Nantes and Paris

 

We went to Nantes to visit a dear friend. (We also got to see a friend who we have not seen since she was in East Lansing in 1980!) Nantes is at the mouth of the Loire River on the western coast of France. It was not our first trip there but was the most memorable. We toured the city with our friend who was born and raised there so he is very knowledgeable guide. He lives in the center of the city so we walked most places. 

We took the “Navibus” to the other side of the Loire river and walked around the village of Trentemoult. We visited the island of the city and got to see the huge (three stories high) mechanical elephant that walks around the island.

We went through the castle of the dukes of Brittany (le Château des ducs de Bretagne) and ate at a lovely restaurant facing the castle (Le Fou du Roi - the Court Jester). Every meal during our visit was excellent and, since our friend is a very knowledgeable connoisseur of wine, we drank well.

Note: Nantes was thirty degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Vaison. Everyday, we went out with a jacket!

We left Nantes and took the fast train to Paris. We visited our friends who were staying in Paris for several weeks. Paris is always awesome.

We had planned to go to an American restaurant for dinner on the 4th of July. (American Independence Day is not a holiday in France.) Two of the Americans with whom we were going to eat did not like the restaurant so we decided instead to find a restaurant in the neighborhood that made hamburgers. We found the perfect café and had great hamburgers and fries - with Heinz catsup!

We went to Versailles to see the new exhibition of paintings depicting the role of France in the American Revolutionary War. (The French call it the War of Independence.) It was a very engaging and enlightening exhibit. Somewhere in my past, I remembered that La Fayette had helped Washington and that the French had also sent naval support but I always thought of the French help as a small footnote on the war. The French were very much involved in supporting our independence and fighting England.

There was an exhibit of three hundred years of women’s fashion at the Museum of Decorative Arts. I am probably showing my age but I much prefer the hoop skirts of the seventeenth century to some of the extravagant (outrageous?) fashions of the current time. (There was also a Barbie exhibit at the same building but we decided not to pay to see that exhibit.)

On our last day in Paris, we went to Montmartre - the highest part of Paris. We found a little café and had a wonderful lunch and then spent the afternoon climbing and descending the hills of Montmartre. Ellen wanted to see the little vineyard in Montmartre because she wanted to compare it to the little vineyard our friend had shown her in the center of Nantes. 

As we walked around Paris, I was asking myself if anyone there spoke French. I heard many languages most of which were not French. Maybe it was the multitude of tourists, maybe it was because July is one of the two vacation months for the French and the French-speaking Parisians had left the city. For whatever reason, it was amazing to hear so many languages. 

Bonne fête nationale de France! Happy Bastille Day!

Troyes

France is often called “the hexagon” by the French. If you squint while looking at a map drawn by a lazy cartographer, you can see that the name fits. Two weeks ago, we started a triangular tour when we drove from Vaison-la-Romaine to Troyes on our way to Paris. We then went to Ornans and back to Vaison. Given the distances covered, we might have driven over about one/sixth of “the hexagon”…

Troyes was a pretty town. It is located in the champagne region of France on the Seine about 150 km from Paris. We found a B&B there that was in a loft apartment in an old factory. The skylights (a veritable ‘glass ceiling’) and the renovations made it a beautiful spot to stay.

The old town was just five minutes away by foot and has beautiful churches and buildings with a hint of the architectural style we saw in Besançon and Ornans. Many of the old buildings date to the 1500s.

These buildings lived apart for too many centuries...

The hosts at our B&B gave us several recommendations of restaurants and we chose Pizzeria Giusepino where one can get “…the best pizza in the city, in the department, in France! – or so we were told by a man who gave us directions when we got lost.

Troyes is worth a visit. The next time you are driving in France, try Troyes!

Sibling visit

We met Sue and Bob as they arrived in Paris. They had come to visit us, to celebrate their anniversary and to do some genealogy research in the eastern part of France. (Bob DuVernois’ family is from Franche-Comte – at least that is where most of the villages named Vernois are located.)

