Thursday, August 23, 2007
Monday
Sunday
Terre Nueve
Today we went to two brocantes, street markets. One was in the village of Angles, which was once at the edge of the sea, but is now miles inland. The brocante was of food and household items, more like the “foires” or fairs held in almost every village once a month or so throughout the year. But during the tourist season, there are more. We found two melons, cantaloupes, quite ripe and ready, and two cheeses that we had not tried before. The melons are the light green ones with dark green ribs, not the ones with a rough netting around them that one finds in the US. The latter are not really cantaloupes at all, but have a strikingly similar taste.
The second brocante was in Longeville sur mer, and much more what I was looking for – old furniture, dishes, glassware, linens and records. The sellers of old postcards outnumbered all of that. I’m sure there is a PhD dissertation somewhere on the French fascination with old postcards. We enjoyed looking, but as usual, nothing much appealed, and the things that did would not fit in the overhead compartment.
We decided to take a chance a launch across the countryside to Fontenay-le-Conte, a renaissance town about 45 minutes to the east. It rained a bit during the drive, but then was eased off and was just grey the rest of the day. Our first object on arrival was lunch. We found a Logis de France hotel on the main street which had a restaurant, so we sat outside under an awning. This is just a workaday lunch: gezsier salad (warm, sautéed duck gizzards served over a green salad), lamb chops with green and white beans, and a raspberry crumble (Tom), melon and ham, mussels and fries, and warm chocolate cake (Susan). Add some wine and espresso and you have an ordinary $50 meal.
After lunch we sped off to the church, the big draw in town. I found it dark and unlovely, but Tom was interested in the roof. The church was started in the 15th century, and remodeled only 3 hundred years later. It started out somewhat Romanesque, but ended up with flamboyant gothic touches. The real scene-stealer is a 9th century crypt which was found by accident in the 19th century.
Next to the church is a charming museum, quite modern in architecture, focused on the Vendee region. The ground floor has a room with a variety of 2nd and 3rd century glass and crockery, showing some Greek and Roman influence. The second floor is the most interesting, showing the traditional tools used by wood workers for furniture and wooden shoes and farming, and the costumes and headdresses of the ladies. The top floor was a nice collection of art, topped off with a maquette – a very large model of the city from the 17th century.
Thanks to our late start and the 2 hour lunch (and everything being closed between 12 and 2, it was now well after 3), I proceeded to get us lost on the way to the big draw of the area, Chateau Terre Nueve. It is called that (new ground or earth) because it was land reclaimed from the marsh and sea – now many, many miles inland. For those familiar with the area, it is near the ruins at Maillezais and the restored abbey at Nieul-sur-l’Autise. These two were monasteries whose monks labored for centuries to reclaim land, much to the chagrin of the nobility who had given them unwanted islands for their monasteries. Once the land was reclaimed, the monks owned it, making them quite a bit wealthier and more powerful than the nobility had intended.
Terre Nueve is still occupied as a private home, but a few ground floor rooms are shown on a tour. Our guide spoke the fastest French we have ever heard, but between the bits we caught and a short English brochure, we are pretty sure we got most of it. When we returned to the Gite, Tom discovered in conversation that the owners of Terre Nueve are cousins of the Delaubiers. From the 17th century. But they are no longer in touch, so no tour of the private portions of the house.
The Gite has been full to bursting – daughter Pauline and her son Leon, daughter Pascale and her spousal equivalent Kyra, son Paul and his girlfriend Alana, and this evening arrives daughter Emmanuelle and her husband Sam and two step children, Alienor and Anselm. Alienor has gone camping nearby with friends, and Emmanuelle and Sam are upstairs in the petite gite with us until tomorrow when Paul and Alana leave for Spain, and a room opens up in the main house.
Saturday
Today Tom and Bertrand cut another tree, an easier one – easier to get at, leaning over the lawn making retrieval of the wood and branches easier. This morning activity was cut a bit short by the arrival of Anne and Marie, friends of Jeanne and Bertrand. We met Anne here a few years ago, and she has now become our friend as well. She lives on the top floor of a house in Montmartre, with a very impressive view. She has been visiting Marie at her country home near Nantes. It seems everyone has a country home.
We were invited to a lovely lunch of pork roast and an unusual ratatouille of chard ribs, carrots and perhaps some tomatoes, very nicely seasoned with herbs from the garden, including thyme and rosemary. Dessert was a variety of sweets – two kinds of chocolate bars, pirouette cookies, orange madeleines, and a traditional cookie from Brittany of thin waffles enclosing a thick cream of Madagascar vanilla. Lunch began about 1, ended about 3:30, with a walk through some fields for a bit of exercise, and Anne and Marie left around 6. You wouldn’t want to rush lunch, especially since dinner is left-over quiche and salad.
