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Our Delta airline flights from New Orleans to Atlanta and (eventually) Atlanta to Paris were nothing to write home about…so I won’t.  But, the TGV train (very fast and smooth) provided a restful trip from Paris to Avignon via Lyon and we arrived in St. Remy somewhat less jet-lagged. We ate lunch in town at the Basserie du Commerce before arriving at Bleu, our villa for the next few weeks.  Allan and I rested while Clay and Connie went to the market and when they returned, we chatted, ate French cheese and crackers and turned in as early as we dared.

The next morning we took things slowly and after breakfast–coffee or espresso, chocolate croissants, sacristains (twisted flaky, sweet pastries covered in powdered sugar and almonds AND only made in St. Remy) and other pastries, we left here about 11:30 for our first excursion.  On the way to the Carriere de Lumieres in Les Baux we stopped at Moulin Castelas, an olive farm complete with picking, processing, bottling and selling.  This is not the season for anything except selling…so we bought a few souvenirs, enjoyed the scenery and moseyed on.  The tree I am standing beside was in full pink bloom but I have no idea what kind of tree it is.  If anyone knows it, please send me a comment!

I’ve tried (earlier in this blog) to describe the light and music show at Les Baux, but it is so amazing that I can’t do it justice.  If you are ever near Les Baux, you really should go to this show.  The show this year (they use different artists every year) is called Bosch, Brueghel, and Arcimboldo and it is truly awesome.  I would not consider any of the artists a favorite, but in the setting, a huge limestone cavern, and with the photo animation and the chosen music, the show was fascinating.  Stairway to Heaven was the last song played along with a photo that had been animated so that people in bubbles were floating up and off the top panels as though into heaven–Wow!  Allan took this video.

 

After watching the show twice, we left to find a lunch spot and stumbled onto L’Oustau de Baumaniere.   This restaurant was the most interesting I’ve been to in years, maybe ever!  Before we ordered they brought a ceramic olive tree with real olives attached, a small dish of aioli and some yummy sweet brioche-like bread with vegetables baked in–excellent!  Clay ordered vegetables to start, Clay and Connie each ordered squab and Allan and I each ordered lobster.  Before our ordered food, we were served a small savory soup–either scallop or snail.  Clay’s vegetables looked like lemon ice box pie!  They were perfectly baked compressed root vegetables (big slices of carrot, beets, turnip with a yummy sauce in between and over).  The squab was served with the dark split breast on bottom and a leg and thigh on top and covered with a brown fruit-infused sauce.  Accompanying the squab was spinach mixed with squab liver.  Our lobster was the entire tail (meat only) and a claw (meat only) with a very light and very tasty brown sauce.  I’ve never had lobster that I enjoyed more.  Our accompaniement was a lobster soufflé–light and airy and perfect!  Next we all were served a dollop of fruit (either apple or pineapple) sorbet and about 2 tablespoons of fruit juice.  For dessert Connie had the millefeuille (because she can’t make it); I had the cognac soufflé; Clay had 3 ice creams with chocolate sauce; Allan had slightly salted caramel ice cream with chocolate sauce.  After dessert they brought us each three tiny sweets and Allan and Clay had coffee. AND, as we left the restaurant they presented Connie and me with a small lemon cake for breakfast tomorrow.  What a lunch!  It is almost 8 o’clock now and none of us are even thinking about dinner.

We had a safe, easy ride back to Bleu and have been reading, writing, editing photos and talking about tomorrow since our return.  Tomorrow the gentle showers should be over and we will have sunshine the remainder of the trip.

Bon nuit!

Nancy

 

A great way to spend the last day of 2016–seeing the sights of Paris with friends.  We moved to Le Buci for our pain chocolate and double espresso before completing yesterday’s aborted return to Deyrolle for souvenirs.  We ubered from there to the Romantic Museum.  Our decision to uber was based on the fact that the temperature was 27 degrees (never got above 31) and we had a New Year’s reservation at 2:15.

