As the year draws to a close, it is a natural and indeed common time to reflect upon the past 12 months. At first thought, my mind naturally went to the negative—the romantic disappointments, job stresses, and Gizmo’s ill-health, to name a few. As humans, negative experiences and feelings are distorted in our memories, given disproportionate saliency and crowding out the host of positive memories we may hold.

We were delighted to discover wifi had been restored at some point during the night, and so I hurriedly searched the internet and finalized our meal plans for the day (in case we lost it again). Continuing our coffee tour of Scandinavia, we set out to visit Coffee Collective, a local Copenhagen roastery, in glorious sunshine. We walked up to the Christianshavn metro station, which was two escalators deep underground, and popped over two stops. We emerged and attempted to get our bearings, stumbling across what looked to be a glass-encased food market.

It was a gloriously sunny day for our only full day in Gothenburg. I had heard that it was a great food city, so we thought we’d spend the day on a relaxing culinary tour. First stop, of course, was coffee. While we had stopped at Da Matteo the previous afternoon, they have 2 locations, and D wanted to check out the roaster location. Hilariously enough, it was right across the square from the other location. We walked along the river through the bustling commercial district to the roaster, which had a vastly different feel than its other location.

As my 25th year draws to a close, with a couple short weeks until my next anniversaire, I feel compelled to take stock of the past year and all its adventure. I realize most people have this moment of nostalgia around New Year’s, but for me, such reminiscence is stirred by my encroaching birthday. Since I was a kid, I have always felt the need to be older…perhaps believing that I could skip the awkward, gawky faze of adolescence right to what I believed to be the good stuff.

We headed downstairs to a nearby boulangerie to pick up our breakfast, and D made a pit stop for coffee. We were soon on the metro, headed to Ile-de-la-Cité to get a glimpse at Notre Dame. We had both seen it, of course, but we thought it would be nice to have another look. There was some talk of going inside, but as we approached the square, we prudently decided against it, as the queue out the door was ridiculously long.

I desperately wanted to avoid major crowds at our final chateau, so I was determined to get there before 10 am. We largely kept to schedule and were soon cruising towards Chateau de Chambord. It wasn’t long before we entered the Parc du Chambord, apparently the largest enclosed game reserve in France with red deer and wild boar wandering about.

After saying our goodbyes to the hosts, we drove off. Our initial route was going to take us to Cheverny, but we decided at the last minute to veer northwest towards Chateau de Chaumont-Sur-Loire. Every year, the chateau holds an International Garden Festival, with gardeners coming in from a host of different countries. We figured that since the rain had stopped, the cloud cover would keep our walk cool.

We hopped in our darling little Twingo and made our way across the river and up to Amboise, situated on the south bank of the Loire River. The heat was already starting to accumulate, so we made our way up the hill to visit the Chateau d’Amboise. The chateau was perched on a cliff above the town, thus the terraces surrounding the chateau afforded excellent views the city and the river.

As it was David’s birthday, we planned to stay in town and, as he gracefully put it, “eat our faces off”. First things first, we went off in search of coffee, and we actually came across a little café that looked eerily like a few coffee shops back home (something like a Blenz).

We planned our modest route for the day, which started off with finding the duck farm that we purchased our little can of foie gras from at the market in Tocane-St-Apre on Monday. The lady had given us a little flier with a map on it, so we thought we’d swing by to pick up some more. We opted to take a road we hadn’t yet travelled, and it turned out to be yet another picturesque road, with plentiful vistas of farmsteads and rolling hills.