During our lunch our new phone, dubbed the Francophone, rang, and Tom required Pascale’s assistance to answer it. After lunch she helped him figure out how to retrieve messages, and make an announcement. Pauline obliged with the message, so if you have reason to call, you will her voice in French and English, asking you to leave a message. It is still as mystery, but we are pretty sure we know how to answer it and collect messages, and that’s all we need, at least for now.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Friday
Pauline in the waves
Alana and Jeanne
Bertrand and Tom at workToday is the market day in the nearby village of Moutier-les-maufaits (the naughty monks, we think). It is over early, so we pulled ourselves together and zipped over to get cheeses (most of which we have never heard of – when in Rome…), fruits and vegetables, and some pale Norwegian salmon, for about a third of the price one would find in California. When cooked, the salmon tastes like trout – if your eyes were closed, you would say trout for sure.
Tom and Bertrand then spent the afternoon cutting a tree, an oak that looked a bit sick. Tom said later that it was filled with insects. For once it was warm, if still grey and cloudy, but the murder of the tree as we called it, went off uneventfully.
While they finished the job, I went with Pauline, Jeanne and Alana to the beach for a very long walk. We began at the area crowded with children and families watched over by the lifeguard, and walked quite a way, through the area reserved for the nudists, until we found the area with possibly the most waves of all – eight layers ready to break. Not my favorite. The waves were a bit too much for me, and Pauline was the only one who ventured in.
We returned to find the project finished for the day, and Tom and I had a quiet dinner of the trout-like salmon, and an easy salad of beets, tomatoes and zucchini.Wednesday and Thursday
Lunch al fresco
Petite Louise
La France ProfondeWednesday -- Again, grey and cold, with bouts of heavy rain. Tom was up early and mastered the French phone as well as the French GPS in the car by the time I got up. We went to the main house to say goodbye to Solange who is heading off to the Dordogne, then chatted for a couple of hours with the family. We had had a lunch of bread and Camembert on our own, and a dinner of Tom’s favorite sausages, a salad of beets and tomatoes, and some more of the endless California carrots.
Another daughter, Pascale, arrived in the afternoon, but with a hairline fracture of her ribs from a fall in Los Angeles several days before. We decided to let her rest and delay a visit until the next day.
Thursday dawned bright, then there were showers, and then warm sun. We chatted with the family, had lunch on our own, and rode bikes to the home of Bertrand’s brother Herve, where the female donkey has just given birth to a baby, called an “anon”. Although the baby is only three weeks old, he is very big. We gave mother Penelop some apples from the Delaubier trees, and took off. We made a small detour to a menhir, a prehistoric standing stone, next to a neighbor’s cornfield. By then it was time to return to the Gite, where we had been invited to join the luncheon guests for coffee. Jeanne and Bertrand were entertaining their friends Michel, Monique, and sister Odile. We knew Michel from the time we first met Jeanne and Bertrand when they were on a walking trip in the Cathar country; at a dinner party one January, Michel found the bean in the cake, making him the King of Paris. He chose me to be his Queen. I still have the paper crown.
After a bit, nephew Pierre and his wife arrived with young Louise. We chatted until about 4, when we excused ourselves to go to the store for a few necessities, and visit the bakery and the tourist office. Then back for a dinner of quiche and squash.
Paul has installed a wifi network, and we were able to log on briefly for news and to send a few emails. As it happens, the hot spot does not reach the petite Gite. We may have to put the computer in the car and drive to the front door to pick up mail! But the sight of three people – Alana, Paul and Pascale -- with four Macs sitting on the dining table, each consumed with his or her computer screen, in the remote French countryside, was quite a picture – La France Profonde.
Monday
Our Home in the Vendee -- The Petite GiteMonday morning we had been careful to get reservations on the train departing at 11 am, but instead we awakened very early (for Susan, at 3 am! Tom slept in until 5), and had plenty of time to repack and prepare the apartment for our absence. We were able to leave a few things behind, since we will return to the apartment for a last week in Paris, which allowed us to consolidate our 6 bags into four, much easier for managing to and into the train. Tom went out to find a taxi (no small feat, as it turned out), and we arrived at the train station over an hour early. But better early than late.
