The Victorian Road Trip Part 1 - Shepparton & Creswick

Before Anto had to start his new job, we decided to squeeze in one last holiday.  After a few days of dithering and discounting a week in Sabah laying around a pool, or 10 days in the South Island of New Zealand, (mostly due to exorbitant airfares due to it being school holidays) we decided on a trip to Victoria to catch up with friends and drive the Great Ocean Road. We figured it was shameful that we had never done the Great Ocean Road drive and we picked up a good deal on accommodation in Lorne and worked everything out from there.

After a couple of days the trip was organised, and we were ready to go.  Both kids are seasoned flyers but we haven't done too many long drives with them. A couple of trips to Sydney, but that is about it. We were a little apprehensive about 10 days and over 2000km in the car with little ones.  We did decide to swap cars with Antony's parents, so that Nic could actually fit in the backseat if Soren cracked it (in our car we can squeeze in the middle for maybe 10 minutes, but breathing and arm movement are optional). We also borrowed a car DVD player for Astrid. As much as we disliked the idea, we figured it would be for our sanity, at least on the long and boring sections of the trip. We also reasoned that on a long flight she gets to watch TV, so this wasn't much different.  A few million episodes of Peppa Pig, Ben & Holly, Octonauts and Bananas were uploaded onto the media card and we somehow mostly filled the boot with endless amounts of 'stuff'..... Nic will note that she was very good with the clothing this time, it was all the wet weather gear, portacot, picnic gear, esky and camera gear and laptops that added up.

The first section of the drive South is pretty boring. We figured we were probably pushing our luck to get all the way from Canberra to Ballarat in one hit without one, or both kids losing the plot. So we picked Shepparton as a stopping point and decided to time our departure for afternoon nap time, and planned an afternoon tea stop, dinner stop and some night driving with an arrival into Shepparton around 10pm.  A small miracle occurred and we actually were organised ourselves and the animals and left home 1.5 hours early.

We made good time, and with sleeping children didn't bother stopping at our initial scheduled stop of Gundagai. We actually made it all the way to Holbrook before both kids needed feeding and release from the car.......and found a nice bakery where Astrid ate her body weight in cream and custard pastry, and Nic & Anto refueled with coffee. Holbrook had been our planned dinner stop but we were running so early that we had revised to Albury and then Wangaratta.

Still making good time, and with relatively well behaved kids (albeit with Nic sitting in the back) we decided that we could keep going and get into Shepparton without an additional stop and get settled into the hotel for a lateish dinner.  Soren lost the plot about half an hour before Shepparton which made for an interesting last part of the drive but stopping was going to prolong the agony for all concerned.  We arrived by 6.20pm, at least 3.5 hours ahead of schedule and managed to placate Soren with a feed while Anto and Astrid went in search of Astrid's requested fish and chips for dinner. After 2 attempts to obtain food, they returned with fried products that everyone enjoyed (except Nic who doesn't like chips and doesn't eat fish), and everyone was asleep in bed, not too late, and without too many tears.

Astrid enjoying her fish and chip dinner and Soren being kept off the floor of our questionable accomodation....

Our Shepparton accommodation was never going to be flash. Everything was expensive and we only wanted to sleep there and leave first thing. Even with low expectations the motel underwhelmed us. It was dated and dingy but the carpet was so feral we couldn't let Soren near it and we weren't overly sure how clean the rest of it was. It also had heating that sounded like a jet engine and came on and off all night, while we all froze.  It also had no cot for Soren, so lucky we had ours with us. He ended up in the bed with us anyway due to being a block of ice in his cot.

After a not so restful nights sleep, we packed up while keeping everyone from touching too much and headed to breakfast. Some superb internet research the night before (how did anyone travel without internet access?) told us there was a fabulous cafe near by.  Turns out the internet was right and we thoroughly enjoyed our breakfast at Friar's cafe (a cafe in a converted church). Excellent food and coffee and a really cool cafe.

