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“I supposed I could put the cognac in a plastic cup for you, but it would be a sacrilege. Tell you what, you can take the snifter with you, but leave a small deposit. Say, 3,000 euros?”
It’s incredible how a lift of graft begins with the best of intentions. So started the interchange with the barkeep of a seedy little place in Nantes. Honey P. and Jen were out on a mission ... to bring me a last drink of the night (a triple, thank you very much!) as I lay in bed and watched my left ankle swell up like a cabbage patch doll with gas.
 Yesterday we did Josselin and Vannes. We arrived in Nantes around lunch, parked the car, wandered around the town. More cathedrals. More old buildings. More food. Another market in a town square. And a really cool open-air arcade named the Pommeraye Passage.
Then dinner. Iced crayfish followed by a fall down the stairs to the men’s room. Followed by an excruciatingly meal during which I sucked the pain. Followed by an iced ankle. Jen and Honey P. went in search of that drink and returned 15 minutes later and flushed with the excitement of having bribed a bartender to break any number of rules. Apparently he felt for me, and for the rolled up bill that Jen had in her hand.
The glass never made it bag to the barkeep, but it made it home in Jen’s backpack. And the barkeep made it home that night with 10 euros in his back pocket. Now that’s what friends are for!
Posted by Voltaire on 07/24/2008 at 04:04 PM
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And the trip begins to wind down. Chris, after playing hookie for four days, needs to return to Paris to write. We drop him at the train station in Chartres and drive on to Vitre. Small town, very cute, very dead quiet, and I have a dim memory of a crepe for lunch. Then on to Fougeres, a walled city in Brittany dating back to medieval times. Our rooms at the Hotel Balzac are modest, but our host is so warm and pleasant that the place feels like a home away from home. Upon her recommendation we embark on a walking tour that starts at the highest point in the city (the cathedral), and then down through the garden terraces, into the town to the citadel and its ramparts. Then back up--a very steep climb--to our hotel and to dinner.
 Which of course, is the part I remember most. Our host at Balzac recommends two places--one in the town square that is quite good, and one on the street behind the hotel if we wanted a modest meal of home cooking. We choose the latter. Le Petit Bouchon.
 Turns out that the host is good friends with the chef and owner of the restaurant--in fact, we had met the chef in the lobby hours before dinner. And the host has deliberately undersold the restaurant to us. We arrive early and open the place. It’s a beautiful night--as quaint as the inside may be, eating on their small outdoor patio seems a better plan. The chef comes out, tells us about the fresh ingredients she found at the market today, and asks for our order. There’s wine, nibblies, more conversation. We learn that the chef’s father was in the army, that she spent some time growing up in Connecticut, and then returned to Fougeres with her partner Eric. That they love the town, but sometimes there’s too little going on. That the people across the way are fighting about who should pay for the chimney repairs on the shared wall of their homes. That they’d like to see more people visit their wonderful castle. Food appears, is quickly and happily eaten, and plates whisked away. And there’s quiet--after Paris and Mont Saint Michel, there’s blessed peace and quiet. And it’s lovely.
Posted by Voltaire on 07/22/2008 at 07:31 AM
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 I don’t know quite what I expected to see at Omaha or Utah, but I know that I didn’t expect the Normandy beaches to be beautiful. We arrived at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in the day and ambled down from the manicured pathway cut into the face of the cliff and leading down to the sand and water. The place was lush with solid trees, dense foliage, wildflowers and grass, and the beach itself pristine and beautiful. You couldn’t see any scars from the war, save the westward-facing white gravestones for our fallen. Under the Normandy sky seems, though, a peaceful place to be honored and laid to rest.
We drove from Omaha Beach to Utah Beach, where we had a quick meal, and journeyed on to Mont Saint Michel.
 I’ve wanted to visit this place since I was in college. All the beautiful pictures I had seen of the island--surrounded by water and lit by moonlight--made it seem other-worldly. A castle framed by the tall glass and the blue sky and rising out of nowhere. And indeed it is, so much so that it was also packed with other visitors. Packed, I say! We arrived late in the day with the tidal waters out and the tourist tide in. Among the throng, we made our way up the mountain to the abbey and walked through its halls and cloisters. We then circled the small island city, first chasing the sunset and settling into our room with hard cider, cookies, and chocolate to await the dinner hour.
