quiet days, good days

I’m so glad we’re inside, I tell Ed.

It’s been a guessing game. Storm coming? No? Safe to walk? No Rain? Rain?

In the Midwest, you know where the whole batch of bad weather is coming from: the west. Here, when you look at the radar map and you see great masses of cloud cover swirling, you wonder – am I in the path? Or not? What does this all mean?

It's very confusing.

But this evening, we called it right. If you looked up, you’d see blue, but to the side, you’d see dark gray and eventually the dark gray came to dominate and in any case there was too much rumble in the mountains for me to feel happy about being outdoors.

The day did not start out very threatening. Yes, some clouds, sure, okay, clouds. Let’s walk down to the square anyway. And hurry, darn it, hurry! I am so longing for a pain au chocolat! Wet drops on the vines remind me that the rains did indeed pass through here just hours ago.

The day is quite on the edge of rain. Let me not think about that. Concentrate on the bright colors  on our walk to town. There are plenty to be seen!

I do note that people have umbrellas tucked under the arm. 

Bonjour, monsieur.

Bonjour monsieur, 'dame! The older people still use this old fashioned form of greeting.

Just before the bridge over the river that cuts Sorède in half, there is a homestead where the family harvests  apricots, peaches and potatoes. One of the great pleasures of being here in June is that you get to go to their backyard, greet their dog and buy loads of their most delicious apricots (and later, peaches) at very low prices. They’re open for business this morning and we are one pair of happy customers.

Okay. That’s the upside. The downside of strolling into town with high hopes and expectations is that you might have to jolt yourself eventually into remembering that your favorite bakery is closed Mondays.

Fine. There is a second bakery and their bread is good, if not as perfect as your preferred bread (these are all subjective measures, I’m sure, though please do note that the preferred bakery is expanding while the second one is standing still, so maybe it's not very subjective after all.)

And they have the pains au chocolat, even though their pains have only one strip of dark chocolate running through it, as opposed to the two in the preferred bakery. No matter. We're happy customers.

We eat our quite fine pains at the village square – a quieter place on this weekday. 

And up the hill we return now, without the anticipated rain. Luck is with us.

Again, admire with me the gardens we pass...

 

 

... the vines, always the dancing ladies, against the backdrop of the cork oaks. (Did you know that Sorède in Catalan is Sureda, which translates into cork oak?)

Ocean reader, are you yawning yet? Hold on, there’s more of the quiet stuff! ...Because our next activity is – you guessed it, lunch on the terrace. The highlight today is the fruit plate – enhanced considerably by the apricots from our neighbor down the hill.

The afternoon is intractable. The rain comes, the rain departs. And then the cycle repeats itself. I say to Ed that this is the day to do our functional if boring errand – to track down the battery replacement for his suddenly dead 1979 Timex.

We take the red clunker to Argeles sur Mer – the nearest town that’s still not exactly large, but certainly larger than Sorède. It’s by the sea and it’s split between the vacation-oriented new town by the water and the somber looking  commercial older center a couple of kilometers away. Here’s a photo of one of the main streets:

We drive through it often on our way to various beaches but with the exception of quick hops to the bakery to pick up something or other, we never stop. We have everything we need in Sorède. To me, Argeles is a tired looking kind of place – what you’d expect from a working town.

We leave our clunker at the train station and walk down in search of watch batteries.

Easy. First tabac has them. Purchased. Now what? Go home?

We stroll toward the church. There's a commotion there. Lot's of people in pressed shirts. A wedding? No, a funeral.  Skies are gray, people are weeping – my impressions of Argeles are not going to change this time around.

We find a bakery that has attracted us in the past. Closed. Oh, but it will reopen in a half hour! We walk some more.

We pass a winery – one that has reputable reds and rosés. Okay, that’s interesting.

Inside, madame is very friendly, very generous with the samples. Ed notes that if you bring your own container, you can buy the stuff for 1.3 Euros per liter. We have apple juice bottles at home... he prods me. But I’m not interested. We don’t consume enough here to warrant buying by the bulk. Trying new producers, comparing varieties is part of the joy. To sample, rather than to load up!

