Winner! Winner!

For the last few months my roommate and I have been helping a thirteen year old French girl with her English. My roommate and I were walking down the street one day, talking like normal and a woman stopped us in the street. Having heard us speaking English she wanted to know if we, or someone we knew, would be interested in giving her daughter English lessons. Her daughter takes English in school, but it is different having people to actually talk to. We agreed and called her up the next week to begin the lessons. We go twice a week for an hour each time and it is a fun way to help the girl learn English. We talked about shopping and jewelry and trips to other countries. We played Uno, which is an awesome game for learning numbers in another language. What is most interesting though is the phrases that stick. Somewhere in the early weeks we were learning opposites and came across right and wrong. At some point I used the phrase “I’m always right” and for the next two weeks our little pupil decided this was her phrase. While it can be quite annoying when someone who knows that phrase says it all the time, it was a bit more endearing coming from her. Sometimes I wondered if she knew what she was saying, but hey, it is a good phrase to repeat no matter what.
Then a few weeks ago we were playing a game and I won. (yes yes, I know, like normal) Well I was gloating a bit and said “winner winner chicken dinner!” She picked it up and loved the little sing-song voice that goes along with it. Problem was she couldn’t for the life of her remember the order of the words. The next week we came back and she did something correctly and said “winner winner dinner chicken!” My roommate and I busted out laughing and told her to try again. ““winner winner dinner chicken!” We repeated the phrase in its true form again. She got it and was singing it as we went out the door.
The next week we came back and the phrase came up.
Here’s how the conversation went :

Our French amie: “winner winner” ………uhhh… “dinner chicken!“

Stares from us

Our French amie: “no no, winner winner” pensive scrunched face…… “DINNER chicken!”

More blank stares

Finally she says, “ok, ok, winner. Winner”…wheels turning…… “DINNER CHICKEN!”

We had a laugh and once again reminded her it is “winner, winner, CHICKEN dinner”
As we were leaving she was repeating it to herself. We’ll see who’s the winner this week.

Soup

I’m going to give you a little heads up if you ever come to France and want to eat soup. If you look at the menu and it says that you’re getting vegetable soup with tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, beans, spinach, etc… and you don’t like one of those ingredients…then consider not getting the soup. The reason? All soup here is puréed. The only soup I had eaten puréed before I came here was tomato. I bring this up today because I made chicken noodle soup last night. I chopped up the carrots, turnips, zucchini, onion and mushrooms, threw them in the pot, boiled the water, cooked the chicken and put in the noodles. Then, we eat. If you don’t like celery? You avoid it. I told the people I work with that I was going to have chicken noodle soup for lunch. They’d never heard of it. I explained how it was made and they were dumbfounded. Soup that isn’t puréed? Weird. You now have fair warning that if you want some nice chunky veggie soup, it isn’t going to happen in France. Find yourself some beef bourguignon stew instead.

Thanksgiving Take 2

As you know we had to work on the real Thanksgiving, so we celebrated this weekend instead.
We went to the market on Saturday morning in search of a turkey. We didn’t find one. What we did find, and decided on getting, was turkey breasts. I didn’t want to sit at my landlord’s house all day on Sunday and babysit the cooking turkey, and I’m not a huge fan of taking meat off bones, so we went the easy route and got big fat turkey breasts.
Later on Saturday my roommate made a sweet potato pie because it was just about the easiest thing we could make. Initially we were trying to make a pie without an oven, but that turns out to be a bit difficult. Once we decided to borrow our landlord’s oven, it became a bit easier. We oculd have had apple or cheery or peach, but sweet potato was the closest we could get to pumpkin so that was it. My roommate also made a batch of stuffing. I realized as she was making it that stuffing recipes vary across the spectrum. At my house, we have stuffing that goes in the turkey and stuffing that doesn’t. We have it with and without celery to accommodate the many different taste buds. I found our that our family recipe does include sausage, but that’s never been in my stuffing as long as I can remember. Well the stuffing my roommate made had apples and sausage and turnips. I’m no food snob though, so I enjoyed it immensely.
Sunday afternoon we began the entire meal preparations. I got all the potatoes peeled and in the water to boil and put the turkey in two different pans sautéing in butter and spices. While all of that was going on our stuffing was in the oven across the way cooking and the fruit for our version of waldorf salad (apples, pears, bananas and whipped cream) was prepared. I let the turkey simmer in chicken broth for a while and then started the gravy prep. I didn’t know how to make gravy before coming here. Mom always does it, and I just never bothered, until this year, when gravy is needed for many dishes. I improvised off of my remembrances of her making gravy and it turned out pretty good each time. This time I thought it was great. It got to thickening a little and the stuffing came back to our apartment. We were ready. The wine was poured, and football was on my other roommate’s computer. We shared our meal with a Portuguese friend who we had to explain all of our traditions to. The meal was great and I ate too much like I do every Thanksgiving. We all went around the table and said what we were thankful for before dessert and enjoyed our pie. Chalk this one up to a Thanksgiving in France success!

