France - July 2007

Carcassone

For Keith's parent's 40th anniversary, they hosted a Dodds family vacation near Carcassone, France.  It was a big contingent: in addition to us were Jean/Dick, Margaret/Damon/Owen, and Graham/Amy/Max/Lily. 

Accommodations:

Rented Villa (Carcassone) - This was a huge house 12 miles up a windy road in the hills southeast of Carcassone.  It had five bedrooms, cribs/highchairs, a massive lounge that could have been 20x50 feet, a table that seats 12, and an outdoor pool. 

Park Hyatt Vendome - A gorgeous hotel overlooking the Rue de la Paix where Keith and Shawna stayed our last night in France. 

Activities:

We flew to Toulouse via Paris on Friday July 20th, arriving in Paris on the Saturday morning in time to catch a connection to Toulouse.  We arrived a couple hours after the rest of the family, so we rented a tiny car and headed to the villa.  Keith's parents had rented a 9 person van for the trip, and Graham also had a car for his family to tool around.  By the time we arrived at the villa, Keith's parents had already been by Carrefour to stock up on beer, wine, and all the food staples needed.  Since the day was mostly gone, we just relaxed at the house that night over a dinner of wine, cheese, BBQ chicken, and salads. 

Tour de France

We started the next day with breakfast on the big table, with fresh croissants that Dick fetched from the village - he did this every morning of the trip (maybe to get out of the house for a while?).  As luck would have it that day, the Tour de France passed 12 miles from where we stayed so we all navigated narrow country roads and showed up an hour before the cyclists.  It was pretty cool to see them powering by in their colorful jerseys (as they were going uphill) so we watched for a while.  Once they had all passed, we headed into the town of Carcassone and grabbed moule frites for lunch before heading back to the house.

Monday, we headed out to see the weekly market at Mirepoix, a 10th century village about 30 miles away.  We walked the market, had some lunch, then headed back to the house.  The babysitter arrived in the early evening so that all the adults could abandon the gremlins so we could go to a nice restaurant for Jean and Dick's anniversary. 

Mirepoix

On Tuesday, we headed to the coast to the salt town of Gruissan.  We went to a small salt museum, went for a walk, and then looked for a place for lunch.  It was tricky to find - many places were closed by the time we were looking at 2pm - in fact we sat at one, ordered drinks, and then found out that they had stopped serving lunch.  We eventually found another place on the harbor that served multiple versions of moules frites - so were satiated!  That evening we headed to dinner for "sibling night" - Keith's parents babysat while the sibs went out for dinner.

On Wednesday, we all split up for the day: Margaret/Damon headed to Cannes (sans Owen), Graham/Amy/Max/Lily headed out for a side trip,  and we headed out to Carcassone ourselves.  It was a nice day exploring the expansive and well preserved fortress, taking a tour of the castle and walking around the grounds and walls of the fort.  We returned to the villa to a steak dinner cooked by Keith's dad.

On the Thursday, it was just us, along with Jean/Dick and Owen.  Keith carried Owen in the backpack all day as we followed the river Aude through the gorge and explored some of the small towns.  We stopped in Limoux, had a fantastic lunch in Quillan on the banks of the river, and went on to a beautiful castle called Puylaurans which we walked up.  We hosted dinner that night, with a meal of cheese ravioli and wine.

During the next two days, we went for a few hikes in the nearby valleys, toured a couple of old castles and forts and wandered around some of the cute towns along the way.

We left the family on the Sunday morning to head to Paris.  We checked in to the hotel and had time to walk around a bit, and with remarkable coincidence, we saw that the Tour de France was wrapping up at the Arc de Triomphe that day.  We watched for an hour or so and then continued our walk.  When back at the hotel we asked the concierge for a restaurant recommendation.  He asked "traditional or trendy?" - and as Keith motioned to his Duke shorts and torn t-shirt he responded "trendy, of course!". 