The bakery is open and yes they do have Napoleons. You could say that this is our moment of great satisfaction.

For later, I tell Ed. Please, for later.

It's finally raining again – a warm, steady rain that we know will linger for a while.

By late evening, there is a pause and still, I’m reluctant to walk down for dinner. There are stormy clouds rolling around the mountains. I don’t want to get stuck in a downpour.

We take the clunker out once more. Twice in one day. Yuk. Each time we drive it down the winding tight road, we groan about its large size. On Sundays, when people are home with cars parked by the road, we need to snap the side mirrors in just to fit between cars and stone fences. We admire every little car that we pass (and they definitely dominate the car scene here) and remind ourselves how much fun it is to drive a mini.

Stupid Hertz.

There! A negative statement on Ocean! I have it in me!

The rain has stopped, at least for a little while. The game is on at the café-bar and a small group is again watching it over pastis – the southern Frenchman’s drink of choice.

We order the moules frites and a half carafe of rosé. The plates are enormous!

The mussels are as they come – big, small, heaped with onion in a basic broth. The fries are good, the ketchup abundant.  It’s a quiet Monday evening on the square. For a minute the clouds part and the scent of the blooming tree is so strong that I think I must be back in the store of French creams -- the place where I did my moonlighting bit just a few years back. 

I think back to our first visit to Sorède, just three years ago. I chose this village randomly – it had a cheap rental and it seemed close to the sea. Bang! In love. And, I loved it despite the unfortunate run down nature of the first rental here and despite the fact that this favorite café-bar on the square was being renovated for the first half of our stay. Finding Gunter and Baerbel’s rental apartment for future visits (so lovely and as meticulous as I would have it if it were it mine!) was the greatest piece of luck! It makes for perfect days now, here in this southern corner of France, against the mountains, by the sea, even as clouds swirl, occasionally letting out torrents of rain and rumbles of thunder.

whether the weather is...

In France, they’ve been talking about the weather a lot this year. Warm beginnings, cool, wet spring, not quite yet summer.

Here, in Sorède , you can usually count on some bit of luck. There’s a wind, there are the mountains, somehow all that works to keep things more friendly, so that when the rest of France suffers continuous rains, this far southern corner usually gets away with, at worst, several showers interspersed with several cloud partings.

In this time of unsettled weather, the trick is to time your activities so that they coincide with the spells of cloud partings.

Whatever bag-load of tricks we had, we willed them out into the open and the weather gods took pity. We were supposed to wake to storms and rain. We woke to mostly sunny skies.

The walk down to the square for a morning coffee and roll is, for me, a big bonus of being a little to the edge of town. It’s a pretty walk, past quiet, older and newer homes, many of them flanked by blooming shrubs.

We pass a small vineyard too, and at this time of the year, the vines are just ever so lovely. They almost look like dancers, in some pose or other, none the same, free spirits, bending, twisting, each in her own way.

And after a while, we’re at the village bridge (the main one... the smaller pedestrian one that we often used for shortcuts got washed away in the big rainstorm last November!)...

...and from here it’s just a short stroll up to the bakery.

Oh dear. We’re late. That’ll teach us. The baguettes are there still, so that’s good. But the pains au chocolat are long gone and Ed’s Napoleon, the one with his name written on it (if badly wanting one allows you to think of it in that way) – long sold to another Napoleon fancier.

So we settle on something else: a chocolate nut tart and an almond tart. Equipped with these, we make our way up to the café on the main square. (A very lovely habit is to take your bakery treats to the café. No one minds that you eat them there.) A café crème for me, a sparkling water for Ed and there you have it. Breakfast. Of a very late kind.

I’m going to say that this is always a high point of the day for us. This is how quiet and unfussy our idea of a good time is. Ed will pull out his crumpled New Yorker, I’ll look around. So much to pay attention to!

