August 10, 2025 • 58 mins
Have you ever dreamed of owning a home in France? In From Paris to Saumur: Real Estate Dreams and Travel Tips for France Lovers, host Annie Sargent sits down with guest David Palachek to talk about making that dream a reality—and all the adventures along the way.
David shares how he and his partner fell in love with Saumur, right in the heart of the Loire Valley. They bought a home in the center of town, surrounded by history, wine culture, and beautiful châteaux. Annie and David swap tips for exploring the region, including visits to Candes-Saint-Martin, Montsoreau, Fontevraud-l’Abbaye, the Château of Langeais, and the gardens of Villandry.
Before heading to Saumur, David spent time in Paris and stayed at the Off Paris Seine, a floating hotel he loved for its unique design and great location. They also talk about the Cadre Noir, France’s prestigious equestrian school, and why it’s a must-visit for horse lovers.
This episode blends personal stories, travel recommendations, and cultural insights for anyone dreaming about French life or planning a Loire Valley trip.
Subscribe to the Join Us in France Travel Podcast for weekly inspiration, practical tips, and authentic stories that will help you explore France like a local. Whether you’re a traveler, a future expat, or just curious about French culture, this episode will make you want to pack your bags.
Table of Contents for this Episode
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
This is Join Us in France, episode558, cinq cent cinquante-huit.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversationwith David Palachek about reconnecting
with France, exploring Paris,and the adventure of real estate
(00:39):
shopping in the Loire Valley.
If you've ever dreamed of living in Franceor want insider tips on travel, culture,
and making big life changes, this episodeis packed with inspiration and practical
advice you will not want to miss.
This podcast runs on chocolatine,caffeine, and the support of
wonderful humans like you.
(01:00):
You book itinerary consults, takemy VoiceMap tours, ride shotgun
in my electric car, come to theboot camp, or slip me a few euros
on Patreon, and I love you for it.
Want to keep me going and skip the ads?
There's a link for that in the show notes.
Head to joinusinfrance.com/boutiqueto purchase any of my services,
(01:23):
and thank you so much.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after my chat with David today,
I'll discuss the Eiffel Tower'ssecret engine and a milestone in
the restoration of Notre Dame.
Want all the links and thefull episode transcript?
You'll find everything on the pagethat lists all episodes by month
(01:43):
at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
And if you'd like a handy summary ofthe conversation with all the useful
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It's the best way to stay in the loop.
(02:09):
Bonjour, David Palacheck andwelcome back to Join Us in France.
Ah, Bonjour, Annie.
Ça va?
Ça va trés bien, merci, et toi?
Trés bien.
So this is your fourth time on the show.
You were here talking about a vacation youtook long ago on episode 119 that I called
Canal Saint-Martin, but I don't know thatwe talked about that mostly, but whatever.
(02:31):
The second one was episode 195,How to Look Stylish in Paris,
because you care about those things.
That's optimistic.
Yeah, exactly.
Very optimistic.
Yes, and then episode 292,Le Corbusier Sites in Paris.
This time we're going totalk about a recent trip you
had with your nephew, right?
(02:52):
Well, it was a business trip that I took.
I had not been back to Paris since2020 when we did the Le Corbusier trip.
We actually were there in February 2020.
We were there less than a monthfrom when the borders closed.
And so this entire time had beenvery anxious to get back, but you
know, everything was closed andthen personal issues, whatever.
This was the first time that weactually were able to go, and
(03:14):
there was a business opportunity.
There's a show that happens once ayear, twice a year in Paris called
Maisons et Objets, where it's afurniture show, a lighting show.
They also have an entire exhibitionhall dedicated to, like, silk
flowers if you ever wanted to go.
But it was a professionalopportunity to go.
Right, because you're an architect.
So this is the sort of work you do, yeah.
(03:34):
I'm an architect, yes.
So, you know, we sawthat it was coming up.
I've always wanted to go.
My husband, Michael, was like,"You know, just book, we've been
wanting to go back. This is a greatopportunity and great excuse."
So, you know, we decided that I'd goahead and take it, and having not been
there in so long, suddenly the tripjust started blossoming, and blossoming,
and becoming more, and more, and more.
(03:55):
So the first thing that happened is whenwe were there in 2020, when we came back,
you know, we had gone in 2018 to theLoire Valley and fell in love with it.
So when we came back in 2020, weimmediately said, "Okay, let's get
serious about maybe trying to find apiece of property to buy in France."
And then the pandemichit, we put that on hold.
What are we doing?
Why are we buying a propertyon a different continent?
(04:16):
So we kind of, like, shut that down.
But just before the trip happened,Michael started getting emails
from real estate agencies.
You know, "This is this property. This isthis property." And they were all places
that we really were fond of, like Saumuror also Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, two places
that are really close to our hearts.
So Michael actually said, "Well, whydon't you extend your trip, your business
(04:38):
trip, by an extra day, take a day tripdown to the Loire Valley?" Which I did.
"And take a look at theproperties that are coming up."
And so that happened, and then theother thing that happened with my
nephew is, my nephew moved to Madridfrom Austin, Texas, last July.
I just kind of, like, wrote him a text andsaid, "I know this is really funny because
you're in Spain, obviously, and I'm goingto be in France, but it seems really weird
(05:01):
being on your side of the Atlantic and notat least letting you know that I'm going
to be there." And he wrote back and justsaid, "Well, what dates are you going?
I'll come up and, I'llfly up and meet you."
So what was supposed to be a businesstrip, which was very successful,
also became a good family trip,a bonding trip with my nephew.
I got to introduce somebodywho'd never been to Paris before.
I got to introduce Paris to him.
(05:23):
And then he and I both went down and spenta day in the Loire Valley, in Saumur, and
found a property that we're interested in.
Fantastic.
How many trips have you taken toFrance or Paris or Saumur all together?
Like...
I think I'm at six now because Iknow I've stayed in four hotels.
I've stayed in the Hotel Mayfair.
(05:45):
I've stayed in the Pavillon de La Reine.
I've stayed in the hotel, Monntauribert.
And then this time, I stayed in a veryinteresting property, which is on a barge
in the river, called Off Paris Seine.
And then we were there once for aday trip from London that we went
to see the Musée des Arts Forains.
So we were there for one New Year'sDay one time, and then we also flew
(06:06):
in with my parents the time thatwe went down to the Loire Valley.
So that makes six.
Wow.
That's a lot.
That's a lot, and it's interestingthat you, just today, I was listening
to somebody talking about people whohave a project to move away from home.
Sometimes it's in retirement, sometimesit's before they retire, and he was
(06:26):
saying that only 4% of people whotalk about this actually do it, but it
sounds like you might actually do it.
Well, it's... the wheels are going.
And it's funny because I wastalking to my therapist about this.
There is actually a point where it'slike, it's good to have a dream or
a fantasy, and a lot of people, Ithink, have a fantasy about, you know,
"Someday I'm going to live in France."Okay, well what does that look like?
And if you really do want to do it, whatare the steps that you start taking?
(06:50):
Do you start doing real estateinvestigations, which again
could be fantasy, you know?
"I want to live in a $3 million houseon the Cote d'Azur," something like
that, which is not where we are.
But if you really do want to take itfrom a fantasy to a dream, it's like,
you can start taking some concrete steps.
And we definitely havetaken those concrete steps.
Michael reached out to the real estateagent who had sent us this one property
(07:13):
in Saumur that we're very interested in,and you know, started corresponding with
her, and then we started correspondingthat I was there, was going to take
a day trip down, and started, youknow, doing the investigation, too.
Because theoretically, yeah, it's fine.
We're in New York.
I could fly to Paris.
But what's it going to be like gettingfrom Paris to the Loire Valley?
Is it something I'm goingto want to do long term?
(07:33):
So, we took the TGV down, and it took alittle over two hours, and it's okay, well
this is doable, especially if we're onlydoing it once or twice a year, or going
for two or three or four weeks at a time.
This is completely doable.
And you know, a meeting with thereal estate agent who, by the way,
has a YouTube video, so I alreadyknew what she looked like and had
talked to her and stuff like that.
Cool.
Very cool.
(07:53):
So it's, you know, then we came backand, it just so happens our son is 20
and he's out of high school, and we'vebeen talking about, "Okay, well, what
do we want, you know, the next yearsof our life to look like?" And, "Do we
really want to be in the suburbs anymoreor do we want to split our time between
our apartment in Manhattan and ourbeach house in maybe, you know, Europe?"
And so you really start looking atit and it's like, "Okay, well, this
(08:15):
is something that's very doable."Some people retire to warmer places,
some people get a condo in Florida.
Some people get a housein Arizona or New Mexico.
And for us, it's like we just decidedthat we're going to point our plane in
a different direction and go to Europe.
Yeah.
And there are all sorts of things, youknow, that I think that that affords.
One I think we're looking at itis, if we have a footprint, we can
(08:36):
actually turn it into a businessthat we can do in our retirement,
importing French design products.
Hmm.
But also, there are all sorts ofexplorations within France and the rest
of Europe that we've really been wantingto do, that when we were traveling
with the kid, we didn't want to dobecause it was always connecting...
You know, we didn't want connectingflights or trains or whatever else.
But if we have a home base... we cango to Toulouse, for instance, for the
(08:59):
weekend, or we can go to Nice, or wecan go to wherever else that you want
to go by train because, "Okay, well,we're going to be here for three months,
so let's take a weekend trip or two."
And some of these places you needan overnight somewhere to stay.
I mean, like from Saumur to Nice,you probably want to spend a couple
of nights before you head back.
But, you know, it's doable.
(09:20):
It's really fun.
Toulouse, same, because Toulouseyou'd probably have to go to
Saint-Pierre-des-Corps on thetrain and then connect through
Bordeaux and then Toulouse.
And they keep threatening to give us adirect TGV between Toulouse and Paris,
but I'll believe it when I see it.
They've been talkingabout this for 20 years.
Well, that's one of the things that I'mvery excited about Saumur, is apparently
(09:42):
there is once a day or twice a daythere is a direct TGV between CDG, you
know, Charles de Gaulle, and Saumur.
I guess for people flying inor people flying out of the
country, they do it once a day.
And that train is an hour and 45 minutes.
The train I took we had to connectthrough Angers, and that took
about two hours and 15 minutes.
(10:04):
And apparently if you go throughTour, it's a little bit faster,
but, you know, I can do that.
The train is really wonderful, and itgoes directly out of Gare Montparnasse.
And it was really funny because it wasgood traveling with my nephew because,
you know, since he's been in Spain inJuly, he's really been taking advantage
of being able to take weekend trips.
(10:25):
So he went to Nice for his birthday.
He went to Amsterdam.
He's not gay, but he went tosee one of his best friends in
Amsterdam for Gay Pride Weekend.
He knows how to work the flying withinEurope and how to use the train.
And it was really funnybecause I was really nervous.
I'd never taken the train.
This was my first trip thatI ever took the Paris Metro.
Oh, okay.
The metro, the first time metro?
(10:45):
Oh, wow.
The metro, the first time on the metro,the first time from the RER from the
airport, first time on the metro,first time the RER outside of the city.
So I didn't know, so I wasthinking American security.
"I need to be there two hours beforemy train." And he kept saying, "Oh,
well, David, you're making this waytoo serious, you can just show up."
So we had a very early... I thinkwe had a 7:45 train to Saumur.
(11:09):
And I wanted to show up early, and hewas like, "Please don't show up any more
than 30 minutes or 45 minutes before."So I talked him into a little bit more.
We took a a G7 taxi to, actually, I thinkhe hired an Uber, but we took an Uber to
Gare Montparnasse, which took less than20 minutes, and then we just sat because
it's like, there is no... He was... itwas really funny because Charlie was
(11:32):
even saying, he was like, "Oh my God, thesecurity's even more lax in France than it
is in Spain," because basically, you justswiped your pass on your phone, and you
walked onto your train and you were there.
And we were like, "Oh mygosh, this is so easy."
Yes, because the TGV in Spain, youhave to go through security, kind of
a metal detector sort of security.
(11:53):
In France, you don't do that.
And there's no point showing upmore than 30 minutes before your
train because imagine you needto go to the bathroom, okay?
Bathrooms at the train stationare terrible, try to avoid it.
But if you must, you must.
You might want to get a sandwichor a drink that takes five minutes.
There's plenty of placesto get stuff like that.
(12:14):
And then they won't announce your platformuntil 20 minutes before it's time to go.
So there's no point getting theremore than 30 minutes ahead of time
really for a train, for a TGV.
Right, right.
It was wonderful.
It was wonderful.
I will have to say one thing aboutthe bathroom, which is really funny.
On the way back, we were transferringover in Angers and we had a layover,
I think it was like 25 minutes,35 minutes, something like that.
(12:36):
And the train station in Angersis not air conditioned at all.
It was really cold the day we were there.
Cold by France standards,not by New York standards.
So we were camped out in the relay storethat was there, the newsstand store
because that's the only place that hadheat, and I needed to go to the bathroom.
And so I went, finally found thebathrooms, and I started walking in and
the attendant that was there was like,"No, no, no, it's like 50 cents," or it
(12:58):
was like a dollar for a public bathroom.
And I just looked at him,I was like, "You're crazy.
I'm not paying for that.
I'm so cheap."... I won't say,"I'll wait till I get on the train."
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for trainstations, you often have to pay a
little bit to get to the bathroom.
All right.
So tell me briefly, why do youlike the Saumur area so much?
What attracts you to it, besidesthe proximity to Paris, obviously?