On Monday, we walked around the city, seeing many of the sites including the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Seine, and the Louvre.  Later that day, we jumped on the plane and headed home, back to Raleigh and to work. 

Restaurants:

La Barbacane - A Michelin star ranked restaurant where we went for Jean and Dick's 40th anniversary dinner.

Chateau de Cavanac - This is a vineyard/hotel/restaurant we went to for "sibling night".  We ate outside and had a huge five course dinner with paired wine. 

La Fargo - A great restaurant with an open air terrace - food and wine was delicious.

Summer '99 Trip - Switzerland and France - August 1999

This last part of the trip covers the countries of Switzerland and France during our Summer of '99 trip.  The first part of the trip can be found in the Africa blog and the second part of this trip can be found in the Mediterranean blog.

Switzerland
This part of the trip will always be special to us as it was here that we got engaged!!  Keith had decided that he wanted to end the trip in Kandersteg, where he spent two summers in '88 and '90 working at the Scout Center.  Little did Shawna know that Keith was planning all along to propose here, assuming we survived the summer travels together!  Well, apparently Shawna passed the test.

Swiss Chalet

We arrived in Zurich and took the train to Zug to visit Stefanie, a friend of mine from Georgetown, and her fiance Thomas.  We stayed one night with them and had dinner out -- it was great to connect as Shawna had not seen her since we graduated.   From here, we took the train to Kandersteg where we stayed in the International Scout Center (our own private room) for 5 nights.  The village is very cute with traditional Swiss chalets, flower boxes, and cows with bells.  While there, Keith ran into a few people he worked with -- Ron and Mike -- so we hung out with them a few times for dinner/drinks.

Oeschinensee Lake

We spent most of our time hiking and relaxing.  We were both out of shape from a summer of gluttony so the hiking was quite hard!  On our first day, we attempted a hike to Oeschinensee Lake, a beautiful glacier lake close to the village; however, it was rainy so once we arrived at the lake, we ate a bowl of soup at the hotel on the lake and hiked back to the Scout Center.  The following day was the hardest -- a hike up to Blumlisalphutte.  The hike started out beautiful but then it got very steep and started to get cloudy so it was difficult to see the views.  Along the way, Keith kept saying 'isn't this beautiful' and Shawna responded with 'no, this sucks' -- she later found out that Keith had planned to propose at the top of this hike but given the poor visibility and Shawna's crabby mood, he decided to wait for another day.

Shawna somehow injured her toe on this hike so the next day we decided to take it easy.  The day turned out to be gorgeous so we returned to Oeschinensee to have a picnic on the lake.  We bought bread, cheese and wine and rented a boat on the lake.  After a few glasses of wine, Keith got the nerve to finally ask Shawna to marry him.  Shawna was so surprised that I kept asking him 'is this for real'?  After I realized that this was not a joke and the real deal, she said yes!!  Keith had bought a cubic zirconium ring as a placeholder until we got back to the States and could buy a ring together.  We took a bunch of pictures on the lake to document this awesome moment and then headed to shore to celebrate with a dinner at the Doldenhorn, one of the nicest restaurants in the area - and celebrate we did with multiple courses, the dessert cart and a bottle of wine.

We Are Engaged!

On our last day, we relaxed, walked around town, read and watched a video from 1990 when Keith was tied to a flag pole as a prank.  That evening, we had dinner at The Crystal, a local lodge/restaurant/bar that is close to the Scout Center.  

France

We made a quick trip to Paris to visit Steve and Jan and the kids on our way back to the States.  We stayed with them for two nights and hung out at their house and around the town they were living in at the time (which is about an hour outside of Paris).  We shared our news of the engagement (the first people to know) and celebrated with them.

Keith and Shawna with Megan and Alistair

Back Home
When we returned home, we visited Keith's parents for a few days and then my parents before we went to NYC to start our new jobs at Deloitte.  We shared the news of our engagement with both families -- everyone was happy and excited!