Hello to an Old Neighborhood

April 23-25

We arrived at Gare de Lyon around four and took a cab to our hotel, Les Trois Colleges, in the Latin Quarter.

We stayed here last time we were in Paris. The hotel’s OK, but the neighborhood is beautiful: a short walk to the Pantheon, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Church of St. Stephen, which is closely associated with St. Genevieve, the patron of Paris. It’s not far from Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, etc.

I love this neighborhood. 

The last thing we had eaten was a late breakfast of pastry and yogurt some time before noon, so we were ready for dinner.

We walked the short block to Rue St. Michel and stood on the corner to take in the view. The Luxembourg Gardens are across the street and up to the left. Straight downhill would take us to Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame. 

We didn’t walk quite that far. We went to the Place de la Sorbonne, a square a short way down the street. That’s where we found Les Patios.

We started with a dozen snails. We followed that with a cut of steak for me and a pasta dish with squid for Joanna. When it came, she was looking for the squid but couldn’t find any.

She asked the waiter about it, who took it back to the kitchen. He explained that the squid dish is new to the menu, so the cook forgot and sent out Provencal sauce instead. 

We had a half liter of a red Bordeaux. It was all right, but not the mouth-filling flavor that I had expected.

Because of the mix-up with Joanna’s pasta, he brought us dessert on the house.

Monday had a slow start. We walked to a cafe for coffee and croissants (about half the price of the hotel restaurant).

We went back to the room, and were out again around one.

We went to the Pantheon. It’s an interesting place. Louis XV originally planned it as a new church dedicated to St. Genevieve. 

Then came the revolution and derailed that plan.

The walls are covered with murals about her life. You have “Here come the Huns” and another showing Genevieve calming the frightened citizens of Paris.

In the same space, marble groups celebrate various secular subjects. There is one for Rousseau, for instance, on which his profile appears as a cameo while three complete figures represent Philosophy sitting between Nature and Truth. To the left of them is Music and to the right, Glory.

Another marble monument celebrates generals of the French Revolution. 

There is a large group celebrating the nation. It’s full of Napoleonic soldiers, speechmakers in tight pants, and others I’m not quite sure who they are.

The Pantheon is the building where Foucault set up his pendulum in 1851. There is a replica under the central dome marking the hours and the rotation of the Earth.

The crypt holds the remains of French notables. One wing is devoted to Napoleon’s cronies. Another wing has a room with Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. Marie and Pierre Curie are down there too. 

Voltaire has his own crypt, directly across the passage from the one that holds Rousseau—the rationalist facing off with the romantic.

It was a damp day and Joanna began to feel the cold. 

We had packed for slightly warmer weather, so when the temperature falls below 60, we know it. 

We stopped at a cafe, La Creperie, for something to warm us up. 
We shared a quiche Lorraine and then a crepe, along with a glass of Chablis.

OK, time for a nap. 

Later we went out for a walk. I wanted to check on a restaurant, the Petit Pontoise, on Rue Pontoise, not far from Notre Dame. We had been there once before, a few years ago. It had been recommended to us then by my cousin Bill. 

Bill’s ability to find great food rivals Larry’s. What did Charlie once say about Larry? I’d follow him to a restaurant anywhere.

The menu looked good but it was too much food for dinner after the lunch we had. So we made a note of the location and moved on.

We got some good views of the cathedral, which is at the very end of the Ile de la Cite. It is even more interesting from the back than from the front because of the graceful flying buttresses and the view of the steeple. 

There are groups of bronze figures on the roof surrounding the steeple base, but they were too far away for us to identify them.

You can’t see them from the front or even directly from the side of the building.

The Left Bank near the Ile de la Cite has narrow, winding side streets full of cafes, bistros, and foreign fare, including Little Hong Kong, a couple of Thai themed restaurants, and a retro American diner.

We wanted something light, so we went to Mandarin, a Chinese 
restaurant next to the hotel. We shared a plate of duck in a brown sauce, sauteed vegetables, and fried rice. 

Mandarin also offered a selection called Bordeaux superieur at 9 euros for a half bottle. 

I asked Joanna, do you want dessert? No, she said, they’re all fried. 

