Wednesday July 1, 2 p.m.: 97.5F and forecast to reach 101 by later this afternoon. Oy.
Update: 6 p.m.: 102F. Bright spot: that’s probably as hot as it’s going to get today. Cooler tomorrow, then back to 97-98 Friday and Saturday. A little rain would be welcome!
Laurie tells me that a number of blog readers know our friends Mary and Gilles Germain, so she’s asked me to post some pictures of Mary and Gilles and their family. As the whole family was in Bois-le-Roi this last weekend, with the exception of son-in-law Fabien, here goes.
The family gathered in stages. First, grandson Christian and son-in-law Fabien arrived. After a couple days Fabien left for home in Singapore and Mary & Gilles took over full-time grandparent duties. Here’s Gilles reading with Christian (3-1/2 years old).
Christian’s mother, Anne, arrived a few days later, then William and Mathilde brought the newest grandchild – Claire, nine months. We visited Mathilde and Claire one morning when all the Germains were doing family business:
At the end of the week, Eric came down from his Paris digs, and we had a family dinner (family plus us, that is).
Les Germain sat (and stood) for a family portrait.
That’s: Gilles & Mary, Anne and Christian, William, Claire and Mathilde, and Eric.
I think Eric was about three when the Germains lived in Boulevard Lane. It was then that we got to know them. Thirty-five years ago…yikes!
And a couple of pictures of the next generation. Christian and Claire getting to know each other:
Laurie and Claire getting to know each other:
Claire checking things out:
Anything better than baby’s feet?
This is a wonderful family. Laurie and I are pleased and honored to have been included in their family gathering.
When we were here two years ago, the first six weeks we had miserable weather: wet and cold almost the entire time. This trip, not so much. We’ve had a couple cloudy days, about two hours of light rain, and here’s this week’s forecast:
I’m okay with hot weather, so I’ll be okay, but Laurie wilts. I suspect we’ll be taking some long drives in our air-conditioned car this week. Or spending a lot of time the Carrefour market, which is kept so cold we wear fleece jackets there, no matter the time of day.
When we were here a couple years ago, we walked the length of the Loing Canal from its start to past Nemours, doing couple-mile stretches as a time. Since we don’t have any canals nearby, this year we’re walking along the Seine, seeing what we can see and watching traffic on the river. It’s a very enjoyable way to see the country-side, and get a little exercise while we’re at it.
This amble took place over a few days, as we ran into rain the first day. (I might point out that this was really the first rain we’ve seen in five weeks, after a constant forecast of “nice today, but rain tomorrow”; everyday we heard that forecast and it was finally correct.)
So, without further ado (or blather), here are some pictures and c0mments from this amble…
Fontaine-le-Port City Hall (Mairie)
Every town in France has a city hall, almost always a nice-looking building. This is for the small village of Fontaine-le-Port (population: about 1,000).
Main street of Fontaine-le-Port.
We found a path along the hills of Fontaine-le-Port and walked along it for a way, seeing beautiful views over the Seine and the country-side. Quite a few houses have this view…nice.
View from top of Fontaine-le-Port
Always flowers.
In the neighboring town of Samoreau, we came upon this Grange Hall. Yes, the same Grange Hall as we find in the United States and, originally, for the same purpose: to support the farmers of the area. This one has been around a long time; I’d put its construction about 200 years ago. Today it’s used more as a community center.
The Grange Hall in Samoreau.
Gotta love the original “Mini.”
It’s always enjoyable to walk down a lane and see sights like this. This is a late-1800s house, likely. Not a real chateau, just a big house, but definitely beautiful. Beautiful estate, too.
Looking across the Seine at affolantes in Samois-sur-Seine.
We often see these reminders.
Note the ages: 19 and 20, and the date, August 1944. This area was liberated by the Allies soon after; not everyone lived to see it.
The biggest surprise: this is in a corner of a huge yard (probably 10-12 acres) of a huge and beautiful house:
Mirage III
This plane came into the French Air Force (“Army of the Air” more accurately) in 1961. The house and land belong to a dentist. I have not been able to discover anything about just why he has a 50-year-old fighter jet in his backyard.
That’s it for this amble. We try to get out for a walk every day and so they’ll be more to follow.