Paris is always a wonderful city to visit. The city has so much to offer and is filled with so many interesting people. We ate well, walked a lot and enjoyed three days of warm, sunny weather. We went to see: “How to Become Parisian in One Hour” and now know: wear black, never smile, never make eye contact… - a fun-filled one-man show that mocks the French as well as every other nationality in the theater. We went to “A la Biche au Bois” restaurant – as we do on every visit to Paris and again were pleased to share this restaurant with my sister and her husband. We also did the ‘tourist thing’ and took the ‘Bateau Mouche’ (river tour boat) tour of the Seine. The day was clear and warm and we enjoyed seeing several of the major sites of Paris from the river.

We left Paris and drove southeast towards Besançon where we got to see an old friend. She invited us to stay with her and asked us to go to her classes and speak to her students (in English). After our “English classes”, we started visiting the Vernois villages. Google maps had identified four of them; the Garmin GPS had found a fifth… All of the villages were small – I would guess about 400-500 people. After we arrived in each one of the villages, we took pictures of the town sign and then went to visit the cemetery to see if there were any ‘Vernois’ buried there. Two days of visits (and about five hundred kilometers on the car) but no luck.

Franche-Comte is very different from Provence. The architecture is different. The houses use a lot more wood in the construction. The outside of houses look like what I call Tudor style with exposed beams and stucco. Add to that long, steep-sloping roofs and a different tile used for the roofs and you start to get an idea of the architecture of Franche-Comte. In Provence – at least our corner of Provence – there are a plethora of vineyards and wine tasting rooms. In Franche-Comte, the wine tasting rooms are few but the cheese tasting rooms are ubiquitous. (Franch-Comte cheeses are renowned: Comte, Morbier and Mont d’Or, to name a few. – though I have never seen Mont d’Or for sale in the States…)

We stayed in Ornans while we did our genealogy research. A lovely village. A lovely hotel (La Table de Gustave). Before leaving, we went through the museum dedicated to Gustave Courbet, an artist born in Ornans and a major influence (my perspective) on the development of the impressionist style.

Ornans

 …And then to Vaison la Romaine!

Thanksgiving in Paris

Our friends Bruce and Judy invited us to join them for Thanksgiving in Paris. They were going to have an “American Thanksgiving” with two other couples and us. We went and had a wonderful time but getting there was not as easy as we had hoped.

SNCF, idTGV, sncf-voyages.com,

Here’s one for the file folder called « soul-sucking French bureaucracy. »

Weeks ago, Ellen started to work on finding the best fares for the train between Avignon and Paris. When she found good rates and good travel times, Ellen purchased the tickets on-line from “idTGV.”  (TGV are the initials for the super-fast train system in France. All trains are run by the SNCF and the trains are fast, clean and on time.)

She printed the return tickets first. The printed tickets had a few lines of advertising stating the advantages of e-tickets including:

Plus rapide (faster)

Plus simple (easier)

Plus souple (more flexible) – and ends with:

« SNCF vous souhaite un bon voyage » (emphasis added)

Ellen went to print the tickets for the trip from Avignon to Paris and every time she clicked on the print command, she was directed to an error web page which said “website not found.” She tried a number of times over the next few days with the same result every time. We went to our friends’ house and tried from their computer to see if it was our machines. No luck. Finally, we borrowed our friends’ car to drive to the TGV station in Avignon to ask one of the SNCF clerks to help us print our ticket for us so that everything would be ready on Wednesday morning when we were to leave.

We approached the clerk and I said “I hope you can help us.” I then explained our problem to the young man at the counter. The young man named Yohann looked at our paperwork and said that since we bought our tickets from “idTGV” and he works for SNCF, he couldn’t help us. Ellen showed him another page that we had brought from our on-line purchase on which was printed a header “voyages-sncf.com” and asked why the SNCF was different from “voyages-sncf.com.” He consulted another colleague and came back and said: “They are not the same as us. I can’t print your ticket.” We asked what his advice to us might be and again, he left his chair and consulted his colleague and came back with the suggestion that we just show up with the printed ticket-confirmation page that we had showed him. That way, he said, the conductor can look up your number and know that you have seats on the train. I asked: “If we encounter any trouble, can we tell the conductor that Yohann from the SNCF office told us to get on the train?” He smiled and said “sure” which in French or English usually means “there is a snow-ball’s chance that this guy will remember my name and, even if he does, the conductor won’t have time to come and find me and plus I don’t work next Wednesday… I am off the hook. Next in line?”