(13:21):
Well, right, so it's twohours from Paris, it's great.
But what's really great about it iswe had taken a trip there in 2018
with my parents and my sister andbrother-in-law, and really at the
time fell in love with the area.
We were staying in a manoir, a reallybeautiful manoir in Verneuil-sur-Loire.
And it was this great walled property,and it was a small manoir and a
(13:44):
barn, and the owners were Americans.
They lived in the barn and thenrented out the manoir when it
was rentable and in season.
It had a pool.
It was actually a walled compound.
And it was old enough that they actuallyhad been... and had gone through all
of the building records with the town.
And there actually was a door in thiswall that had been built or had been
(14:06):
blown through the wall from Louis XIV,because their property apparently was
where they had collected taxes forthe entire region, and Louis XIV at
one point showed up, and at that time,before that, the only way to get onto
the property was to drive underneath adovecove, and they didn't want the king
to be shat upon, so they actually had toopen up a different door for the king.
(14:27):
But, you know, part of the moataround this manoir was still existing.
But we had fallen in love with it.
Saumur itself is such a lovely town.
There's a lovely place, PlaceSaint-Pierre, which is the
property that we're looking at isactually on Place Saint-Pierre.
A really beautiful églisethat's on the square.
There are beautifulmarkets every Saturday.
We were there on a Saturday.
The entire town turnsinto a farmer's market.
(14:49):
They drive in oysters from the coast.
The vegetables that were in thevegetable stands looked like a
photo shoot, they didn't look real.
You're right on the Loire, you have...
But they are real.
They are real, but it's beautiful.
The vibe of the town is really good.
It's just big enough, I think it's26,000 people, so it's big enough it
has its own opera house, which is nice.
(15:09):
So performing arts are there.
The arts in that area of theLoire Valley are amazing.
There's an entire, south of the river,there's a road that goes through, and
it goes through these wonderful townslike Candes-Saint Martin, then it goes
through a town called Montsoreau, andeventually goes to Fontevraud-l'Abbaye,
which is the Fontevraud Abbey.
(15:30):
And in addition to just being areally interesting historic site,
they do these like really, reallywonderful art exhibits at the abbey.
So when we were there, they had verycontemporary art that was there.
We were talking to a real estate agent,she said that they had just had a
Monet exhibit within the last year.
So you can be out in the country,but you've got a performing arts
center, you've got this great museum.
(15:52):
They actually sometimes doyoga, apparently, in the
galleries with this art.
And I was like, "Well, sign me up forthat." The other thing is our son is a
horse person, and one of the things inSaumur is the Cadre Noir, which is the
National Academy of Riding for the French,where they do, what's the horse dancing?
Dressage, so they do dressage.
You can actually go and seea dressage exhibit there.
(16:15):
And if you go in the other directionyou end up in Nantes eventually.
So for us, it's a really great location,it's relatively easy for us to get
into, and you know, it's just because welove it, we'd been there, we were very
familiar, both of us felt like it was someplace that we could spend a lot of time.
And at a certain point, in our50s and 60s, it's like, "Okay,
(16:35):
well, we know we want to do this,it's some place that we're very
passionate about, and we'll start."
Yeah.
And maybe it'll be where we live forthe rest of our lives or maybe we'll
get a foothold in spending three monthsout of the year there, we'll start
realizing, "Oh, you know, maybe Toulousewas where we want." You know, who knows?
But what's beautiful about theLoire Valley is that there are so
many chateaus that you can visitas well, and most of these chateaus
(16:58):
have exhibits that they invite.
So you have a lot of exhibitsgoing around to various chateaus.
You have ones that are only open onWeek-end du Patrimoine, for instance.
So really, if you want to beactive in the local culture,
you can, there's plenty to do.
The food is... I mean, it'snot super famous for food.
(17:20):
Wine, definitely, lots of wonderfulwines are produced around Saumur.
The food is, I mean, nothingcomes to mind, but they
must have local specialties.
They had a bread thing, like...
They grow mushrooms there.
That's true, mushrooms.
Champignon.
Yes, yes, yes.
It's a lovely part of France, and thewhole western coast of France is superb.
(17:43):
I mean, really, it's a beautiful placeto spend some time, so wonderful.
So you said you showedParis to your nephew.
Where did you take him?
Like, to you, what's essential Paris?
Well, it was really funny, because I askedhim what he wanted to do, and he said,
"Well, I want to do the Louvre," whichwe ended up doing, and then what else?
He didn't even say the Eiffel Tower.
I said, "Do you want to go up the EiffelTower?" He said no, not necessarily.
(18:07):
Oh, he wanted to see Notre Dame.
And, you know, with Notre Dame having justreopened, I told him, I was like, "Well,
I'm not sure," because when I found outwe were taking the trip, I immediately...
because I booked the trip in Decemberand they had just... We booked the trip
about two weeks before they startedtaking reservations to see Notre Dame.
For the app, yeah.
Through the app.
Through the app.
(18:27):
And so, you know, starting in December,I started trying to get tickets and
then realized that they were onlyopening up tickets 24 to 48 hours.
Started listening to podcasts and Facebookto try and figure out how to do it.
But I had warned him, it's like,"Okay, well, you know, we may or
may not be able to see Notre Dame."And he said, well, you know, what he
really wanted to see was the exterior.
And it's like, "Okay,well, we can do that."
(18:47):
The day that I got to France, I checkedinto my hotel and I had hours to burn
before I could actually go into my room.
So I had walked through the entire city.
I'd gone to the Centre Pompidou.
I had a meeting, a business meetingup around the Gare Saint-Lazare.
And so I had walked up thatarea and walked past the Opera.
And on my way back to the hotel, I waslike, "You know what? There's probably
(19:11):
no way I'm getting into Notre Dame at allbecause it's just reopened. I'm not going
to be able to get in, but I want to walkpast it, I want to see it." I wanted to
see how bad the lines are and even see ifit's going to be possible to get into it.
I walked through, it was aboutfour o'clock in the afternoon.
I just walked in.
I just, like, walked in.
I was like, "Oh my God, this isamazing." Beautiful restoration.
(19:32):
But Charlie was there.
He came in Thursday night.
He'd flown in from Madrid.
He got there, he thought he wasgoing to get there at midnight.
He got there a little bit earlier.
I had warned him, I was like, "I'm reallyjet-lagged, I'm not sure that I'm going
to be up for anything tonight, but we'llstart off and we'll try Notre Dame to
begin with and then whether or not thatis possible. If that's not possible,
(19:54):
I'll take you to Sainte-Chapelle,which is a must see in my book." But
anyway, so by the time he got there, I'dgotten my second wind and he got there.
Our hotel was on a barge, and so it hada small restaurant with limited hours
and I knew that by the time he gotthere, there wasn't going to be food.
So I'd gone to the Monoprix around thecorner and just gotten a sandwich and a
(20:15):
bag of Dijon chips and stuff like that.
So he, I fed him and then I was like,"You know what? Let's just go walk. It's
your first night in Paris, I'm not goingto be like a lame uncle and be like,
'Oh, I'm jet-lagged.'" So we walkedup the river from our hotel which was
right in front of the Gare Austerlitz.
And we walked along the river andwe walked to the Ile Saint-Louis.
Or, I'm sorry, Ile de la Cite.
(20:36):
And we sat outside of the Notre Dameand then he said, "Well, how far is the
Louvre?" I said, "Come on, I'll show you.
Let's walk." We walked up to the Louvre,we circled the pyramid and then we started
walking back down the Rue de Rivoli.
And then we got, because I know itnow well enough surprisingly that I
was like, "Okay, we're really close toPlace des Vosges. We should just, like,
cut through and you should see Placedes Vosges." And we stood in Place des
(20:57):
Vosges for a while, and then at thatpoint it's like, "Come on, we're going to
ruin the next day, which is our big dayin Paris. Let's go back to the hotel."
So went back to the hotel, got up earlyin the morning again, we tried that night
to get tickets to Notre Dame, couldn'tget a reservation so I said "Let's just
hit it early." So we hit Notre Dame early.
Less of a line even than whenI'd been in the day before, or
(21:18):
the, a couple of days before.
Went in, saw Notre Dame,which was wonderful.
Then we had lunch reservations atthis, one of my favorite restaurants,
which is Les Ombres, The Shadows,which is, it looks, it's on the roof of
the museum that's right by the EiffelTower, and it's got a glass roof.
Ah, yeah, the Quai Branly.
Oui, oui, oui.
So you eat there, it's areally great prix fixe lunch.
(21:40):
Really, really beautiful artisan foodlike, haute cuisine, but they have a
prix fixe that's like $50 per person,which I thought was a really good deal.
Yeah.
And so we had that reservation.
We couldn't get reservations toNotre Dame but we went to Notre Dame.
If you go early enough, you get in.
Try and be there before 10:00 andthen you usually, you can get in.
(22:01):
Right, we were there around 9:00.
And so then I told him, I was like,"Well look, we're, you know, we're here,
we don't have tickets but let me go seeif we can get into Sainte-Chapelle."
So they were selling tickets, youactually have to go through, the entire
place is cordoned off with securitybut I explained that we wanted to go to
Sainte-Chapelle so they said, "Well, goto the office at the conciergerie." So
(22:21):
we went there and they were only sellingsplit tickets where you had to do both.
Oh.
So we got a timed ticket to go intoSainte-Chapelle and then to spend
the 45 minutes before we walkedthrough the conciergerie and saw
the cell where Marie Antoinettewas held before she was executed.
And then went to Sainte-Chapelle.
One warning is they had two lineswhere they had a on the hour and they
(22:44):
had a half hour, but no signage whichone you were supposed to get in.
So we just, like, got in oneand then it wasn't moving.
I was like, "I think we're in the wrongone." So we went and then switched
and they were like, "Oh, you've gotcombo tickets, come on in." And so
we saw Sainte-Chapelle, which wasfantastic, and then, you know, walked
up and walked behind Les Invalides.
(23:04):
Went to lunch and then, I was like,"You know, we don't have tickets to
see the Eiffel Tower but you reallyshould..." Oh, well, actually,
no, we saw that the last day.
Losing what we did that day.
So we went and did that.
Oh, then he wanted to go to theLouvre, so we ended up at the Louvre.
And again, I'm, like, always gotan edge, so we had timed tickets
to get into the Louvre at 4:00.
And so I was like, "Let's not go throughthe pyramid, we're going to go through
(23:26):
the carousel entry." It was Januaryand there were so few people there
that we just, like, basically walkedin.... and walked into the Louvre.
And you know, we weren't there verylong, but we went and saw all the
David paintings, which are... I adore.
Showed him the Mona Lisa, and he was like,"Well, am I supposed to actually want to
go up?" I was like, "Well, do you want aselfie?" He was like, "No." He goes like,
(23:48):
"Okay, we'll go see it." He kind of stoodthere for a while and was like, "Okay,
I've seen enough." We saw Winged Victory.
I never was able tofind the Venus de Milo.
But we were there for a couple hours.
It's in a different wing.
That's probably why.
Yeah, that's why.
And although... because we didthe complete U, because we ended
up leaving out of Richelieu.
So we walked out of Richelieu.
So we did that, but I just couldn'tfigure out, because it's downstairs...
(24:09):
We did see the original foundationsof the original historic Louvre.
Okay.
So we made it down there, but it's like,that's the one thing I couldn't find when
we were there in the time that we had.
Well, in a situation like that, youcan ask one of the guards, because
they take turns guarding everywhere,and they typically know exactly how to
direct you, but you didn't know that.
That's fine.
(24:30):
We didn't know that.
After we did the Louvre,Charlie was like, "Well, do
you want to go to a siesta and thenget ready to go out in the evening?"
I said, "Well, why don't we... Youhad mentioned wanting to go shopping
and do some clothes shopping.
We're here, it's January, it'sin the middle of Les Soldes."
Hmm.
So the deals are going to be incredible.
So, he was like, "Sure, let's go,let's go." So I took him to Galerie
(24:50):
Lafayette and to Printemps, where weended up actually buying some stuff.
But we decided... He was like, "Well,do you want to just Uber it?" I was
like, "Well, no, I'm actually tryingto teach myself how to use the metro.
Let's use the metro."
So we end up taking the metro fromLouvre to the Galerie Lafayette stop,
but I'd been having this thing with...this difficulty with my phone, where
I had the day pass on my phone, butI'd try and swipe it, and it would say
(25:14):
that... it would give me this error.
Hmm.
And I was like, "Well, thisdoesn't make any sense.
I bought it.
You know, whatever." As it turnsout, there's some setting on my
iPhone where, when you try to swipeit, there was a little thing at
the very bottom of the screen thatsaid, "Authorize with your code."
Ah.
And I'd have to hit that, then I'dhave to double-click the side of
my phone, and then it would bringup the code to unlock my phone.
(25:35):
And once I unlocked my phone,then it would bring the ticket
up, and there was no problem.
And once I realized that, I would justdo that before I even got to the station.
But the first couple of times I triedto use it, I thought my credit card was
bad or I thought something was going on.
It was kind of nerve-racking,so I was a little bit thrown.
Mm-hmm.
But we finally got through theturnstiles, because that's about the
time I figured out how to do that.
(25:56):
And so we're going, andthis woman walks up to me.
And I was like, "Oh, it'sone of those petition ladies.
It's a pickpocket, it's a scam orsomething." So I just like, kind
of waved her off, and she was like,"No, no, Monsieur." I was like, "No.