Every June 21 – the Summer Solstice – Paris celebrates with an enormous music festival: the Fete de la Musique. Some years ago our late friend Barbara was in Paris on June 21, but she didn’t know ahead of time about the celebration. She told us ,”There was music everywhere in Paris.” and raved about the experience. Ever since, we’ve wanted to be here for the fete and yesterday, it worked out; we were there!
Now, about this festival: the official website lists about 500 musical performances in Paris, all free. They range from the most classical of classical music to the most avant-garde of avant-garde music. But the fact is that the official website lists maybe ten percent of the actual performances; there must have been thousands in total. We walked through a tiny slice the city and saw, oh, twenty different performances. Places des Vosges alone had probably ten going at any time, and they kept changing during the evening.
What did we see and hear? Well…here goes. (I apologize for the not-very-good pictures; it’s hard to get a decent shot with a big crowd in the way). These are our favorites, in the order we saw them (we also saw quite a few more for a few minutes each.):
No program and announcements in French, so we don’t know what we heard, but it was beautiful. Not a lot of people when we got there at the beginning, but the recital started at 4:30 and was to continue until 10 pm, and it was filling up when we left after 45 minutes, so I think they had lots of people there over the evening:
Eglise Saint-Louis en l’Ile
As we left, we saw crowds at two stores: Berthillon Ice Cream
The line for Berthillon ice cream: out the door, down the street and around the corner.
And Carolyn’s favorite store in all of Paris:
And a puppeteer on the bridge between Ile St. Louis and Ile de la Citè.
A pupeteer entertaining kids on Pont Louis IV.
At the west end of Ile Saint-Louis is a beautiful, quiet, tiny park. No so quiet today. This band wasn’t the best, but they had lots of people dancing.
Not a great band, but soon after this couple started dancing, many joined in.
Then we bumped into this band playing at an imprompu beer/wine bar on the river. First song was Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” sung in French with a reggae beat. Different…
On the banks of the Seine.
Then on to Places des Vosges. Place des Vosges deserves a post of its own, but that’s another day. It’s a beautiful arcaded square (about 500 years old) and there was a lot of music going on under those arcades.
Place des Vosges.
We never figured out what type of music this group was playing, but there were a bunch people who knew the dances to go with the music and they danced and danced and danced.
Never figured out what kind of music/dance this was.
Then, after several other stops, we discovered Margot Varret:
Margot Varret – jazz harp! She was wonderful.
Margot Varret trained as a classical harpist and then fell in love with jazz. She now has a quartet, but yesterday she was solo. Jazz harp: now there’s something you don’t see every day. She was fabulous; we hope to catch her with her quartet while we’re here.
After a few more stops, another highlight. I’d read about this group on the website, but it was way more fun than we expected: the Tigresses. Six women – five of them our age; old, that is – and two men, all playing accordions. For each song, they handed out sheets with the words and everyone sang along; then they collected the sheets and did it again with the next song. Before they started they had over a hundred people waiting and when we left, probably triple that. A woman standing next to us said they’re there every year, same place, same time, so they have a following. This was just crazy, and great fun.
The Tigresses
This is the crowd singing along with the Tigresses and their eight accordions.
By this time we’d been standing or walking for almost five hours and we were pooped. So we started back toward the flat, but got delayed. First, this small jazz group playing in a side street. We listened to them for half an hour. They unfortunately were in competition with four guys playing BIG and LOUD drums not too far away.
Then the topper. If you look at the top balcony of this apartment building – which is on a main street of Paris – you’ll see three guys: two guitarists and a drummer. What you don’t see are the amplifiers and speakers that filled that whole street with…good old American Rock ‘n’ Roll. Well, okay the “good” part might be a stretch; these guys are not going to make a living at this. But somehow, this summed up the Fete de la Musique: want to make some music? Find a place and start playing; a crowd will gather to hear you.
A garage band on a balcony – a “balcony band?”
After five hours of standing and walking, we returned to the flat for a re-invigorating glass or two of wine and something to eat, figuring we’d re-charge and go back out. The re-invigorating part didn’t work; we never got out the door again. We opened a bottle of wine, toasted Barbara and thanked her for getting us to the Fete de la Musique. This evening was definitely one of the most enjoyable times we’ve had in Paris over the twenty-five years we’ve been coming here.
