Category Archives: France

Even though it was quite a warm night in our cottage with no AC, we both slept well. In the morning we successfully navigated yet another tiny cooking area and figured out how to make an awesome fried egg sandwich for breakfast. Then it was off to find things that are open in France on a Sunday. When in doubt, go to a tourist destination where savvy local authorities are willing to suspend necessary rules to let the merchants take visitor’s cash.

Even though this is our last overnight stop in Normandy, we crossed the line and spent the day in neighbouring Brittany. First to Cancale, the so called oyster capital of France. (Not a Google Gemini hallucination – backed up by Wikipedia. Unless they are in cahoots. 🤔) Oysters weren’t the only draw though – it was market day! Another fantastic street market to explore. We made several purchases including a new tablecloth and local sausages and strawberries from the food stalls.

This wasn’t the only market in town. The oyster market operates in the seafront every day and sells local, freshly shucked oysters for what we would consider a pittance. Two dozen for about £22/$30. And if you were willing to do the work yourself, you could get two dozen No 3 size for about half that! So with half bottle of Chardonnay and our two platters of oysters, we joined the dozens of others on the waterfront enjoying the very warm day. With only a squeeze of lemon, the fresh briny taste really came through. Once done, we were told to throw the shells onto the small beach. It was covered in layers of oyster shells being carefully inspected by the local seagulls, some of which were Aberdeen worthy – think rugby ball with wings. The bonus was that we could throw shells AT the flying rats and make it look innocent! Best target practice ever!

We wandered about a bit more before heading across the headlands to another tourist hotspot: Saint Malo. It’s a port city with the old town surrounded by high walls that was once home to privateers – pirates with the royal seal of approval. Like Cancale, this place was jumping! All of the shops and restaurants inside the old town were open for business and there were plenty of people there to take advantage of it. It was a beautiful little spot and we thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the cobbled streets, popping in and out of shops, and looking over the wall to the receding tide. There were several stages set up where bands were playing and a variety of street acts performing in different places. This included the obligatory hen party who decided they really needed to do the Macarena in the middle of the street.

Because there is a beach accessible from the edge of the old town, we did the obligatory walk along the sand. It was broad and flat and sparkled with silica, beauty marred only by the vast amount of seaweed washed up on shore.

Eventually it was time to head out. While being close to the water helped with the intense heat, the sun had taken it out of us. We were hoping to stop at a less urban beach for a swim on the way home but the tide was going out. And when I say out, I mean WAY out. Like a kilometre out from the main part of the beach. So no swim today. 😢

Because it’s Sunday, the grocery options are severely limited so it was back to the local convenience store. As a Father’s Day treat, we decided not to walk back into town in the intense heat when the cafes finally opened at 7pm but instead picked up a rotisserie chicken and fixings to dine at home. (Side note on poulet rôti – they are EVERYWHERE here! There have been multiple stands at every market we have been too and every grocery store and corner shop sells them as well! Mental.)

I hope all the dads enjoyed their Father’s Day as much as Frank did!

Data for today:

• Steps: 16,637 or 6.8 miles
• Max temp endured: 31
• Layers of sunscreen applied: 3
• Bottles of water consumed: 5

Today would be our next transition day as we continue westward through Normandy. We are getting quite handy at packing up so we were on the road early for our first destination- Utah beach. The most westerly of the landing beaches, it was the last one to complete our D-Day beach bingo card.

It was the beach with the most visible scars from the engagement. Bits of German bunkers in the dunes and the remains of the floating bridges and heavy machinery ramps still in the water. Yes, there was a museum but we didn’t visit. (Point to note: all the museums tell the same story with the focus on different bits of detail. If you are like us and want the big picture but not the minutiae, then visiting dozens of these places is overload.)

Then we headed inland to Saint Lô, a victim of Allied bombing after the landing. Nearly the entire city was destroyed in the days after so the rebuilt city doesn’t have the same feel as some of the places we’ve been. The cathedral- another Notre Dame! – is the most visible evidence of the destruction and rebuilding. They didn’t try to restore it to its gothic glory. But instead left just one of the two towers of the 14th century building standing and adapted the rest. We weren’t able to visit properly as there was a mass going on so we observed mostly from the outside. There is still a shell casing stuck in the outer wall among all the bullet holes.