The trip to Nantes was quite quick, about two hours. We hopped off, and after some confusion (it being lunchtime and all – nothing moves until 2 pm) found our navette to the car rental. Once we had our car, we proceeded to get somewhat lost, since we had decided to buy new maps and had forgotten to get one before embarking in the car. But we found our way, and arrived at the Gite around 5. Jeanne and Bertrand were there, along with their daughter Pauline (with news of her recent trip to New York and Los Angeles), and their friend Solange. Solange is a quadriplegic, and was quite interesting to talk to. She speaks very good English, and has traveled extensively in the United States, and the world, so she had a lot to say about various places she has visited. Her two young aides were also very helpful in the kitchen and in clearing up after meals. We joined them for a delicious dinner of Moroccan chicken (lemon and green olives), potatoes and (in this household) the inevitable, delicious and intriguing cheese course. The evening wound down just after midnight.
Tuesday
The menu du jour...
Solange and Pauline....
Our hungry group.Tuesday morning we roused ourselves to go to the grocery store and lay in some supplies. Then we went over to the main house and happened upon a short cooking lesson as Pauline and Jeanne made an almond macaroon tart shell for the evening’s dessert. Interesting to watch as they measured the ingredients by weight instead of volume. Then we whisked Pauline away for lunch at our favorite restaurant in Jard sur Mer, a small tourist town with a lovely little harbor. There we all enjoyed the formule (formula lunch of fixed courses) of mussels and frites, while it rained cats and dogs outside. It was strange to see all the shops opened for the afternoon hours – we have never visited during the tourist season, and have only seen the shops closed up for the winter.
Our real objective was to take Pauline to the small city of La Roche sur Yon to help us buy a French telephone. She was beyond helpful. Normally we can manage ourselves, but with so many complications of the telephone, the prepaid plan, recharging details and so on, we could not have done it without her. Her objective was raspberries or strawberries for the evening’s dessert – we got a walking tour of downtown La Roche as we searched out what appeared to be the only berries in town.
Before dinner, which started at the civilized hour of 8:30, son Paul and his girlfriend Alana arrived from Biarritz. They had been expected earlier but had missed their train, apparently a family trait. Alana is American, but works in Madrid as a graphic artist. She speaks some Spanish and is also quickly learning French. Tom remarked later that except for the two aides, everyone at the table spoke some to fluent English, and the conversation could have been in English. As it happened, the primary language was French, with some Spanish, and the occasional English exchange thrown in. In addition, there were 11 people, so usually at least 4 conversations going on at all times. I had to work to keep up, but had the luxury of choosing which exchange I could follow the best.
The dinner itself was extraordinary. Solange treated us all to an enormous platter – actually three platters – of shellfish, which we ate with bread and butter. There were prawns, langoustine, very tiny grey shrimp, lots of oysters – two kinds, and bulots, a type of green sea snail. There were all delicious, although I have to admit that the bulots are not much to my taste, and the oysters were a bit wasted on me – I know they were excellent, tasting like the sea, but after the other sweet shellfish, they were quite salty. Having had my favorite moules frites for lunch, the dinner was the cherry on the cake. Jeanne had four choices of cheese for the cheese course – muenster which I like very much, a chevre in ashes which I don’t so much, a cantal which was very good, but the sancere was the best – a dry cheese like parmesan, but not as strong with a bit of a floral, honey-like flavor I could not quite identify.
Speaking of which, dessert consisted of a tart of chocolate cream between two layers of meringue from a bakery, and the raspberries on top of the shell of almond meringue that Pauline and Jeanne had made earlier. For 11 people one expected that even the two together would not have gone around, but in the French style of tiny portions, there were leftovers of the chocolate. Matthew, Pauline’s cousin (a famous singer in Europe) was prevailed upon to finish the raspberry tart.
Sunday
Sunday
We arrived in Paris Sunday morning 8/12 after a flight of about 18 hours, including a 4 hour stopover in Montreal. We made our way to Jeanne and Bertrand's apartment in the 16th. We have stayed there a number of times when they were in the country, and it feels like our home away from home. Tom went out for supplies – not much since we were leaving the next morning – and then there were naps. Our friend Yamina appeared about 4:30, and we chatted for several hours catching up on all the news on both sides of the pond. Tom had been raring to go out to dinner, but by the time we were ready to go, we both knew we would be asleep by the time the soup was served, so we said good night to Yamina. We barely made it through a quick dinner of hamburgers and left-over carrots from our trip before we collapsed.
In a way, just as well. The weather in Paris was cold and wet, not at all what was expected. According to the weather reports, it had been enjoying a moderate summer of high 70s and low 80s. But according to the cab driver from the airport, this is the year of no summer – the weather being gray and cool all the time. (Reminds me of the recent book about the Little Ice Age, when people starved in Europe because there was too little sun for crops to grow. A couple of years ago there was the same problem in the south – no fruit on the trees.) So I thought about all the light clothes I had brought, and worried a bit.