Wow, you are so aggressive with me." Iwas like, "I'm... She's totally going
to pickpocket me." And it was like, "No,no," and she was like, screaming at me,
"Yes, yes." And then all of a sudden,like, two or three other people come over.
(26:18):
I was like, "Oh, my God. It'slike a gang of pickpockets."
And I look over, and then I realizedthat they've got the jacket on
with the metro logo on the jacket.
I was like, "Oh, I'm being controlled.They're actually checking. They
want to see the ticket." And Iimmediately started apologizing.
I was like, "Oh, my God. Desolee,desolee, desolee." And she was like,
(26:39):
"No, no, it's fine, it's fine." Andthen in French I was like, "I am so
sorry. I thought you were pickpockets."They all doubled over with laughter.
They're like, "Ha ha ha,pickpockets?" "Pickpockets?
Ha ha ha." "Okay.
Bonne journee." And then they let mego, but I was like, "Oh, my goodness."
You know, be prepared to be controlled.
Don't put up a fight.
Yeah, there's a lot of controls on themetro, and these people are not friendly.
(27:03):
I'm pretty sure I've mentionedthis on the podcast before,
they're not paid to be nice.
So, if you are in violation, you willget a ticket, and you will need to pay
it right away, and it's very unpleasant.
But by then, you had figuredout how to use your app, right?
Yeah, they had shown me.
It was really funny, talkingabout people not being pleasant.
The person who'd kind of showed me thefirst time is the... The hotel where
(27:24):
I was staying was really well-situatedas far as the metro, because it was
right in front of the Gare d'Austerlitz,but across the river is the Gare Lyon.
And so it's on two, reallyconvenient to two metro lines.
So that's the first time that I waslike, " I just bought this pass.
Why isn't it working?" So I went tothe ticket office. And in French I
said, you know, "Excuse me, pardon.
Bonjour.
Pardon.
(27:45):
Pouvez m'aider?
J'ai achete un billet."
You know, "I've just bought this ticketon my phone but it's not working, can
you help me?" And the guy was like,"Yeah, give me your phone." He looked
through, and he kind of, like, madea face and said, "wait a minute,"
because there was somebody behind me.
Helped the guy behind me.
Got out of the ticket office, walkedwith me to the turnstile, swiped it a
couple of times, and he was like, "Idon't know why this isn't working."
(28:07):
Actually went and got another woman whocame over and started scrolling through.
You know, she's the person who showed me.
But it was so funny, because as a NewYorker, I was like, "Okay, there's no
way that anybody who's a subway workerin New York is going to take their
time to come over and individually tryand get you through the turnstile."
Yeah.
But anyway, so yeah, I had figuredout by that time what was going on.
(28:28):
That's about the time after theLouvre situation that I was like, "Oh,
maybe what I can do is I can go throughthe steps before I get to the metro stop."
Right.
"... so that the ticket's upped beforeI even get to the turnstile," and
that's what I did for the restof the trip, and it was fine.
Yeah, yeah.
That's interesting, because you must havebeen somewhat nervous about taking the
metro, and then you had problems withyour ticket and you had problems with
(28:49):
the contrôle, so maybe you're now justpetrified to go on the metro again, but...
Not just petrified, but it's just...as a New Yorker, it's really funny,
because I was like, "I can do this."And every time I got on, I got on
the wrong side of the platform andended up going in the wrong direction.
One day, I was trying to get fromAusterlitz into the Saint-Michel
(29:10):
station, and then all of a sudden endedup at the station at the Bibliotheque
Nationale, and was like, "Oh, I wentthe wrong direction." So I switched,
and then, "Oh, yeah, I went in thewrong direction." And then got out
and got to the other platform, andthen the trains were being delayed.
Like, the next train was like 45 minutes,and the one after that was an hour.
Oh, dear.
You might as well walk at that point.
(29:30):
Yeah, I know.
Well, at that point I just, I took ag-... I swear by the G7 app for taxis.
Because I just went out and hailed acab, and the cab was there with like two
minutes and got me where I wanted to go.
Yeah.
And then there were a couple of timesthat we got on metro trains that all of a
sudden the lights would just go down, andthey'd make an announcement and everybody
would grumble and just got off the train.
And I was like, "Okay, if I've got time,I'm going to come back because hopefully
(29:53):
I will be coming back more frequently.I'm going to learn this, but I'm only
going to do it when I've got plentyof time and I want to save money."
Usually the metro is very efficient.
I've gotten used to it, but it's truethat... I mean, I took the metro in
New York and thought it was quite abit worse than the metro in Paris.
It's dirty by comparison.
It's dirty and also I wasn't usedto it, and all these different
(30:17):
companies running trains.
I was like, "Oh, this is so confusing."But it gave me more sympathy for
people who come to Paris and areconfused, because if it's brand new,
of course it might be confusing.
That just makes sense.
But you're right about theG7 app, it's very efficient.
I like it better than Uberin Paris because they're
more professionals, you know.
(30:38):
I'm traumatized because I was inParis a couple weeks ago and this
woman, I called an Uber to take me tothe train station, to Montparnasse,
and on the Uber app it said she wasgoing to be there in four minutes,
and 20 minutes later, she arrives.
It was a good thing I had plenty oftime to get to the train station.
And she totally had stopped for lunch,because it was 1:00 PM, and I could
(30:59):
see that her car was parked, withthe app you can see where the car is.
It wasn't moving.
So I thought, "Well, maybe there's aprotest or maybe she had a breakdown or
something." No, she was having lunch.
When she showed up, she had a Cokein her hand and a sandwich on her,
you know, on the passenger seat.
And I was like, "Son of a..."
With, well... with Uber, I'm alwaysafraid that I'm going to get a bad rating
(31:24):
so, you know, I'll just wait it out.
But then at the same time, youknow, it is that situation.
It's like once you're logged in.
The other thing about taking the G7 asopposed to taking the Uber is the taxis
can take the taxi lanes, so when there'sa lot of traffic, it's faster, because
Uber drivers have to sit in traffic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And sometimes they don't and thenthe taxi drivers yell at them and
then you're in the middle of a fight.
(31:45):
So, don't do it.
Yeah.
Yikes.
Before we end up losing that train ofthought, which I think we almost have,
but, you know, Charlie the next day wentwith me to the Montparnasse station.
We went down to Saumur together, whichwas a lot of fun, and then came back.
And then that evening ended up havinga dinner out in the Montparnasse area,
which I'd never been to really that much.
(32:06):
That's totally hopping.
I love that neighborhood.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
Yeah, it's very nice.
It's wonderful.
And then the following day we got up, hehad a flight and wanted to go to brunch.
So we actually went to Rue Clerfor brunch, and then walked around.
We had a couple hours before he hadto go to the airport, so I actually
took him to the Eiffel Tower.
I was like, "You really shouldgo to the Eiffel Tower."
And I had, really hadn't beento the Eiffel Tower since any of
(32:28):
the security fencing had gone up.
So I didn't know if you could getinto the security fencing without
a ticket to go up, which you can.
Yep.
And again, because it was kind of drizzlythe day that we went, so we basically
just had to walk through security andwe were able to walk around the Eiffel
Tower, which I actually have to say as afirst-time person, that's probably enough.
I mean, I think it's so impressivewalking underneath it, that
(32:51):
you don't even need to go up.
And then walked across thebridge to the Trocadero.
He wanted to see the Arc deTriomphe, so we took him there.
And then, he went ahead andwent back to the airport.
I took him back to the hotel so that hecould catch a cab to go to the airport.
And then I went to... I'd been dyingsince it opened to go see the Bourse du
Commerce, which is the Pinault Collection.
(33:12):
Which is there Les Halles.
So I walked over, actually, I think Isuccessfully took the metro that time.
Yay for me.
Good.
And went and saw the Pinault Collection,which is really, really, really an
impressive piece of architecture, boththe Tadao Ando intervention as well as
just the building itself is stunning.
(33:32):
And now that it's renovated,the area around the Bourse
du Commerce is just amazing.
The shops are cool.
There's a really cool Japanesefood store and cat tea room
that's right around the corner.
There's the really beautiful church,the Eglise, that is, was the old
church for all of the people whoused to sell at Les Halles is there
(33:53):
and very definitely worth seeing.
Saint-Eustache.
Yes.
And it's a beautiful,beautiful, beautiful church.
And for all the people who complainthat, you know, Notre Dame is too
clean, just go there and you can see
what... you know, churches lookedlike before they were scrubbed down.
Yes.
Saint-Eustache is
a good example of onethat needs some help.
(34:15):
Yeah.
It needs a little scrubbing.
Yeah.
And then I wanted to go see, there was areally great exhibit at the Grand Palais.
And so I went up to the GrandPalais, and it didn't matter if
you had tickets in advance or not.
The line to get into the GrandPalais was like 45 minutes.
The security.
Yeah.
I was like, "You know what? Atthis point, I'm just, it's my last
day. I, it's too much for me."...
(34:35):
But what's interesting about this tripis, you know, me not necessarily needing
to see all of the big sights, it wasgreat to go with Charlie because I took
him to all the big sights and I couldsee... it's funny, you know, I hadn't
seen a lot of those since our veryfirst trip to Paris, like, 12 years ago.
Mm-hmm.
And so it was interesting to me to seehow accurate my memories actually were.
(34:57):
It's like, had they changed orhad my memories just been faulty?
And I was like, I likedeverything that we saw.
It was like, "I don't rememberthat being quite like that. Okay."
And Paris has improved, I think, asa result of the Olympics, in part.
And they're just getting better atbeing more welcoming and more organized.
Paris is a really nice city to visit.
I mean, honestly.
(35:18):
It's a great city.
My French is improved enoughthat I can mostly communicate
in French, and that helps a lot.
Yeah, and if you're going to livethere, you need... Like, I'm sure
in Saumur, you will find plentyof people who speak English.
But for everyday life you need atleast B2 level of French, you know?
Is minimum.
Well, so that's all.
(35:39):
I just, I adore France, and adore Paris.
The 12 years or so that we've beengoing, to your point, it has gotten,
it's gotten cleaner, it's gotten Ithink more interesting, you know?
It's like there's the show that was there,there's an entire new arts community or
art center that I want to go to, but Iran out of time, called Centquatre, 104.
It's like an incubator fornew art, and it's around...
(36:02):
It's on Rue de Rivoli, right?
No, no.
I know the one that you're talking about.
No.
This is actually out by wherethe Parc de Lafayette is.
Oh.
So it's out there in that portion ofthe city where the new symphony is.
And it's the old... It'sactually really interesting.
It's in the old city morgue.
Ooh.
But it's an art center, and it'sall, like, they commission new
(36:23):
works by up-and-coming artists.
I found it accidentally througha sound installation that
had been posted on Instagram.
I was like, "Oh my God, this artist isso interesting, I wonder where they're
showing," and they were showing there.
Oh.
But I ran out of time.
But to me, it was like this bug.
It's like, okay, well Parisisn't just these sights.
It's like, Paris is acontemporary world city.
(36:45):
Yeah, there are the things to see, butfor me, it's like, I've got the bug
where it's like, okay, well, I want itin rotation because I get to see a lot
of things living in Manhattan, but thereare things that never even come here.
Yeah.
I wanted to try and incorporate,see how I can expand my business
and start traveling there.
I want to continue to go for thearts and for performance, and just
(37:06):
to be in the city is just amazing.
Yeah.
And the whole area with the Cite desScience and the... I mean, obviously,
the opera house there, what is it called?
I forgot.
Anyway, it might come back.
It's really not aged well.
The exterior looks awful by now.
It was-
Oh, the one at Bastille?
Not Bastille.
Bastille is fine.
The one by the Cite des Science.
(37:27):
Oh.
Yeah, yeah.
Can't remember what it's called.
La Symph- No, not Symphony.
The-
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
The Jean Nouvel, who's actually oneof my favorite architects, but... Oh,
he took his name off of that project.
He did, yeah.
Because they wouldn't use themusic... Cite de la Musique.
La Philharmonie de Parisis what it's called.
Yes, yes.
Oui.
And yeah, the buildingdoesn't look good anymore.
(37:51):
But that whole area has really improved.
The Cite des Science was very fun.
When we went there were a lotof exhibits, there were a lot of
families with children under ten.
And I used to not recommend itbecause I saw it was very loud
and very unpleasant in there.
They've made it a lot better.
It was really a good experience for methis couple of weeks ago when we went.
(38:12):
So, I would recommend that.
Tell me, are there some things you learnedabout France that you want to share?
Advice that you want to give people?
You've given plenty already, but...
Well, I think, first of all, taking thetrain in... there's no way I'm going to
do, come back and forth to the airportany way other than taking the train.
Which was, I did have a funny experience.
(38:33):
I flew United flies into thedoughnut terminal, Terminal 1.
And so I had to, you know, doYouTube videos beforehand to
figure out where to go to the RERstation between Terminals 2 and 3.
That was good.
I did have a funny... You know,got there, got in the morning.
You know, in New York you havelike mariachis and things that
get on the subway with you.
And you're like, "Oh, man." And I goton the train and this guy walked up
(38:54):
right to my seat with an accordion andstarted playing an accordion on it.
It was like, "Are you kiddingme?" "Are you kidding me?"
Sometimes they're not very good either.
Well, he was okay.
I still didn't start belting out any ofmy Edith Piaf at him, so... The Metro
is really good, the G7 is really good.
My advice is just basically go toParis and try and see it not as a
postcard, but try and see it as a city.
(39:15):
And just spend time.
There was so much that I wanted to see...I was so hungry to be there because
I hadn't been there for five yearsthat I probably tried to do too much.