We had an order of gyoza dumplings instead. They were fried too, but surprisingly light.

We stopped at Le Duc, a bar in sight of the hotel, for coffee Tuesday morning, but there was no light fare for breakfast, so we went back to La Creperie for more coffee and a crepe with chestnut sauce. Not the lightest thing in the world, but lighter than an omelette with fries and salad on the side.

When we were staying at the Chabrans’ house, Larry, Claude, and I had a discussion about laundry. We just send it out and pay by the kilo to have it done when we’re in Asia. Joanna and I were able to do that in Syracuse, too.

Claude said that, when you get to a place like Paris, though, it can be cheaper to buy a new shirt than to have one cleaned.

That might be a stretch if you’re talking about suits or dress shirts, but I found out that it’s certainly true of underwear.

We decided to go to a department store to get Joanna something warmer to wear. The desk gave us directions to get to Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann on the right bank. Take the Number 21 or 27 bus, either one, to the stop called Auber, near the Opera.

It worked very well indeed. We even had the exact change between us for the fare. 

You get a different view of a city from a bus. You don’t get all the detail that you will pick up during a walk, but it beats a cab.

On a bus, you sit up high so you see more than you do from a taxi. You go slower, too, because the bus makes stops.

We got off at the right station. As we walked toward the department store, we passed a Uni-Qlo store. That was even better.

Joanna found a lightweight down jacket that gives her more insulation than her cotton sport coat or her unlined trench coat. I added to my stock of underwear.

Joanna put her new coat on in the store, so she was feeling much better when we came out than when we went in. We took a short stroll and stopped for a snack at a cafe on Boulevard Haussmann. 

It was a croque monsieur that came with a short order of fries and a small salad. Sharing that, and a glass of white Burgundy, was just the thing to set us right.

It’s seven in Paris, and we’ll be thinking about dinner soon.

Keep warm, everyone, and stay well.

Harry

April 24

Hello, Grasshopper, Joanna, and FOH (Friends of Harry),

As I write this waiting for my ride to the train station, I am stuffing my face with some of the regional delicacies we enjoyed so much during our incredible time here in belle Provence: tapenade, brandade à l'ai, dried sausage, some great bread from the local baker and, of course, la fraise de Carpentras, the beautiful local strawberries. The Vacqueyras vin blanc Harry was kind enough to purchase from Domaine La Garrigue is making it all taste even better.

It was indeed a great visit. 

Claude took us (Pierre and the lovely Marine, as well) out for a fabulous dinner last night (razor clams with asparagus and a soupçon of Chinese-style egg noodles, saddle of lamb, and a full compliment of excellent libations, starting with Champagne, to white and then red Vacqueyras, ending with a gorgeous Marc de Chateauneuf du Pape). He made it a point to ask me if you arrived safely in Paris. They were happy to see you again. Joanna, it seemed, proved especially helpful in both the house and vineyard. They were quite impressed with your spirit and industry. Harry? Well, maybe not so much. But they love you anyway. Claude especially admires your sense of fashion and how you wear a tie and jacket in the vineyards: the best-dressed man in Provence!

As Joanna and I discussed the other evening, having friends like Claude and Sophie is like winning the lottery. Not only are they exceedingly kind and hospitable, they have a fantastic home in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Money can't buy the experience of fellowship we have experienced here.

And, even better, they seem to embrace freeloaders like me. The house is huge, and Claude and Sophie prefer it to be full of noisy, thirsty, and hungry company.

I have indeed found paradise on earth, and it was nice to have Joanna and Harry join me for a taste of it.

If you are reading this, I hope you too can make a visit to this region.

And fear not, gracious readers: The travel gods have been most kind to Joanna and Harry. It was great to see them, and I expect their stay in Paris will also be great.

Salut and Bon Voyage,

Larry

Honey and History

April 21-22

Remember this is the land of wine and honey. So Friday Joanna got one jar of lavender honey and another of flower honey.

Friday is Carpentras market day. We got there before eight, so early that a number of vendors were still setting up.

Larry was buying food for Saturday. That gave us time to explore the town.

Narrow medieval streets.

An arcade decorated with parasols.

And local color.

We had time to find two historical sites in the town. 