But we didn’t stop here just for the WWII history- Saturday is market day!! We explored the streets stalls and let Frank practice his high school French to help me purchase more cheap Italian linen! 😬 We availed ourselves of the gallette food truck and enjoyed a light lunch in the screaming sunshine- ham, cheese, and egg plus mushrooms for Frank if you are curious.

Moving along, we continued westward to the coastal city of Danville, which Google Gemini says is known as the “Monaco of the North”. If you ever wanted evidence of AI hallucinations, read some of Google’s AI summaries for searches!!

It is a very pretty seaside town, with beautiful aquamarine water but not necessarily beautiful beaches. We wandered the ramparts, saw the closing of the market stalls (darn – missed one!) and enjoyed the atmosphere in this lovely place. A couple of ice creams – for which I badly mangled my order because Spanish keeps creeping in! – and it was time to head to our new home base.

We are staying in a fairly new purpose-built cottage outside Mont Saint Michele. It has everything you could ask for including a private deck and washing machine. Clean clothes- yay! We are about 1 km from the car parks for visiting the Mont so there will be walking.

And it will be HOT 🥵! The forecast is for a dangerous heatwave over the remainder of our stay with temps possibly reaching as high as 40! And nothing here is set up for that kind of heat, including our cottage. So we may need to change our plans and do less walking and more relaxing… what a pity!

Data for today:

• Steps: 24,365 or 10.4 miles
• Tiny roads that made me panic: 6
• Mistakes made by Google maps: 4
• Landing beaches visited this trip: 5

Or as we should say in French: Allons sur les plages! Today’s plan (yes, there was one!) was to head back east a bit to Deauxville to see what the “posh” beach in the area looks like – and visit the street market that was scheduled to be there until just after lunch. Then we would wend our way back west making stops at the 3 eastern landing beaches – Sword, Juno, and Gold. We made cooked breakfast in our tiny cupboard of a kitchen before setting out for our adventures.

Because we wanted this to be a chill driving tour, we are very happy taking all the back roads and seeing the country. Well we are mostly happy – except when we hit the *really* back roads with no lane markers, no passing places, and insane speed limits for the conditions. There are lots of comparable B roads in Scotland (except they have passing places!) but when we drive down those roads, I’m comfortably ensconced on the verge side of the car. The trusty and talented driver (that’s Frank BTW) is the one closest to the oncoming traffic and can make the appropriate decisions when cars get too close. Here, it is me facing small French automobiles coming towards me taking up what seems to be more than their fare share of the road! We’ve only had one instance where we had to overcompensate for a road hog but that doesn’t make some of these travels any easier. Good thing my hair is already grey!

We arrived unscathed and headed to the market – one of our favourite activities. In addition to the requisite food stalls, there were a variety of clothing, jewellery, and household items that we thoroughly enjoyed perusing. I came away with a nice green and white shirt for €10. Yay!

Then to lunch! We found a lovely cafe with a variety of salad options – none of which involved fried Indian food items! I thoroughly enjoyed the Niçoise – including the anchovies! – and Frank opted for the Croque Monsieur (because who doesn’t like a pound of cheese melted on a ham sandwich!) Add the local cider and dessert (cheesecake and divine panna cotta) and it was a most sumptuous repast.

Then to the beach! Interestingly, it appears that this weekend is the Deauxville Triathlon- with a sprint, Olympic, and Iron Man distance on offer. So the beachfront had been transformed into different parts of the race which made it more difficult to appreciate the “glamour and luxury” that Google Gemini would have you believe is the norm. The beach itself is okay – broad pale sands strewn with LOTS sharp shells – but not the nicest we’ve seen this week.

Then it was off to the eastern D-Day beaches – lesser celebrated than Omaha and very different in both nature and commemoration. Sword is the furthest east and except for the obligatory museum and the statue of Piper Billie Mullins, you wouldn’t really know it was a special place. Families were picnicking and people were walking their dogs. Everything seemed very normal. The sand here was also coarse and full of sharp things so definitely not a favourite.

Next up: Juno beach – the Canadian one according to all the signs. Here was another museum along with bunkers, tanks, and other reminders of what came before. The beach itself was actually kind of gross with harsh sand and gobs of seaweed and other floaties. Ugh.