Geeze, one post after another! You’d think I had nothing better to do!
This morning we continued our search for les affolantes. For those who haven’t read every word of this blog, the affolantes are houses built on the banks of the Seine in the late-1800s/early-1900s, by affluent Parisiens mostly, as summer houses. They are amazing. (see Affolantes).
We went to the small village of La Rochette, which is the next town north of us here. It has a long road that goes along the Seine and there are quite a few simply beautiful houses on that road. Some are affolantes, built in the time mentioned above, others are newer. Mostly, we like the affolantes and not so much the newer homes. These houses all overlook the Seine. For some of them, trees have grown up to block the view, but others have unobstructed views of the river. (You can click on a picture to see it full-size.)
These pictures were taken from our bedroom windows at 9:58 last night.
Sunset is at 9:56 here right now; it’ll be a couple minutes later after the solstice June 21. We like that. Given the clear skies we’ve had in the evenings, it means that it’s light enough to do things outdoors until 10:30, and there’s still light in the sky at 11.
Sunrise is about 5:57, but I wouldn’t know that by observation. We’re on vacation: we’re not sleeping in late, but we’re also not getting up very early. Why would we?
Recently a friend reading the blog (that’s you, Frannie) asked us about food markets and how the French get their food, so I’ve taken some pictures and will write a bit about it in this post.
Although it’s surely possible for someone here to buy all their food in a supermarket, it seems that few people do that. They buy staples and some food in supermarkets, things that need to be fresh from local two- or three-mornings-a-week markets (what we call “farmers markets” but here have much more than just produce) or from small stores. As we’ve understood better how to shop, and the strengths and weaknesses of each food source, we’ve really come to enjoy shopping in all of them, just as the French do.
There are, indeed, super markets here. Big supermarkets. Huge supermarkets. Supermarkets that make a Fred Meyer look like a corner store. They have everything, from groceries and staples to televisions, computers, furniture, refrigerators and whatever you might need. We have not shopped at one of these hyper-markets and likely won’t.
Then there’s the smaller super-markets that have all the staples, produce, meat and drink you could want, and some household appliances, such as coffee makers, toasters, and so forth. They also have an amazing selection of wine – now there’s a surprise. Not to mention the amazing selection of box wines: maybe fifty different kinds. We always have one or two boxes (3 liters) on hand. They are surprisingly good and surprisingly inexpensive; we’ve become fans of Corbières, a red wine from the South, and we can buy a box for 9€ – about $2.50 per bottle equivalent; it’s imminently drinkable.
Here’s a picture of our local supermarket, Carrefour. There are Carrefours everywhere.
Two years ago our first trip to the local Carrefour was to stock a house that was empty and in which we were going to live for four and a half months. So in addition to tons of staples and food we bought a coffee-maker, toaster, water-filter carafe and a bunch of other things missing from the house. Because we were completely unfamiliar with the store, we were there for over two hours, filled a cart and a half, and ran up an over-400€ bill. They’re still talking about us there, as the average person buys food for a couple days – maybe 20-30€.
There are also small stores that carry a bit of everything, including produce and meats. Here’s our local:
A small “has a little of everything” market near us. The U.S.. equivalent is a 7-11, with groceries and produce added.
Next step down, in size, but usually a step up in quality and price, are the many small, local stores. These are owned privately, the owner usually is in the store with maybe an employee or two and the inventory is limited to one or two types of product. So, we have:
Boulangerie – bread, but most boulangeries are really boulangerie/patisseries, selling bread and pastries.
Patisserie – pastry; not many pastry-only patisseries left; they’ve combined with boulangeries.
Charcuterie – pork products.
Boucherie – other meats.
Chevaline – horse meat. I’ve seen a couple of these stores in Paris, and the biggest food markets may have a horse meat stall; haven’t tried it, and don’t plan to.
Fromagerie – cheese.
Epicerie – a small grocery store.
Poissonerie – fish.
Now, the fact is that many of these stores have disappeared in the smaller towns, such as Bois-le-Rois. There’s no poisonniere here, no stand-alone boucherie or charcuterie. Fish we would get at the local twice-a-week market. The meats are available at one of two stores, one of which is also a fromagerie (our favorite store; we’re already known well there). Where there once might have been several poissoneries and several charcuteries, now there may be one or two stores that have all types of meat and fish.
