Visit Date: September 18, 2014
It was finally time to leave France. Still our departure was in the afternoon, so we decided to do a little sightseeing in the morning in the city we chose to stay.
The city of Meaux is about an hour’s drive east of Paris, and is conveniently located not far from Charles de Gaulle Airport. It takes about 30 minutes from here to the airport by car.
In fact, I stayed in this town once when I first started driving in Europe in 2006.
The reason is that it was near the airport. At that time, we entered Paris by the flight arriving in the evening, I think, and we rented a car immediately after arrival, stayed in this city once, and decided to do sightseeing in earnest from the next day. If anything, I just used this city as a transit point.
So, this is the first time for me to visit the city itself.
Because the hotel where I had stayed the night before was somewhat in the suburbs, I moved to the center of the city by car. Just found a space in the parking lot around the tourist information center near the entrance to the old town and parked the car there to start sightseeing.
First of all, we visited the Cathedral, the symbol of the city. Quite a big cathedral.
There were few tourists because it is still early in the morning.
Next is shopping. Yes, actually, I chose this city because of the proximity to the airport, but there was another big reason. That was to buy this « mustard ».
Assaisonnements Briards, Moutarde de Meaux ® Pommery ® et Vinaigre du Lion ®. http://www.moutarde-de-meaux.com/
It seems that people who know this mustard know about it. It’s a mustard made by a famous champagne maker called Pommery, which I learned about from a chef at a French bistro.
When I saw the spelling of « Meaux », I wondered if it was the town where I had stayed before, and when I looked it up later, my hunch was correct. That’s why I chose this town, because I thought it would be a good place to buy souvenirs.
It’s early in the morning, say 9:00 a.m., but I take a stroll through the city’s shopping district to see if there are any shops open where I can buy something.
First of all, I found it in the supermarket, but it was too big 500g bottle and I gave up to buy it. I almost gave up and walked to the end of the shopping street, and found a nice cheese shop selling small bottles of 100g and 250g. I decided to buy it here.
That’s mission complete! It’s 10 o’clock at this point, just right time because I want to arrive at the airport before 11 o’clock. I’m going back to the parking lot by the tourist information center.
When we returned to the parking lot, the tourist information center was open, apparently from 10am. We peeked around for a bit and found out that we could buy this mustard at this information center too. And it was a little cheaper here. Well, let’s see.
We ended up arriving at the airport around 10:40. The car was returned without any problem.
Air France flight between Paris and Narita was cancelled because of strike, so I flew to Amsterdam and then back to Narita by KLM. It was no problem.
I arrived in Japan at noon the next day. After a quick refreshment in the shower room at Narita, I went directly to the office. However, it was already 3:00 p.m. on Friday at this point. I had to deal with the work that had been delayed due to the strike the following week, but I finished various preparations for the next week, including various apologies, and left the office at around 6:00 p.m. to go home. This was the end of my trip.
当初は3泊5日の強行日程のはずが、結局、10日程度の普通の旅行となってしまいました。これにて「2014メドックマラソン日記」シリーズは終わりです。