L'Isle Sur La Sorgue

The last city on my parents' visit was L'Isle Sur La Sorgue, a little place to the east of Avignon. Some of the guidebooks call it the Venice of France, but I'm convinced these people have never been to Venice. Sure, it has little canals that run through it, as it was once a city who lived off of miling, but Venice is just a tad more grand than LISLS (abbreviated because the name is too darn long). The city was cool though, don't get me wrong. It was a fine place to spend our last two days because it was calm and interesting and located close to a pretty drive through the Luberon hills. We got settled in the hotel and headed to the tourist office to find a map. After picking up the map from the office we decided to take the little tourist circuit around the city just to get our bearings and find out what there was to explore. I can't say the walk was all that exciting. They had us walking down some pretty boring streets, but we did see lots of waterwheels! These were used in the city's milling history. We saw the old church, that was built in the baroque style, which dad was not fond of, but it was a bit different than the rest of the churches we had seen on the trip, so interesting none-the-less. After searching for a restaurant on the first night we ended up at a little place that had a delightful dinner of beef canneloni. The one thing about French restaurants is that they all serve the same thing (beef, duck, fois gras, salmon, entrecote, etc..) this canneloni was definitely new and scrumptious. Mom had a dessert that she about died for. It was a house dessert with three little desserts made from orange. She couldn't stop saying how wonderful it was. Chalk that place up to a success!

The next day we decided to take a Rick Steves drive through some of the little towns around Provence. We drove though one of the most beautiful towns in France, Ménerbes, but it was pretty deserted, so we just walked through the town a bit. Then we made our way to Vaison la Romaine which has an "upper" city and a "lower" city. The upper city is the old medieval town, whic the lower city is the modern day town, still old, just not as old as the upper city. We walked across the old Roman bridge and through the medieval city, but it was also pretty dead. It must have been the time of year that no one (aka tourists) really inhabit the city. Finally we stopped in Suzette for a meal at a Rick Steves' recommended lunch place. After inconveniencing the owner to make up a table for us, we proceeded to have an unplanned 2 1/2 hr lunch. We tried to be patient and enjoy being on vacation, but we're American, we get antsy after sitting and waiting for food for an hour. At least it was good!

Back in LISLS we did some walking around town and checking out the antique shops, part of what makes LISLS a destination. That night for dinner we went way different and ate at a modern little chinese place. It was packed, which is usually a good sign. The food was good, and very different than our cuisine from the rest of the trip, so a nice change up.

The last morning of our vacation we woke up and headed out into the town to partake in the markets. My mom and I had expected just antique markets, but there was good, and clothes, and dogs, and cassettes, and mattresses, and soaps, and well, just about anything you could want. It was festive and entertaining, but a bit draining. We decided to head off to Lyon early, but wanted to grab some lunch. We stopped at a place and were the very first people in the door and placed our orders before anyone else arrived. An hour and twenty minutes later we got our food. There was serious discussion as to whether dropping 40 euro on the table for our entrees and leaving would have been acceptable. Unfortunately this long lunch pushed our whole day back, but we made it to our desitnations and got on trains, me heading to Clermont for 4 more weeks and mom and dad to Charles de Gaulle in Paris for their flight home the next day.