The cathedral may date to the 12th or 13th century. The structure is Gothic, but the interior shows the effects of later times. 

The sanctuary behind the high altar, for instance, has a descending dove in a window surrounded by golden rays of metal in a starburst: much like Bernini’s work in the chapel at St. Peter’s, only a little smaller.

Larry told us that the cathedral has a special side entrance that was for the Jews, who were permitted to come in and pray.

Carpentras also has one of the oldest synagogues in France.

We followed a couple of signs directing us to it, and then the supply of signs ran out. Actually, we were standing in a large square with the synagogue at our right, but didn’t know it at first. 

Then we saw a small plaque on the wall with a line of Hebrew characters across the top. 

The door was locked but another sign asked us to ring the bell. A voice came out of the wall and told Larry we’d have to come back at two. That timing didn’t work for us, so we didn’t get in.

We came back to the house and took a long nap.

I got up around four and went with Larry to Vacqueyras. First stop was the co-op cave. Vacqueyras has a wine co-op, which has merged with the Beaumes-de-Venise co-op, and Claude is president of both of them now. 

Claude met us there and went into the office. He came out and introduced us to Marine—not Le Pen, the nationalist presidential candidate, but the girl whom Pierre, Claude’s son, is dating.

All the wine is good here. We bought a Vacqueyras Grand Cuvee.

Next stop was a cave operated by a winemaker called Montmirail. Larry bought a white and I bought a red.

We also went to a shop that sells wine from most of the producers in the area. We left without buying anything, but when we were about a block away, Larry started muttering to himself. 

He had liked one of the wines we sampled, Domaine Sang de Cailloux (I think). Finally he said, “I’m going to go back and buy it.” Which he did. 

Dinner was a leg of lamb in a wine reduction with roast baby potatoes on the side. 

We had bought wine in Chateauneuf-du-Pape specifically to go with this meal. One cost 30 or 40 euros and the other was a little more than a hundred. We bought them mainly to thank the Chabrans for having us in their home for a week.

Both wines are extraordinarily good. Larry engineered a blind taste test, which Joanna administered.

Neither Larry nor I could tell which was which. We both guessed wrong. It’s probably going to be the only time in my life when my wine palate is going to be in the same league as Larry’s.

Dessert was a basket of local strawberries that Larry had bought at the Carpentras market. They’re in season now, and everywhere we go we see signs for “fraises de Carpentras.”

The area is justly famous for its strawberries, which are small and sweet and full of flavor.

Saturday we took it easy in the morning, hanging around the house. We got up late. I got some writing done.

The mistral had quit and the weather was warm. We ate lunch outside. We had a cut of pork called a spider, because of its unusual shape, and a hot sausage called merguez. 

We had that with La Garrigue rose and two different whites from Chateauneuf-du-Pape. One was the Eddie Feraud we had bought earlier in the week and the other was made by the Beaumes-de-Venise co-op using Chateauneuf-du-Pape grapes.

Pierre works the family vineyards. There is one right behind the house, and the other day, he was using a very narrow tractor to weed between the rows of vines. 

Joanna said she wanted to try working in the vineyard, too. Apparently, there is nothing more wasteful of time for a wine grower than greenhorns in the vineyard, but Pierre agreed and set aside Saturday afternoon. Joanna asked me to come along to take pictures.

We rode in Pierre’s truck to a field not far from the house, up a narrow road and then into an unpaved track, around a bend, up a slope, and so forth. Enough turns to get me lost, but it was only a matter of minutes from the house.

Wine-growing in this region is like that. Families have holdings here and there. 

The Chabran vineyards will be next to others owned by different growers.

We were issued gloves, and I got mine on at the second try. At first I was putting them on backwards, with the rubberized side on the backs of my hands. I forget why that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Pierre very patiently showed us what to prune from each vine. You are supposed to take everything except two, at most three, new shoots emerging from a pruning from last year called, I believe, a “leader.” Shoots coming out of the main branches or from below the leader have to go. This leaves more of the vine’s energy for the development of grapes.

Joanna took to it right away. I was a little slower. No, a lot slower. 

The vines grow about knee high on me and I had to bend down to reach them. This is not a good working position for me, so after about a half hour, I was having trouble walking on the rough ground. My sense of balance, never that great to begin with, was seriously disrupted.

