from l’Ile de Re: the ride

Whatever made me do this*?? Insane. I should act my age and bake cookies in my free time. Or in the alternative, sip a nice noisette and watch people go by all day long.

I’m thinking this as I push myself to go up the bridge that will put me back on the mainland. I hate precipitous drops (it doesn’t help that it’s into the ocean) and I dislike uphill pedaling, but there is no other way to return except to cross that bridge once again.





It was a clever idea, I thought: rent un velo and bike over to l’Ile de Re. The island is maybe a dozen kilometers up north from La Rochelle and it is connected to the mainland by a bridge. (I hadn’t quite realized that it’s a three-kilometer bridge.) Once you survive the crossing, you are in a beautiful setting – a 35 kilometer long stretch of land, with fishing villages, beaches, oyster beds and small vineyards – all that prettiness for me to enjoy on a beautiful, sunny day.

I thought: what’s 80 kilometers of biking in a day… Tough Polish peasant stock here. I can keep up with the French bikers. Surely.

There was an issue though. The bike had to be back at the shop by 4:30. They close then and by the time they reopen, I’ll be back in Madison teaching a class.

But so what. I will watch the hours and tell myself, halfway through: time is up! Now turn around and go back.

In the meantime, it feels tremendously wonderful out there on l’Ile de Re. A dazzling little place.









…and because it’s near lunchtime, I pass many happy people eating at the countless brasseries and bistros that line village harbors.



how many French people does it take to fill a café table? (ten here)


And so I am tempted. And I sit down. And I order a wonderful, best ever salad, with some shrimp on the side…



with endive!


…and I lose track of time. Monsieur and madame at the table next to mine engage me in a conversation and I listen with a smile to their recounting of when they visited America.

I have family there, you know. It’s a fascinating place! I love California! (Predictable. All French people love California, especially the vineyards.) Are you on vacation?
Sort of. I took my work along, but I am on a week long spring break now.
We here in France get two weeks off for Easter, two weeks for Christmas and six weeks in the summer. And then some other holidays as well. (I know, I know. That's what the French think of us: we are crazy workaholics over in the States.)
So you are also on spring break?
Yes, we like to travel in France in the winter and spring. Too crowded everywhere during the summer. We’re from Toulouse. You know Toulouse?
Foie gras land.
Yes! But the food is good here as well. (They are eating heaping plates of seafood.)
When we were in the States, it was for a family reunion with our cousins who moved there a long time ago. We all say “let’s have lunch,” and the Americans open the refrigerator and take out some things to eat! You eat a quick lunch, no? Here, we make a big deal of it. We sit down and take our time.

Yes, and while in France, I take my time as well. So much so that I neglect to count back the time that I need to bike to La Rochelle.

Madness. It’s madness. The wind is in my face, the hills which seemed insignificant before seem monstrous now. I ache, but I cannot stop.

Okay, I do sometimes stop. A photo opportunity! How can I resist? I’ll pedal harder when I am done, surely that’ll put me back on track.

It is not inconsequential that I take photos of men fishing. I like to take photos of people fishing. Here, they do it variously. But they all have this in common: they are not in a rush. I should learn from them.













Through absolutely hellish maneuvers and a hair-raising sprint through the crowded downtown, I do in fact make it back to the shop at 4:29. I promise, you, it was that close.



seconds before closing


And afterwards? Do I collapse in my pretty little room with the crisp white everything? Hell no. I go for my blow out meal at Richard Coutanceau – one that defies a recount. If you are within a thousand miles of the place, you should make a point of going there. (I do not know where people on a budget would be without French fixed price menus. They are what allows the likes of me to occasionally enter the great culinary halls like this one.)

Let me just show you the dessert: tomatoes, leeks, some orange peel, cardamom ice cream. And yes, the combination works! Mildly sweet, but with a delicious zest to it. Beautiful.




I have previously admitted to my absolute bedazzlement when I meet a renowned chef. It’s very adolescent, really. Richard, with his Michelin rosettes may be the highest in the French hierarchy to ever shake my hand and chat me up. I am certain I mumbled something totally incoherent. I blame it on still being in a trance after the velo madness.