Oh.
And I think that, you know, especiallyfor first-timers, it's like, well, you
may never come back again, but one of thethings you're going to miss if you don't
take time is you're going to miss whatit actually feels like to be in the city.
Yeah.
So I think that there's a lotof like, kind of being relaxed
(39:36):
that I didn't experience.
One thing I do want to hit onbefore we leave is the hotel
where I stayed is really amazing.
It's on the river.
It's on a retired barge.
And basically what they did was they tooktwo barges and they strapped them together
and built a 54-room boutique hotel on it.
And where the two of them come together,they actually put a swimming pool.
(39:58):
Oh, it's the one with the pool.
Okay.
I know where it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's the one with the pool.
It's the one with the pool.
Yeah, okay.
I did bring my bathing suit with mebecause I was like, "I'm not going
to swim in the Seine, but maybe I'mswimming on the Seine." I ended up just
like dipping my toes in the first nightI was there just to say I could do it.
But it's really, you know, it wasreally quiet because it's, you know,
it's just past the Jardin des Plantes.
(40:18):
So it's kind of just on theedge of where central Paris is.
Super convenient because it's rightthere by the two train stations.
And for me, they gave me thislike really wonderful room on the
ground level at the very far end ofthe hotel, so it was super quiet.
The staying in it was really interestingbecause you really didn't feel that you
were on a boat until something really bigcame by, and then every once in a while
(40:40):
there was kind of a little bit of likea jolt and it would take a minute or two
for the hotel to basically come to a stop.
I actually found it, like, a really,really easy place to sleep because
it, it was almost like you werebeing rocked to sleep every night.
But it was great.
It's another thing that Iwould potentially recommend
is going... It wasn't so easy,like, if I wanted to go out.
(41:01):
You know, I had to walk aroundthe Gare d'Austerlitz to get to
the... close to the Monoprix.
You couldn't just, like, go outyour front door and find a cafe or
a bistro or something like that.
So it was a little bit of a, youknow, inconvenience in that way.
But if you wanted someplace to justkind of like decompress at the end of
the day, finding a hotel that's maybea little bit out of the craziness,
(41:25):
I mean, to me, made it a really, itwas almost like a zen experience at
the end of the day, just like go backand kind of think about, you know,
what had happened during the daytime.
And I don't see the river.
One night, I just had dinnerat the hotel restaurant.
I was like, "I'm so lame.
I'm having a dinner at the hotelrestaurant." It's like, "Yeah, in a glass
room looking over the Seine." I was like-
Yeah.
It's nice.
(41:45):
That's not lame.
That's not lame.
So...
Yeah.
They often have events for companies.
They had one there... Yeah.
They had one there one ofthe days that I went there.
When I was writing my Eiffel Tower tour,because I was staying by Javel, so it's
right along there, and so I would walkvery often and that's a great place
if you want to jog, by the way, also.
(42:07):
There were a lot of joggers.
Right.
Access to the banks of the river.
It's a great place for jogs.
Right around there, you don't have alot of businesses, but you don't have
to go very far to find them, you know?
You know what else was reallyconvenient that I wasn't anticipating?
Again, because to get to the Montparnassestation, I was a little concerned, it's
like, "Well, how long is it going to taketo get an Uber or how long is it going
(42:28):
to take to get a taxi?" Because you areequidis- not equidistance, but because
you're wedged between two train stations,you can get a taxi in under a minute.
Yeah.
Because there's always taxisthere for the taxi stands.
Of course.
So if you have the G7, like,somebody's there in a minute.
Which is often... I mean, in Parisyou never have to wait very long
for a taxi anyway, but if you'relocated well, that's even better.
(42:52):
I should mention, you said you would takethe RER into the city, and that's a fine
thing to do, but just make sure you getthe direct train, because the trains that
stop at every station, there's alwayssomebody who is going to rush in, grab
somebody's bag and rush out the door,and there's nothing you can do about it.
(43:15):
Yeah.
I actually, I did take the local,but I was so paranoid because I-
You knew about this.
Yeah.
When you see, like, I almost got arrestedbecause of my fear of pickpockets.
But no, I had a stainless steel carry-onthat I travel with, and then my carry-on
bag with my computer, I actually tookthe shoulder strap and unhooked it and
wrapped it around the handle, like-
(43:35):
Mm-hmm.
... three or four times andthen hooked it back in.
You know, if they'd really wanted toand they had a knife, they could have
come and... But even it was wrappedaround so many times that, you know,
they wouldn't have been able to, like-
It would have been hard.
Yeah.
It would have been hard.
Yeah.
But you just have to be ready.
Unfortunately, they can't seem to stopthese guys, and it's really easy for
them because they just... When it stopsat one of the stations, they rush in,
(43:58):
they grab whatever is easy, and theyrush out the door, and the doors close,
and the train goes and you're like,"Oh, my God!" And then if you arrive
at Orly Airport there's line 14 of themetro now, and I would take line 14
of the metro between Orly and the citycenter because it's 13 euros, you know.
(44:20):
Well, it's the same price to get toCDG, but in CDG, I think it's not
as, I would like it a little safer.
Let's put it this way.
I hear too many stories of peoplegetting robbed along that route.
So, yeah.
Noted.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fantastic.
Well, you had a great trip and...
I had a great trip.
I had a great trip and if everything goeswell, you may have a field correspondent
(44:43):
in the Loire Valley if you want one.
In the Loire Valley.
Fantastic.
Yeah.
That's a part of France where I justwant to go and park myself there for
a couple of weeks and go see, I mean,I've been to many of them, but briefly,
and it would be fantastic to go againand just spend a little more time.
Yeah.
We've been to Chambord.
We've been to Chenonceau.
The castle at Langeaisis really wonderful.
(45:05):
Uh-huh.
And it's not necessarily one thatis, you know, on the guidebooks,
but I found the town of Langeaisto be just beautiful, beautiful.
And, of course, there's Villandry whichis spectacular if you're a gardener.
It's so rich and even if I could...Hopefully, it'll be, you know, a landing
pad to explore more of France, but youcould spend years exploring just the
(45:27):
Loire Valley and still have things to see.
I think there's 400 chateaus in, like...I can't remember the surface area, but
I read an article once saying, you know,in this tiny area, you have 400 chateaus.
It's amazing.
It's never ending.
And some of them arenot open to the public.
Many of them are.
Some of them, they can't attractanybody because people don't spend
(45:49):
that long in the area really.
They will spend two, three nights maxand then be off to Normandy or whatever.
it's actually not a bad idea to...if you're going to be touring around,
especially if you have your owncar, to then go on to Normandy, or
La Rochelle or somewhere like that.
My sister and brother-in-law... Mybrother-in-law is actually a historian.
(46:09):
His degree is in history andhis specialty is World War II.
And so they actually went andthey rented... There's a Hertz
in Saumur, so that they actuallyrented a car themselves and took a
day trip to the Normandy beaches.
It's very definitely doableas a day trip from there.
It is.
It is.
David, thank you somuch for talking to me.
It's always a delight to talkto you and thank you for sharing
(46:30):
so many great tips and have awonderful time settling in Saumur.
That's exciting.
Yeah, very, I'm beside myself.
I'm really, really excited.
Merci beaucoup.
Merci.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
(46:53):
Patrons get several exclusiverewards for doing that, you can
see them at patreon.com/joinus.
I don't have any Join Us in FranceChampions to thank this week, I hope
this means that you're all on vacation.
To become a patron, go topatreon.com/joinus, and to support
(47:17):
Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
This week, I published my first shortvideo with footage I shot in Annecy, in
the French Alps, and I'm working on a newvideo about Vilanova i la Geltrú in Spain,
where I spent the last couple of weeks.
(47:37):
I've talked about this city of, inCatalunya several times because I
have been going there since I was achild and I own an apartment there
that my parents bought eons ago.
And it so happened that I bought a newcamera and I have been playing with
it, and it makes a huge difference.
It's a wonderful cameracompared to what I had before.
The one thing that is mind-blowing in thisvideo I'm going to share, is the human
(48:04):
castle that happened just under my nose.
As a matter of fact, I was soclose to a professional TV guy who,
you know, he was two feet tallerthan me, and he was holding this
massive professional TV camera.
And he kept kind of moving a littlebit and going in front of me, whatever,
but I made my way, I made my way.
(48:26):
That footage is amazing.
So for now, this is just for patrons,because I'm learning the craft and
I know they like me, so I'm lessworried about sharing with patrons.
But pretty soon they'll be onYouTube as well, give me a few weeks.
And on a personal note, I startedrenovating the apartment in Vilanova
(48:47):
i la :Geltrú, a couple years ago, andI always had in my mind that perhaps
I'd rent it out part of the year.
Clearly, I want to be able to gothere whenever I feel like it.
My sister is there right now, my brotherwill go next, my daughter goes, so
do my nieces and their children atthis point, so it's used quite a bit.
(49:09):
But there are still whole weeksin the year where it's empty.
And when you think about it,before you can rent a place out
or loan it out even, everythingneeds to be in good working order.
You need to sort out the keys, make roomsin the closet, remove any items that
visitors wouldn't have any use for, likemy recording equipment, for instance.
(49:34):
I keep some therebecause I always need it.
But I'm now ready.
I'm very happy with the state of things.
So I decided to list it on HomeExchange.
That's a good place to start, I think.
And so if you're in the HomeExchangesystem and would like to spend
some time in Catalunya, look it up.
It's called Annie's Apartmentin Vilanova i la Geltrú.
(49:58):
I just barely listed it, so nofeedback yet, but I can't wait to have
some experience with HomeExchange.
I think that's a very good way to go.
If you're planning a trip to Franceand want expert help, you can hire
me as your itinerary consultant.
Someone emailed me asking if I'm anold style full service travel agent,
(50:19):
you know, booking all your rooms andyour travel and all that, and I am not.
I make recommendations for hotels, forrestaurants, for experiences, tailored
to your needs and based on my firsthandexperience with you since we talk for an
hour, but I don't book anything for you.
Why not?
(50:40):
Well, because I want you to have fullcontrol over your reservations because
I think it's just better for you,it's going to work out better for you.
If you need to make any changes, ifyou're not happy with this or that,
it's better if you have full control.
So if you'd like to book theItinerary Consult Service or any
of my products and services, goto joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
(51:03):
Let's talk about the Eiffel Tower's secretengine, which is water power at work.
Did you know that the Eiffel Toweris still using hydraulic technology
from the 19th century to movevisitors up and down its elevators?
That's right, beneath all the wrought ironbeauty, there's a fascinating bit of Old
(51:27):
World engineering still at work today.
It's one of those hidden storiesthat most of the six million
annual visitors never hear about.
In a recent behind-the-scene visitshared by journalist Yvan Allouin,
and elevator operator, Eric Trahan welearned that the west pillar of the
Eiffel Tower houses machinery largelyunchanged since the tower's early days.
(51:53):
The elevators that transport people upto the second floor, that's 115 meters
above ground, operate using a water-basedhydraulic system first put in place
in 1899 by Gustave Eiffel himself.
Here's how it works.
A valve opens, water from thecounterweight flows into a piston, called
(52:16):
a verin in French, which pushes a cart.
As the cart moves, it pulls oncables, lifting the elevator cabin.
When the counterweight goesdown, the cabin goes up.
The speed?
About two meters per second.
Eric Trahan, who maintains theelevators, says he can tell whether
(52:38):
the system is working properlyjust by the sound it makes.
"I hear it sing," he said.
"When everything hums the rightway, I know it's running smoothly."
What's even more amazing is that theoriginal pistons and cables from 1889
are still in use, though they've beenreinforced over the years for safety.
(53:01):
In fact, the elevator system is now sosecure, it's often compared to the safety
standards of the aviation industry.
Sensors monitor the system constantly andany minor fault can be corrected on site.
So it's not just aboutthe guy's hearing, okay?
If the problem is serious, afull intervention is triggered.
(53:23):
So next time you take the elevator up theEiffel Tower, take a moment to appreciate
the hidden world below your feet.
It's not just a monument, it's aliving piece of sightseeing history,
humming quietly beneath the crowds.
Let's talk about a majormilestone at Notre Dame, the
statues of Notre Dame return.
(53:47):
Something remarkablehappened this week in Paris.
All 16 statues that originallystood at the base of the Notre
Dame spire are now back in place.
The very last one, thestatue of Saint Thomas,
was lifted by crane early Thursday,last week, and it is secured at
(54:09):
the top of the cathedral, justunder the freshly rebuilt spire.
The statue, like the others, ismade of copper with a bronze patina.
It stands about three meters talland weighs just about 100 kilos.
It was blessed by ArchbishopLaurent Ulrich of Paris before being
(54:29):
carefully hoisted into position.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because these statues are some ofthe only original pieces of the
spire that survived the 2019 fire.
Just four days before the blaze, theyhad been removed for restoration work
(54:50):
and they were sent to the Dordogne,where they were going to be worked on.
Marie-Hélène Didier, a top heritageconservator for the Ile-de-France
region says, "It's almost a miracle."
The statues are currently stillhidden behind scaffolding, but by
the end of August, which will comefast, when the scaffolding around
(55:12):
the spire is finally dismantled,they'll be fully visible once again.
Best bring your binoculars because, Imean, if you have very good eyesight,
you will see them, but to reallysee them, you need binoculars or a
very good zoom lens, or you, it'salso worth trying with your phone.
Zooming in with your phone helps as well.
(55:33):
And a fun fact, Viollet-le-Ducmodeled Saint Thomas in his own
likeness, they say, because Thomasis the saint patron of architects.