...to attach my own imagined stories to faces and personalities.

And all the while there is this heavenly sweet scent coming in with each breezy gust of wind. An older gentleman at the next table leans over and whispers to me. It’s the trees. They’re blooming. Incredible aromas!

He goes back to reading his paper, but after a while, he gets curious. Where are you from? The north? I'm  always amused at the guesses on this one. Ed's tall so they think -- Scandinavia. I surely must have an accent to my French, but it's not an American accent. So they think maybe Dutch, maybe Danish, maybe German. Not one of my real identities (American, Polish) is ever among the options. And so when I say -- from the United States, there is always tremendous surprise.  

Of course, I know these are just polite questions -- a cracking of the door so that he can talk, tell a story and having found out we're Americans,  he's happy now to tell us about his two trips to North America. Which continent, he reassures us, he likes quite a bit. As if that’s not a given. No, no, he likes it just fine!

It’s nearly noon and we should think about heading up home for lunch. So now it’s a walk down to the bridge again and then up those hills, not a steep climb, just a gentle walk, maybe fifteen minutes, not more..

...and we’re home.

Lunch is always on the terrace outside. It’s still sunny and warm even though the weather site tells us any second now there’ll be rain. I put out the cheeses, the bread. The local anchovies in oil – I just purchased those at the charcouterie (a store selling prepared products -- sort of a deli, only pork figures heavily in the selections) on the square. And, too, the tomatoes, the sausage, the fruits.

A delicious meal. In these early days of our stay here, it’s all so photogenic, so photographable. As if you can’t believe you’re here at last, doing what you love doing – eating cheese and bread to the song of birds outside, looking out on the blooming oleanders.

Well now, two big events behind us (the breakfast, the lunch). That calls for a nap for Ed. But by late afternoon I’m nudging him. It’s still not raining. Indeed, we’re still in a pocket of blue sky, though there are clouds there, on the horizon, just waiting, waiting...

We’ve got to make good use of this bit of luck! The beach!

We head for Le Racou – our go-to favorite. I have a more distant beauty as a real favorite, but for the quick swim, Le Racou is fantastic! And close.

We drive to a vast parking space in the tiny village by the sea. The lot is not empty, as it is Sunday, but nor is it full. In any case, we're not worried. Somehow this not large beach soaks up people and hides them enough so that they never appear on top of one another.

 There are old colorful cottages that line the sand bank...

And then there’s the swimming part: the beach is on a slope and so the drop off is quick. A couple of feet from the shore, you are up to your chin in water.


 

But it’s not hot outside. Almost no one is in the water. A few clouds come and go, waiting for the right moment to take control of the sky. We sit down, Ed loses himself in his now really tattered magazine.

I look out on the water. Beautifully clear, blue against the equally blue (in parts) sky. Is it really the case that I can’t be lured into the sea until the warm sunshine boosts the heat index here? No, cool it may be, but I cannot resist it. To Ed’s surprise, I plunge in.

...and more predictably, so does he.

I love the swimming here – just close to the water's edge, back and forth, or, if I get tired of it, I can tread water and look out onto the pretty shoreline.

There are open showers on most beaches here and so we rinse off before climbing back into the clunker car. On the way home we pause to watch this most common Sunday scene -- men playing Pétanque. I read somewhere that nearly all southerners here play the game. Seventeen million French know how to throw the metal balls so they hit the small wooden "jack" ball.


 


I want to stay and watch, but I see that I'm distracting them. They begin playing toward my camera, engaging me in banter about whether I bring luck to some and quite the opposite to another who has just missed an easy throw. I beg off with a wave and get back to Ed who has dozed off in the big red machine.


Ten minutes later, as if to say – there, we held back and gave you your good day here, the clouds take control and the rain comes down. We are, by then, home.

I hadn’t counted on cooking dinner this early in our stay, but the rain continues into the evening and neither of us feels like walking down the hill to the village. You want to drive? Ed asks. Nah, the less time I spend in the clunker, the happier I’ll be.