On our way just after 9am, and Soren managed to sleep for awhile and Astrid watched a million more episodes of Ben and Holly but behaved admirably.  We made good time again and enjoyed our brief drive through Bendigo (we didn't know they had trams, learn something new every day). Soren was a little over the driving but was happily playing with Nic for at least some of the time.  We had planned to stop in Daylesford for a look around but both kids had fallen asleep and it was absolutely pouring with rain so we drove through and just viewed from the car, figuring it was pointless waking both of them up to get them wet and cranky.  We then drove through to Creswick and decided that we needed to stop for lunch and had been informed by a very reliable source that there was both a patisserie and chocolate shop in town worth visiting.

It was still raining and both kids were still sleeping, but they needed feeding so we located the chocolate shop (mysteriously closed despite it claiming to be open) but the patisserie was a winner. Called Le Peche Gourmand, it was the closest thing to a French Patisserie we have found outside of France.  It was pretty small, but there was a fire, velvety chairs and delicious treats.  Astrid had a croissant, Anto a baguette and Nic decided, despite not being hungry that the tarts looked too good and settled on a chocolate and salted caramel tart.  The woman who runs the patisserie was French and obviously knew what she was doing. The food was fantastic, and the coffee excellent. Proper croissants, baguette and perfect pastry.  It was a nice way to spend a very cold and rainy lunch, by a warm fire, eating yummy food.  Soren was also pretty pleased with himself, crawling around the plush chairs and trying all the food.

We regrettably left the warm and wandered around Creswick.  It was bitterly cold and wet so we didn't stay out for too long. We considered visiting the nearby wool mill to see the alpaca fleece milling but decided since we had alpacas at home and we were very cold, so to keep going on to Ballarat.  We did swing back by the patisserie to pick up some 'takeaway' patisserie for dessert that night....

29 November - The farewell to Paree eating tour!

Today was our last full day in Paris. So much food and so little time. We decided that we needed to make sure we got some more yummy treats in before we depart. Of course we are only going to Belgium, home of chocolate, waffles and beer, so we aren't going to starve!

Despite both her parents being up late (yet again), Astrid had a decentish nights sleep and was happier in the morning than her parents were pre-coffee!  We are currently using up items in our fridge and pantry so have run out of a few essential ingredients like pepper. Breakfast was rather salty eggs, but still with nice French butter and bread.

We headed out of the apartment into a cool (OK, pretty cold) Paris morning and walked down to La Conciergerie, which is a former Royal Paris and prison (that housed Marie-Antoinette). During the French Revolution hundreds of prisoners were taken from La Conciergerie to be executed via guillotine at locations around Paris.  La Conciergerie was originally a Medieval Palace and has some impressive guard halls. Kings continued to improve upon the palace until the 14th Century, when Charles V moved across the river to the Louvre. However, the Conciergerie is most famous for being 'the antechamber to the guillotine' due to the number of it's prisoners that were executed during the French Revolution.

The building now houses a museum and many parts of it are used as Paris law courts.  The part that is open to the public had an extensive collection of art, which seemed to include a lot of castles, including castle models (and Lego ones)! They were fun to look at, even though Astrid thought she should be let loose to run around.  Then we toured the display of the prison area which showed the size of the cells and how the cells available to prisoners that could 'pay' were larger and more comfortable. Marie Antoinette's was significantly bigger than those for regular prisoners but still tiny by Versailles palace standards.



Once we finished at the Conciergerie we headed over to Ile de la Cite for another visit to Berthillon. Astrid was refusing to keep her mittens on and it was very cold. We weren't inclined to get her her own icecream since she was being rather petulant. In the end we walked briskly, enjoying going over some different bridges and found our desired icecream and grabbed some cones to eat on the run.  I had to go for the salted caramel again but I also tried the pear, so Astrid could have some. She enjoyed the pear until she discovered her dad had dark chocolate and chocolate-orange-praline and decided instead to eat his.  Looking like a chocolate monster, but now keeping her mittens on with the promise of more bites of icecream, we walked back towards our apartment, stopping to admire some more Christmas decorations and savour our last views of an area we have become very familiar with.



Of course Astrid fell asleep and didn't want to be woken... again. Annoying, when we wanted her to have a proper sleep today before some hectic days ahead.  We hit our street and collected some fresh bread and today's patisserie item and woke the sleeping munchkin, hoping she hadn't slept for too long.