 La Mere Poulard, our hotel, has definitely seen better days. Frayed at the edge and worn at the seam, it seems very much like a tourist turnstile. The restaurant, however, is anything but. Their famous omelettes, whipped up in copper bowls and cooked in long-armed cast-iron pans over an open fire, taste and look more like souffles. Fluffy, fluffy souffle goodness. Jen has the lobster while Honey P. and I choose the salt meadow lamb (raised locally on the marshes that surround the tidal island). The food and wine are absolutely delicious--one of the best meals any of us has had--and we retire to the bar, full and happy, to sample a flight of calvados, enjoy a snifter full of our selection, and wait the return of the tidal waters and for the moonrise.
Posted by Voltaire on 07/21/2008 at 04:35 PM
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 Detour. At Chris’ recommendation, we skip our planned next stop and head to Honfleur, a seacoast town, instead. The place is packed--by locals, in large part--out to enjoy a perfect summer Sunday by the water. We choose a cafe on the harbor--Chris and I split a bottle of rose, and I order the moules frites, which are really delicious. We spend part of the afternoon touring the rest of the town and shopping.
 Then on to Bayeux, where we see the famed Bayeux tapestry and tour the local WWII museum. The tapestry in particular is a remarkably well-preserved visual spectacle and historical artifact. I must confess, however, that the most fun I had was at our Hotel, the Lion D’Or, a petit hotel with a charming courtyard. The bar’s walls are covered with the autographed pictures of luminaries who’d come to stay in this sleepy little town. And so we begin the night (champagne) and end the evening (calvados) in the company of Catherine Deneuve, Ethel Kennedy, John Wayne, Geraldine Chaplin, and Tom Hanks.
Posted by Voltaire on 07/20/2008 at 09:03 AM
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The French are fairly informal about car lanes, we discover, as we navigate from the Hertz garage in Gare de Lyon back to our hotel in the Marais. Of course, it takes awhile to find the language settings on our Neverlost system, but once we’ve programmed it to English it makes so much more sense! Small problem: the trunk is too small for all of our luggage. Larger problem: the loading zone at our hotel is already taken up by a Mercedes. Imagine four people with advanced degrees in non-mathetical fields trying to pack a trunk efficiently. In the middle of the street. Six angry cars, and four really angry tour buses later, we get everything to the space, and we’re out of Paris by 10:00 a.m. Destination: Normandy.
 First stop, Giverny, a small village in Normandy in which Monet spent many years living and painting. We tour his house, sprawling gardens and flowered grounds, and the famous lily pond. Some of the most beautiful flowers and settings there. I’ll post my images to Flickr once I get back, I promise!
 Second stop, Les Andelys, or as everyone in the car knows it, lunch. In the middle of the town square, we find the Auberge de l’Hotel de Ville, where I have rabbit tagine that’s perfect for the somewhat-grey-somehat-cool day. The rabbit is fall-off-the-bone tender, and the vegetables cooked to perfect consistency in a clear broth. We check out the cathedral and the ruins of a nearby castle, and then make our way to our final stop of the day, Rouen. See all of my pictures of Les Andelys ...
 Rouen’s seen a great deal in its time. It houses the oldest inn in all of Europe. And it’s the place that Joan of Arc was killed (and later memorialized). Then there was WWII. The cobblestone streets, half-timber houses, and gothic cathedrals are appropriately worse for the wear. It’s an afternoon of wandering about town and taking pictures of the architecture, and then on to dinner at Restaurant Gill.
Let me first say that Restaurant Gill’s food is fantastic . Absolutely wonderful. However, its senior staff is actively condescending, and the hostess bordered on rude. So, if you want to get your full bourgeoisie on, there’s no more pretentious place to be on a Saturday night in Rouen.
 Back at the hotel, our friend Chris produces a bottle of very good calvados, and we finish our evening sitting on our room’s balcony and watching the parade of lights: the nightly laser and live music presentation in the town square that transforms the front of the cathedral into a living Monet, the full moon rising, and stars that we just don’t see in the city limits of our home, sweet home.
Posted by Voltaire on 07/19/2008 at 01:10 AM
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