I make a salad Nicoise, or my version of it, though without the olives (I was waiting for the market!), but with an abundance of potatoes, thin green beans, tomatoes and eggs. And of course the anchovies from Coilloure.

The rain stops now and I suggest we take a brief stroll down the road. Somewhere toward the western hills the sun is letting out bands of orange and purple sky. The air is pungent, as if a shower had passed through and sprinkled fresh aromatics on all surfaces. We don’t walk far, just enough to feel ready for a night rest.

A perfect day, I say to Ed. It’s a common phrase for me, I know. But an honest one too.

Sorède

Breakfast at the Mas (old farm hotel) at the edge of the town of Begur in Spain. Outside, on the terrace, we nibble  on rolls with cheese and quince paste, cherries locally grown, cake that is densely layered with slices of apple. Chosen from a richly assorted table of foods.

I’ve evolved: from a kid who hated the morning meal, to someone who considers it a highlight. Especially (but not only) when traveling. It should never be rushed, it’s better in the company (even if silent company) of another, it’s almost always finer if outside.

So now the morning has meandered into a later hour. And we do have a set agenda: a hike up to the castle in Begur, a beach or two, a medieval village and finally, not too late, before the stores close, an arrival in Sorède.

Begur is really quite pretty. We passed by it a year ago, but this time we’re steps away and so we do poke around some. A pedestrian heart, warmly toned buildings, a happy, lively square with a church and a wedding and higher up – old fortifications of a castle.

It feels warm now, but I see clouds coming in from the hills and I’ve learned this about the Catalan region – the weather has become far less predictable. Even Sorède, the quintessentially sunny little village has its share of showers these days. The old saying that it’s a place with 300 days of sunshine still holds, so long as you can tamper with the denominator. Nothing is predictable, only that in the course of the day, you may see many different weather patterns passing through.

It’s barely sunny by the time we drive down to a well liked cove beach a tad to the south (Aiguablava). Very well liked. It’s Saturday and we are really not that far from Girona or even Barcelona. So the city folk come out for the day.We take a look...

...and drive on. The parking alone is a major headache as the coves really cannot accommodate heavy traffic. At some point, the parking possibilities are gone and you’re left wondering what’s next. Ed comments that we’re better off crossing the border to our favorite spots in France for swimming.

And so our search for the second and final recommended beach is really half hearted.  After a while, we spin around and head back toward the highway leading to France.

With one small detour. This area of Spain is dotted with a number of medieval villages.  Monells is one of them and it’s just a stone’s throw from where we are, so we detour and pause there for a brief peek.

It’s an eerily quiet place, except for the main square, where a very large group of Spanish seniors, clearly on some day trip or other, is enjoying a hearty lunch.

We find a spot on the opposite side of the square for a refreshing glass of rose (or mineral water, depending if you’re Ed or me) and watch this rather sublime little scene. Seniors, animated, clearly enjoying each others company. Cats crisscrossing the square in search of scraps. Young children playing in what appears to be Spain’s answer to hotwheels.

Ed and I look on. He’s back to making faces at my camera, but they're happy, smoochy faces.

And anyway, I can still catch him off guard.

After, we stroll. Let me repeat: it’s very quiet here and for this reason, you can put yourself back in time...

Okay. Done with the detours.  Now we’re heading due north and in some fifty kilometers we cross the border – always a thrilling pass in between mountains of the lower end of the Pyrenee chain.

And now we get off the major North-South highway and we take the lesser road that promises to put us just in a few kilometers on the coast. Except we don’t quite reach the coast. Sorède is just short of the Mediterranean which is, of course, why it is so blissfully quiet and not really part of the coastal clutter. Even as it is not even ten minutes from some mighty nice and sandy shores of the sea.