Once back in the warm apartment, and Astrid was again full of bread and cheese, she had a play while her dad was trying to rest but when put down for a sleep she actively resisted sleep for a very long time.  Apparently today we weren't the winners.  However, while she was thinking about sleeping we ate our last patisserie item from our street, the ideale pistache. We had this one a few weeks back and it was so good that we had to try it again.  Still so many things to try but this one was worthy of a second go.



Giving up on the concept of sleep for anyone, we did a bit of tidying for our afternoon rental inspection and headed out for one last walk around Paris. It was still pretty cold but we enjoyed our walk down to the Les Halles shopping centre.  We had a bit of a walk around and made some last minute PJ purchases..... the lingerie and PJs available here are fantastic so had to go back and buy some things for Astrid to put under the Christmas tree for me.  Of course she flirted outrageously with a group of young people shopping in the store and then found the stuffed cat and dog PJ holders and tried to escape with about 30 of them. They were very cute (and not expensive) but we are already carting a heap of her toys around that we forgot to include in the luggage for London so she was out of luck today!



We headed back out and decided not to go to the park as it was too darn cold (mostly for us, as we didn't want to stand around in the cold).  Instead we took Astrid out for crepes......... Yes more food! We were cramming it all in today.  We went to a crepe place not too far from our apartment (well the other end of the adjoining street), we have had lovely icecream there before.  Normally we get take away but today we decided to sit and eat at the cafe, since it was our last chance. Take away is always much cheaper and usually our preferred option but it was nice sitting out on the street, watching the Christmas lights come on, being warmed by the heaters and eating our freshly cooked crepes. I had sugar and Grand Marnier (Astrid did not get to try this). Luckily for her Anto had nutella and banana. She is still a fan of crepe! We  then wandered back up our street, bidding farewell to many of the lovely and yummy shops.



 While we will miss our many patisseries, fromageries, boulangeries and other assorted shops on our street. We will not miss our staircase up to our apartment. Two flights of twisty, worn stairs. Not so bad except when trooping up and down with luggage and babies who are getting bigger by the second!
 

 On the way back we grabbed last minute dinner groceries and headed back upstairs in time for our inspection. Keen to get Astrid fed and to bed at a decent hour we were annoyed by their lack of promptness. They were 'supposed' to be here at 5pm. At 5.20pm we started making Astrid's dinner.  This kind of thing wouldn't happen in Switzerland.....  Post-dinner we decided to just go ahead with showers and bedtime as we had last minute washing that needed doing.  At almost 6.30pm the Real Estate agent informed us the agent had gone home and wouldn't be coming. So typically French and very annoying!

Astrid was relegated to bed so we could finish our packing and cleaning and enjoy our last bit of French dessert.  Tonight we had located the really nice supermarket creme brulees again (the ones that are better than most restaurant ones).  We really didn't need any more food but it was the last day in Paris, so we figured why not spend it eating!

26 November - Christmas is coming......

We all woke up a bit tired after a bad nights sleep (non-sleep?). Sadly, Astrid did  not think a good sleep-in and lazy morning was in order.  Plus we had to go fetch our passports. After breaky we headed out via metro towards the Australian Embassy. We went a slightly different way than the last couple of times which involved some walking at the end but it was a nice (but cool) day so we didn't mind.  We got to the Embassy a little after 10am and were efficiently scanned in and sent to retrieve our passports.  It was a very efficient process that took all of 5 minutes, once inside. We now have documents that should guarantee us getting home. We might have gotten away with the other passports but we didn't fancy being refused entry to the UK, even though more time in Europe would be nice.....

After passport retrieval we thought we should do some shopping.  Not up for too much walking after yesterdays biking we decided to catch the metro, but getting to BHV (Bazaar de Hotel de Ville) shopping centre is a little tricky from the Embassy and somehow took multiple changes.  We did encounter possibly our rudest French person yet (mostly they have been very polite).... this old lady started screaming at a large group of young (5 year old?) children trying to board the metro, with their carers.  Instead of nicely asking them to let her out, which they would have done, or been made to do, she just repeatedly screamed 'pardon, pardon, pardon' in a haughty voice at them and scarring them witless. She was seemingly quite quickly told off by others, but the whole thing was very rude and unnecessary.

