First Days in Fontainebleau

Yesterday morning, we packed our bags and departed from Paris and headed 1 hour south by train to the little village of Fontainebleau. Actually, I envisioned it to be a little village, similar to Bishop in Central California, dedicated entirely to climbing. I was wrong. It is a fairly cosmopolitan town, not very big, but with lots of shops and a decent number of eateries. If State Street in Santa Barbara was an entire town, that town would be very similar to Fontainebleau.

Upon arriving at our hotel here, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that the Chateau de Fontainebleau, which is a French palace comparable to Versailles, only less visited, is literally across the street from us. We walk out of our hotel and there it is. We have not visited it yet, but we did check out the surrounding park, which is massive. We were also pleasantly surprised by our room - very spacious and gorgeous!

After settling in, we explored the town on foot before picking up the rental car (a Renault - it seems the French only drive French or German cars here...and you never see Peugeots or Renaults anywhere but France!). We decided to try the Indian restaurant for lunch and the Japanese restaurant for dinner, with a brief stroll in aforementioned park in between.

On Teusday we set out to do some climbing - which Ryan managed to accomplish. He chose the hardest area in Fontainebleau, Bas Cuvier, to be our initiation to the area - without a crash pad. Being the coward that I am, I only tried the low hanging baby climbs, but Ryan got up some pretty cool climbs. We managed to find some one to rent a crash pad from, so hopefully tomorrow we (read: I) will be able to get some more climbing in. But along the way today we met some really friendly Scots, Finns, and Brits.

And then we had dinner...oh, dinner! We randomly chose the Brussels brasserie (there must be a lot of ex-pats here - there are Irish, Australian, and Belgium bars, Mexican and Indian restaurants, and British hotel owners all over the place!) that was just a 5 minute walk from the hotel. I decided to have the duck (confit de canard) with fried potatoes and...bacon! Ryan had smoked ham with fries. I had a delicious Bordeaux and Ryan chose a French Chardonnay. In sum, I will eat at this brasserie ever single day we have left here if I have a choice. The waiter was even friendly, and spoke enough English to help us get through the meal with ease. An overall lovely evening, and the best meal I have had on this trip yet!

[Ryan's note: WiFi is really sketchy at the hotel so I'm having trouble uploading pictures. Once I figure something out I'll post some for this entry as well as publish a gallery of climbing shots.]