Pont du Gard

There is a site so renowned in France that it made it on the Euro 5 note. Since you probably don’t happen to have a 5 euro bill sitting around, I’ll just tell you that the site is called Pont du Gard. I thought it would be best not to leave France without seeing this site, so on our way from Carcassonne to L’Isle sur la Sorgue, we stopped and took a stroll across the old aqueduct. It was pretty amazing. It was built in the first century to help water travel between cities and eventually became a toll bridge to cross the river. It was maintained for many years and would not look as grand as it does today without some repairs, but it is still quite neat that it is standing. It made us wonder how long it will stay standing?
One small outrage. Rick Steves said that parking at the Pont du Gard was 5 euro. When we went to pay for parking it was 15!!! 15 euro to spend an hour seeing a marvelous site. Tourists, your money is much appreciated. Boo.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in France isn’t exactly the same as it is in the States. By that I mean it is not celebrated. Obviously. The French don’t so much care about the discovery of America. Or America in general for that matter. Everyone that I work with though knew that it was Thanksgiving so I was explaining to them that we were going to try and make something traditional for thanksgiving, but there is one big problem. We don’t have an oven. They have much more turkey here than we have at home. At least more turkey breasts and the like for making on the stove top, so that isn’t a problem. They have all the vegetables that we need, we’re going to make stuffing and gravy, but we’re going to have to miss out on the pies. We investigated making a no-bake pumpkin pie, but there is no canned pumpkin. There is also no corn syrup, pecans or molasses. I’m sure they are available somewhere in France, but not readily available in Clermont, so our search ended quickly. At this point we’re at a loss as to how to celebrate Thanksgiving desserts without those ingredients, so we’ll make due. This weekend we are going to make a Thanksgiving meal because unlike at home, we have to work all day here. I can honestly say it is the first time, and I hope the last time, that I have to work on Thanksgiving.

In other news, when I got to work this morning, one of my co-workers wished me “Happy Fete” because Thanksgiving this year is also the Feast of Catherine of Alexandria. She was a noted scholar in the 4th century and apparently appeared to Joan of Arc several times. She was a martyr who was supposed to have died by the “breaking wheel”, an old form of torture, but according to legend, the wheel died when she touched it, so she was beheaded.

Happy Turkey Day!

Carcassonne

Carcassonne was the next town on the trip. This is the place that I really wanted to go to before I left France. I had heard nothing but good things about it and wanted to check it out. Apparently in July it is jam packed with tourists. By jam packed, it literally gets full because it is a walled medieval city. There are about four hotels in the walls, and one of them has suites that go for 1600 euros a night. Not exactly in my price range. Thankfully, in November it is much easier to get a room at a reasonable price, and while the city was not deserted, it wasn't too crowded to enjoy. We were there on Nov 11, which is a free day for the French. This had virtually no bearing on our stay except that the castle was closed and a few restaurants were closed, but it didn't stop us from enjoying the city. We didn't really do much except explore. There were no "must-see" sights, so we wandered the city walls both during the day time and at night, we saw the church, we shopped in the little stores and we had a drink at the 5-star hotel. The had a really neat bar area in a library. Their restaurant was open on Nov 11, but the meal was 130 euros. Right. We ate across the street and it was scrumptious. The best part about Carcassonne was that we just relaxed and enjoyed being on vacation.

Albi

We left Clermont in the rain and pops drove in it all the way to Albi. We were without a GPS on this trip, I'm convinced they aren't necessary, as I haven't had one for any of the road trips I have taken in France. The trick is that you can't expect to drive straight there. You have to teleport yourself back about 3 years when you actually had to read a map, and sometimes stop and ask for directions. Really, if you just put yourself in the mindset that it might take slightly longer than the 4hrs and 2 minutes that mapquest says, it really isn't that bad. I haven't slept in the car yet, and manage to find my destination every time. It is part of the taking a chill pill and being on vacation. Anyway, we found our hotel after a few looks at the city map on the placard in the main place and a "beer stop" which had a dual purpose of buying the tired driver a beer to help him unwind from the drive and to ask the owner where the heck our hotel was.

Sadly it was still a bit rainy in the morning, but nothing horrible, so out we went to see Albi. The main attraction we went for was the Toulouse-Loutrec Museum. If you don't know the name, he's the guy that did the poster for Moulin Rouge back in the day. He has a really excentric style and was quite the character. I'll just tell you he died at 36 from complications of alcoholism (he's said to have created the drink "earthquake" half absinthe and half cognac) and syphillis. I quite enjoyed some of his paintings, he did some really cool things with colors and brushstrokes. The rest of his work was interesting too, as it mostly centered around prostitutes and actresses.