On our walk through the metro's we came across some more buskers in the corridors. This time a whole jazz ensemble.  The metros all have long tiled corridors that snake under Paris. You often find buskers inside and most of them are very good. The sound travels through the corridors well and it is quite pleasant to listen to. We often come across them on our late night returns from International trips, but this time it was about 8 Jazz musicians together, singing and playing, in the middle of the day. Very cool! We have also found buskers on the actual metros, and it's a fun way to pass the time.

Once at BHV we did a bit of a whip around looking at any specials and deciding on what we 'needed' to buy. We decided to buy each others Christmas presents while we are away, since there is plenty here we want and there is no point finding some random thing when we get home. So, Anto purchased my present and I'll act surprised when I open it on Christmas day!

We then headed to our favourite chain store cafe next to BHV and had probably our last morning tea there. This morning it was pain au chocolat and a framboise tart, with coffees.  Even though the pastries at this chain store aren't *quite* as good as the specialist patisseries, they knock the socks off most things you will find in Australia.  Savouring our last mouthfuls, we went out the front of the BHV to have another look at their Christmas windows. They have very cute displays at the moment and Astrid loved watching the large bobbly headed women and the cute bears on a balloon.  We are loving the Christmas windows popping up everywhere and the sparkling lights and it is making us a little sad we won't actually be here for Christmas.


We then headed back to the apartment, desperately trying to keep Astrid awake so we could get her to have a 'proper' sleep. It's about a 25ish minute walk back and she kept trying to fall asleep on us, so Anto would poke her and ask her 'where is the dog?'. She would wake up and look around and pronounce the dog 'gone' and fall back asleep......  this kept going on until she eventually found a dog, which resulted in laughter and sleeping while laughing :)

Once back, the previously exhausted child got a second wind and tried to avoid napping, much to her parents extreme irritation. She did *eventually* go to sleep and we all tried to get some rest.  Post napping, and a late lunch we headed out for Christmas shopping part 2.  We had previously seen lots of kitchen supply (pots, pans, baking items etc) shops on our travels. After some research Anto discovered some of the ones we regularly walk past are the absolute best in Paris (and famous all over the world)! We had a list of a few to go to, only a few hundred metres from our apartment.

We headed out and found ourselves in Nic and Anto heaven. Our favourite kitchen place in Canberra has nothing on these places. We could bankrupt a small country in them, so much to buy, and things we just don't see at home. The copper saucepans, the biscuit cutters, the extensive pastry pans, the chocolate molds.......... we were in heaven! The hard part was deciding what we really needed and could actually fit in our bags.  Anto got some items as his Christmas present (he will again act surprised when he opens them) and we got a few other things we decided we needed.  Astrid scored some presents too.  We won't talk about how much money we spent or how on earth we are getting all of this home........

We could have spent all day in kitchen shopping heaven but decided to take Astrid to the park. Down to the local Jardin Des Halles, which is just around the corner from where we were. She had a quick play and is getting more confident with the slippery dip. It started getting quite crowded at about 5pm and the bigger kids were dominating all the equipment she wanted so we headed back to the apartment via a patisserie to pick up tonight's dessert.

Astrid trying on one of her new Christmas presents and enjoying (probably) her last play at the park:

Once Astrid was safely in bed we had dinner and started the mammoth task of packing some bags. We came over with some empty suitcases and spare bags and we still think we are going to be short of bags. We have an entire (big) suitcase full of chocolate and biscuits.......  During a break from packing and cleaning we indulged in a little mulled wine and our cake of the night, a Royale, which turned out to be a light chocolaty mousse with a crunchy layer on the bottom. Very yum!

25 November - Bike to my castle.

*Post by Nic and Anto depending on who was awake*

The day has come when we finally get to do our bike tour to Versailles - we had been looking at options for a Versailles visit for a while and had stumbled across Fat Tire Bike Tours (an American company but we won't hold that against them, right..). They specialise in bike tours, as the name may suggest. As neither of the adults involved have a great love for overly touristy, commercial tours we held out the hope that a tour that involved at least a modicum of physical effort might weed out some of the more annoying participants.