* One reason for the velo challenge now is to test my skills in anticipation of a two-week bike ride. Coming up in May. Check in then!

from La Rochelle, France: alone again, naturally

The trick is to be enchanted by what you see, even if you are somewhat removed from it. So that even when you’re out alone for the evening, you are still touched, for example, by seeing before you the affection people feel for one another.

Walking to dinner, I am just so taken with the dusk colors. The harbor is spinning with the exuberance of people facing a warm season ahead. Love, everywhere I see people in love.




As a solo traveler (more often than not), I especially like being around people. Take this evening. I am by the ocean and so I go to a seafood place, Les Flots, reputed to be one of the freshest, most honest places on this coast of the Atlantic.

[Amazingly, there are four restaurants in town and Les Flots is one of these -- all with stellar reputations -- all run by various sibling; the one that has captured the greatest praise from French food critics is run by the dad and mom -- I'll be trying it Saturday.]

As usual, I am given an exquisite table, perfect for people watching. It’s as if they know that solo travelers need to look out onto others.

The waiters speak rapid fire French here. They have a lot to say about the foods and wines (if you ask). At the table next to mine, a waiter is describing a certain wine and the customer asks, yes, but at what temperature will you serve it to me? The waiter doesn’t even hesitate with the answer. It seems to be the way it should be served. The customer nods in agreement.

At one point, I’m a little lost in what the waiter is telling me about the two lobster preparations on the menu. Yes, the lobster is from Brittany. Yes, it has a special butter-based sauce, infused with lobster broth. Yes it has julienned vegetables. The rest I just am not following. A customer shouts over from a distant table to my waiter: talk slower, Jacques. You need to talk slower. She is a foreigner. She’ll get it if you talk slower.

Watching is a two-way thing.

The food here is absolutely fantastic. This is what you want from a coastal seafood place: a basket of fresh nibbles from the ocean to start with:





Followed by the best of the best:





Finally, capped with an original take on a traditional dessert (poire Helene, which my mother used to serve for guests by opening a can of pears, doing a jello brand vanilla pudding around it, and, for that special touch, sprinkling it with slivered almonds. My mother did not like to spend much time in the kitchen.):





I walk back to my wonderful little hotel (hint: it’ going to take first prize as the reasonably priced hotel of the year on Ocean View. Watch for details in a few days.) and I am just so enchanted by this little curved bay with its boats and cafes.




Madame is enjoying the warm air - a fisherman says this to me. His buddy corrects him. La jeune fille (the young girl) is enjoying the warm air. Alright, gentlemen, at some point, that line is just ridiculous. But the thing is, in this little port on a warm evening, it’s not. It’s intended to make you smile and it does just that.

Or maybe the smile comes from an entire evening of people watching. Maybe.

...do as the French do

in two chapters:


1. stay in the village

Last night my landlady, Anne, stopped by. A young woman, as French as they come (meaning a million times more well kempt than me). Born just six kilometers up the road. And her husband is from this village. They were away for the week, or they would have surely run into me on Sunday at lunch at Le Croquant. They heard all about the American who dined alone and took a lot of pictures.

How is it to know your soil so well? To connect to it through the houses you build and the people who are forever your neighbors?

I asked Anne’s mother-in-law when I first arrived what restaurants she liked to eat at around here. I like Anne’s, she told me.

At the vineyard where I spent the harvest week-end last September, the vintner married the girl from the village next door. In the Savoie, in my favorite fromlast spring restaurant with rooms, the award-winning chef married the girl next door. Here, in Plazac, the carpenter married the girl next door.

Village life. So, you’re born there, you go to school elsewhere (by necessity), you come back and marry the boy/girl next door. And you build houses and plant gardens and buy foods at the market and kiss greetings left and right, because you know these people as well as you know your own driveway.

I’m drawn to it, even as I know that I would be the one who moved away. Nina? She left after college. Even before she finished actually. Village life was not for her.