How fun.
This symbolic milestone shows how far therestoration of Notre Dame has come, and
it's a reminder that amidst the tragedyof the fire, the precious things, like
(55:57):
these statues, were spared, and nowthey're right back where they belong.
My thanks to podcast editorsAnne and Christian Cotovan.
And next week on the podcast, an episodeabout the trip of a lifetime with
a family of six with Lori Belinski.
That sounds like it'sgoing to be a lot of fun.
(56:17):
Thank you so much for listening andI hope you join me next time so we
can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
(56:38):
no derivatives license.
This is Join Us in France, episode558, cinq cent cinquante-huit.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversationwith David Palachek about reconnecting
with France, exploring Paris,and the adventure of real estate
(00:39):
shopping in the Loire Valley.
If you've ever dreamed of living in Franceor want insider tips on travel, culture,
and making big life changes, this episodeis packed with inspiration and practical
advice you will not want to miss.
This podcast runs on chocolatine,caffeine, and the support of
wonderful humans like you.
(01:00):
You book itinerary consults, takemy VoiceMap tours, ride shotgun
in my electric car, come to theboot camp, or slip me a few euros
on Patreon, and I love you for it.
Want to keep me going and skip the ads?
There's a link for that in the show notes.
Head to joinusinfrance.com/boutiqueto purchase any of my services,
(01:23):
and thank you so much.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after my chat with David today,
I'll discuss the Eiffel Tower'ssecret engine and a milestone in
the restoration of Notre Dame.
Want all the links and thefull episode transcript?
You'll find everything on the pagethat lists all episodes by month
(01:43):
at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
And if you'd like a handy summary ofthe conversation with all the useful
links, subscribe to the newsletterat joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
It's the best way to stay in the loop.
(02:09):
Bonjour, David Palacheck andwelcome back to Join Us in France.
Ah, Bonjour, Annie.
Ça va?
Ça va trés bien, merci, et toi?
Trés bien.
So this is your fourth time on the show.
You were here talking about a vacation youtook long ago on episode 119 that I called
Canal Saint-Martin, but I don't know thatwe talked about that mostly, but whatever.
(02:31):
The second one was episode 195,How to Look Stylish in Paris,
because you care about those things.
That's optimistic.
Yeah, exactly.
Very optimistic.
Yes, and then episode 292,Le Corbusier Sites in Paris.
This time we're going totalk about a recent trip you
had with your nephew, right?
(02:52):
Well, it was a business trip that I took.
I had not been back to Paris since2020 when we did the Le Corbusier trip.
We actually were there in February 2020.
We were there less than a monthfrom when the borders closed.
And so this entire time had beenvery anxious to get back, but you
know, everything was closed andthen personal issues, whatever.
This was the first time that weactually were able to go, and
(03:14):
there was a business opportunity.
There's a show that happens once ayear, twice a year in Paris called
Maisons et Objets, where it's afurniture show, a lighting show.
They also have an entire exhibitionhall dedicated to, like, silk
flowers if you ever wanted to go.
But it was a professionalopportunity to go.
Right, because you're an architect.
So this is the sort of work you do, yeah.
(03:34):
I'm an architect, yes.
So, you know, we sawthat it was coming up.
I've always wanted to go.
My husband, Michael, was like,"You know, just book, we've been
wanting to go back. This is a greatopportunity and great excuse."
So, you know, we decided that I'd goahead and take it, and having not been
there in so long, suddenly the tripjust started blossoming, and blossoming,
and becoming more, and more, and more.
(03:55):
So the first thing that happened is whenwe were there in 2020, when we came back,
you know, we had gone in 2018 to theLoire Valley and fell in love with it.
So when we came back in 2020, weimmediately said, "Okay, let's get
serious about maybe trying to find apiece of property to buy in France."
And then the pandemichit, we put that on hold.
What are we doing?
Why are we buying a propertyon a different continent?
(04:16):
So we kind of, like, shut that down.
But just before the trip happened,Michael started getting emails
from real estate agencies.
You know, "This is this property. This isthis property." And they were all places
that we really were fond of, like Saumuror also Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, two places
that are really close to our hearts.
So Michael actually said, "Well, whydon't you extend your trip, your business
(04:38):
trip, by an extra day, take a day tripdown to the Loire Valley?" Which I did.
"And take a look at theproperties that are coming up."
And so that happened, and then theother thing that happened with my
nephew is, my nephew moved to Madridfrom Austin, Texas, last July.
I just kind of, like, wrote him a text andsaid, "I know this is really funny because
you're in Spain, obviously, and I'm goingto be in France, but it seems really weird
(05:01):
being on your side of the Atlantic and notat least letting you know that I'm going
to be there." And he wrote back and justsaid, "Well, what dates are you going?
I'll come up and, I'llfly up and meet you."
So what was supposed to be a businesstrip, which was very successful,
also became a good family trip,a bonding trip with my nephew.
I got to introduce somebodywho'd never been to Paris before.
I got to introduce Paris to him.
(05:23):
And then he and I both went down and spenta day in the Loire Valley, in Saumur, and
found a property that we're interested in.
Fantastic.
How many trips have you taken toFrance or Paris or Saumur all together?
Like...
I think I'm at six now because Iknow I've stayed in four hotels.
I've stayed in the Hotel Mayfair.
(05:45):
I've stayed in the Pavillon de La Reine.
I've stayed in the hotel, Monntauribert.
And then this time, I stayed in a veryinteresting property, which is on a barge
in the river, called Off Paris Seine.
And then we were there once for aday trip from London that we went
to see the Musée des Arts Forains.
So we were there for one New Year'sDay one time, and then we also flew
(06:06):
in with my parents the time thatwe went down to the Loire Valley.
So that makes six.
Wow.
That's a lot.
That's a lot, and it's interestingthat you, just today, I was listening
to somebody talking about people whohave a project to move away from home.
Sometimes it's in retirement, sometimesit's before they retire, and he was
(06:26):
saying that only 4% of people whotalk about this actually do it, but it
sounds like you might actually do it.
Well, it's... the wheels are going.
And it's funny because I wastalking to my therapist about this.
There is actually a point where it'slike, it's good to have a dream or
a fantasy, and a lot of people, Ithink, have a fantasy about, you know,
"Someday I'm going to live in France."Okay, well what does that look like?
And if you really do want to do it, whatare the steps that you start taking?
(06:50):
Do you start doing real estateinvestigations, which again
could be fantasy, you know?
"I want to live in a $3 million houseon the Cote d'Azur," something like
that, which is not where we are.
But if you really do want to take itfrom a fantasy to a dream, it's like,
you can start taking some concrete steps.
And we definitely havetaken those concrete steps.
Michael reached out to the real estateagent who had sent us this one property
(07:13):
in Saumur that we're very interested in,and you know, started corresponding with
her, and then we started correspondingthat I was there, was going to take
a day trip down, and started, youknow, doing the investigation, too.
Because theoretically, yeah, it's fine.
We're in New York.
I could fly to Paris.
But what's it going to be like gettingfrom Paris to the Loire Valley?
Is it something I'm goingto want to do long term?
(07:33):
So, we took the TGV down, and it took alittle over two hours, and it's okay, well
this is doable, especially if we're onlydoing it once or twice a year, or going
for two or three or four weeks at a time.
This is completely doable.
And you know, a meeting with thereal estate agent who, by the way,
has a YouTube video, so I alreadyknew what she looked like and had
talked to her and stuff like that.
Cool.
Very cool.
(07:53):
So it's, you know, then we came backand, it just so happens our son is 20
and he's out of high school, and we'vebeen talking about, "Okay, well, what
do we want, you know, the next yearsof our life to look like?" And, "Do we
really want to be in the suburbs anymoreor do we want to split our time between
our apartment in Manhattan and ourbeach house in maybe, you know, Europe?"
And so you really start looking atit and it's like, "Okay, well, this
(08:15):
is something that's very doable."Some people retire to warmer places,
some people get a condo in Florida.
Some people get a housein Arizona or New Mexico.
And for us, it's like we just decidedthat we're going to point our plane in
a different direction and go to Europe.
Yeah.
And there are all sorts of things, youknow, that I think that that affords.
One I think we're looking at itis, if we have a footprint, we can
(08:36):
actually turn it into a businessthat we can do in our retirement,
importing French design products.
Hmm.
But also, there are all sorts ofexplorations within France and the rest
of Europe that we've really been wantingto do, that when we were traveling
with the kid, we didn't want to dobecause it was always connecting...
You know, we didn't want connectingflights or trains or whatever else.
But if we have a home base... we cango to Toulouse, for instance, for the
(08:59):
weekend, or we can go to Nice, or wecan go to wherever else that you want
to go by train because, "Okay, well,we're going to be here for three months,
so let's take a weekend trip or two."
And some of these places you needan overnight somewhere to stay.
I mean, like from Saumur to Nice,you probably want to spend a couple
of nights before you head back.
But, you know, it's doable.
(09:20):
It's really fun.
Toulouse, same, because Toulouseyou'd probably have to go to
Saint-Pierre-des-Corps on thetrain and then connect through
Bordeaux and then Toulouse.
And they keep threatening to give us adirect TGV between Toulouse and Paris,
but I'll believe it when I see it.
They've been talkingabout this for 20 years.
Well, that's one of the things that I'mvery excited about Saumur, is apparently
(09:42):
there is once a day or twice a daythere is a direct TGV between CDG, you
know, Charles de Gaulle, and Saumur.
I guess for people flying inor people flying out of the
country, they do it once a day.
And that train is an hour and 45 minutes.
The train I took we had to connectthrough Angers, and that took
about two hours and 15 minutes.
(10:04):
And apparently if you go throughTour, it's a little bit faster,
but, you know, I can do that.
The train is really wonderful, and itgoes directly out of Gare Montparnasse.
And it was really funny because it wasgood traveling with my nephew because,
you know, since he's been in Spain inJuly, he's really been taking advantage
of being able to take weekend trips.
(10:25):
So he went to Nice for his birthday.
He went to Amsterdam.
He's not gay, but he went tosee one of his best friends in
Amsterdam for Gay Pride Weekend.
He knows how to work the flying withinEurope and how to use the train.
And it was really funnybecause I was really nervous.
I'd never taken the train.
This was my first trip thatI ever took the Paris Metro.
Oh, okay.
The metro, the first time metro?
(10:45):
Oh, wow.
The metro, the first time on the metro,the first time from the RER from the
airport, first time on the metro,first time the RER outside of the city.
So I didn't know, so I wasthinking American security.
"I need to be there two hours beforemy train." And he kept saying, "Oh,
well, David, you're making this waytoo serious, you can just show up."
So we had a very early... I thinkwe had a 7:45 train to Saumur.
(11:09):
And I wanted to show up early, and hewas like, "Please don't show up any more
than 30 minutes or 45 minutes before."So I talked him into a little bit more.
We took a a G7 taxi to, actually, I thinkhe hired an Uber, but we took an Uber to
Gare Montparnasse, which took less than20 minutes, and then we just sat because
it's like, there is no... He was... itwas really funny because Charlie was
(11:32):
even saying, he was like, "Oh my God, thesecurity's even more lax in France than it
is in Spain," because basically, you justswiped your pass on your phone, and you
walked onto your train and you were there.
And we were like, "Oh mygosh, this is so easy."
Yes, because the TGV in Spain, youhave to go through security, kind of
a metal detector sort of security.
(11:53):
In France, you don't do that.
And there's no point showing upmore than 30 minutes before your
train because imagine you needto go to the bathroom, okay?
Bathrooms at the train stationare terrible, try to avoid it.
But if you must, you must.
You might want to get a sandwichor a drink that takes five minutes.
There's plenty of placesto get stuff like that.
(12:14):
And then they won't announce your platformuntil 20 minutes before it's time to go.
So there's no point getting theremore than 30 minutes ahead of time
really for a train, for a TGV.
Right, right.
It was wonderful.
It was wonderful.
I will have to say one thing aboutthe bathroom, which is really funny.
On the way back, we were transferringover in Angers and we had a layover,
I think it was like 25 minutes,35 minutes, something like that.
(12:36):
And the train station in Angersis not air conditioned at all.
It was really cold the day we were there.
Cold by France standards,not by New York standards.
So we were camped out in the relay storethat was there, the newsstand store
because that's the only place that hadheat, and I needed to go to the bathroom.
And so I went, finally found thebathrooms, and I started walking in and
the attendant that was there was like,"No, no, no, it's like 50 cents," or it
(12:58):
was like a dollar for a public bathroom.
And I just looked at him,I was like, "You're crazy.
I'm not paying for that.
I'm so cheap."... I won't say,"I'll wait till I get on the train."
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for trainstations, you often have to pay a
little bit to get to the bathroom.
All right.
So tell me briefly, why do youlike the Saumur area so much?
What attracts you to it, besidesthe proximity to Paris, obviously?
(13:21):
Well, right, so it's twohours from Paris, it's great.
But what's really great about it iswe had taken a trip there in 2018
with my parents and my sister andbrother-in-law, and really at the
time fell in love with the area.
We were staying in a manoir, a reallybeautiful manoir in Verneuil-sur-Loire.
And it was this great walled property,and it was a small manoir and a
(13:44):
barn, and the owners were Americans.
They lived in the barn and thenrented out the manoir when it
was rentable and in season.
It had a pool.
It was actually a walled compound.
And it was old enough that they actuallyhad been... and had gone through all
of the building records with the town.