The morning started like most in Paris with some nice fresh coffee, bread and a serve of healthy eggs to fuel what we expected will be a day of some effort. Before we knew it we were about 10 minutes past when we wanted to have left the apartment - Miss A was being 'just oh. so. helpful' which most mornings wouldn't have been an issue... Anyway we made it down to our 'local' subway (about 40m from our apartments front door) - the tour departed from an office over near the Australian embassy (a place we have become familiar with) - for which there are a ton of Metro options, all of which require at least one change.  Working out which was likely to be the best involved a fair amount of guesswork.

Like most public transport systems the Paris metro's run on a reduced schedule on Sundays - this means you can wait for up to 8-10 minutes for a train at times (*please* Action buses take note). This means that although you have to allow some additional time it's still not worth your effort to actually look at a schedule - just turning up and waiting almost always works out. As it turns out today's trip involved about 4 minutes of waiting and a fairly quick run between the lines to try and make up the time we had devoted to Astrid wrangling. Sadly between just not leaving enough metro time, GPS slowness (for some reason the GPS seems to have a hard time getting locked on when you are buried in buildings with a layer of thick cloud around) and Anto guessing the wrong walking direction we ended up about 5 minutes late for the tour check-in. We had just become the people on the tour that always show up late and annoy everyone from the start - not our preferred first impression.

Luckily everyone involved seemed fairly relaxed and friendly, our group consisted of an American guide, Justin (who seemed fairly generally un-American to us sensitive Aussie's) an American couple over for about 6 days while the Husband was working, and an Australian chap who is in Paris on study leave for 6 months (Anto tried to not be horribly jealous at the concept of being paid to be here for 6 months..). We were assigned a couple of bikes, followed by performing quick last minute adjustments, including ensuring that Astrid fitted in her special seat and Nic making sure that she could still ride a bike after not being on one for possibly more than 3 years. A quick briefing was held about what we were to do for the day & covering off the tour operators philosophy of 'taking the lane' when riding on streets (the narrow streets make this even more important than in other places) - and then we were off and riding to the nearest RER train station (RER's are bigger than metro's but not long distance - probably the equivalent of Sydney's trains). It was interesting to be back on a bike & rolling down the streets - you could cover fairly large distances quite quickly & seemingly it was actually easier to negotiate the intersections on a bike compared to wandering across the (ever unreliable)  pedestrian crossings. After no practice riding before hitting the streets Nic nearly only fell over once as someone opened a car door into the bike lane and only cut off one member of our group, but stayed upright! Before we knew it we were at the RER station, and after a bit of juggling we got the bikes down through the ticket gates and onto the platform - just as our train was ready to leave. After a quick 'heave' to get the bikes onboard we sat down for the 15-20 minute train ride to Versailles.



Versailles is what we would consider a satellite city of Paris, being only about 16km from the center of Paris as the crow flies. However unlike most of the other surrounding cites / towns people who live in Versailles will say 'I live in Versailles' rather than ' I live in the Paris outskirts'. After getting off our RER train we had a quick ride to the huge Market held in a square that is filled with vendors and blocked off from cars twice a week. This was by far the biggest Market we had been to on the trip thus far - there was probably 40-60 'outside' temporary stands (most of which were the size of a good sized fruit and vegie shop back home) additionally there were more permanent shops inside buildings off the square and continuing down the rather symmetrical streets that led out of the square. We had about 45 minutes to browse around and select our picnic lunch supplies. The market also contained a large poodle, and we did finally manage to get a photo of one!


Being by now oh-so-French we went about purchasing our food in the order of importance: Bread (and of course pastry) from the bakery down the road - which proved to be of excellent quality, wine just next door (wine with lunch combined with bikes - what could go wrong...), followed by cheese and some local butter, some freshly rotissaried chicken for the meat eaters and finally some fruit in case we starved to death - a highly unlikely occurrence. We packed our purchases up, with delicate items going on the back of the tour guides bike in a lovely wooden create he obtained somewhere at the markets. Then it was back on our bikes for the rather short run out to the Versailles Jardins - which had been reduced down to 'only' 2000 hectares over the years. We would stop our ride about every 5 minutes or so for a snippit of the history of both the place and the characters that led to it's creation.