Finally to Gold beach which seemed to have almost nothing to mark it as being the next beach over from Omaha. Until we found the British Memorial nearby. A similar commemoration to the Normandy American cemetery, it is a memorial – but not resting place- for every British solo who died during the Battle of Normandy. Outside the columned structure are metal silhouettes representing each of the soldiers killed on D-Day. In the fading summer sunlight, it was incredibly moving. (Lest you think we don’t investigate, the beach was far less jaggy with much nicer sand but not necessarily better atmosphere.)

A stop at a large Carrefore on the road home provided all we needed for the evening meal. Our go-to AirBnb dinner of pasta and sauce- this time with loads of fresh mushrooms- and a lovely Cotes du Rhône (yup, €4). C’est magnifique!

Data for today:

• Steps: 18,790 or 7.8 miles
• Beaches visited: 4
• ATMs negotiated: 1
• Meals involving cheese: Yes

Today marked the first move from one part of Normandy to another. Being dab hands at the induction hob at this point, we mastered a wonderful breakfast including hash browns made with the leftover potatoes from our steak night. Then it was time to pack up and hit the road. We said goodbye to our quaint cottage on the hill and the village of Canteleu and began our trip west. Destination: Port-en-Bessin on the Atlantic coast.

But first, some history – the really old kind. We stopped for lunch in Caen, which is not old in itself but has a castle which is. We happened upon a cafe with a very simple lunch menu of 3 items: steak tartare (it’s absolutely everywhere!), a “smash burger”, and a salad. No tourist menu with 15 choices and English translations here! So the raw beef was right out but the other two were on target and with a bottle of cider, we enjoyed our repast.

I do feel the need to point out two things at this point. First, it was HOT. I mean searing sun and sweaty pits hot. The weather apps said it was 27 but the car thermometer and my clammy skin said otherwise. I’m so glad we chose northern France early in the summer to avoid the terrible temps. 🙄 We were appropriately dressed but still unprepared. The heat is part of the reason we chose this particular cafe as it offered the quickest respite from the roasting sunshine.

Which brings me to the next point: what do the French think is the definition of salad? I can tell you that Dictionary.com says “a usually cold dish consisting of vegetables, as lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, covered with a dressing and sometimes containing seafood, meat, or eggs.” Nowhere does it say fried Indian fritter. Yet today I had a “salad” with cold asparagus and green beans, picked courgettes (zucchini), buratta, and PAKORAS! WTF?! I thought that my translation app was broken and that there was an obvious French veggie thing that was spelled like the Indian fritter. But no, my salad had two (admittedly excellent) Indian pakoras with the lump of Italian cheese and other vegetables. Delicious but the cognitive dissonance was palpable!

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, we can move on. We wandered about the central district for a bit, checking out the other shops and restaurants before a quick stop in Saint Peter’s church. Can’t pass up a good Gothic edifice! It wasn’t particularly noteworthy IMHO so we moved onto the main event: Caen Castle. Originally built by William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings, parts of the castle from the 11th century still survive. Other bits date from the 100 years war (15th century) with more things being unearthed from different periods. Fascinating! The chapel of St George was a favourite for the beauty of its stark simplicity.

But after climbing all over the ancient walls in the scorching sun, we decided it was time to head to our next destination on the coast: Port en Bessin was the first village to be liberated after D Day which sets the scene for the next part of the trip. Our apartment is 100 meters from the seafront (all up hill of course!) and the sea breeze was a welcome relief.

We settled in and wandered about to pick up necessities and get our bearings. Then it was time for (more) food. As we are on the coast, seafood seemed appropriate. We chose a place that offered local scallops in calvados and leek cream sauce for me and the “every other seafood option besides mussels” platter for Frank. This plate of crab, oysters, langoustines, prawns and whelks was so enormous, the German couple at the table next to us asked if they could take a picture!

All in all, another successful day! Today’s stats:

• Steps: 17,385 or 7.6 miles
• Price of petrol: €1.82/litre (roughly $8/gallon for those in the US),or £1.56/litre
• Grade of hill outside our door: 18%
• Number of food items moved between apartments: 19 (not all cheese!)

August 12 –

Ah, France on a Sunday…. it’s so quiet…. deathly quiet…. so we sorta had to have breakfast in the hotel this morning because there was nothing else open!  So we loaded up the utilitarian van and found our way out of Dijon.  We would have liked to spend some time driving down the Wine Road but it headed south and we were going north…. to Reins, the heart of Champagne!