And there actually was a door in thiswall that had been built or had been
(14:06):
blown through the wall from Louis XIV,because their property apparently was
where they had collected taxes forthe entire region, and Louis XIV at
one point showed up, and at that time,before that, the only way to get onto
the property was to drive underneath adovecove, and they didn't want the king
to be shat upon, so they actually had toopen up a different door for the king.
(14:27):
But, you know, part of the moataround this manoir was still existing.
But we had fallen in love with it.
Saumur itself is such a lovely town.
There's a lovely place, PlaceSaint-Pierre, which is the
property that we're looking at isactually on Place Saint-Pierre.
A really beautiful églisethat's on the square.
There are beautifulmarkets every Saturday.
We were there on a Saturday.
The entire town turnsinto a farmer's market.
(14:49):
They drive in oysters from the coast.
The vegetables that were in thevegetable stands looked like a
photo shoot, they didn't look real.
You're right on the Loire, you have...
But they are real.
They are real, but it's beautiful.
The vibe of the town is really good.
It's just big enough, I think it's26,000 people, so it's big enough it
has its own opera house, which is nice.
(15:09):
So performing arts are there.
The arts in that area of theLoire Valley are amazing.
There's an entire, south of the river,there's a road that goes through, and
it goes through these wonderful townslike Candes-Saint Martin, then it goes
through a town called Montsoreau, andeventually goes to Fontevraud-l'Abbaye,
which is the Fontevraud Abbey.
(15:30):
And in addition to just being areally interesting historic site,
they do these like really, reallywonderful art exhibits at the abbey.
So when we were there, they had verycontemporary art that was there.
We were talking to a real estate agent,she said that they had just had a
Monet exhibit within the last year.
So you can be out in the country,but you've got a performing arts
center, you've got this great museum.
(15:52):
They actually sometimes doyoga, apparently, in the
galleries with this art.
And I was like, "Well, sign me up forthat." The other thing is our son is a
horse person, and one of the things inSaumur is the Cadre Noir, which is the
National Academy of Riding for the French,where they do, what's the horse dancing?
Dressage, so they do dressage.
You can actually go and seea dressage exhibit there.
(16:15):
And if you go in the other directionyou end up in Nantes eventually.
So for us, it's a really great location,it's relatively easy for us to get
into, and you know, it's just because welove it, we'd been there, we were very
familiar, both of us felt like it was someplace that we could spend a lot of time.
And at a certain point, in our50s and 60s, it's like, "Okay,
(16:35):
well, we know we want to do this,it's some place that we're very
passionate about, and we'll start."
Yeah.
And maybe it'll be where we live forthe rest of our lives or maybe we'll
get a foothold in spending three monthsout of the year there, we'll start
realizing, "Oh, you know, maybe Toulousewas where we want." You know, who knows?
But what's beautiful about theLoire Valley is that there are so
many chateaus that you can visitas well, and most of these chateaus
(16:58):
have exhibits that they invite.
So you have a lot of exhibitsgoing around to various chateaus.
You have ones that are only open onWeek-end du Patrimoine, for instance.
So really, if you want to beactive in the local culture,
you can, there's plenty to do.
The food is... I mean, it'snot super famous for food.
(17:20):
Wine, definitely, lots of wonderfulwines are produced around Saumur.
The food is, I mean, nothingcomes to mind, but they
must have local specialties.
They had a bread thing, like...
They grow mushrooms there.
That's true, mushrooms.
Champignon.
Yes, yes, yes.
It's a lovely part of France, and thewhole western coast of France is superb.
(17:43):
I mean, really, it's a beautiful placeto spend some time, so wonderful.
So you said you showedParis to your nephew.
Where did you take him?
Like, to you, what's essential Paris?
Well, it was really funny, because I askedhim what he wanted to do, and he said,
"Well, I want to do the Louvre," whichwe ended up doing, and then what else?
He didn't even say the Eiffel Tower.
I said, "Do you want to go up the EiffelTower?" He said no, not necessarily.
(18:07):
Oh, he wanted to see Notre Dame.
And, you know, with Notre Dame having justreopened, I told him, I was like, "Well,
I'm not sure," because when I found outwe were taking the trip, I immediately...
because I booked the trip in Decemberand they had just... We booked the trip
about two weeks before they startedtaking reservations to see Notre Dame.
For the app, yeah.
Through the app.
Through the app.
(18:27):
And so, you know, starting in December,I started trying to get tickets and
then realized that they were onlyopening up tickets 24 to 48 hours.
Started listening to podcasts and Facebookto try and figure out how to do it.
But I had warned him, it's like,"Okay, well, you know, we may or
may not be able to see Notre Dame."And he said, well, you know, what he
really wanted to see was the exterior.
And it's like, "Okay,well, we can do that."
(18:47):
The day that I got to France, I checkedinto my hotel and I had hours to burn
before I could actually go into my room.
So I had walked through the entire city.
I'd gone to the Centre Pompidou.
I had a meeting, a business meetingup around the Gare Saint-Lazare.
And so I had walked up thatarea and walked past the Opera.
And on my way back to the hotel, I waslike, "You know what? There's probably
(19:11):
no way I'm getting into Notre Dame at allbecause it's just reopened. I'm not going
to be able to get in, but I want to walkpast it, I want to see it." I wanted to
see how bad the lines are and even see ifit's going to be possible to get into it.
I walked through, it was aboutfour o'clock in the afternoon.
I just walked in.
I just, like, walked in.
I was like, "Oh my God, this isamazing." Beautiful restoration.
(19:32):
But Charlie was there.
He came in Thursday night.
He'd flown in from Madrid.
He got there, he thought he wasgoing to get there at midnight.
He got there a little bit earlier.
I had warned him, I was like, "I'm reallyjet-lagged, I'm not sure that I'm going
to be up for anything tonight, but we'llstart off and we'll try Notre Dame to
begin with and then whether or not thatis possible. If that's not possible,
(19:54):
I'll take you to Sainte-Chapelle,which is a must see in my book." But
anyway, so by the time he got there, I'dgotten my second wind and he got there.
Our hotel was on a barge, and so it hada small restaurant with limited hours
and I knew that by the time he gotthere, there wasn't going to be food.
So I'd gone to the Monoprix around thecorner and just gotten a sandwich and a
(20:15):
bag of Dijon chips and stuff like that.
So he, I fed him and then I was like,"You know what? Let's just go walk. It's
your first night in Paris, I'm not goingto be like a lame uncle and be like,
'Oh, I'm jet-lagged.'" So we walkedup the river from our hotel which was
right in front of the Gare Austerlitz.
And we walked along the river andwe walked to the Ile Saint-Louis.
Or, I'm sorry, Ile de la Cite.
(20:36):
And we sat outside of the Notre Dameand then he said, "Well, how far is the
Louvre?" I said, "Come on, I'll show you.
Let's walk." We walked up to the Louvre,we circled the pyramid and then we started
walking back down the Rue de Rivoli.
And then we got, because I know itnow well enough surprisingly that I
was like, "Okay, we're really close toPlace des Vosges. We should just, like,
cut through and you should see Placedes Vosges." And we stood in Place des
(20:57):
Vosges for a while, and then at thatpoint it's like, "Come on, we're going to
ruin the next day, which is our big dayin Paris. Let's go back to the hotel."
So went back to the hotel, got up earlyin the morning again, we tried that night
to get tickets to Notre Dame, couldn'tget a reservation so I said "Let's just
hit it early." So we hit Notre Dame early.
Less of a line even than whenI'd been in the day before, or
(21:18):
the, a couple of days before.
Went in, saw Notre Dame,which was wonderful.
Then we had lunch reservations atthis, one of my favorite restaurants,
which is Les Ombres, The Shadows,which is, it looks, it's on the roof of
the museum that's right by the EiffelTower, and it's got a glass roof.
Ah, yeah, the Quai Branly.
Oui, oui, oui.
So you eat there, it's areally great prix fixe lunch.
(21:40):
Really, really beautiful artisan foodlike, haute cuisine, but they have a
prix fixe that's like $50 per person,which I thought was a really good deal.
Yeah.
And so we had that reservation.
We couldn't get reservations toNotre Dame but we went to Notre Dame.
If you go early enough, you get in.
Try and be there before 10:00 andthen you usually, you can get in.
(22:01):
Right, we were there around 9:00.
And so then I told him, I was like,"Well look, we're, you know, we're here,
we don't have tickets but let me go seeif we can get into Sainte-Chapelle."
So they were selling tickets, youactually have to go through, the entire
place is cordoned off with securitybut I explained that we wanted to go to
Sainte-Chapelle so they said, "Well, goto the office at the conciergerie." So
(22:21):
we went there and they were only sellingsplit tickets where you had to do both.
Oh.
So we got a timed ticket to go intoSainte-Chapelle and then to spend
the 45 minutes before we walkedthrough the conciergerie and saw
the cell where Marie Antoinettewas held before she was executed.
And then went to Sainte-Chapelle.
One warning is they had two lineswhere they had a on the hour and they
(22:44):
had a half hour, but no signage whichone you were supposed to get in.
So we just, like, got in oneand then it wasn't moving.
I was like, "I think we're in the wrongone." So we went and then switched
and they were like, "Oh, you've gotcombo tickets, come on in." And so
we saw Sainte-Chapelle, which wasfantastic, and then, you know, walked
up and walked behind Les Invalides.
(23:04):
Went to lunch and then, I was like,"You know, we don't have tickets to
see the Eiffel Tower but you reallyshould..." Oh, well, actually,
no, we saw that the last day.
Losing what we did that day.
So we went and did that.
Oh, then he wanted to go to theLouvre, so we ended up at the Louvre.
And again, I'm, like, always gotan edge, so we had timed tickets
to get into the Louvre at 4:00.
And so I was like, "Let's not go throughthe pyramid, we're going to go through
(23:26):
the carousel entry." It was Januaryand there were so few people there
that we just, like, basically walkedin.... and walked into the Louvre.
And you know, we weren't there verylong, but we went and saw all the
David paintings, which are... I adore.
Showed him the Mona Lisa, and he was like,"Well, am I supposed to actually want to
go up?" I was like, "Well, do you want aselfie?" He was like, "No." He goes like,
(23:48):
"Okay, we'll go see it." He kind of stoodthere for a while and was like, "Okay,
I've seen enough." We saw Winged Victory.
I never was able tofind the Venus de Milo.
But we were there for a couple hours.
It's in a different wing.
That's probably why.
Yeah, that's why.
And although... because we didthe complete U, because we ended
up leaving out of Richelieu.
So we walked out of Richelieu.
So we did that, but I just couldn'tfigure out, because it's downstairs...
(24:09):
We did see the original foundationsof the original historic Louvre.
Okay.
So we made it down there, but it's like,that's the one thing I couldn't find when
we were there in the time that we had.
Well, in a situation like that, youcan ask one of the guards, because
they take turns guarding everywhere,and they typically know exactly how to
direct you, but you didn't know that.
That's fine.
(24:30):
We didn't know that.
After we did the Louvre,Charlie was like, "Well, do
you want to go to a siesta and thenget ready to go out in the evening?"
I said, "Well, why don't we... Youhad mentioned wanting to go shopping
and do some clothes shopping.
We're here, it's January, it'sin the middle of Les Soldes."
Hmm.
So the deals are going to be incredible.
So, he was like, "Sure, let's go,let's go." So I took him to Galerie
(24:50):
Lafayette and to Printemps, where weended up actually buying some stuff.
But we decided... He was like, "Well,do you want to just Uber it?" I was
like, "Well, no, I'm actually tryingto teach myself how to use the metro.
Let's use the metro."
So we end up taking the metro fromLouvre to the Galerie Lafayette stop,
but I'd been having this thing with...this difficulty with my phone, where
I had the day pass on my phone, butI'd try and swipe it, and it would say
(25:14):
that... it would give me this error.
Hmm.
And I was like, "Well, thisdoesn't make any sense.
I bought it.
You know, whatever." As it turnsout, there's some setting on my
iPhone where, when you try to swipeit, there was a little thing at
the very bottom of the screen thatsaid, "Authorize with your code."
Ah.
And I'd have to hit that, then I'dhave to double-click the side of
my phone, and then it would bringup the code to unlock my phone.
(25:35):
And once I unlocked my phone,then it would bring the ticket
up, and there was no problem.
And once I realized that, I would justdo that before I even got to the station.
But the first couple of times I triedto use it, I thought my credit card was
bad or I thought something was going on.
It was kind of nerve-racking,so I was a little bit thrown.
Mm-hmm.
But we finally got through theturnstiles, because that's about the
time I figured out how to do that.
(25:56):
And so we're going, andthis woman walks up to me.
And I was like, "Oh, it'sone of those petition ladies.
It's a pickpocket, it's a scam orsomething." So I just like, kind
of waved her off, and she was like,"No, no, Monsieur." I was like, "No.
Wow, you are so aggressive with me." Iwas like, "I'm... She's totally going
to pickpocket me." And it was like, "No,no," and she was like, screaming at me,
"Yes, yes." And then all of a sudden,like, two or three other people come over.
(26:18):
I was like, "Oh, my God. It'slike a gang of pickpockets."
And I look over, and then I realizedthat they've got the jacket on
with the metro logo on the jacket.
I was like, "Oh, I'm being controlled.They're actually checking. They
want to see the ticket." And Iimmediately started apologizing.
I was like, "Oh, my God. Desolee,desolee, desolee." And she was like,
(26:39):
"No, no, it's fine, it's fine." Andthen in French I was like, "I am so
sorry. I thought you were pickpockets."They all doubled over with laughter.