After we finished at the museum we walked to the cathedral, but it was closing for lunch, so we went on a hunt for a place to eat lunch. Using our trusted Rick Steves, the first place we found was on annual vacation (bien sur), but the second place was absolutely marvelous. It is called Tournesol and is completely vegetarian. I had falafel, mom had couscous and dad had lasagna that he wasn't sure he would like, but did! It was delighfully perfect. Then came dessert. A brownie for mom that she coveted and kept commenting on the "lightness" of and a piece of apple tart for dad. I, of course, could not let them enjoy their sugar fixes alone, so ordered up a third spoon and partook in the enjoyment.

Before heading to the Cathedral, we went down to the river and crossed the bridge to the "wrong side of the river". It is where the working people lived in the old times when the Cathedral side was for the clergy and nobility. The views were absolutely lovely. The water and leaves and bridges were great.

Finally we made it to the Cathedral. Interesting note about the cathedral in Albi, it is made out of brick. I can't tell you another church that I have seen in Europe that is as old as it is (built starting in 1282). Apparently it is the largest brick building in the world. Another point to note is that it still had its screen. Most cathedrals used to have the choir screen to separate the clergy from the normal folks. During the back and forth religious affiliations of royalty back in the day, at some point most choir screens were removed from Cathedrals, but not in Albi. They still have theirs and it is neat. It is really detailed and looks like it took a bunch of work. Also, the ceiling of the Cathedral is neat because it has never been restored, but the colors are incredibly vibrant. Finally, initially the church had this huge painting of the Last Judgement behind the altar, but during some renovations the middle was cut out to build another part onto the church. Interestingly, the part that was cut out of the painting was the part where Jesus appeared in the work. So, now there is a painting of the Last Judgement, without Jesus. Unfortunately we didn't get to see this painting because it was behind scaffolding. Dope!

Parents in Clermont

After getting back from Chambord, I unfortunately had to work for Monday and Tuesday of that week. My parents had originally planned to take a train to Lyon for Monday night to see that city, but as this trip was more about relaxing and enjoying being on vacation, they decided to stay in Clermont and just soak up what there is to see here and relax a bit. There were many great parts about having them here, but one was showing them some of our favorite restaurants in Clermont. We took them out for fondue, which was very different than the first time I had fondue in France, this time there was meat and potatoes involved, and we used wine to cook the foods. It was yummy as usual. Then on Tuesday I got to take my parents to my favorite creperie in France, Pescajoux. We had a great lunch, surrounded by artwork of female busts!
My parents went exploring one day and went to one of the churches in Clermont, not the big cathedral because it was closed for some work, but Notre-Dame du Port. My mom noticed that there was a statue of the Virgin Mary breast feeding and noted that she'd never seen that depicted before. Interesting. My parents also went and did the Michelin Adventure. It is a little museum that tells about the history of Michelin and how it evolved. I haven't even done that yet! It is on the list to be done before I come home though, so maybe next weekend.
Sadly the weather wasn't ideal while they were here, as there was a lot of rain and chilly temperatures, but we endured and enjoyed the time in my city.

Interlude

After leaving mass at Chartres, my parents and I drove to a little town called Blois on the Loire River. I had quickly visited this city earlier in the year, but it looked so cute I wanted to come back. I failed to mention to Mother Nature that I wanted to return with sunny and decently bearable weather. She failed miserably. It was raining and chilly, but we braved on. Following Rick Steves' guide we headed to a little restaurant at the base of the chateau...that was closed. Instead we walked through the pretty Sunday-deserted town and found our way to a little restaurant open for business. My dad had cassoulet, which I had thought was a cheesy potato dish like the one I had on my birthday, but really cassoulet is a dish with sausage and beans and, as I found out the following week, duck. We enjoyed our meal and off we went to Chambord.

I have visited Chambord before on my day of chateaux, but as it is a massively-huge place and pretty famous, Mom and Dad wanted to check it out. It was on our way from Chartres to Clermont-Ferrand so we made the quick stop. As was with Fontainebleu, the sheer wealth of the castles of the royalty back in the day is just astonishing. One of the features of Chambord is that there is a fireplace for every day of the year. The neat part about this trip is there were actually fires in some of the fireplaces! This castle is nowhere near as decorated as most are, but mostly because it has so many rooms. Also, this castle was just a hunting castle for the king, so all of the furniture was mobile. When he wanted to come, his people were sent along ahead of time to put in the furniture, when he wanted to go elsewhere, they packed it all up and sent it along before him. Interestingly this castle fell into ruin and as the years went on and people died it was literally gifted away because the swamps it was built on contributed to horrible mosquito infestations in the summer and the area of France where it is located is prone to horrible winters. Eventually it was unlived in for a while until someone "stumbled" across it while hunting and, as a piece of royal property, it was once again gifted to someone who was willing to invest even more money and energy into the place. The state of France bought it in the early 1900s and turned it into a tourist attraction and money-making machine. Well, congratulations, you got me twice and it was worth it both times.

