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Au revoir to La Maison de la Vieille Vigne and Bourgogne. A la prochaine!<\/p>\n
Our drive up to Paris was uneventful – we followed the autoroute for the entire distance, for ease and to ensure we had plenty of time to check into our hotel, return the car, eat dinner, and get to bed at a decent time for our very early alarm tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n
We got hungry and decided to take our chances with one of the \u201cAire\u201d, a pull-off centre similar to the service centres along the 401.\u00a0 But that\u2019s where the similarity ended.\u00a0 Some Aires have only rest areas with picnic tables and toilettes; some are full service with gas, kids\u2019 play zones, tranquil green rest areas, and food – full course hot meals, sandwich bars, serve yourself microwave stations.\u00a0 We opted for the sandwich bar and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever had a better sandwich – real roasted chicken with lettuce, tomatoes, and a tasty mayonnaise, all on the freshest bun ever!\u00a0 Autoroute service stops could actually be a destination.<\/p>\n
The Aire did give us reason to pause, though.\u00a0 The French are supposed to have a zero tolerance for drinking and driving, yet they offer wines and beers at these\u00a0stops, which are only accessible by car – hmmm…\u00a0 I guess their reasonable and respectful attitude about drinking supersedes their laws.\u00a0 Seems it’s their god-given right to drink what they want, when they want, where they want – period.\u00a0 It works for them – why can\u2019t it work for us, too? Enough said!<\/p>\n
With the help of our GPS, it was reasonably easy to get through\/around Paris on the Peripherique and find our hotel.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad we were traveling on a Saturday afternoon, as traffic was bad enough.\u00a0 Returning the car was also fairly simple although, in my opinion, there could be better signs at the airport (I think I\u2019ve already said that!).\u00a0 Following our accommodations of the past two weeks, our Novotel hotel room was a big disappointment, but functional.\u00a0 The only upside was we were still in France, so dinner in the hotel restaurant was excellent.\u00a0 Ah, back to reality tomorrow.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Check out the video Steve made of our home away from home.\u00a0 Note, though, that although he is an excellent photographer, he still needs a little more practice with a video camera and narration \ud83d\ude42 (click image for video) Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beaune","category-france"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3547,"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions\/3547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maureensmusings.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}