I expected the Romantic Museum to be about romance and the symbols associated with love. In actuality the Romantic Museum focused on the Romance period in art history.  The entire first floor of the museum held artifacts from George Sand’s estate–mostly her art collection and costume jewelry.  They were donated by her great grand daughter to the City of Paris and moved here for exhibition.  Our next stop was up, up, up to Sacre Coeur Basilica and the artist colony at Montmartre.

Sacre Coeur normally provides an expansive view of the city of Paris, but today the fog was so thick we could hardly see even the closest buildings, a different sort of beauty.  We continued walking with the large crowd around the basilica and found the small square where artists have worked since the beginning of the twentieth century, including Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh.

While enjoying the art and being reminded of Jackson Square artists, we ran into two couples we know well in New Orleans.  It really is an amazingly small world.

We ubered again to our apartments in preparation for our New Year’s reservation and were reminded that Paris expects large crowds tonight and is concerned about the safety of the thousands expected to celebrate.  The Louvre was blocked off to vehicles so our driver had to find an alternative route to cross the river…no easy task since the rest of the traffic was in search of the same.

Lunch/dinner at Boullion Racine  was excellent.  Established in 1906 as a soup kitchen for local workers, the Art Deco decor added  just the right amount of ambiance to the experience.  After dinner, we walked a few blocks to the l’Aubusson Hotel (recommended by the friends we ran into in Montmartre) for a last round of drinks in Paris and a final au revoir to 2016.

My first meal in 2017 was pain chocolate and espresso–what a great way to begin the New Year!  I was almost the only person on our street.  The red door leads to our apartment.  We pack now to begin our trip home to New Orleans.  Until next time…

 

 

This morning began for me the same as every morning in France so far, with a pain chocolate and double espresso.  Over this breakfast at La Pallette we planned our day…return to Deyrolle to get some souvenirs…walk (it was 29 degrees) to and tour the Rodin Museum…and head to Muffetard Street and a restaurant called Papillion. Deyrolle was closed when we arrived between 12 and 2 so we continued on to Rodin.

The setting for this museum is a lovely old mansion and grounds.  Many of Rodin’s large sculptures like these are in the garden.  Allan is thinking with le penseur, and the Gates of Hell and Three Shades are some of our other favorite sculptures.  Inside we saw some of the creative process that Rodin went through to create these bronze behemoths and of course we had some favorites there too.

Next stop on our plan was Muffetard Street and Papillion Restaurant–too far to walk so we ubered.  Papillion, a favorite of Anthony Bourdain, has been shuttered, but, undeterred, we found Le cafe Muffetard  and shared wine and an excellent lunch (or was it dinner?). It was dark when we left the cafe so we moved on to a bar called Little Bastards for a drink.  Muffetard Street is a lively, interesting part of Paris, with plenty of reasonably priced shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and the like.  We bought some more Comte and Brillat cheeses.

The next part of our plan was to begin walking toward the Hemingway Bar in the Ritz Hotel on Place Vendome, stopping for a drink when we needed to get warm.  Google told us it was a 41 minute walk and we only stopped three times for warming and quenching our thirsts  before reaching the Ritz.  Although cold, it was a beautiful night for a walk.  Paris was foggy so the light was soft and we enjoyed both the different and the familiar sights.  The Hemingway Bar had at least an hour wait so we ubered to our apartment and hiked 77 steps up for our final drink of the evening and fruit and cheese.  We said good night and Charlie and Patti hiked 77 steps down to the street, around the corner and 3 more flights up to their apartment. It was a great day wandering the streets of Paris with friends…Bon Nuit.

I enjoyed my mandatory double espresso and pain chocolate (chocolate croissant) at a  cafe around the corner called La Pallette.  While sitting at a table, we watched people come in, greet the barista, stand at the copper bar and order an espresso.  The espresso and a small glass of water were delivered in seconds, the person who ordered drank both the espresso and the water in a few more seconds, and the person paid and left.  We watched it happen over and over while we finished our breakfast.