Let me describe a Sunday drive on a highway in northern France… we were surrounded by Belgians and Brits with overloaded station wagons and mini-vans heading home from their holidays.  The Dutch were on the move too but they seemed to all be either driving RVs or towing caravans!  I think we only saw 3 cars with French plates the whole 300 kilometers we were on the road today!  Not that we’re ones to talk – our car has Swiss plates!

We sorely missed Helga, or any satnav system, as we attempted to find our hotel in Reims today.  Mostly because it turned out not to actually be in Reims but in a suburb…. D’oh!  I hate it when I forget to read the fine print!  A very nice lady at the tourist information office set us straight though and we found it with little trouble.  Unfortunately, it’s really not near anything that you can walk to so after checking in and unloading the bags (through the window – we’re on the ground floor!), we headed back downtown to see the sights.

We found a lovely little place still serving lunch at 3 p.m. and discovered what Croques are in Champagne:  open faced grilled cheese sandwiches… YUM!  Frank had his with tomato and I had mine with ham.  Duncan experienced the French version of a club sandwich and learned a lesson himself:  hard-boiled eggs don’t fit well on sandwiches if they are just cut in half!   Nevertheless, we had our sustenance and it was time to figure out what the town had to offer.  One guess:  champagne!

We walked a little ways from the town center to get to the wine cellars of G.H. Mumm for a tour and some tasting… well for us, the kids had to pass.  We caught the last English tour of the day and learned how this fine house has been making champagne for 170 years.  They are the official champagne of Formula 1 racing so the next time you see a grand prix, you’ll see their champagne being sprayed all over the podium. They have 2.5 MILLION bottles aging in cellars that cover 25 kilometers of tunnels.  It was pretty impressive!  We learned lots of stuff about the various fermentations and saw the riddling racks where a small percentage of their product is still riddled by hand; riddling is the fine art of getting the sediment into the neck of the bottle so it can be easily removed before the finally bottling.  Then it was time to taste!  We had tickets to try the basic offering, the Cordon Rouge, as well as a single year vintage from 1999.  We could actually taste the difference – it was really neat to be able to see and smell the difference in the two champagnes.  We bought a half-bottle to have later since there’s no way to get it home…. stupid 3 ounce rule….

Thus fortified, we wandered to the cathedral:  Notre Dame de Reims – I told you every French city had one!  After lighting a tall candle this time (10!), we learned about the history of this interesting building.  It was built on the site where it is believed that Clovis, the first king to unite the Frankish people, was crowned in *496*!!  Of course, no cathedral existed for another 400 years…  This building has a fascinating history starting in the 12th century when construction began.  It is where 25 kings of France have been crowned including Charles VII who was pretty much dragged there by Jeanne d’Arc.  It sustained damage in WWI but not much in WWII and has some beautiful stained glass windows by Marc Chagall.

It was now time for the evening meal and we found another lovely place where we got to sit outside and have yummy food but it was spoiled by a nearby table where a large Italian or Spanish man decided to have a cigar during our dinner.  I’ve adjusted, a bit, to the ever present cigarette smoke here in Europe but cigar smoke makes me really ill.  So we finished up quickly, skipping desert :-(, and headed back to the hotel to snack on Swiss chocolate and prepare for tomorrow’s adventure:  Brussels.

/san/

[Pedometer:  17,401 or about 8.5 miles, a fair amount of which was clocked in cellars 14 meters below the surface.]

August 11 –

So today we prepare to bid Auf Weidersein to Zurich and move on to the French countryside.  We breakfasted, packed up and loaded up our new rental car; alas, our rental car karma had given out and we got exactly what we paid for:  a Volkswagon Caddy.  It’s a bare bones mini-van with no extras especially no satellite navigation system so I actually have to pay attention to where we are and figure out how to get to where we are going!

So thanks to Google maps, we find our way out of Zurich and onto the road to Dijon.  It is grey and cloudy and we are convinced that we are in for another soggy day in France.  We got there about 3.5 hours later and realized the downside to Google maps:  if you don’t wind up on the road they recommend, you have no reference how to get back to the suggested route!  We found the hotel eventually and got the bags unloaded.  The sun had broken through the clouds and it appeared that France was trying to redeem herself.  But we couldn’t enjoy it immediately because we had family business:  laundry!