You think? Maybe. But when I come to France, I always want to witness it, study it, contemplate the way it might be.

From the cottage, one last look at Plazac:




2. get away from the village

It would benot a whole lot of fun for me to spend the holiday weekend in places like Plazac, Rouffignac, Fanzac, Montignac or any of the other Perigord clusters. On Easter, families eat meals at home. Much of village life – that part that an outsider can participate in – is closed down.

How else to be among the French on a French holiday? The obvious answer is to head for the coast.

I am (happily) letting go of the car this morning and returning to train travel. Sure, it’s harder this way. For example, I was way late for my train and had to wait a very long time for another. Moreover, my suitcase, the one now containing five spectacular bottles of wine (because obviously you cannot buy wine in the States) decided to break at the handle. And the connection between one train and another left me with only two minutes to run from one platform to the other (up the stairs, down the stairs) – yes, all that.

And still, trains are for me calming devices. For all that can go wrong, you still come out smiling.

And so when I got off at La Rochelle, with hundreds pouring out with me into the spectacular sunshine, giving an almost Mediterranean feel to the place, I was exuberant!

It could not be more different here, on the Atlantic coast, than what I experienced in the Perigord Noir. There is absolutely nothing noir about where I am now.

La Rochelle has got all the things we all love in a holiday get-away. It’s got a little of the history, a little of the harbor and beachfront, a healthy dose of the markets, a lot of fantastic restaurants, many stores, and a mile long (or so it seems) harbor-front lined with outdoor cafes. And happy people, in-love people, eating ice cream and sipping wine people. It defines escape.



La Rochelle



full of ice cream...



...just picked flowers



...and love.


So, I'll eat big today and tomorrow... oh, check in, why don’t you. I have an idea for tomorrow. We’ll see what comes of it.

from oysters to geese, in SW France

It’s morning in Pons. I’m to head for the Perigord Noir, the region of fat geese and duck confit.

But at the petit Pons Saturday market, after purchasing a kilo of endive because I love it so, I note these two, who have came in with the oysters…




I turn the car away from Perigord Noir and head toward the Atlantic Ocean.

Eventually I get to what seems like the oyster hub of central France. I drive over the long bridge to Ile d’Oleron, just off the western coast. A stretch of flat land slapped on all sides by ocean waters. Muddy waters. The kind that oysters love to call home. (Oysters like slime it seems.)


beach and mud. what fun.



shell life



low tide?

I drive up and down the island and watch people do their island Saturday stuff. They do what we do on this day: chores.

Maybe this is why they are so frazzled on the road. If ever you are inching slowly on a French rural road, wondering if you should be on the D706 in the direction of Montignac, or on the N21 in the direction of Bergerac, concluding that you are completely off in your directions and only a u-turn will save you from yourself, you’ll get the equivalent of a finger for sure. French people on the road have no patience for the likes of me. Nor I for them. We finger each other (figuratively!) quite a lot. They become road mean and they bring out the tough and don't you push me around side of me that I thought I had left back in the old country.

Off the road, all is forgotten and we are fast friends, shaking hands and kissing each other furiously to demonstrate our sincerity.

But I digress. The oysters: yes, it is a big thing here. I wander in and around now empty oyster huts. Did people seek shelter here in bad weather?




I stay too long on the island chasing down mud banks and staring at those who fish in them for the stuff that eventually you and I will find so sophisticatedly decadent.



by hand



by boat (of sorts)



Refocus: head inland. Perigord Noir, dark and brooding, is waiting.

At first, the transition from the coastal land to the Perigord is nice, mellow. Hi there, cognac-country, wine-country, gentle slopes with vines that are just now waking up.





But then quite suddenly, it all changes. Fields are gone. Forests – trees still not entirely green – replace the vines and mustard yellow flowers. I think I like it, I think I like it… Hmmm…

It's like someone switched stations on me and I am now watching a different movie.



entering Perigord Noir

At every bend in the road, there is a sign directing you to a farm where you can visit and buy foie gras. In their spare time, all the people of Perigord Noir must be making foie gras. Should I go visit? Should I? After all, I watched a harvest of oysters and I photograph fishermen frequently. Aren’t fat geese, well treated fat geese in the same league? We take pictures of cows even though the vast majority of cows on our side of the ocean are so miserably treated it hurts.