By the way, the dome in yesterday’s photo from the Luxembourg Garden was not the Sorbonne; it may have been the Pantheon, but my expert is not committing.

We went with Charlie and Patti to a most unusual place called Deyrolle, a 170-year old establishment on rue du Bac, not far from the Musee d’Orsay on the Left Bank.   The ground floor looks like an upscale and interesting garden shop with excellent tools, gardening books, aprons and hats. BUT, upstairs is a completely different world.  The first thing to greet you  at the top of the stairs is a stuffed polar bear and in the next two rooms there are taxidermied birds and animals, seashells, and mounted insects from all over the world. We spent at least an hour enjoying the amazing collection.

From there we went to the D’Orsay Museum and thoroughly enjoyed the post-impressionists and impressionists.  We had lunch in the beautiful chandeliered dining room and continued wandering through the various exhibits.  Our second and last museum for the day was l’Orangerie where we enjoyed more art.  We had a drink at a small bar on Rue Jacob and ubered to Robert et Louise for a meat-lover’s dinner.  It was a most interesting and enjoyable dinner.  Not having a reservation was not a problem, we were ushered downstairs and seated at a large round table with a young couple, Monique and Zennen.  It turns out that Zennen’s extended family is from New Orleans and Monique is from Chattanooga.  Quite a reminder of how small the world is…

Leaving Bayeux and heading to Paris was bittersweet for me this morning.  We love Paris, but small towns are in my DNA.  It has been a relaxing, educational and beautiful 4+ days.  This morning dawned clear and cold (0 degrees Celsius).  The French countryside, clean and well-kept  in Normandy as in other parts of France, was covered in frost anywhere that the sun hadn’t reached.  Allan drove the rental car and we learned a lot about driving in Normandy…roundabouts are a civilized method of controlling traffic…gare de peage is toll booth in French and our credit card works well there…rappel when written under a round speed limit sign means that the speed doesn’t change, this is only a reminder.

Driving into Paris was a bit frightening…the roundabouts here are more like free-for-alls with cars juggling for position and motorcycles speeding between the cars…it took us much longer to get where we were headed than we expected…we were happy to drop off the rental car and get on our feet.  We ubered to 58 Mazarin and brought our belongings up 4 flights (77 steps) to Mister Prince (our apartment for the next few days).

Charlie and Patti  landed this morning and napped for a few hours before we arrived.  We met them at Le H’oevre Gourmand across from our apartment and had a tasty lunch before walking through our neighborhood.  The photos above are the Luxembourg Garden with the dome of the Sorbonne in the background.

Patti had yet to see the Seine so we walked over the Pont de Art and through the Louvre grounds and the Tuileries before crossing back over the Seine for an early dinner-like snack at La Fregate.  An industrious young man named Charles de Batz, seigneur d’Artagnan who inspired Alexander Dumas to write the Three Musketeers once lived in this spot.  There is a story on every corner in this interesting city.

This morning dawned clear and cold, 29 degrees Fahrenheit, so our warm comforter-covered beds were very attractive…we got a late start so our visit to Mont St. Michel (2 1/2 hours) has been postponed until another trip to the area.  Instead we visited the American Cemetery in Normandy.  We entered the museum through the usual security, learned interesting facts about the mission and watched several short films about the Normandy mission and some biographical information about several young soldiers.  New Orleans-based Andrew Higgins was prominently discussed because of the boats the company built for the war.   The soldiers were all so young and none looked scared.  These soldiers were well prepared for their mission and supported by everyone in the world who believed in freedom.

Leaving the museum, we walked through the beautifully manicured cemetery grounds to the perfect rows of white crosses and stars of David.  One of our friends from home told Allan that his uncle had been killed in hand-to-hand combat shortly after D-Day.  Using the provided computer, we found that our friend’s uncle was in plot H, row 7, grave 27 so we made our way there and found his name etched in a perfect white cross.  Walking through this cemetery, I was sadly reminded of the almost 10,000 American men and women who died in this fight for freedom.