As it would happen, there is a laundromat right around the corner from our hotel (coincidence?) so we start a couple of loads and head of to grab some lunch.  Now we are back in less familiar, more French territory where a smile and “Bitte” don’t buy anything!  Dijon may not be the back woods but it isn’t so cosmopolitan that we can expect everyone to speak English because they don’t!  We navigated the menu at the brasserie with no major problems (ham in mustard sauce – yum!) and then checked in on the laundry. 

After putting the clean clothes in the dryer, we started our daily wanderings to see what this city had to offer.  It is a very old town with lots of ancient sandstone buildings and tons of churches!  We found our way into Notre Dame de Dijon – I think every French city has a Notre Dame – where I lit a candle for my mom to make up for the lack of candles in the Swiss churches (candles: 9).  We retrieved the laundry and had our daily ice cream before doing some more wandering.

One thing that is really neat about Dijon is that there is a marked walking tour of the city.  The Owl  (“La Chouette”) is a symbol for the city and it appears on the pillars of Notre Dam and there are little owl plaques set into the sidewalks to take you past the major tourist attractions.  We figured this out halfway through and proceeded to have some aim to our wandering which took us past many other churches – including one where a wedding was just wrapping up and we got to see the bride and groom emerge.  It was really neat!  We stopped in a few shops and snapped lots of pictures of this really neat town.

We found a lovely little restaurant where there was an English menu posted – except, of course, that the waiter himself didn’t speak English.  Luckily I knew the French word for egg or I would have gotten escargot for a starter!  We think we have found all the missing children from Zurich because they were all in the square in Dijon tonight.  We enjoyed all three courses and a litre of the local wine and then headed back for a quiet Saturday night.

/san/

[Pedometer:  18,681 or about 9 miles over cobblestones.  Not bad considering we spent half the day in the car…]

July 29 –

Okay I’m sure it’s not wet all the time but I certainly wouldn’t be able to testify to the contrary! We awoke to another gray morning hoping that things would stay dry enough to get out for a bit. It doesn’t rain constantly but there are bursts in between dry spells that make wandering a challenge. It rained everyday in Paris and so far every day in Strasbourg! We slept in this morning and decided against the hotel breakfast; therefore, we wandered about the streets of the Grand Ile looking for somewhere to have breakfast. We found a patisserie serving bread, croissants, jam and coffee and were happy to do so. Here’s a traveling hint: Strasbourg isn’t very exciting on a Sunday – especially in the rain. We had hoped to take a cruise on the Rhine this morning but the showers started early so we nixed that idea.

Wandering through town after breakfast, we stumbled up on a folk dance exhibition in the Place Guttenberg. I have to say that the French equivalent of square dancing was quite entertaining. Add an occasional cloudburst to the enthusiastic performers and things get even more amusing. None of the shops besides those outside the cathedral were open and the rain ruined the boat plans so we shifted to an alternative.

We rescued the car from the hotel car park and ventured out into the countryside to visit a French castle. (There’s a Monty Python joke in there but I’ll leave it alone!) We encountered our first French traffic jam: it seems that lots of people had the same idea on how to spend a rainy Sunday! The castle Haut-Koeningsburg is about half an hour outside Strassbourg and is about half a mile up in the hills. It was fascinating to walk around for a few reasons. First, although we have seen many castles during our travels, this one was still different to any we’d seen before. It was built with red sandstone, had a great deal of wood used in to basic structure and had ornate porcelain-type stoves in many of the rooms. Second, it was actually restored in the early 20th century by Kaiser Wilhelm II so much of the decoration is due to his influence and style rather than trying to accurately capture every aspect of the castle as it was in the 12th century.

Our late start and lunchtime castle exploration meant that we didn’t even think about lunch until after we had come back down the mountain and well after 2 p.m. We found a restaurant in the village at the bottom of the hill from the castle that had lots of people sitting outside (under awnings in the intermittent rain) so we thought it would be a good place for a late lunch. Wrong! The only options we had open to us were pizzas and one of the local specialties, tarte flambe, which is like a thin crust pizza with no tomato sauce. I chose that option, Duncan and Gillian picked a pizza and Frank opted for a calzone. Here’s a note to write down: NOT ALL RESTAURANTS IN FRANCE ARE GOOD. My tarte was fine and the pizzas were just okay. Frank’s calzone, on the other hand, seemed a bit undercooked. The gloppy dough and raw egg inside (!?!) would indicate to me that there was more cooking to be done. We decided that a nice dinner would be in order to make up for this less than mediocre lunch!