Supporting wires run along the rows of vines, and every now and then there is a post to hold them. Also to hold Harry. Very useful.

Pierre called time and said he had other things to do.

We were in the field for maybe an hour. and pruned two and a half rows out of, I dunno, three or four dozen rows, or maybe several thousand.

I also don’t know how much help I was. Probably very little.

I was able to walk to the truck, so there was no ambulance or stretcher involved. Back at the house, I had a few glasses of water and started to nap in a folding chair.

I thought better of that and went to bed for a couple of hours. 

Larry had bought a fowl called a pintade at the Carpentras market. It’s a bird with a lot of dark meat. The British call it a Guinea fowl. The Americans don’t often eat it.

That was cooked in rose wine with three heads of garlic, some rosemary, and some thyme.

The garlic cooked in the skin, and when it came out, it was buttery soft and had lost most of its pungency. I like garlic as a discreet background flavor in many things. Usually if I can smell the garlic in a dish, I don’t want to eat it. 

I tried a couple of cloves. The garlic squeezed out of the skin and tasted mild indeed. Two were enough, though.

The pintade is slightly gamier than chicken, which made it very tasty. The juice was excellent over pasta and cauliflower.

We had that with a Vacqueyras red that Larry had bought. It was almost as good as a Chateauneuf-du-Pape. We also shared another red (I forget which one) that I had picked up in our travels.

That was a younger wine, so Larry transferred it from the bottle into a decanter to aerate it.

Sophie and Claude had been invited out to dinner. Sophie had made pies using lemons from the family’s vacation house in Corsica. It was Larry, Joanna, and I at the Chabrans’ house that night, and Sophie left us half a lemon pie.

The flavor was intense and wonderful.

Larry drove us to Avignon Sunday morning. We approached town along the Rhone, past the broken bridge and the Palace of the Popes to the Tren a Grande Vitesse station, which is outside town.

Right now, we are speeding across the hilly French countryside, past vineyards, and meadows with sheep, horses, cows, and goats, and hillsides covered with trees. I haven’t noticed any bison farms, so I know we’re not in Wyoming.

Be well, all, and don’t count your pintades before they’re hatched.

Harry

Channeling Van Gogh

April 19-20

We hit the road to see some new places. Well, new to us, but not to the Romans or anyone else in Provence.

We started out for Pont du Gard and Nimes, but took a wrong turn and continued to Arles instead. Larry, who was driving, was fine with the change. If you don’t get lost, you’re not traveling hard enough.

Arles is where Van Gogh went in search of the colors of the south. It is a colorful place, and when we rolled into town, it was one of its more colorful days. The market was in full swing.

We didn’t spend much time with the market, even though it was full of vegetables and fish and exotic food, because we had been marketed out at Vaison-la-Romaine the day before.

We did, however, go to the Arles tourist office to get a city map. The woman at the counter said there was an exhibit of several Van Gogh paintings. She showed us where. She showed us other Van Gogh sites on the map, too.

Of course we couldn’t keep them straight, and so it took a few tries to find the art exhibition. We stopped at a couple of spots before we found the works on display at Fondation Vincent Van Gogh.

It’s only since Joanna took me to a Van Gogh exhibition at the Hermitage branch in Amsterdam that I have been able to appreciate Van Gogh. Before that, I had only been looking at prints of his work.

You have to see the real thing, stand to one side and see the paint rise off the canvas, get close to see how he breaks the colors into short pixelated strokes, then step back to watch everything blend. If you think about all that hard enough, like how did he do it, how did he get it, you can imagine that you’re going crazy too.

Arles, like most old European towns, has winding narrow streets, old churches, and great doorways, including one flanked by baroque Bernini-style helical columns. One of the motives to travel is to breathe the air in these places.

We took lunch at a small restaurant called L’Autruche, The Ostrich, on a narrow side street. We all ordered the lamb and had it with the local wine.

(Editor’s note: The red wine at lunch was made only with Grenache grapes. Joanna)

Arles is fun, a bit touristy, but still full of commercial streets and places where people live, and isn’t just tourist hotels. There are little silhouettes set into the sidewalk of a figure wearing a floppy hat and carrying an easel, as if to say, “Van Gogh walked here.”