Beaujolais Nouveau

As everyone knows, France has a small industry related to wine. By that I mean they have the second largest total area of vineyards (behind Spain, go figure), produce 7-8 billion bottles of wine each year and in 2005, French wine sales accounted for 17.6% of world exports (thank you wikipedia). You get the picture, a lot happens around wine here.
Last night was a little celebration of wine centered around a wine called Beaujolais Nouveau. Apparently every year, no matter when the gamay grapes are harvested, the new wine is introduced on the third Thursday in November. Bars have bands, there are specials on the wine, and some French bars have...gasp!...FOOD. Significant of course because usually you can't eat and drink at the same establishment if it isn't lunchtime or dinnertime. (I'm looking forward to some chicken nachos with a beer while watching a football game, when I get back to America, when you can eat whenever you want.)
We decided to celebrate the new wine at a little place that had a tent set up on the street and hay on the sidwalk for everyone to stand (and smoke) on. Smoking while standing on hay didn't seem all that safe to me, but whatever. The bar was selling hot dogs for 3 euro and everyone was bundled up drinking a red wine that had hints of banana. They told us it was raspberry, but I kept tasting banana bread. We did find out that while the wine is introduced every year at the same time, there are many diffiferet producers of the wine, so different bars have different bottles. The distinction is in the type of grape and the region of France. While others proclaim they sell Beaujolais Nouveau wine, unless it is from a specific region in France, it is an imposter. It is notoriously not that smooth, but we had no problem with two bottles, so thumbs up on Beaujolais Nouveau Thursday!

Chartres

One of the places my dad definitely wanted to visit on this trip to France was Chartres Cathedral (officially Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres). It is said to have some of the most magnificent stained glass windows in the world and is a ridiculously old place. It was built between 1193 and 1250 and according to our friends at wikipedia, is in an “exceptional state of preservation”.
We arrived in Chartres on a Saturday afternoon at the high point of one of the day’s rallys revolving around the retirement age. Of course the main area of the town is around the church, so after attempting to find our way to parking, we decided to come back later in the day. But, it was raining later in the day, so we decided to stay in the town where our hotel was, about 25 km outside of Chartres. There were two restaurants to choose from in Illiers-Combray; we picked the one not at our hotel and had pizza and calzones. We hoped that the skies would clear and we’d have bright sunlight in the morning for mass at the church. We were disappointed.
The next day it was at least not raining, so we were able to walk around the cathedral and see its “exceptional state of preservation”….or not. It was really one of the most deteriorating cathedrals I have seen in Europe. I guess it has been standing since the 13th century and maybe the deterioration is a testament to the fact that they haven’t had it redone or anything, but it was not in top form. Sadly though, while we were there, there was scaffolding covering the main entrance into the church and the famous rose window was covered up. Bollocks you scaffolding! We attended a Latin mass in the church, which I’m pretty sure was in French with just Latin songs, and patiently waited for the sun to come out. It didn’t. the stained glass windows were impressive and huge and I can see how the place would be pretty spectacular on a bright sun-shiny day.

