Variation on a theme

What's a vacation without the requisite picture of a street musician? When we were in France this year, we didn't meet any musical characters but we did find a piano that looked like it had taken root, just off Colmar's busiest shopping street.

Meringues in shop window

Have you ever seen meringues so big? The girls tried them for breakfast once, but only ate nibbles, they were so sweet.

Artichoke bouquet

When we got back from France, my business partner asked me what we'd done and I thought for a second and said, um...ate a lot!

Our trip was pretty much centered around food and wine (and cider and coffee). I don't know how much this reflects our love of seafood and cheesy products, or because we spend our vacations with a French expat living in England, or because we have small children and can't wander about as much as other vacationers, but when we go to France, we tend to spend a lot of time preparing meals and hanging out at the table.

Here's the consumption tally from our five days on the coast:
1. market visits - three. We got to know the olive stand family quite well.
2. grocery store visits - three. How I love thee, E.LeClerc.
3. ice cream parlors - four. Did you know, French scoops are thrice the size of Czech scoops? Thus rendering our family favorite of pistachio and chocolate into nearly a meal.
4. lollipop stand - one. Even Caroline, the queen of lollipops, thought one visit to the succette stand enough. The resulting lollipop remains largely intact, unvanquished by many many licks.
5. cafes - three. Mostly for their email connections. And to meet new friends! More on this later.
6. restaurants - three. Because mussels and fries taste much better in a restaurant.
7. home cooked seafood - As Will would say, not enough. In tally though we did a good job of covering the basics: cooking oysters, ray, squid, shrimp, and fish cakes.
8. cheese and yogurt - enough to start our own dairy. Luckily we could make the yogurt ourselves.
9. Czech beer consumed - one case, imported for the occasion.
10. Alsace Cremant - three bottles (we were trying to save some for posterity)
11. Brittany cider - much.

With some trepidation then, yesterday I decided to greet our scales again and see what they might have to tell me. I'm happy to note that after their news I tripped blithley to the grocery store and picked up some goat cheese (driven in from France, approximately six times the cost of E.LeClerc) to celebrate and reminisce.

Last view from the ramparts

 

I decided I shouldn't leave you thinking that all the views from St. Malo looked out over factories and cranes. As befits a major port town, it also has a fabulous view of the sea and the little schools of boats that dart from the beach into the harbor and back as you stalk its city walls.

There was something about the color of the St. Malo sand that made all my photos of the beach look like tinted postcards from the sixties. Or maybe it was just the light that day.

View from the ramparts, St. Malo

Can you tell I like precisionist paintings? We visited St. Malo and walked most of the way around its ramparts. Across the bay from the town stood factories and cranes and I thought Charles Sheeler would have liked this view in particular.

On the road again!

Tomorrow we head off on vacation, driving from Prague to Brittany. The end of the road leads here...

On the way, we're planning to wind our way through the Alsace region and meet my sister in Colmar to go wine tasting, shopping, hiking and art viewing (perhaps not in that order). Then we'll skirt Paris and scoot to the coast.

I'm looking forward to hiking along the cliff tops, eating mussels, playing on the sand with C, meeting up with old friends (and maybe new as well!) and taking lots and lots of pictures. Somewhere along the way I promise to raise a glass of cider to everyone, and you can be sure there will be many pics when we're home!

Day in Dinan

While in Brittany, we spent one day in Dinan. A medieval town famous for its timbered houses and the ramparts you can use to hike around the city, it also hosts a pair of competing musicians who have staked out their personal stages. In the center, an accordion and hurdy gurdy player moved from one likely spot to another all day. Near the ramparts, we hung out with a hand organ/singer/actor as he entertained the girls with song after song and persuaded us to sing along too. His props kept them entertained and they enjoyed feeding his cap, well positioned on the street for donations.

I like this picture because it shows off our singer, the old houses and the curious outfits that some of the locals like to wear. The guy on the left had just popped off a motorcycle, but he looks like he is heading for a sword convention, don't you think?

Coast guard house in Brittany

It wasn't all rain and clouds in France. Whenever the sun came out we were on the beach, or hiking along the coast around Val Andre. Here, we're on top of a cliff overlooking the sea, in front of an old coast guard house that still stands as a memorial to the guard.

Parisian pigeons

Walking down the Seine, across from Notre Dame, we ran into pigeons flocking. Flying in uneasy bunches they'd take off, settle down, then take off again. Ellen's camera packed away, she asked for the shot. I took ten and this is my favorite.

The coast of Brittany

 

Just back from a holiday in France. We spent two weekends in Paris and the week on the coast of Brittany. As might be expected in northern France, the food was fantastic, the weather slightly less so. But despite the sun's poor showing we had a wonderful time especially splashing in the sea and hiking along the seashore. More photos to follow.

The new year started today

The first Monday in September feels like the beginning of a new year. People are back from vacation, children start school, businesses answer phone calls again and, right on cue, the weather has snapped from sunny to cold.

We were in Paris yesterday, on the way back from Brittany. At our patisserie, adopted because the owner knows Caroline by name, the locals were out in force, greeting one another with kisses and exclamations in honor of the end of the holiday season. August was over - Parisians were ready to take back their streets from the tourists and the silly season. The church across from our hotel had a regular circulation of families in their Sunday best, girls in navy cardigans, mothers in sensible skirts, fathers with smoothed hair and tennis tan lines. In the middle of rue Mouffetard, right where a playground meets the market, retired hippies sang and passed out song sheets. Couples with long grey hair and flowing skirts and shirts danced polkas to accordion music, the next younger generation, dressed still for church, watched sedately while their parents frolicked in the square and their children swung through the playground.