We know to turn off the main road before reaching Sorede. We stop at the Carrefour (supermarket) outside the village to stock up with the essentials: Roussillon (regional) cherries. Tomatoes. Roussillon potatoes. Roussillon eggs (regions are often clearly specified on produce and farm products). The exquisite thin green beans. Four cheeses (yes, four... we couldn’t agree on which to eliminate). A salami. Rosé wine. Mineral water.

It’s sounds so simple and inconsequential: stop at store, pick up groceries. But when I’m back home and thinking ahead about coming to Sorède, I often imagine just this moment in the parking lot of the Carrefour. Everything changes for me in the space of a few seconds. The view before me is of the hills and the tall trees.

Just a couple of kilometers down the road, Sorède life is moving along, at its own pace and I am about to join it. Our small routines suddenly are exceptionally pleasurable. Picking lunch foods is joyous – you should see us debating which potatoes to select. Ed finds his favorite apple juices – the nonfiltered ones, each made from a different apple species. I find the very lightly tinted rosés and Ed tries to focus my attention on those that hover in price around 3 Euros. We debate cheeses as if they had the value of mutual funds.

And now we’re set. We wheel back the shopping cart and retrieve our token, which madame in the store has kindly replaced for me as I lost mine from last year. Small detail, special meaning.

And within a minute or two, we are in Sorède.

Yes, definitely, we should stop at the bakery. We don’t need bread, but we need their little cookies. And most of all, we need to see if it’s still there.

It is.

A determined Ed.

Madame asks which weeks we are here and whether we’ll be back next year because at the end of June they’re closing for a major remodeling! Oh, how very fortunate! Not until after we’re gone!

Ed is so tempted by the (weekend only!) Napoleaons...

...but I know if he buys one he’ll eat it before we even get to the house. That surely will mean no supper on the square. (I’m too full!) And so I talk him out of it. Tomorrow, I say. We’ll get one tomorrow.

And there is one more stop to make – at Ciboulette, the lovely little produce store right in the heart of the village. In many ways, it is like a small farmer’s market – if there are good melons in season, you’ll find them here.

Or tomatoes, or lettuces, or – which is what I’m searching for right now – their local olive oil.

We’re set. A short drive toward the hills and we are home. Our most perfect apartment (well, not ours at all, but the true owners, Gunter and Baerbel keep it in such immaculate fine condition that it’s as good as home).

So, nothing’s changed in Sorede? I ask.

Oh, but there was one calamity – November 21^st, it rained heavily and the river flooded. Washed away the pedestrian bridge! Took off a chunk of a neighbor’s property! Incredible!

A year, any year, is never without changes.

We unpack in the lovely little apartment that faces the garden. And now it is late enough so that we can walk, past vines and trees and houses...





...and cats... always the cats...





... for dinner on the square. I do have to say that there is always the worry that a place you love will have lost some elements of what drew you there in the first place. The square – the main one, up the hill – is, to me, the village focal point. There is a café bar where so many people come and go all day long and it is where we have our breakfast and so often our pizza and sangria and if the café bar closed, our visits here would be far less pleasurable, I’m sure of it.

Almost there, almost there, yes, the flags of France and Catalonia...

Ah, there we have it. Still welcoming, still the epicenter of village life.

[A friendly type asks if he can take our photo... we never ask for it, but if offered, we'll pose.]

And because we are in the thick of the soccer world cup tournament, the large TVs are going strong and the men are clustered, standing around a table, over pastis and beer. The evening progresses. Someone else comes over, exchanges kisses with his buddies, shakes hands with our familiar spry waiter and joins in on the animated conversation, with only an occasional glance at the game (Portugal against Germany).

Ed and I have our mushroom and olive pizzas and salads and, yes, the fruity sangria...

... and it is a beautiful evening, a welcoming evening, one where I’m thinking it’s as if the eleven and a half months since our last meal here are some distant thought, a bit fuzzy now, because we have much more pressing things to do. Like savoring the mushrooms on the pizza. Or watching the man at the table next to ours hug his dog.

After, we walk home, up the road, past the small vineyard, just as the last dusky light disappear behind the hills.