Fontainebleu

My parents made their second trip over to France this year and we decided to hit some of the places that they didn’t see the first time they were here in May, and that I haven’t seen in the year that I have been here. One of the places tops on my list was Fontainebleu. Depending on who you ask, it is either the second or third most-visited chateau behind Versailles. As you have seen if you read the blog much, I love French castles, they happen to be one of my favorite parts of the country. Ridiculous wealth being spent just for the heck of it is absolutely mind-boggling to me, but they did put up some pretty nice buildings surrounded by some beautiful gardens. I have to think that castle building and maintenance was the #1 trade of back-in-the-day. I would have wanted to be the vegetable gardener. You get to be outside, don’t really have to deal with the royalty and if you get hungry, you can just discretely pop a carrot in your mouth. But I digress. On to the castle.
Unlike some of the other castles that I have visited, this one sits right on the road leading into town. In fact, the night before we visited, when my parents picked me up at the train station, we were driving back to the hotel and drove right past it. I saw it and exclaimed “What is that!” Quickly I realized it was the attraction for the next day.
The castle was one of the best I have visited in France (thus the reason so many people go and visit I’m sure). The entry price was reasonable, I think 6.50 or so and we got an audio guide to boot. We went at a great time of the year because there weren’t really any other big groups. There was one, but they were just walking through so we let them pass and continued on with our journey. We saw some spectacular rooms with intricate tapestries and well decorated apartments.
My favorite room in the house was definitely the library. It was in a huge barrel room and had books lining the sides in cases, but had natural light coming in from skylights on the sides of the room. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable sitting room for reading books, as one could probably have a ball in the space it occupied, but I liked the way the room created interest.
The audio tour pointed out an interesting feature of some of the chairs in the rooms with fireplaces. One arm of the chair was lower than the other so that the person sitting in the chair could be exposed to the fire warmth on one side, but guarded from the colder air on the other side. First time I had heard that description in conjunction with furniture.
When we were finished with the castle, which took about an hour, we walked the grounds a little bit. Nowhere near the size they were back when Francois I lived there, there was still ample open space for walking and admiring the colorful fallen leaves. As my dad said, “It must have been good to be king”.

Chateau du Commarque

On our way back to Clermont we decided to stop at one of the Chateau that was on the way back. This chateau ended up being totally different than the majority of the other chateaux that I have visited while in France. Notably, it was in ruins. It was originally built in the 12th century and was more than just a castle. There were certain areas for the nobles and then areas for the servants. There was an oven room and numerous towers to see the lands that the nobles possessed. We were the only two people there, so we got to explore all we wanted without interruption from other tourists. It was a bit pricey in comparison to some of the other castles, but we decided after hiking to the top of the highest tower that we paid for a day at the gym. The view from the top of the tower was pretty cool though because the leaves were the same colors as the stones.
One funny moment at the castle is when we got to the ticket counter we saw another castle like looking building on the other side of the valley. My roommate asked the guy working the ticket window “What’s that?” pointing across the valley. The guy’s response? “Another castle”. Thanks buddy. Apparently thought people actually live in the other castle. It didn’t look to warm or too inviting so I hope they have done some work to the inside!

Bergerac

Our last night of the road trip we stayed in a little town called Bergerac. When I called home while we were planning our trip and asked my mom if she had ever heard of the place, she said sure, you know, like Cyrano de Bergerac. Sure, I know him. Nope. Only recently I had the story recounted and figured out what he was all about.
Anyway, we had a lovely little walking tour through the town on the day of the Dead (Nov 1). There were flower markets set up in front of the church. Sadly, the church had scaffolding all over it, so it wasn’t a great sight, but it confirmed what we have learned about little French towns; they are all built around churches.
We walked down to the little square where we had eaten a not so delightful meal the night before and my roommate had her picture taken with Cyrano himself, well the statue version of him anyway. We walked through a little square with some very cute bed and breakfasts, where we should have stayed, but when I was booking places I didn’t realize chambers d’hotels meant they were bed and breakfasts, so oh well. My roommate realized that she would have been a little tall for the past few centuries and navigating the small doors into the residences would have been a bit interesting. We walked to the old port and marveled at the colorful leaves on the sides of the buildings. We completed our tour in about…30 minutes. The town just isn’t that big. Then we were off to the east and headed home, but not without a few stops on the way…