Let me mull this one over.

In the meantime, I am getting acquainted with my village, Plazac. I’ll say this much about it now: it is remote!

More on my first encounters with the village folk tomorrow. Tres fatigue tonight.

[Post script: if there is one thing that will someday put an end to my travel blogging it is my relationship to the Internet in France. It has virtually always malfunctioned. It completely warped my email program in Pons. And here, in the Perigord, it killed my USB port, so that I can no longer download photos in any straightforward fashion from my camera. Thank you, Ed, for helping me find, by phone, through tedious, convoluted steps, a temporary fix until I get back to the States. France, you have GOT to do better with the WiFi! PLEASE!]

post from Pons

All you have to do is guess which country has Pons in it. No Wiki checking! I am helpful, I give photo hints:

This morning, I eat an early stand-up breakfast here:


early illy

Tired and, I admit it, a little cold, I nonetheless continue on my journey. I hesitate only half a second before deciding I should pick one of these up for the ride:



By mid-afternoon, after a bus, a plane and a train, I am almost there. I do the last short lap by car. This one. It's my partner for the week:



It would have been less than an hour on the road had I not stopped to admire these:


spring vines

Now you’re thinking – wine. It’s all about wine. She’s doing her vineyard visit thing. Next thing you know, she’ll be pushing one wine or another and telling everyone what to drink.

No.

In truth, I am so very close to the place where Ann’s favorite post-dinner beverage is made. It's all about the c word here. This is serious stuff. Take a look at the selection from local producers, displayed at my evening meal in Pons (some 20 kilometers from the town of Cognac):



I’m not here for long – just one night. I am waiting for my house rental to become available on Staurday. That will be in the deep Perigord Noir (the black Perigord). Okay, in case you haven't quite located it -- it's in the southwest of France.

Most people regard the Perigord region as the place which gave us overfed geese with huge livers. I prefer to associate it with cepes (the mushrooms) and berries. But all that should be talked of tomorrow. Today I am at the edge of it, closer to the Atlantic coast.

Pons has a very nice little restaurant (indeed, I chose it because I am a huge fan of small, regional restaurants with rooms). Nothing fancy, nothing elaborate. Just a place to take your dog or spouse to when you want to step back from your stove for a bit. Inside and out, it looks like a million others.


Hotel de Bordeaux: no, it's not in Bordeaux, but close

But the kitchen is not a run of the mill place. In my opinion, it is outstanding, even for this side of the ocean.

Around me, I do not hear much English. True, there is a British couple right at my side. Easy to spot. She orders a plain salad. Perhaps she is on a diet. She is thin, but you know how odd people can be about maintaining a good weight. (If I were her, I would maintain the good weight while in England and chomp away here, south of the Channel, but that’s just me.)

A groan is heard. A loud one. It’s from the dog by the French speaking table on my other side. Meanwhile, its owner is surveying the cheese board. She asks for recommendation from the young waiter. And I mean young. How sweet to have confidence in what he has to say about cheese.






Oh, but this country is insane about food. The restaurant is packed (with two Brit-occupied tables, a dozen French settings, and of course me). We are in the middle of nowhere and people are lining up, as they are in the town next to this and the next one and the next, just to have themselves a fine meal at the end of the day.

And it is a very, very fine meal. Carpaccio of scallops with shrimp and carrot mousse, fish fillets over braised endive with cocoa and orange sauce, crepes stuffed with a Grand Marnier soufflé – those are just my main dishes. Well worth the long, long trip over to small, insignificant Pons.









I am falling over from tiredness. I didn’t even try a cognac. I know, do as the locals do. But for me, the day ends with an Illy noisette and a dish of cookies. Too tired to contemplate anything else. I post an unedited post from Pons and collapse. Tomorrow – the Perigord.