We’d walked by stores and restaurants closed for the month, promising to wake again on Tuesday, September the 4th, and I thought about their owners, wondering if they were part of all of this celebration and settling in; who might be who in the great crowds of people enjoying the day. We sang some of the songs, danced none of the dances and drank coffee on a playground bench while Caroline practiced her one French expression - “Regardez moi!”

On the boulevards the chestnut leaves have already started to fall, and when the weekly rollerblading parade swept down St. Germain in the late afternoon, the skaters swept the leaves in front of them. We watched the skaters pass, Caroline waved once more, and then we walked down the Saint-Michel metro stairs to an RER train and the airport. We were ready to be home too.

Prague is not as adamant as Paris is about its right to take the entire month of August off, and so September first is not as big a date here, but even Prague had a more than usual bustle about it today. Outside the schools on our block, parents waited for their children to finish their half day, students whistled as friends appeared, Caroline whirled in her new dress and posed for pictures before walking into her first day of school, summarily dismissing me with a “bye mommy” and a languid wave.

I hung out for an hour anyway, sitting in a chair for toddlers, the only barefooted person in the room*, trying desperately to decode the whispers of the other mothers and at the same time assure them that although, and uniquely, Caroline had arrived at school with a team (Will, Marie and myself) we really weren’t that unusual. I picked her up again at 12:30 and the director told us she’d been a hodne holcicka, a good girl.

Tired out from being good, Caroline started to cry as soon she saw me, and I carried her home, sobbing on my shoulder. She told me that she didn’t have a flower for me and it had broken her heart. The flower turned out to be a finger painting, all in red. Marie found one for Caroline to take home. Consoled by strawberries, hot cocoa, and a card of flowery swirls, Caroline fell asleep as soon as we pulled up the covers at nap time.

* Avoid sandals at Czech pre-school events - you'll have to take off your shoes to enter the classroom. If you must wear sandals, bring slippers. At least half the mothers brought their own.

Home from vacation

I entertained myself on the long car ride yesterday by coming up with a list of what I was looking forward to doing when I got home. Top of the list - sleeping on my own bed. After a week in France, my list did not include "going to the grocery store." Nor did the list mention "drinking pastis with orgeat at the little cafe at the bottom of a ravine by the side of a gorgeous river," or "star gazing in the fields next to our house and counting shooting stars." But I wish it did.

Because I love French grocery stores, I do. Actually, both Will and I do and now that we have a three year old, we will happily exchange a morning at the crowded local French town free-for-all market half filled with stands selling patchouli soap and pottery made in China for thirty minutes in the wide (uncrowded) aisles of the Super U admiring the yogurt, cheese, jam, cookies, sausage, wine, olives, chicken, chocolate.

And pastis tasted so perfect on that river, so much better than it ever tastes in Prague or anywhere other than the Mediterranean in the afternoon on a hot dry sunny day with old men playing bocce between the sycamore trees and children (ours too) playing in the fountain.

I will find the stars but they will not be right outside my door. I miss them tonight.

May traveling

We didn’t venture out much this winter. I realized just how little when I happened to call our rental car company to see about renting a car for the weekend.

“Julie, you’re alive!” our car guy said. “Wait, but you’ve bought your own car, is that it?”
No no, I promise we haven’t.
“Then,“ (his voice chokes up) “you’ve found someone else?“
No, really Alex, we haven’t rented a car in months! But it’s spring you know, so time to start traveling!

That was five weeks ago. We haven’t been home on a weekend since. Last Thursday found us in Paris, where we experienced French life with a toddler, a stroller minus a wheel and winds that threatened to blow the horses off the carousel in the Jardin du Luxembourg. At a certain moment I had to remind myself - in a year you won’t remember the pollen lashing your face like a sand storm, you’ll remember the foie gras, the coffee and the pain au chocolat. You’ll remember playing gamba with your teacher while Caroline pretends to play harpsichord on the music stand, the fountains blowing across the gardens at Versailles, the Sunday market at Versailles with more fish than you’ve seen since South Carolina.

And mostly that is what I remember from our weekend in Paris. But I am guessing I’ll also remember having to floss my teeth late Sunday night, just home from the airport, to get rid of that last tricky piece of pollen, wedged there by the winds of the North Atlantic blowing into Versailles.

Paris Weather

Have I mentioned that temperatures have hovered over 0/32 for a week? And how nice this is, so moderate, so easy to live with. It isn’t exactly sunny, but I don’t mind. Cloudy skies filter the sun, so we don’t have to see just how weak its rays are right now, barely skimming the top of the buildings across the courtyard from my desk window, before sinking again and setting at 3:59 in the afternoon.

The weather reminds me of my trip last November to Paris. I stayed with friends in their small flat in Versailles and we bicycled around the Chateau’s gardens, still green. We rode past other bicyclists and children on scooters, past cherubims obviously waiting for the tourists to come back, and more delicate sculptures bundled in their own tents for winter. It was cold enough that we were glad to stop and push our bikes through the outdoor markets to buy fruit, cheese and bread, but not so cold that I couldn't enjoy the simple pleasure of bicycling across the flat sands of the town, past the tourists heading to the train station and back to the big city, while we rode home, residents at least for the weekend.