Wineries

When in France, a trip to the actual wineries is a must at some point, so while my roommate and I were in the southwestern part of the country, we decided to stop by a few places and check out the wine. I’m not a big red drinker, and we were in red country, but I decided if I was going to drink red wine, I might as well drink some of the best. We got a map from the local tourist office in St. Emilion and a list of the wineries that were open and were able to take people who didn’t have reservations and we set off into the French country side.
The first place we came to was right outside of St. Emilion and didn’t need reservations so we stopped and rang the bell. The guy came out and told us he’d be with us in a couple of minutes. While we were waiting, a couple from the most-western part of France showed up. They had a reservation so got some very specialized attention. By that I mean the owner talked to them the whole time and barely even bothered to make eye contact with us. He told us about his small winery and how he didn’t try to compete with the marketing operations of the bigger ones. The lady asked 100,000 questions and we took a tour of the wine cave which was about 60 feet long and 30 feet wide. It wasn’t exactly a huge place. Forty minutes after we started the tour we began moving to the wine bar where the wine was actually going to be tasted. He pulled out the first bottle and talked for 5 minutes. Then the lady asked a question and he talked for 5 more minutes. Finally he opened the bottle and poured the couple their glasses, we were getting excited as ours were in the row next. Then the lady asked another question. Ugh. As a true Frenchman, this guy gave 3 parts to every answer. He first gave you his answer, then said “that is to say…” and gave you another version of the answer, then ended the response with an example of what he was talking about. ENOUGH already. Pour me some wine! We tried 4 different big reds and of course progressed to the most expensive bottle, which turned out to be 40 euro. Right. Moving on.
The next winery we stumbled upon that didn’t need reservations, we came in a bit late to the tour, but the man was nice enough to let us join the 12 people already there. The man giving the tour was nearing 80 and I think had a permanently stained red mouth from all the wine he has drunk through the years. He told us there were actually 4 senses you use when tasting wine instead of the three normally regarded ones of taste, smell and sight. For him, the sound of the bottle being uncorked was also very important. I should have known at that point that this was going to be interesting. The session ended up being more of an example how to taste wine than the actual tasting of the wine. This man went all out. He was taking a sip of the wine and taking 3 deep breaths before swallowing it. He was halting his breathing mid breath, he was using his hand to summon the oxygen from his feet to his palate, he chewed, he spat, he called cats while the wine was in his mouth. I honestly have no idea how the other 12 people in the group kept a straight face. I had to turn around twice to laugh because I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. At one point he encouraged everyone to follow his lead, which ended with spitting the wine in the vat. He invited everyone to try it with the warning: “Be discreet, not all of us can be champions at spitting” uh huh.
The big reveal came when he showed us the kind of wine we had drank 1/2 ounce of: a 2007. He then gave us pamphlets on his other wines and asked us what we’d like to buy. Unfortunately for him, we didn’t think the wine was purchase worthy, especially after we only drank ½ ounce of it. So we were on our way.
We came to the decision that the best next step was to drive to the next town, buy a bottle of wine and drink it. Sometimes you just have to do things yourself.

St. Emilion

Our second night was spent in a little town called St. Emilion. We ended up staying in the only hotel in another town called Coutras, which was about a 20 minute drive to St. Emilion. St. Emilion at night was pretty neat. It was the night before Halloween which was pretty fitting because the town seemed to be deserted. It was built in the 13th century in a dip in the countryside and the first thing we saw was just a huge wall which looked like it used to belong to a cathedral. Apparently it was bombed way back in the day. We parked quite easily and headed into town. The first place we saw was a hotel that had rooms for 625 euro a night and an 8-course meal for 130 euro. We considered staying there, but then thought we might want to have rent money for the next two months, so we moved on. Walking through the town was kind of spooky because everything was closed and the streets were lit with orange lights. It gave it a bit of an eerie feeling. It was dinner time, so we stopped in the place that had the best menu. The woman asked us how many, we said two. She asked if we had a reservation, we said no. She promptly firmly replied: NO MADAME and turned around in a bustle and left. My roommate and I were both pretty stunned at the rudeness, so I thanked her for her cordiality and peaced out. It was a good thing too because the other place we found was great. I randomly ordered something off the menu. Ok, I say that but just because I didn’t know what it was. I was 80% sure it was a white fish and it was. It was also really really yummy. There were some interesting side dishes, but dessert was a strawberry tart that was yummy.
We returned to St. Emilion the next day and the first thing we did was get the key to the bell tower. I went to ask about climbing it and the lady at the office gave me the key and told me to lock the door behind me! It was neat because we climbed up and got to explore the place and take in the views all alone. No words can do the beauty of fall in this area justice. It was absolutely stunning. We perused the wine shops of the town a little after that without finding anyone who wanted to sell us wine. Strange I know, but we kept going into places and people were just kinda hanging out, not really engaging customers or getting them to buy anything. I guess people usually do their own leg work with finding good wines. We had a very good lunch in a little cave and learned that Paris macaroons and Bordeaux macaroons are two different things. Paris ones are two cake like things with a frosting or jam in the middle like a sandwich. Bordeaux macaroons are just cookies. We had another Bordeaux area treat called a canelé, which was a cake with an interesting flavor (I just wikipedia-ed it, the flavor was rum). Our adventure in St. Emilion complete, we headed out to the vineyards surrounding the town.