They're like, "Ha ha ha,pickpockets?" "Pickpockets?
Ha ha ha." "Okay.
Bonne journee." And then they let mego, but I was like, "Oh, my goodness."
You know, be prepared to be controlled.
Don't put up a fight.
Yeah, there's a lot of controls on themetro, and these people are not friendly.
(27:03):
I'm pretty sure I've mentionedthis on the podcast before,
they're not paid to be nice.
So, if you are in violation, you willget a ticket, and you will need to pay
it right away, and it's very unpleasant.
But by then, you had figuredout how to use your app, right?
Yeah, they had shown me.
It was really funny, talkingabout people not being pleasant.
The person who'd kind of showed me thefirst time is the... The hotel where
(27:24):
I was staying was really well-situatedas far as the metro, because it was
right in front of the Gare d'Austerlitz,but across the river is the Gare Lyon.
And so it's on two, reallyconvenient to two metro lines.
So that's the first time that I waslike, " I just bought this pass.
Why isn't it working?" So I went tothe ticket office. And in French I
said, you know, "Excuse me, pardon.
Bonjour.
Pardon.
(27:45):
Pouvez m'aider?
J'ai achete un billet."
You know, "I've just bought this ticketon my phone but it's not working, can
you help me?" And the guy was like,"Yeah, give me your phone." He looked
through, and he kind of, like, madea face and said, "wait a minute,"
because there was somebody behind me.
Helped the guy behind me.
Got out of the ticket office, walkedwith me to the turnstile, swiped it a
couple of times, and he was like, "Idon't know why this isn't working."
(28:07):
Actually went and got another woman whocame over and started scrolling through.
You know, she's the person who showed me.
But it was so funny, because as a NewYorker, I was like, "Okay, there's no
way that anybody who's a subway workerin New York is going to take their
time to come over and individually tryand get you through the turnstile."
Yeah.
But anyway, so yeah, I had figuredout by that time what was going on.
(28:28):
That's about the time after theLouvre situation that I was like, "Oh,
maybe what I can do is I can go throughthe steps before I get to the metro stop."
Right.
"... so that the ticket's upped beforeI even get to the turnstile," and
that's what I did for the restof the trip, and it was fine.
Yeah, yeah.
That's interesting, because you must havebeen somewhat nervous about taking the
metro, and then you had problems withyour ticket and you had problems with
(28:49):
the contrôle, so maybe you're now justpetrified to go on the metro again, but...
Not just petrified, but it's just...as a New Yorker, it's really funny,
because I was like, "I can do this."And every time I got on, I got on
the wrong side of the platform andended up going in the wrong direction.
One day, I was trying to get fromAusterlitz into the Saint-Michel
(29:10):
station, and then all of a sudden endedup at the station at the Bibliotheque
Nationale, and was like, "Oh, I wentthe wrong direction." So I switched,
and then, "Oh, yeah, I went in thewrong direction." And then got out
and got to the other platform, andthen the trains were being delayed.
Like, the next train was like 45 minutes,and the one after that was an hour.
Oh, dear.
You might as well walk at that point.
(29:30):
Yeah, I know.
Well, at that point I just, I took ag-... I swear by the G7 app for taxis.
Because I just went out and hailed acab, and the cab was there with like two
minutes and got me where I wanted to go.
Yeah.
And then there were a couple of timesthat we got on metro trains that all of a
sudden the lights would just go down, andthey'd make an announcement and everybody
would grumble and just got off the train.
And I was like, "Okay, if I've got time,I'm going to come back because hopefully
(29:53):
I will be coming back more frequently.I'm going to learn this, but I'm only
going to do it when I've got plentyof time and I want to save money."
Usually the metro is very efficient.
I've gotten used to it, but it's truethat... I mean, I took the metro in
New York and thought it was quite abit worse than the metro in Paris.
It's dirty by comparison.
It's dirty and also I wasn't usedto it, and all these different
(30:17):
companies running trains.
I was like, "Oh, this is so confusing."But it gave me more sympathy for
people who come to Paris and areconfused, because if it's brand new,
of course it might be confusing.
That just makes sense.
But you're right about theG7 app, it's very efficient.
I like it better than Uberin Paris because they're
more professionals, you know.
(30:38):
I'm traumatized because I was inParis a couple weeks ago and this
woman, I called an Uber to take me tothe train station, to Montparnasse,
and on the Uber app it said she wasgoing to be there in four minutes,
and 20 minutes later, she arrives.
It was a good thing I had plenty oftime to get to the train station.
And she totally had stopped for lunch,because it was 1:00 PM, and I could
(30:59):
see that her car was parked, withthe app you can see where the car is.
It wasn't moving.
So I thought, "Well, maybe there's aprotest or maybe she had a breakdown or
something." No, she was having lunch.
When she showed up, she had a Cokein her hand and a sandwich on her,
you know, on the passenger seat.
And I was like, "Son of a..."
With, well... with Uber, I'm alwaysafraid that I'm going to get a bad rating
(31:24):
so, you know, I'll just wait it out.
But then at the same time, youknow, it is that situation.
It's like once you're logged in.
The other thing about taking the G7 asopposed to taking the Uber is the taxis
can take the taxi lanes, so when there'sa lot of traffic, it's faster, because
Uber drivers have to sit in traffic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And sometimes they don't and thenthe taxi drivers yell at them and
then you're in the middle of a fight.
(31:45):
So, don't do it.
Yeah.
Yikes.
Before we end up losing that train ofthought, which I think we almost have,
but, you know, Charlie the next day wentwith me to the Montparnasse station.
We went down to Saumur together, whichwas a lot of fun, and then came back.
And then that evening ended up havinga dinner out in the Montparnasse area,
which I'd never been to really that much.
(32:06):
That's totally hopping.
I love that neighborhood.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
Yeah, it's very nice.
It's wonderful.
And then the following day we got up, hehad a flight and wanted to go to brunch.
So we actually went to Rue Clerfor brunch, and then walked around.
We had a couple hours before he hadto go to the airport, so I actually
took him to the Eiffel Tower.
I was like, "You really shouldgo to the Eiffel Tower."
And I had, really hadn't beento the Eiffel Tower since any of
(32:28):
the security fencing had gone up.
So I didn't know if you could getinto the security fencing without
a ticket to go up, which you can.
Yep.
And again, because it was kind of drizzlythe day that we went, so we basically
just had to walk through security andwe were able to walk around the Eiffel
Tower, which I actually have to say as afirst-time person, that's probably enough.
I mean, I think it's so impressivewalking underneath it, that
(32:51):
you don't even need to go up.
And then walked across thebridge to the Trocadero.
He wanted to see the Arc deTriomphe, so we took him there.
And then, he went ahead andwent back to the airport.
I took him back to the hotel so that hecould catch a cab to go to the airport.
And then I went to... I'd been dyingsince it opened to go see the Bourse du
Commerce, which is the Pinault Collection.
(33:12):
Which is there Les Halles.
So I walked over, actually, I think Isuccessfully took the metro that time.
Yay for me.
Good.
And went and saw the Pinault Collection,which is really, really, really an
impressive piece of architecture, boththe Tadao Ando intervention as well as
just the building itself is stunning.
(33:32):
And now that it's renovated,the area around the Bourse
du Commerce is just amazing.
The shops are cool.
There's a really cool Japanesefood store and cat tea room
that's right around the corner.
There's the really beautiful church,the Eglise, that is, was the old
church for all of the people whoused to sell at Les Halles is there
(33:53):
and very definitely worth seeing.
Saint-Eustache.
Yes.
And it's a beautiful,beautiful, beautiful church.
And for all the people who complainthat, you know, Notre Dame is too
clean, just go there and you can see
what... you know, churches lookedlike before they were scrubbed down.
Yes.
Saint-Eustache is
a good example of onethat needs some help.
(34:15):
Yeah.
It needs a little scrubbing.
Yeah.
And then I wanted to go see, there was areally great exhibit at the Grand Palais.
And so I went up to the GrandPalais, and it didn't matter if
you had tickets in advance or not.
The line to get into the GrandPalais was like 45 minutes.
The security.
Yeah.
I was like, "You know what? Atthis point, I'm just, it's my last
day. I, it's too much for me."...
(34:35):
But what's interesting about this tripis, you know, me not necessarily needing
to see all of the big sights, it wasgreat to go with Charlie because I took
him to all the big sights and I couldsee... it's funny, you know, I hadn't
seen a lot of those since our veryfirst trip to Paris, like, 12 years ago.
Mm-hmm.
And so it was interesting to me to seehow accurate my memories actually were.
(34:57):
It's like, had they changed orhad my memories just been faulty?
And I was like, I likedeverything that we saw.
It was like, "I don't rememberthat being quite like that. Okay."
And Paris has improved, I think, asa result of the Olympics, in part.
And they're just getting better atbeing more welcoming and more organized.
Paris is a really nice city to visit.
I mean, honestly.
(35:18):
It's a great city.
My French is improved enoughthat I can mostly communicate
in French, and that helps a lot.
Yeah, and if you're going to livethere, you need... Like, I'm sure
in Saumur, you will find plentyof people who speak English.
But for everyday life you need atleast B2 level of French, you know?
Is minimum.
Well, so that's all.
(35:39):
I just, I adore France, and adore Paris.
The 12 years or so that we've beengoing, to your point, it has gotten,
it's gotten cleaner, it's gotten Ithink more interesting, you know?
It's like there's the show that was there,there's an entire new arts community or
art center that I want to go to, but Iran out of time, called Centquatre, 104.
It's like an incubator fornew art, and it's around...
(36:02):
It's on Rue de Rivoli, right?
No, no.
I know the one that you're talking about.
No.
This is actually out by wherethe Parc de Lafayette is.
Oh.
So it's out there in that portion ofthe city where the new symphony is.
And it's the old... It'sactually really interesting.
It's in the old city morgue.
Ooh.
But it's an art center, and it'sall, like, they commission new
(36:23):
works by up-and-coming artists.
I found it accidentally througha sound installation that
had been posted on Instagram.
I was like, "Oh my God, this artist isso interesting, I wonder where they're
showing," and they were showing there.
Oh.
But I ran out of time.
But to me, it was like this bug.
It's like, okay, well Parisisn't just these sights.
It's like, Paris is acontemporary world city.
(36:45):
Yeah, there are the things to see, butfor me, it's like, I've got the bug
where it's like, okay, well, I want itin rotation because I get to see a lot
of things living in Manhattan, but thereare things that never even come here.
Yeah.
I wanted to try and incorporate,see how I can expand my business
and start traveling there.
I want to continue to go for thearts and for performance, and just
(37:06):
to be in the city is just amazing.
Yeah.
And the whole area with the Cite desScience and the... I mean, obviously,
the opera house there, what is it called?
I forgot.
Anyway, it might come back.
It's really not aged well.
The exterior looks awful by now.
It was-
Oh, the one at Bastille?
Not Bastille.
Bastille is fine.
The one by the Cite des Science.
(37:27):
Oh.
Yeah, yeah.
Can't remember what it's called.
La Symph- No, not Symphony.
The-
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
The Jean Nouvel, who's actually oneof my favorite architects, but... Oh,
he took his name off of that project.
He did, yeah.
Because they wouldn't use themusic... Cite de la Musique.
La Philharmonie de Parisis what it's called.
Yes, yes.
Oui.
And yeah, the buildingdoesn't look good anymore.
(37:51):
But that whole area has really improved.
The Cite des Science was very fun.
When we went there were a lotof exhibits, there were a lot of
families with children under ten.
And I used to not recommend itbecause I saw it was very loud
and very unpleasant in there.
They've made it a lot better.
It was really a good experience for methis couple of weeks ago when we went.
(38:12):
So, I would recommend that.
Tell me, are there some things you learnedabout France that you want to share?
Advice that you want to give people?
You've given plenty already, but...
Well, I think, first of all, taking thetrain in... there's no way I'm going to
do, come back and forth to the airportany way other than taking the train.
Which was, I did have a funny experience.
(38:33):
I flew United flies into thedoughnut terminal, Terminal 1.
And so I had to, you know, doYouTube videos beforehand to
figure out where to go to the RERstation between Terminals 2 and 3.
That was good.
I did have a funny... You know,got there, got in the morning.
You know, in New York you havelike mariachis and things that
get on the subway with you.
And you're like, "Oh, man." And I goton the train and this guy walked up
(38:54):
right to my seat with an accordion andstarted playing an accordion on it.
It was like, "Are you kiddingme?" "Are you kidding me?"
Sometimes they're not very good either.
Well, he was okay.
I still didn't start belting out any ofmy Edith Piaf at him, so... The Metro
is really good, the G7 is really good.
My advice is just basically go toParis and try and see it not as a
postcard, but try and see it as a city.
(39:15):
And just spend time.
There was so much that I wanted to see...I was so hungry to be there because
I hadn't been there for five yearsthat I probably tried to do too much.
Oh.
And I think that, you know, especiallyfor first-timers, it's like, well, you
may never come back again, but one of thethings you're going to miss if you don't
take time is you're going to miss whatit actually feels like to be in the city.
Yeah.
So I think that there's a lotof like, kind of being relaxed
(39:36):
that I didn't experience.
One thing I do want to hit onbefore we leave is the hotel
where I stayed is really amazing.
It's on the river.
It's on a retired barge.
And basically what they did was they tooktwo barges and they strapped them together
and built a 54-room boutique hotel on it.
And where the two of them come together,they actually put a swimming pool.