Back in Strasbourg, it was still a rainy Sunday with nothing open and none of the movie theaters were showing the Simpson’s movie in English. While the dubbed French version would have been an adventure, we opted for some quiet time reading; Duncan is plowing through Harry Potter at every opportunity! Around 7 p.m. we decided more food was in order so off to Petite France to find an open restaurant. Not quite as easy as we would have liked but we found a lovely place with a set 3 course meal that we all could agree on (it had vegetables on the menu!) and enjoyed a leisurely evening meal with wine and dessert and coffee.

We’ll try for an earlier night so we can get an earlier start tomorrow. If the weather clears we’ll try one more time for the boat cruise, otherwise we’re off to the Black Forest where I can finally do some hiking that doesn’t involve concrete!

/san/

[Pedometer: 14,923 or about 7 miles up and down castle ramparts.]

July 28 –

It was a dreary rainy day in Luxembourg this morning so we ate breakfast in the hotel but only because the kids were free! Good thing too because we were not at all pleased with the buffet. It took forever to get coffee, the eggs came either runny or uncooked and needed to sit in a pot of semi-warm water for a *long* time, and they never came to clear away the plates even though we used many and they piled up on the table!

Undaunted by this inauspicious start, however, we packed up the car and programmed Helga to take us to Strasbourg – about a 2 hour drive. We encountered our first European toll road – which took credit cards – and managed to keep up with the flow of traffic proceeding at 130kmph. We pulled into the city and up to our hotel right around noon.

Cases unloaded and the car parked, we wandered into the old city to experience the market. When we asked at the desk where the market was, we were essentially told that it was all over the city. This was no exaggeration! You couldn’t turn a street corner without seeing more stalls lined up on every street. Shoes, sausages, tank tops, toys, watches, pretzels, mattresses (?!?), and just about anything else you could think of was for sale somewhere. And the people! I don’t know the population of Strasbourg but I think that half of Germany was also here today!

And we did do some shopping – of course. I bought a great sundress and Gillian got a new watch. I encountered my first truly rude French sales clerk in a small shop. I wanted to buy a 2 litre bottle of water for €2 but all I had was a €20 note. When she pointed out that the bottle only cost 2 – by holding up two fingers – and I shrugged and looked helpless – the international sign for “that’s all I have” – I got tsked at, she rolled her eyes and then turned to a colleague behind the counter and continued a previous chat! I was ready to hit her with the bottle of water but Duncan saved me from an international incident by scrounging up a coin and then she was all sweetness and light; I even got a cheery “Bon jour” on the way out the door…. go figure.

And for those familiar with my nun saga (I’m being stalked by nuns – really!), I had my first real sighting today. Asian nuns in grey habits fairly swarming the streets. As it was raining intermittently, one had decided to don a fishing hat over her habit – a sight not readily forgotten! To make up for the lack of sightings prior to this, we ran into a group of French nuns later on in the day. I suspect I will encounter them regularly now since their cover was blown….

We skipped the formal lunch and grabbed munchies in the market. Duncan and Frank enjoyed the traditional French treat of Churros (!) while Gillian and I settled for the more mundane crepe. I dedicated my crepe to my friends Christine and Julie with whom I should have shared one last year and then proceeded to devour it!

After some wandering, we went to the main attraction in Strasbourg: the cathedral. I lit a candle (that’s 6) and admired the stained glass windows. This is the first cathedrals we’ve visited with a serious decorative disparity between indoors and out. It’s incredibly ornate architecturally but very plain inside. There is a really cool astronomical clock inside as well – Duncan had to explain it to me of course.

More wandering around the city until the real rain started then we decided to get an early dinner. Later on in the evening, we ventured back to the cathedral for a really neat light show. Starting at 10:15 p.m. the cathedral puts on a light show set to music on the western facade. It was really neat! Not quite as cool as the Magic Fountains in Barcelona but definitely a sight to see.

/san/

[Pedometer: 25, 958 which is probably only about 10 miles since most of it was spent jostling impatient French market goers.]