Dunes

On the recommendation of my roommate’s boss, we got up earlier than we would have on Saturday to head to the Atlantic coast of France to see a dune. I had absolutely zero expectations for this dune, but it had a write up in the book and national signs pointing to it, which is usually a good sign. This trip to the coast would also complete my exploration of each of the French coasts. I did Normandy on the North, the Cote d’Azur on the south and now Arcachon on the west. We had no trouble finding the dune and after a bit of a walk I was quite taken aback with a massive sand dune. It really did look like the Sahara. We climbed up the stairs to the top and walked in the foot prints of the adults, dogs and children who beat us to the dune. Thankfully the sand was a bit wet so not flying all over the place. You know how much me and sand get along, but I just took a deep breath and told myself that it wasn’t my car that I was driving, so it didn’t matter how much sand ended up in it. After spending a bit of time walking along the dune, we decided to take a bit more of a fun descent. No, we did not roll down the side of the dune like logs, although that was thoroughly considered, but we did walk down the side of the dune which was really like skiing. Not slip sliding down it, but each step was about a foot deep in sand and slid a bit til the sand packed down enough to stop the foot. It was quite fun. I thought about hiking up the stairs to do it again, but then thought not. We ventured into the nearby town of Arcachon and walked out onto a pier over the bay to fully absorb the huge beaches and the Atlantic coast. We stopped for a quick coffee break where I royally pissed off an already grumpy waitress by ordering something by saying I didn’t want anything (I don’t know, she heard me wrong, or just assumed what I said, but I didn’t order anything, she thought I did, rudeness by her ensued). Our quick stop at the Atlantic complete, we jumped in the car and headed back east. Five hours later my roommate found stored up sand saved in her pant cuffs. Just a little treasure from a huge dune in France. Happens all the time.

Bordeaux

While in the US we celebrate Halloween, in France, they celebrate the Day of the Dead. Essentially the same thing, the difference is that the French get a day off on Nov 1 for this day. I have all confidence that each and every French person is honoring their ancestors on this free Monday, I’m just not as sure that they all went to church to do so, thus the necessity of a day off is….? No complaints from me though. 3 day weekend for me! My roommate and I decided about a month ago that we wanted to spend this weekend in the Bordeaux region as it is a part of France neither of us had been to. We had a little wavering when the strikes were happening because our plan was to rent a car and the strikes were making shortages of fuel. Cars without fuel don’t work too well. Thankfully the striking subsided enough and the Ministry of the Interior went around all the strikers anyway and imported fuel from Russia and Italy before breaking up the blockages in the French distribution system, so we had plenty of fuel to get to Bordeaux. We left Friday night after work and drove mostly in the dark to get there. Not that interesting…until we actually drove into the city and then it was awesome that we arrived at night. Bordeaux does a great job of lighting up its city at night. The buildings have great architecture and the bridge over the Garonne River is illuminated and looks really neat. The Gambetta theme of this trip started in Bordeaux and by that I mean that in every city we visited in the southwest there was something named Gambetta. In Bordeaux, it was the place in which our hotel was located just off of. (I just wikipedia-ed for you and he was a French statesman who came to prominence after the Franco-Prussian war. Consider yourself educated.) I either haven’t been paying very good attention or he is really just popular in the southwest, because I have never heard his name before this trip. He was with us every step of the way on this one though.
Despite the rain we walked around Bordeaux a bit when we arrived and walked to the Esplanade to see the fair that was going on. It reminded me of Oktoberfest if no one had gone. Really it was just like any other fair at home with horribly-bad for you food and over-priced games. Interesting to walk through it in France though and feel like I could be in a Springfield somewhere in the US.
The next day our culinary opinion of Bordeaux did not get the proper introduction I’m sure, because we waited 30 minutes for sandwiches at an outdoor that were absolutely awful. I was hoping for something about 400% better, but good food can’t be found with ease all the time, so we’ll chalk that one up to just a bad choice by us. We did get to enjoy the sunshine and some intriguing people watching. We saw the funny looking cathedral, I say that because the spires are on the side and not at the head of the church. It is always nice to see interesting twists on standard church designs. We attempted in vain to use the size of Bordeaux and its abundance of shopping, to find my roommate a pair of boots, but had to move on without a purchase. While I wasn’t in Bordeaux for a significant amount of time, I really enjoyed the city and its exuberance.