In a nutshell Versailles exists for a couple of reasons:
Louis XIV (the Sun King - a name he gave himself as he believed the world should revolve around him) was unusually a king who both wanted to run things and actually did so - apparently the standard at the time was the king was a rubber stamp for a team of 'advisors' who actually ran the country.
Louis was irritated with the Nobility running around behind the royalty's back conspiring and generally being annoying - he wanted to put them all somewhere he could keep an eye on them.
So the obvious solution was to move the 'court' and the seat of power out of the murky Paris where the nobility had access to people who might like to conspire against the crown and put them 'in the country' where you could dole out 'chores' based on a complex system of privilege to keep them busy and out of your hair.

Versailles took over 40 years to be originally built and planted out (mostly by the Army apparently) partially because the Army kept on being taken off the project to go invade somewhere. At this point in history France pretty much ruled the known world, or at least the bits anyone cared about. The town remained the seat of government until the pesty commoners got more than a little fed up and started the French Revolution - interestingly in part due to the combination of failed crops, which made bread (the staple food of the day) expensive and the troops returning from 'helping' the United States overthrow British Sovereign rule, which the French mostly did to annoy the British. Apparently the returning troops were slightly miffed that a) they were paying a vast fortune in taxes the nobility didn't have to and b) couldn't actually afford to eat. One thing led to another (as they do) and before you know it there was some heads un-ceremoniously removed from bodies and paraded around the streets. This fairly rapidly escalated to the King and Queen being put under house arrest at a Paris castle (since it is somewhat unseemly to directly attack your King) before they were caught a few years later trying to escape and raise a pro-monarchy European army - the European monarchy were quite intertwined and tended to stick together in such matters as ensuring the commoners didn't run around beheading people. Apparently this was pretty much the last straw and both the King and Queen ended up falling victim to the guillotine.

Anyway history out of the way we rode down to Marie-Antoinette's 'play farm' where she had a rural village created so she could get away from the oppressive nature of court life and pretend to be a commoner - although not too many commoners had all their animals freshly washed before they touched them... Apparently her dislike for court life contributed to her dislike by the French commoners who expected the nobility to 'do their job' - the only worse thing was that after she was married at 14 it took her a bit over 7 years to have a child - given this was pretty much her only job her (public) performance review wasn't all that good. There is a theory that her failure to produce a child may have more to do with her husband, who was unusual in not having any recorded mistresses (Louis the XV reportedly had about 300) - apparently after a bit of a frank discussion with Marie's brother (and wouldn't that have been uncomfortable for all concerned) children were produced at a fairly good rate. We rode past Petit Trianon and the Grand Trianon. Petit Trianon was originally where the chief mistress (yes that's an official title) of one of the Louis' originally lived.  Grand Trianon was used by several important people, even as recently as the 20th Century when Charles De Gaulle (French President) lived there.


We proceeded through the gardens until eventually we ended up at the end of a 1.67km long man made lake (when you are king apparently you can just 'make' huge lakes. The sun had come out & we had a lovely picnic on the banks - with Astrid being rather charming, somehow ending up with most of our tour guides Mandarin. As we were in France we had the traditional glass (or two) of wine with lunch - hoping that it wouldn't affect our riding ability too much. After a very pleasant lunch it was time to get back on our steeds and continue around the lake - with a goal of eventually arriving at the 'main' chateau for a wander around on foot. There were numerous photo opportunities - being on a bike meant we could stop, take a photo and catch up without annoying the rest of the group.



Nic taking over here..... Anto spent way too much late night blogging time rabbiting on about French history and I'm too tired to check whether what he has written is right, but it sound closeish at any rate. there was some more stuff and some other King Louis' in there but blah, blah, French revolution and so on...... all very interesting but back to our tour........ Seriously, it is very interesting and great to see the places were a lot of important events occurred.

So I would like to note at this point that I still hadn't fallen off my bike! Riding with the camera bag attached to the back of the bike, the backpack (full of the copious amounts of food we bought at the markets, and several wine bottles) on my back and the camera (with heavy wide angle lens on) slung over my shoulder so I could take photos on the go. I also managed all of this while riding under the influence of French wine. I still did not fall off. Anto was also noted to say that my riding improved after I had 2(ish) glasses of wine. I guess I didn't care about falling off any more and in hero like ways picked up quite a bit of speed at times.  I'll also point at that Astrid loved the bike! She was giggling and having a wonderful time and loved it as I rode past her. It was the first time she had ever been in a bike seat and was doing really well.