(39:58):
Oh, it's the one with the pool.
Okay.
I know where it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's the one with the pool.
It's the one with the pool.
Yeah, okay.
I did bring my bathing suit with mebecause I was like, "I'm not going
to swim in the Seine, but maybe I'mswimming on the Seine." I ended up just
like dipping my toes in the first nightI was there just to say I could do it.
But it's really, you know, it wasreally quiet because it's, you know,
it's just past the Jardin des Plantes.
(40:18):
So it's kind of just on theedge of where central Paris is.
Super convenient because it's rightthere by the two train stations.
And for me, they gave me thislike really wonderful room on the
ground level at the very far end ofthe hotel, so it was super quiet.
The staying in it was really interestingbecause you really didn't feel that you
were on a boat until something really bigcame by, and then every once in a while
(40:40):
there was kind of a little bit of likea jolt and it would take a minute or two
for the hotel to basically come to a stop.
I actually found it, like, a really,really easy place to sleep because
it, it was almost like you werebeing rocked to sleep every night.
But it was great.
It's another thing that Iwould potentially recommend
is going... It wasn't so easy,like, if I wanted to go out.
(41:01):
You know, I had to walk aroundthe Gare d'Austerlitz to get to
the... close to the Monoprix.
You couldn't just, like, go outyour front door and find a cafe or
a bistro or something like that.
So it was a little bit of a, youknow, inconvenience in that way.
But if you wanted someplace to justkind of like decompress at the end of
the day, finding a hotel that's maybea little bit out of the craziness,
(41:25):
I mean, to me, made it a really, itwas almost like a zen experience at
the end of the day, just like go backand kind of think about, you know,
what had happened during the daytime.
And I don't see the river.
One night, I just had dinnerat the hotel restaurant.
I was like, "I'm so lame.
I'm having a dinner at the hotelrestaurant." It's like, "Yeah, in a glass
room looking over the Seine." I was like-
Yeah.
It's nice.
(41:45):
That's not lame.
That's not lame.
So...
Yeah.
They often have events for companies.
They had one there... Yeah.
They had one there one ofthe days that I went there.
When I was writing my Eiffel Tower tour,because I was staying by Javel, so it's
right along there, and so I would walkvery often and that's a great place
if you want to jog, by the way, also.
(42:07):
There were a lot of joggers.
Right.
Access to the banks of the river.
It's a great place for jogs.
Right around there, you don't have alot of businesses, but you don't have
to go very far to find them, you know?
You know what else was reallyconvenient that I wasn't anticipating?
Again, because to get to the Montparnassestation, I was a little concerned, it's
like, "Well, how long is it going to taketo get an Uber or how long is it going
(42:28):
to take to get a taxi?" Because you areequidis- not equidistance, but because
you're wedged between two train stations,you can get a taxi in under a minute.
Yeah.
Because there's always taxisthere for the taxi stands.
Of course.
So if you have the G7, like,somebody's there in a minute.
Which is often... I mean, in Parisyou never have to wait very long
for a taxi anyway, but if you'relocated well, that's even better.
(42:52):
I should mention, you said you would takethe RER into the city, and that's a fine
thing to do, but just make sure you getthe direct train, because the trains that
stop at every station, there's alwayssomebody who is going to rush in, grab
somebody's bag and rush out the door,and there's nothing you can do about it.
(43:15):
Yeah.
I actually, I did take the local,but I was so paranoid because I-
You knew about this.
Yeah.
When you see, like, I almost got arrestedbecause of my fear of pickpockets.
But no, I had a stainless steel carry-onthat I travel with, and then my carry-on
bag with my computer, I actually tookthe shoulder strap and unhooked it and
wrapped it around the handle, like-
(43:35):
Mm-hmm.
... three or four times andthen hooked it back in.
You know, if they'd really wanted toand they had a knife, they could have
come and... But even it was wrappedaround so many times that, you know,
they wouldn't have been able to, like-
It would have been hard.
Yeah.
It would have been hard.
Yeah.
But you just have to be ready.
Unfortunately, they can't seem to stopthese guys, and it's really easy for
them because they just... When it stopsat one of the stations, they rush in,
(43:58):
they grab whatever is easy, and theyrush out the door, and the doors close,
and the train goes and you're like,"Oh, my God!" And then if you arrive
at Orly Airport there's line 14 of themetro now, and I would take line 14
of the metro between Orly and the citycenter because it's 13 euros, you know.
(44:20):
Well, it's the same price to get toCDG, but in CDG, I think it's not
as, I would like it a little safer.
Let's put it this way.
I hear too many stories of peoplegetting robbed along that route.
So, yeah.
Noted.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fantastic.
Well, you had a great trip and...
I had a great trip.
I had a great trip and if everything goeswell, you may have a field correspondent
(44:43):
in the Loire Valley if you want one.
In the Loire Valley.
Fantastic.
Yeah.
That's a part of France where I justwant to go and park myself there for
a couple of weeks and go see, I mean,I've been to many of them, but briefly,
and it would be fantastic to go againand just spend a little more time.
Yeah.
We've been to Chambord.
We've been to Chenonceau.
The castle at Langeaisis really wonderful.
(45:05):
Uh-huh.
And it's not necessarily one thatis, you know, on the guidebooks,
but I found the town of Langeaisto be just beautiful, beautiful.
And, of course, there's Villandry whichis spectacular if you're a gardener.
It's so rich and even if I could...Hopefully, it'll be, you know, a landing
pad to explore more of France, but youcould spend years exploring just the
(45:27):
Loire Valley and still have things to see.
I think there's 400 chateaus in, like...I can't remember the surface area, but
I read an article once saying, you know,in this tiny area, you have 400 chateaus.
It's amazing.
It's never ending.
And some of them arenot open to the public.
Many of them are.
Some of them, they can't attractanybody because people don't spend
(45:49):
that long in the area really.
They will spend two, three nights maxand then be off to Normandy or whatever.
it's actually not a bad idea to...if you're going to be touring around,
especially if you have your owncar, to then go on to Normandy, or
La Rochelle or somewhere like that.
My sister and brother-in-law... Mybrother-in-law is actually a historian.
(46:09):
His degree is in history andhis specialty is World War II.
And so they actually went andthey rented... There's a Hertz
in Saumur, so that they actuallyrented a car themselves and took a
day trip to the Normandy beaches.
It's very definitely doableas a day trip from there.
It is.
It is.
David, thank you somuch for talking to me.
It's always a delight to talkto you and thank you for sharing
(46:30):
so many great tips and have awonderful time settling in Saumur.
That's exciting.
Yeah, very, I'm beside myself.
I'm really, really excited.
Merci beaucoup.
Merci.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
(46:53):
Patrons get several exclusiverewards for doing that, you can
see them at patreon.com/joinus.
I don't have any Join Us in FranceChampions to thank this week, I hope
this means that you're all on vacation.
To become a patron, go topatreon.com/joinus, and to support
(47:17):
Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
This week, I published my first shortvideo with footage I shot in Annecy, in
the French Alps, and I'm working on a newvideo about Vilanova i la Geltrú in Spain,
where I spent the last couple of weeks.
(47:37):
I've talked about this city of, inCatalunya several times because I
have been going there since I was achild and I own an apartment there
that my parents bought eons ago.
And it so happened that I bought a newcamera and I have been playing with
it, and it makes a huge difference.
It's a wonderful cameracompared to what I had before.
The one thing that is mind-blowing in thisvideo I'm going to share, is the human
(48:04):
castle that happened just under my nose.
As a matter of fact, I was soclose to a professional TV guy who,
you know, he was two feet tallerthan me, and he was holding this
massive professional TV camera.
And he kept kind of moving a littlebit and going in front of me, whatever,
but I made my way, I made my way.
(48:26):
That footage is amazing.
So for now, this is just for patrons,because I'm learning the craft and
I know they like me, so I'm lessworried about sharing with patrons.
But pretty soon they'll be onYouTube as well, give me a few weeks.
And on a personal note, I startedrenovating the apartment in Vilanova
(48:47):
i la :Geltrú, a couple years ago, andI always had in my mind that perhaps
I'd rent it out part of the year.
Clearly, I want to be able to gothere whenever I feel like it.
My sister is there right now, my brotherwill go next, my daughter goes, so
do my nieces and their children atthis point, so it's used quite a bit.
(49:09):
But there are still whole weeksin the year where it's empty.
And when you think about it,before you can rent a place out
or loan it out even, everythingneeds to be in good working order.
You need to sort out the keys, make roomsin the closet, remove any items that
visitors wouldn't have any use for, likemy recording equipment, for instance.
(49:34):
I keep some therebecause I always need it.
But I'm now ready.
I'm very happy with the state of things.
So I decided to list it on HomeExchange.
That's a good place to start, I think.
And so if you're in the HomeExchangesystem and would like to spend
some time in Catalunya, look it up.
It's called Annie's Apartmentin Vilanova i la Geltrú.
(49:58):
I just barely listed it, so nofeedback yet, but I can't wait to have
some experience with HomeExchange.
I think that's a very good way to go.
If you're planning a trip to Franceand want expert help, you can hire
me as your itinerary consultant.
Someone emailed me asking if I'm anold style full service travel agent,
(50:19):
you know, booking all your rooms andyour travel and all that, and I am not.
I make recommendations for hotels, forrestaurants, for experiences, tailored
to your needs and based on my firsthandexperience with you since we talk for an
hour, but I don't book anything for you.
Why not?
(50:40):
Well, because I want you to have fullcontrol over your reservations because
I think it's just better for you,it's going to work out better for you.
If you need to make any changes, ifyou're not happy with this or that,
it's better if you have full control.
So if you'd like to book theItinerary Consult Service or any
of my products and services, goto joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
(51:03):
Let's talk about the Eiffel Tower's secretengine, which is water power at work.
Did you know that the Eiffel Toweris still using hydraulic technology
from the 19th century to movevisitors up and down its elevators?
That's right, beneath all the wrought ironbeauty, there's a fascinating bit of Old
(51:27):
World engineering still at work today.
It's one of those hidden storiesthat most of the six million
annual visitors never hear about.
In a recent behind-the-scene visitshared by journalist Yvan Allouin,
and elevator operator, Eric Trahan welearned that the west pillar of the
Eiffel Tower houses machinery largelyunchanged since the tower's early days.
(51:53):
The elevators that transport people upto the second floor, that's 115 meters
above ground, operate using a water-basedhydraulic system first put in place
in 1899 by Gustave Eiffel himself.
Here's how it works.
A valve opens, water from thecounterweight flows into a piston, called
(52:16):
a verin in French, which pushes a cart.
As the cart moves, it pulls oncables, lifting the elevator cabin.
When the counterweight goesdown, the cabin goes up.
The speed?
About two meters per second.
Eric Trahan, who maintains theelevators, says he can tell whether
(52:38):
the system is working properlyjust by the sound it makes.
"I hear it sing," he said.
"When everything hums the rightway, I know it's running smoothly."
What's even more amazing is that theoriginal pistons and cables from 1889
are still in use, though they've beenreinforced over the years for safety.
(53:01):
In fact, the elevator system is now sosecure, it's often compared to the safety
standards of the aviation industry.
Sensors monitor the system constantly andany minor fault can be corrected on site.
So it's not just aboutthe guy's hearing, okay?
If the problem is serious, afull intervention is triggered.
(53:23):
So next time you take the elevator up theEiffel Tower, take a moment to appreciate
the hidden world below your feet.
It's not just a monument, it's aliving piece of sightseeing history,
humming quietly beneath the crowds.
Let's talk about a majormilestone at Notre Dame, the
statues of Notre Dame return.
(53:47):
Something remarkablehappened this week in Paris.
All 16 statues that originallystood at the base of the Notre
Dame spire are now back in place.
The very last one, thestatue of Saint Thomas,
was lifted by crane early Thursday,last week, and it is secured at
(54:09):
the top of the cathedral, justunder the freshly rebuilt spire.
The statue, like the others, ismade of copper with a bronze patina.
It stands about three meters talland weighs just about 100 kilos.
It was blessed by ArchbishopLaurent Ulrich of Paris before being
(54:29):
carefully hoisted into position.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because these statues are some ofthe only original pieces of the
spire that survived the 2019 fire.
Just four days before the blaze, theyhad been removed for restoration work
(54:50):
and they were sent to the Dordogne,where they were going to be worked on.
Marie-Hélène Didier, a top heritageconservator for the Ile-de-France
region says, "It's almost a miracle."
The statues are currently stillhidden behind scaffolding, but by
the end of August, which will comefast, when the scaffolding around
(55:12):
the spire is finally dismantled,they'll be fully visible once again.
Best bring your binoculars because, Imean, if you have very good eyesight,
you will see them, but to reallysee them, you need binoculars or a
very good zoom lens, or you, it'salso worth trying with your phone.
Zooming in with your phone helps as well.
(55:33):
And a fun fact, Viollet-le-Ducmodeled Saint Thomas in his own
likeness, they say, because Thomasis the saint patron of architects.
How fun.
This symbolic milestone shows how far therestoration of Notre Dame has come, and
it's a reminder that amidst the tragedyof the fire, the precious things, like
(55:57):
these statues, were spared, and nowthey're right back where they belong.
My thanks to podcast editorsAnne and Christian Cotovan.
And next week on the podcast, an episodeabout the trip of a lifetime with
a family of six with Lori Belinski.
That sounds like it'sgoing to be a lot of fun.
(56:17):
Thank you so much for listening andI hope you join me next time so we
can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
(56:38):
no derivatives license.
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