On the way back to the car, Ellen said that if the clerk had not been so cute, she would have reached across the counter and throttled him.

PS: On Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours before our departure, Ellen got an e-mail from idTGV reminding us that we needed to print our ticket. Ellen followed the links and THIS TIME she was able to print the ticket.

Once in Paris, all of the TGV/SNCF/idTGV/sncf-voyages.com frustrations evaporated. We were in Paris!

Bruce and Judy live in the Marais so we lugged our luggage 

(? does luggage come from ‘something lugged?) onto the metro and then walked about 10 blocks to their apartment. They have a great apartment.

We walked to the “Hotel de Ville” (City Hall) and got in line to see an exhibit of the works of Andrée Putman – a French woman who designed furniture, room arrangements, Concorde seating, etc. (I had never heard of her, but recognized several of her designs.) That evening, Judy, Ellen and I went to the Left Bank to see the Ionesco play “The Bald Soprano” in French. We met up with Bruce and went to dinner at “Le Bouledogue” (the Bulldog) which is a restaurant in their neighborhood. Wonderful food.

As I walk around Paris, I am amazed at the number of restaurants. It seems that few Parisians must cook at home for all of these restaurants to remain viable. – but when one goes to the markets of Paris, one gets the opposite impression:  most people must be wonderful cooks given the things in their shopping baskets. After restaurants, there is a plethora of eyeglass shops, followed by lingerie shops… If I try to deduce priorities from my impressions, I might suggest that food is at the top followed by being able to read the menu (while looking gorgeous) and being able to eye – from head to toe – the women who come into the restaurant…

Thanksgiving

Judy, Ellen and I walked to Judy’s favorite vegetable shop to pick up cranberries. The vegetable shop owner had to special order the cranberries because he thought that Thanksgiving was over. Judy explained that it was Canadian Thanksgiving that was over. American (as in US of America) is the fourth Thursday of November.  We then went to the shop to pick up the fresh turkey that Judy had ordered. It was five kilos instead of the seven she had ordered. Judy bought two coquelet (young chickens) to ensure that we would have enough to eat. Just to be sure, we stopped at Bruce’s favorite bakery and bought five baguettes.

Ellen and Judy made stuffing. Judy made cranberry relish and Waldorf salad.

As folks started to arrive, Ellen had made amuses-bouches (appetizers) with foie-gras that she had bought. I served wine until it was time to mash potatoes. I had very capable guidance from Suzanne who said that mashed potatoes were her favorite food. She encouraged me to add more cream, more butter, a little more cream... (Cooking à la Julia Child!)

Suzanne had made "American" green bean casserole with French haricots verts, cream and crème fraiche cooked with mushrooms and American style French-fried onion rings in a can. She also made a squash casserole. Both were perfect in the comfort food list of favorites.

Rounding out the list but proving that ‘the last shall be first’ were the dessert offerings that Yolanda brought. We enjoyed sweet-potato pie and pumpkin cake each served with ample amounts of chantilly (whipped cream) or crème fraiche. Everyone went home with left-overs.

Quel repas! (What a meal!) We had a wonderful meal that was second only to spending time with wonderful people. Quelle chance! (How lucky we are!)

And then…

Friday included shopping (Ellen bought very stylish boots – thus ending two months of women staring at her for wearing her Croc sling backs or her klunky but comfy Merrell boots) and going to two of the museums that were participating in the photography expo across Paris. In the afternoon we went to see an American film: “Mother and Child” in English with French subtitles (so different from what we usually get to watch at the cinema in Vaison.)  Bruce made bouillabaisse for dinner that evening. (Another great meal)

Saturday, we went to the Museum of Modern Art to see one more of the photo exhibits connected with the expo. Then back to the Marais, lugging our suitcases to Gare de Lyon and the trip home.

Paris is always thrilling but I like our little village.