - 2 T brown sugar. Stir and cook for about 2 - 3 more minutes.

London

Great news!!! No VISA is required for Taiwanese visitors entering the United Kingdom and staying up to 6 months. We found a good vacation package deal from Expedia and looked forward to being in a English speaking country again.

Since this no visa thing is so new (started March 3, 2009), I even went to UK Border Agency's website to print out the announcement just in case I was refused entry on the flight. Sure enough, I was asked for a UK VISA at the Zurich airport while boarding. Good thing I was well prepared. I showed them the announcement print out and they let me board. When we entered the UK customs, there was no problem at all. We were so surprised and delight that Taiwan is moving up the international ladder. To me... this is such a cool thing... entering a country without a VISA or some kind of resident permit... my very first time.

No matter how much we prepare before a trip, there is always something that we can not control. Typically, it's the weather but not this time. Guess what it was this time. The Underground (tube) was on strike. Oh my god, how lucky we were and did I mention that it was Queen's birthday weekend! Well, it turned out that it's not all that bad since we had no problem of getting help and understanding from the locals. We even had a nice British girl, who had been to Taiwan for several months last year to learn Chinese, giving us directions to the hotel. So lucky, we had no language barrier in England at all.

The tube was still on strike the next day. Our plan was to go out of London and visit Windsor Castle, so it did not impact us too much. Just a minute before we arrived, we saw the castle in distance. It was magnificent. Here is a pictures taken from the train which gives a grand scale of Windsor Castle.

The Castle is so beautiful its no wonder the Queen often spends weekend there. The ticket included an audio guide so we could take our time visiting the Castle ground , St. George, and State Apartment. After watching the Tudors on the TV, I was so glad to see the actual location where the history had taken place. King Henry VIII and his third wife were buried in St. George.

The tube was back to normal after the two day strike. We visited the Westminster Abbey on Friday and St. Paul's on Saturday. At each church, we took a special guided tour and saw the areas where visitors were normally not allowed to go such as sitting in the choir while listening to the guides in both churches, entering the Shrine of St. Edward the Confessor in the Abbey, and seeing where the Queen sits when she goes to both churches. The tours were great and we enjoyed it very much. Not to forget that we learned many famous people had their funerals, were buried, or had memorials in both churches. St. Paul's only started having memorial statues in the church after realized how empty and bare their cathedral was. On the other hand, Westminster Abby was running out of space for worshiping the new comers. Besides worshiping the death, they also hold weddings (however) in the Crypt of St. Paul's (only for the order of Britain) unless you are princess Diana. Somehow, it is hard for me to see the romantic side of marrying my spouse by standing so close to the stone coffins, tomb stones, and memorials. I wonder if it's a sign of telling the newly weds that marriage is the grave of your love life (a Chinese saying), or till death do us apart. Interesting! Or you just have to go on honeymoon trip every month like us!

We walked as much as we could but London is so big. We walked by the Household Guard Museum and snapped a shot. From this angle, it looked like that the guard was sleeping. We often ended up in Soho and China town areas so we had tons of Chinese food which I miss the most. It reminded me so much of the China town in San Francisco and New York City. It was so good to have authentic Taiwanese and Hong Kong food.

Street performers in Covent Garden... is not it an interesting tactic of selling CDs? It was so fun to watch and glad that we were not the ones who were forced to make the purchase.



Piccadilly Circus electronic advertisements just like we have seen so often in TV and Movies.

Josh's first time on the London Eye. It was fun and cool to be on the Eye. We could see Parliament, Westminster Abby, St. Paul's, Buckingham Palace, and much more that we could not name.

Tower Bridge...it was beautiful with all the lights. We got there when the sky started getting dark and just in time when the lights came on.

We spend 4-5 hours in the British museum on our last day in London. The museum was huge and I was glad that Josh insisted to go. Not only is visiting museum like traveling around the world (has collections from the world), but also it is FREE! One interesting thing to me was seeing Buddha statures out side of temples. Then I realized that it's not so different than Virgin Mary's, Jesus', and Saints' paintings are all over in every museum we have been.

I totally had a much better impression of London compared to several years ago. Besides all the good old things we saw... the food was good, people were friendly, and English pubs were fun although we only went to one. We would love to go back again especially since I don't need a VISA.

Brussels Belgium

After 6 hour drive and settled in the hotel, guess what's the first thing I did in Brussels. A little hint -- Brussels is known for beer, chocolate, diamond, mussel, french fries, and waffle. Chocolate shopping! You would not believe how many chocolate stores there are in a such small old town. It's so hard to resist that I ran into NeuHaus, that our friend Julia told me about, and got half kilogram for Julia and half kilogram for us. Half kilogram of chocolate sounded a lot but in fact, it's only about a quarter A4 size box and it didn't last us long. Next time, I'll get one kilogram.

One must see tourist point - Manneken Pis. There were so many people surrounding the small statue that we could only have this picture taken in distance. That's the advantage of having a 20x zoom camera. Here is a female version of pis statue.










We tried everything that Brussels is famous for except... diamonds. Well... we are living in the recession but all food and beer were delicious . We even had Ethiopian food one the second night. All fingers... no forks and knives.

Brussels at night is even more breath taking. We waited until the lights came on and took some pictures before we called it a day.

Bern and Lausanne Switzerland

An interesting opportunity brought us to visit Bern and Lausanne Switzerland. After researching the means of transportation, we decided to rent a car. We got a Peugeot 107, a very small car with a powerless engine on a very fast German Autobahn... kind of scary when we had to pass a semi-truck.

Bern is the capital of Switzerland with Aare river running through. The old town is filled with many fountains and a big clock tower. We walked around the old town and finally found a restaurant for dinner. We noticed that most of the bars and restaurants do not ban smoking. It was almost impossible to find one non-smoking bar or restaurant. It was hard to adjust after getting used to the non-smoking environment in German which follows the EU's non-smoking law.

Switzerland is more expensive but I still managed to find a reasonable price hotel with free parking and sauna. After a good night rest, we checked out of the hotel and were ready to go to our next destination -- Lausanne. But...our car key couldn't open the car door automatically, so we opened it manually (I mean with the key in the key hole). Then, we found out that the engine would not start either. That's when Josh realized that he left the lights on over night and the car was out of battery . My brain was going ...oh my~ here is another our car/road trip adventure!! Josh tried to open the hood when I read the car manual to figure out how exactly to open it... because Josh couldn't find it. One of the hotel guest helped us to jump the car but it didn't work. Oh my god... the problem is bigger than out of battery. What a piece of junk we rented I thought, while Josh called the Hertz rental car road assistant hot line. Josh explained everything and our location to Hertz and they promised to send someone over in 30 minutes. We waited for 20 minutes and then saw a stationwagen filled with all kinds of tools and lube in front of the hotel. Wow... that was quick!! I was expecting a 2 hour wait- like waiting for AAA in the US. The guy got our car started in no time and told us that there was a trick (push the key car to lock and unlock the car door before starting the car) to jump this particular type of car. If my German was better, I could probably understand that from the manual. I guess that I should study more. It took the guy a longer time to fill out the paperwork than fix the car but I had to say that the service was great!! I would rent a car from Hertz again.

We were amazed by the view in front of us when we approaching the city limits of Lausanne. In view were the French Alps with snow on the top and clear water at the bottom. We could not wait to settle into our hotel and soak up this fantastic view by the lake. Even the weather was nice. We spent most of the time walking by the lake and enjoying the rare sunny day. There were moments that we thought we could picture ourselves living in Lausanne.