Paris, Lyon and the Pyrenees, 2012

Old home week at the security line at SFO, flight to #TED2012. Saw 2 startup founders, one Google/Twitter friend. Still, Paris > Long Beach.

Paris for 12 hours and already delighted. Evening walk along thenSeine, best duck confit evar at Caveau du Palais. Very comfortable.

Paris breakfast 130p. Duck liver meatloaf, raw hamburger, French toast, Marc de Bourgogne. At the excellent Pharamond

My pustule, let me show you it. (St Roch, Musee des Arts Decoratifs)

The power of global branding: Parisians say l'eye-phone, not l'ee-phone. They say wee-fee for wifi though, for years.

That Paris tourist thing where you can't address your waitress because you're not sure if she is madame or mademoiselle.

Best Paris meals: Pharamond, Caveau du Palais

Lyon dinner, Pierre Orsi. An entire pigeon: breast, leg, wing, liver, brains served in half skulls with beak attached. pierreorsi.com

Ken in our hotel bathroom. flic.kr/p/bncibA

St Anne astronomical clock. flic.kr/p/bA7aQc

Lol (store in Lyon) flic.kr/p/bnckjo

Funicular in Lyon, to the basilica with amazing tile mosaics. (as good as those in St Louis!) flic.kr/p/bA7cnF

Pleasantly domestic gay moment, adjusting ties in adjacent bathroom mirrors.

Pleased that Mssr Paul Bocuse is helping me celebrate my 40th birthday.

300kph on the TGV, Lyon -> Carcassonne down the Rhone. Part two of the trip, driving west to Biarritz via Andorra and then north to Nantes.

I'm pleased to report Paul Bocuse is still excellent. Traditional to a fault, beautifully executed. Best dish: lobster and potato salad.

Carcassonne is a study in how not to restore architecture. It's also totally charming. Blame the 19th c. romantics.

Hotel de la Cité and its restaurant La Barbacane were excellent in Carcassonne. Highly recommended.

Today we drove south across the Pyrenees and into Spain, very close to Andorra. Staying here a couple of days.

Awkward late snack in a little Spanish town. 2 foot long hotdogs, awesome bread, bottle of wine. 10€50. "Frankfurt Heidelberg" Seu de Urgell

Companionable benches.

Forgot to say dinner last night was beautiful kid goat. Delicate bits of rare meat, also organs ground and stuffed into mushroom. Maaaaa!

It's embarrassing that I live in California and my Spanish is worse than my French.

Hello from the Co-Principality of Andorra! Would you like some cigarettes? A watch? A Ferrari?

Andorra is a small Pyrennes valley metastasized into an overbuilt tourist town, tax haven, and duty free shopping zone. Weird place.

Cool infovis for a task plan, 1934 hydroelectric in Andorra. Is this kind of diagram well known? Map+timeline flic.kr/p/bAYbWK

1946 Herederos del Marques de Riscal (Rioja). Still beautiful, full, lively.

@marquesderiscal was at El Castell de Ciutat in La Seu de Urgell. Lovely place, great wine, our birth year. Gracias!

Pau in France lacks charm. But just one night and supermarché charcuterie + wine solves problems. Also, Pyrenees view.

I'm sad to report that one of the current fashion trends for young French women is Jersey Shore. Complete with bronzage et bouche de canard.

Lovely lunch at Zoko Moko in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a Basque port town in France. Fish with peas and carrot purée.

The pleasure of eating the leg of a lamb who was no more than knee-high to her mother before being culled. Milk=cheese, afterall.

One lovely thing in France; every single person I've told I'm from San Francisco has some happy story about our fair city. SF is loved.

Lovely time in Biarritz; amazing hotel (former Napolean III palace), also great daily market for meats, cheese, fish.

In retrospect, it should have been obvious Biarritz would have a cruisy area under this proud-standing lighthouse.

Long boring drive across Les Landes. Celebrating our arrival in Bordeaux with a glass of France's famous beer 1664.

Headed to St Emilion for the day for tourism and wine. Super friendly tourist office.

Quoi de neuf dans la mode? STYLE HIPSTER. (a Bordeaux).

Lovely day trip to St-Émilion, cool old town. Didn't buy wine; US prices better than tourist shops.

Oddly, we failed to find a serious wine bar serving good Bordeaux here in Bordeaux. Plenty of bad €3 café wine though.

A bit stunned after an uncharacteristically enormous dinner at La Tupina. Lovely goose confit, just too much.

Having Marenne oysters for lunch here in Blaye, near Bordeaux. The oysters are blue!

My French is improving! These signs "Port wine zone, reserved for pleasure usage. Eating macaroons is required."

At the harbour in La Rochelle. They stretched a chain across this narrow spot, just like in Game of Thrones.

Walking in Nantes 10 minutes and already found 20 bars, 2 sex shops, and a salsa club. My kinda town. /cc @jy

OK Nantes isn't all party. Phenomenal sculpture at the tomb of François II in the cathedral. Marble? Delicate as ivory.

An homage to Space Invader in Nantes? Doesn't look like his kind of tile.

Traveling in France makes me appreciate what a terrific resource Wikipedia is. Particularly with a cached copy like Wiki Offline.

Fact: Nantes is a twin city with both Seattle and Jacksonville. Also, it was the center of the 18th c. French slave trade. #Wikipedia

At l'Atlantide last night, in Nantes: "papillote" of foie gras wrapped in cabbage leaves. Nice contrast of earthy and luscious.

Lovely day touring Nantes with @jy, great lunch at La Cigalle. Here we are with the marvelous mechanical elephant.

A planned creation from Les Machines d'Ile de Nantes; a heron (half scale). lesmachines-nantes.fr/english

Our stop for tonight: Le Prieuré, a lovely quiet hotel near Saumur. Has a killer view of the Loire.

Ken relaxes in our room at La Prieuré.

Our final stop for the driving trip, the Chateau de Marçay near Chinon. I love this part of the Loire Valley.

Tonight's wine, from pre-phylloxera authentic French root stock, a severe rarity.

It wouldn't be a trip to France without crouching awkwardly in the corner of a hotel shower/tub with no curtain or enclosure.

The more I read about the French Revolution, the more horrible it seems. E.g., memorial to 1000 murdered priests in Saint-Martin-de-Ré.

Ecopark (n) (French). An ugly European strip mall on the edge of town.

At the train station in Saumur, waiting to head back to Paris for one last night. Looking forward to dinner with our friend Evelyne.

By the long line of barefoot travelers, I deduce I am in the American airport terminal.

Doing pretty well on our post-Europe ritual. Almost 6pm, cocktail time, then garbage American delivery pizza, early sleep.

I am Zombie Nelson, my brains eaten on AF084 somewhere over Greenland as we flew 8 time zones away.