So the lakes in the gardens are spectacular. Lots of glorious photos were taken and we enjoyed our riding. It was definitely the best way to get around and the only way to see the whole Versailles property in a day. It as populated by joggers and other bikers and a lovely sunny (if cool day). We did ride up a couple of 'hills' (OK slight inclines) and my legs didn't appreciate that, but otherwise it was fun.



Astrid grew tired and eventually fell asleep.  She kept slumping over in her seat, despite our best efforts to keep her upright and even slept through quite a bit of riding, while leaning totally sideways out of her seat. It looked mighty uncomfy but she didn't seem to notice.



We eventually found our way around to the Versailles Chateau and left our bikes with Justin and headed inside. First through a security check, which was mostly to ensure all the food and wine stayed in the 'compulsory bag check in'. Anto's pocked knife went through unscathed.... priorities? Our ticket included an audio guide but in typical Nic and Anto style we decided the line was too long to pick it up so we just went ahead without it.  The Chateau is enormous and with a small child, who was rapidly getting tired and cranky, we didn't want to dilly-dally.

The Chateau was also packed with large tour groups, who we like to avoid. Most of the rooms are very large and it wasn't hard to get around. There is also a 'route' to walk so you couldn't really get lost.  We marvelled at the huge rooms, ornate ceiling art, extensive use of gold (and more gold), and enormous paintings.  Some of the paintings did make us wonder how much 'selective editing' of history went on....
 


The hall of mirrors was fantastic - gorgeous chandeliers and lovely views over the whole estate.  The royal bedrooms seemed like popular exhibits and were interesting to look at, but very crowded so we just had a quick look and moved onto the bigger more extensive rooms.



Here is a model of the Versailles estate (in one of the lower level rooms) so you can see some of the area we covered on our bikes.



After about an hour, Astrid had enough Palace touring, and we had witnessed the grandeur of the Palace (which was definitely worth seeing, totally spectacular), so we headed out into the 'formal' gardens just in front of the Palace. These were in the formal French style, and fun to walk around.  It was now bitterly cold and the wind had come up, so we walked around for about half an hour and enjoyed taking some photos, then decided to head back out the front.



Our bags retrieved, we still had half an hour before our tour group met up again so we wandered down through the town into a nearby street and found an Italian cafe for some hot coffees to warm up. Our cheapest coffee yet in Paris (2 for 5 Euro!) and blindingly hot. Feeling warmer, but weary, we headed back to the bikes, met the others and jumped back on the bikes. It appears other members of the group got stuck in between the masses of huge tour groups and didn't get to see much but got quite annoyed, so we were right to push through and doing a flying tour, it appears.  The ride back through the town of Versailles to the train station was fun, but much colder.  We made it through unscathed (Nic still upright on bike) and managed to get our bikes onto the correct train. It was hard with 2 bikes and an Astrid, but luckily we had many people (including our guide) to help lug the bike up and down stairs, while I lugged an Astrid.

The train ride back to Champ de Mars station was painless and Astrid was keen to go back on the bike. Luckily we had one more short ride through the streets and back to the bike shop. Even tired and cold, she loved riding the streets with her dad and was giggling with glee as we sped through the Paris streets at dusk. Back at the shop we said goodbye to our fellow tour group members, our bikes and Justin (who was keen for a photo with Astrid) and headed back out on the metro to our apartment.  I was quite tired after about 20km's of riding and probably 6-8km's of walking. Anto did better with the riding, being a biking veteran. Astrid had the easy job of the day. We all thoroughly enjoyed the tour though and it was definitely worth doing. Fat Tire Bike Tours were awesome and very patient with us lugging a little one around. They also provided great history and background on the tour. It was relaxed and fun and we wish we had time to do more of their tours.



Astrid safely in bed, the grown ups fed our sore muscles with the nights pastry treat of St Honore...... delicious choux pastry filled with custard and cream and covered in toffee. Not a bad way to end a really fun day!