My Trip to France

I’m in France! It’s hard to believe it’s taken me quarter of a century to visit, but here I am.

This is technically a work trip, but I’m treating it a little bit like a holiday even though I’ll have to write something official when I get back.

I’m here for four days (26-29) so I’m going to write this blog like a diary - day by day until the trip is over, and it’ll go out on 1st October as normal.

26th September

A day of mostly travelling, although we did have a nighttime excursion.

I got up at 6am today, my flight left from Heathrow Terminal 5 at 11:05am. It was supposed to anyway. What actually happened was we got on the plane, after having our gate changed at the last minute, and then sat in the plane for an hour while the pilot had his oxygen in the cockpit changed.

We ended up taking off at around 12:15, and after we were in the air everything was great. The flight was quick, we got complimentary pretzels, and getting through the airport in France was a breeze.

We then had a transfer to Pont L’Eveque, which is where our river barge was docked. We’re taking a four day river cruise on the MS Raymonde, one of CroisiEurope’s ships.

I’ve never been on a river cruise before, and I’ve never been to France before, so this is a wild experience already and we’ve only just got here.

In France, or maybe just on CroisiEurope ships, they ‘present’ the crew to you once you’re on board. So we got to meet the entire crew (only six people) before seeing our rooms.

This is my room. I have the whole thing to myself despite the two beds. The bed is extremely comfortable, and there’s something very soothing about falling asleep in a boat that’s gently rocking on the water.

Anyway, by the time we got to the boat and got settled in it was basically time for dinner. But first, a snack. And by snack I mean snail. That’s right. I ate a snail. I’d never tried one before and figured I may as well get the full experience.

It was gross, I won’t lie. It was smothered in a garlic butter sauce, which was delicious, and the little bread/cake thing it was in was also lovely, but the actual snail I could’ve done without. The texture was truly indescribable.

And after that we had the most wonderful dinner. Which is, of course, completely unsurprising considering where I am. We had quiche to start, guinea fowl for main and then strawberries and ice cream for dessert.

Everything was incredible, shocking I know. But it genuinely was. I’ve never tried guinea fowl before so that was a new experience for me, but it was delicious and I ate pretty much all of it.

After dinner we had a nighttime excursion to Noyon Cathedral

Truly a stunning cathedral, inside and out.

27th September

First of all, it’s my birthday, so jot that down. That’s right, I decided to spend my 25th birthday on a river cruise in France for a work trip and honestly I do not regret it. The weather is beautiful, the sights are interesting and everyone on this trip, passengers and crew, is so lovely.

Our morning is spent cruising down the Canal l’Oise. Everyone on board is either working or just enjoying the scenery as it drifts past; we’re in a truly beautiful area of the country.

We had an 11:30am cocktail, as pictured, which was very refreshing. I spent most of the morning getting to know the other boat passengers. There’s two American men, four people from Quebec, and the other five people on the press trip with me.

Now, I don’t speak French, and the Quebecois people don’t really speak English, so it’s been a bit of a struggle but we’ve had a couple of conversations.

This is my view for the morning, pretty good right?

We had lunch at around 12 ish. Cheese tart, pork tenderloin and chocolate mousse. There’s also a cheese course every lunch, which was epoisse and comte today, both of which were incredible!

After lunch we went on our excursion of the day. A trip to Compiègne to go to the Château de Compiègne and the Musée de l’Armistice.

Château de Compiègne

The Château was incredible. It was used as a royal residence as a kind of summer home, but also a hunting base given the masses of forest that surround the building. The Château was later restored by Napoleon.

Everything in the Château is so abundantly beautiful, it’s hard to take it all in. I’ve included some pictures of my favourite parts though.

There was also a carriage museum at the Château, which basically showed us the history of cars and carriages in France. Very interesting, but that part of the museum was quite dark so I didn’t manage to take any particularly good photos.

Musée de l’Armistice

I love a good museum, and this one is particularly interesting. In the grounds, you can see the actual place the Armistice was signed, isn’t that cool??

The train car is inside, but we were informed that it’s actually a replica, not the original train car. A little disappointing, but the replica was still cool, and all the places at the table were marked with who was sat where.

This statue is Ferdinand Foch, the guy who signed the Armistice on 11 November 1918. It was signed at 5:45am and officially came into effect at 11am. It was an overall victory for the Allied forces, although not an official surrender from Germany either.

The crew were very lovely, and made me a birthday cake!! It was another guest’s birthday yesterday, hence the two cakes.

Dinner was delicious, as per usual. We didn’t do much after dinner, just had a few drinks and went to bed.

28th September

The morning was spent cruising, as all our mornings are. We had another lovely cocktail at around 11:30am and had another three course lunch (with cheese) at 12.

The excursion today is a trip to Château de Chantilly. As you can see, our entire group was photographed outside the Château by Suzie, one of the fantastic crew members on this trip.

While at Château de Chantilly, we saw the famous Condé Diamond. The diamond is 9.01 carat and a gorgeous pale pink colour.

Originally from the Kollur mines in Southern India, the diamond was sold to King Louis XIII of France, who in turn gifted it to Louis II de Bourbon, prince of Condé (where the diamond gets its name from). It’s never been set, and it’s only adornment is a row of smaller white diamonds around the edge.

We also got a demonstration on how to make Chantilly cream! After we got back to the barge, a wonderful member of the le confrérie de chevaliers fouetteurs de la créme chantilly (the brotherhood of whipping knights) demonstrated how to make authentic Chantilly cream. We got to partake (side note: whipping cream by hand is surprisingly hard) and we then enjoyed our efforts as a pre-dinner treat.

We had a bit of an evening of revelry. The crew broke out the microphones and we all did karaoke well into the night.

That’s right, I did karaoke. Drunk karaoke. Thankfully there’s no evidence of this (I hope!).

29th September

I have to be honest, the Doctor Who fangirl in me spent most of the day vibrating with excitement over this.

We visited Auvers-sur-Oise, where Vincent van Gogh spent his final days. We had a tour round the village, seeing the famous church, and various places van Gogh used to frequent.

I didn’t know this, but turns out van Gogh was doing quite well for himself in the village. His brother used to send him money every week, and also bought all his art supplies for him. So the only thing van Gogh had to pay for was food and somewhere to stay, which he managed quite easily on the money his brother sent him.

During his time in the village (70 days) van Gogh painted 76 paintings, which is an insane amount of art to produce in a little over two months.

We visited his grave, which he shared with his brother, Theodore. Ivy from Doctor Gachet’s garden was used to cover the entire grave, symbolising the unbreakable bond between the two.

Musée de l’Absinthe

Our final stop on this trip is the Absinthe Museum. I won’t lie, I knew very little about Absinthe before coming here, other than the fact that’s it’s extremely dangerous in large quantities.

Back in the day, it had hallucinogenic properties due to the plants used to make it, but most of the hallucinogens are filtered out in the modern-day process of making it.

Trying absinthe for the first time was an experience. I knew I wouldn’t really like it, it’s aniseed flavoured, which I can’t stand. However, I tried it and it wasn’t as awful as I originally thought it would be. A little bitter for my liking, it could’ve done with an extra sugar cube, but the flavour wasn’t as powerful as I thought it would be.

And that’s that! I spent a wonderful four days in France and had so many new experiences it was impossible to fit them all into this post without making it longer than it already is.