Here are a couple local stores:
In the U.S., that’s what we’d call these temporary markets. Here they’re known as “marchés locales” and many towns have a market two or three mornings a week. They comprise of trucks with display cases that may go from market to market through the week, or, as in the case of our favorite cheese store, they may be a local store that has a presence at the local market. Our cheese shop is open five days a week, but on two mornings – Thursday and Sunday – Madame is at the Bois-le-Roi market.
Here are pictures of the Bois-le-Roi marché local on a Sunday morning. We don’t know why, but this particular Sunday morning several “regular” vendors were not there. Still, you can see this is not a big market – Bois-le-Roi is about 5,000 people, so the marché reflects that size.
Fountainbleau is the nearest good-sized city. It has a much bigger – and more frenetic – market three days a week. Melun, bigger than Fountainbleau, has a permanent building for its marché, and because Melun has a large population from Africa, it is much more colorful and much more diverse in what it sells.
One last way we get our produce: on Thursdays at 4 in the afternoon, a truck straight from a farm appears at the location of the Thursday morning market – which has folded up and been gone since about noon – and sets up a table. The truck also has a number of bags of produce, picked that day and changing from week-to-week to reflect what was ready to pick in the the morning. For 10€ you get a bagful; no choice in what you get, as they’re all pre-bagged. The next week, you exchange your now-empty bag and 10€ for another full bag. And this week, they also had strawberries and cherries, both of which were just fabulous. Not cheap, I can say, but about the freshest and tastiest imaginable.
Food from a truck straight from the farm. One bagful: 10€.
Our bag o’ food from the farm truck.
As you see, getting food here could be simple: go to Carrefour and get everything you need. But getting the freshest and best requires more work and is much more fun. We get staples at Carrefour and everything else in the smaller stores or the markets. Once we understood the routines of doing that, we found it to be much more fun, and we got much better food. We still feel stupid occasionally, but we believe that if we don’t feel stupid at least once a day, we’re not trying hard enough. The fact is that everyone treats us wonderfully, even after we have slaughtered their language. I suspect there are not a lot of Americans in the Bois-le-Roi marché local, and they like having us there as much as we like being there.
I don’t think we’ll get to all the cheeses in France, but we’re making an effort. Today:
Roquefort Vernieres
Reblochon
Crottin de Cavignol – a famous chevre
Salers – never tried this one, but very similar to Cantal, which we like a lot. Actually, we like all them a lot.
Tommes de Savoie – had this last week and loved it, so what the heck: we’ll have some more
We also bought a slab of paté de campagne.
Can’t wait for lunch!
Today’s haul at the cheese shop.
On the cheese place, clockwise from the top: Salers, Reblochon, Crottin de Cavignol, Roquefort, Tommes de Savoie. French readers are now saying, “What? Cheese and paté at lunch? On a weekday? Quelle horreur! An advantage of being non-French and on vacation: we eat what we want when we want.
Laurie says lots of blog readers will be interested in seeing where we’re staying for five weeks. I’m not so sure, but here goes…
I think an unsettling moment of traveling is when you arrive at a place – a hotel, a B & B, a rental, whatever – that you’ve seen only in pictures and you open the door. What, exactly, are you going to discover? We’ve seen plenty of places that looked oh-so-good on a website but were not-so-good when the door opened. Our cottage here in Bois-le-Roi gave us the opposite reaction: we liked what we saw on the website, but the reality is better.
Now, we had references, so to speak, for this cottage: our friends the Germains and Rufins both know the owner, we heard that the remodeling work was done by a man who’d done work for both of them, so we expected the place to be fine. From the minute we walked in, though, we knew it would exceed our expectations. It is light, roomy, well-equipped, the re-modeled bathroom is beautiful, the yard is huge and green, it’s on a quiet street, it’s…well, perfect.
Some pictures:
We have some time in September for which we hadn’t figured out where we’d stay, but now we know: we’ll come back here. This place is a wonderful find. It’s 35 minutes by train to Paris, there are many walking trails, and if we’re lazy, we can just sit in the yard chairs and enjoy the garden (with, of course, a glass or two of rosé).