We strolled around Arles, or maybe were blown around by the mistral, which was ferocious. It wasn’t so bad in the narrow old streets, but when we came out to the plaza around the ancient arena, it was too much.

We got a couple of snapshots of arches and then ducked into an alley for cover from the wind.

Thursday Larry reviewed the directions of Pont du Gard and found where we had missed our connection the day before. We were supposed to take the first toll road, A7, for one exit and then get onto A9.

The pont is a high bridge across a huge gorge with a small river called the Gardon. It is part of an aqueduct that carried water from a mountain source to the city of Nimes.

The pont is made of arches upon arches three levels high. It is really remarkable to walk around a bend and suddenly see the Pont du Gard.

To get to the pont, you walk up a slope past another ancient site, a large, shallow cave that seems to have been inhabited in the remote past. You can’t go in, but you can see the areas of the cave floor where researchers have been digging.

You can cross the pont on a walkway next to the second level of arches. I don’t know if the structure is modern or part of the original. The arches are next to the walk.

The mistral has been blowing for days. Wednesday and Thursday have been the worst of it. Cars hit by sidewinds swerved on the highway.

It has also made us much colder than we expected to be. 

The mistral blew so hard when we were on the pont that it gave me flashbacks to the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn’t get the same sense of Hitchcock-style vertigo, but I held my hat in my hand. 

We entered from the right bank, and when we got across, we came to a steep set of stairs running up a hillside. We opted out of that part.

It was very interesting to get so close to the stonework during the crossing. The bridge is made of huge limestone blocks. Those at the top were lifted more than 150 feet into the air. That would have been done with ropes and wooden engines powered by men and animals.

The pont was built sometime in the middle of the first century, so the Roman arches have stood for almost 2,000 years. 

One feature that I found curious is a series of projecting stones. Every second or third course up the side of the pont, a block extends a couple of feet out from the wall. I don’t know if that is decorative or if it served some purpose during construction.

Nimes was packed when we got there. It took a while to find a place to park, for instance.

Nimes is a little less tourist-oriented than Arles is, and that makes it even more interesting to see. Frequently a large door to the street would be open, and we could look in to see a sun-drenched courtyard.

The streets are full of young people. Not because life in town is particularly lethal to people over 40, but because there are several universities in Nimes.

The cafes are full of students. And wonder of wonders, the mistral tapered off by the time we got into the city. We actually sat at a sidewalk cafe for coffee and pastis.

The cathedral nave is undergoing renovation so we couldn’t go inside or see much from the open door, except for three stained glass windows glowing over the sanctuary.

There is a wooden platform attached to one side of the belfry. Maybe that’s where they poured the boiling oil when the heretics attacked. 

Maybe as God’s way of compensating for our disappointment over the closed cathedral, a group of monks in dark robes and baseball caps walked by.

One (unfortunately not in a cap) posed for Joanna.

Equal time for pagans, of course. The Maison Carree is a Roman temple dedicated to two dead nephews of Augustus Caesar in the first decade of the first century A.D. 

According to Wikipedia, it is “one of the best preserved Roman temple façades to be found in the territory of the former Roman Empire and the only completely preserved temple of the ancient world.”

Dinners over the past couple of days have been unusual by American standards. Wednesday night we had smoked sausage in a tomato sauce with onion. Claude, who gave Larry the recipe, said it originated in the island or Reunion off the coast of Africa. 

It was best with the addition of a hot chili sauce. It’s good that we ate it over white rice because that can cool off the tongue.

Thursday Larry put together a sauce of rabbit with mushrooms that went with a pasta that looked like oversize rotini. This wasn’t a red sauce, although there may have been some tomato in it.

Wine flows in this part of the world. We have been having the white from Domaine la Garrigue in Vaqueyras as an aperitif. The wines with our meals have included a couple of reds, whose names escape me, and the Eddie Feraud Chateauneuf du Pape.

Twice now I have enjoyed them too much and that makes me snore all night long. I may be keeping other people in the house awake. I’m not sure. I was asleep at the time.

Good night, all.

Harry