We continued our drive along the beach and lunched in Port-en-Bessin-Huppain at a small brasserie called Brasserie Les pieds dans l’eau.  I think it refers to legs dancing in the water.  It was a good choice–we loved our lunch.  Huppain is a fishing port and we discovered that one of their main catches is the coquille for coquille St. Jacques.  The fishing boats dump all of the shells on the shore here and the numerous gulls are hopeful that something remains in the shells.

Further down the beach road we stopped in Arromanches les bains where the artificial port, Port Winston, was created by the British to feed weapons and supplies to the invasion.  It is considered the heart of the Normandy invasion.  There remain concrete structures in the channel that were dragged from Britain.  We watched a film at the circular cinema that was a conglomeration of clips from the British, Americans, and others.  In addition to all the other emotions I experienced earlier today, I was reminded of the pictures we see today of war in the Middle East…so much destruction, sad men, women, and children walking in the rubble-strewn streets, and innocent people forever changed.  But, this new one is a different kind of war–we are not fighting an out of control government, there may not be a successful military strategy for the free world to get behind, and the threat we feel is difficult, if not impossible, to track and thwart.  There must be a way to help the many suffering people in the world…and because of sights like the cotton candy clouds in this sunset, I still have hope…

Our short ride back to Bayeux was uneventful…we got dressed for our Noel dinner at a fine-dining restaurant in Caen.  Before leaving I checked my confirmation for the address only to read:

Bonsoir Madame,

Malheureusement notre restaurant est fermé le Dimanche 25 Décembre au soir, mais bien ouvert le midi.
Merci de votre compréhension.

Cordialement,
Diana

…which we interpreted to indicate they were actually closed…and so was everything in Bayeux.  We wandered the streets again and a lady at the Tobacco Bar (who was not selling food) pointed out the only restaurant open…La Maison Blanche.  We had a lovely prefixe Noel menu with a glass of champagne, a bottle of wine and a taste of Calvados (the local and strong apple brandy) and a tasty apple liquor.  Needless to say, we went to sleep quite sated.

Joyeuse Noel!

Exhausted, we fell asleep on Christmas Eve listening to the Notre Dame Cathedral of Bayeux bells ringing and ringing and ringing.  We can see the spires on the right from our window.  We slept well and woke to the happy sounds of children playing. After breakfast, we wandered the empty streets of Bayeux toward the Cathedral–a big, beautiful romanesque/gothic building of weathered stone with stained glass windows everywhere.  Although it has been modified over time, it was originally consecrated in 1077.  Along the way we walked through a park which was at one time the center of town.  We saw the hospital and the Aure River flowing next to it.  The river has a water wheel that powered mills and electricity for the hospital back in the day.  We went up one and down another cobblestone street with lovely stone buildings that were all closed. We spent the rest of Christmas Day seeing the D-Day sights at Omaha Beach.  We were one of very few cars leaving Bayeux, in fact we were one of very few cars anywhere!  It made driving easy and our trip to the Atlantic uneventful.  The countryside reminded me of the Cotswolds (maybe because it was cold, damp and dreary) with big fields separated by wooded areas and large stone houses and barns.  Our first sight on Omaha Beach was a monument called Les Braves designed to memorialize the brave American men who fought to liberate France.  It is beautiful.  We walked the beach for a little while (it was cold!), drove to some other sights in the area and then on to Point Du Hoc where the Americans landed on a tiny beach at the base of huge cliffs and surprised the Germans who did not expect an assault from the water.

They shot grappling hooks up to the tops of the cliffs, climbed up, and attacked the surprised Germans. We are still wondering how any Americans survived to free the French.  Seeing these sights and putting ourselves in the soldiers footsteps was quite sobering.

I’ll finish today in the next post…