Month: December 2016

We chose Colmar as our next long stay several years ago when we visited in the late Fall, and the Christmas decorations were just beginning to come out.  (We’re here for 3 weeks – from mid-December until January 3.) It seemed then like a perfect place to spend the holidays, and it has definitely been that!  The feel of the place is certainly French but with a lot of German influence.  The half-timbered houses with their pastel stucco make for a charming city that, at least for Christmas, is largely pedestrianized.
                       
We found a great Airbnb that has the biggest kitchen so far, and a garage(!) which is essential during the time of the Christmas markets when the town is packed with tourists.  Our host even left us a Christmas tree!

The Christmas Markets are the draw this time of year and Colmar is certainly decked out for the holidays.  Our apartment is within 100 yards of one of the five markets in Colmar. The weather was very cold at first but has gotten progressively warmer with Christmas in the 50s! Lots of looking but, sadly, no buying…no room in the suitcases for ornaments.
    

Alsatian cuisine bears a strong German influence.  Lots of sauerkraut, potatoes, smoked meats, sausages and onions with names like Choucroute Garni, Baeckeoffe and Roesti.  We’ve also enjoyed Tartes Flambée, which is essentially a very thin crust white pizza with (you guessed it!) sausages, onions, lardons (bacon to us).

Our Christmas dinner (at home) was Poulet aux Riesling (Coq aux Vin made with Riesling instead of Burgundy). Kathy did  a fine job of recreating a local specialty.
There are also lots of sweets available to tempt Rick’s sweet tooth…things like nougat (Kathy likes this, too), gaufré (waffle), crepes, and even churros!

Berawecka is an Alsatian fruit cake that is good by itself or as a ‘cracker’ for foie gras. and Kugelhopf is a lighter cake with some fruits in it that is fabulous with ice cream!  Kathy’s favorite treat is Vin Chaude Rouge …think piping hot Sangria …great to warm your insides on a cold day.

We’ve visiting many of the surrounding towns – Ribeauvillé, Riquewihr, Kaysersberg, Éguisheim, Niedermorschwihr, Hunawihr – all charming and many with their own Christmas Markets.

We were also able to get in a few tastings (Dopff & Irion and Albert Boxler) and a wonderful winery tour at Hugel in Riquewihr. We’ve been enjoying the local Reislings and Pinot Blancs, and the Crémant d’Alsace (sparkling) is delicious!
    

We took the train into Strasbourg one very cold day after their Christmas markets had closed.  Used the tram and buses to get around – plus our feet, of course.  It, too, is a charming town with lots of history.  We weren’t able to visit the Alsace Museum, unfortunately…closed on Tuesdays… but did see the impressive Cathédrale de Notre Dame with its amazing Astrological Clock, and the delightful area called La Petite France that encompasses three canals and many bridges.

One final trip out was to a marvelous castle – Château du Haut- Koenigsbourg – 2500 feet up on a ridge of the Vosges Mountains. Once parked, we walked up to the castle that looks like a fortress from the outside but like an Alsatian village on the inside. It was started in the 12th century, rebuilt in the 15th century, and completely renovated 100 years ago.  The painted ceilings and stone work are impressive.
     
Every room in the living quarters contains a ceramic stove for heating. (They were not on that day!) Each is more beautiful than the last.  And in the garden was the most unusual Christmas tree we’ve seen so far…composed if moss, pinecones and other garden debris mounted around the trunk of a large deciduous tree.
                          

We’ll be heading south soon and are hoping for some warmer weather.

 

We’ve seen a lot of Christmas as we’ve traveled in France this December.

We began seeing Christmas decorations go up in Narbonne in mid- November, but the lights weren’t turned on until Dec 3.  There was a small Christmas market on one side of the Canal de la Robine and, on the other side, a sort of carnival midway with rides of all kinds.  I’m not sure that a Haunted House (Le Chalet Hanté) fits with Christmas but who am I to judge??

In Arles, the streets were lighted subtly.  Their Christmas tradition that was most impressive was a display of the work of Santonniers (les crechists). These are artists that make miniature scenes of village life, including créche (nativity) scenes.

We arrived in Lyon on the final day of the annual Fête des Lumières.  Talk about lights! This was an impressive, and crowded, festival of lights that took in many of the main areas of the city, celebrating Christmas and the feast of Notre Dame de Fourvière.
                            

Of course, we’ve seen Christmas trees for sale in each city.  And lots of live trees are used for decoration around the towns.  One thing I’ve noticed is that each tree comes with a ready-made stand – an X or circle of wood or a mount made of a larger piece of wood. And none of these seem to allow for watering the tree as we’ve always done.  I guess it’s cold enough for the outside trees to survive anyway!

The center of Beaune is filled with lovely pedestrian streets that are, of course, lighted for the holiday.  The shop windows are also tastefully and beautifully decorated.  And the flowers on the street!  Hard to imagine that they are so lovely when it’s this cold!

Now we are in Colmar – a Christmas paradise! During most of our recent travels, we’ve been aware (and happy) that we’re there in the off-season.  Well, not here.  Christmas is THE time to be in Colmar!  There are no fewer than 5 Christmas markets in different sections of the town and the streets are crowded with people who, like us, decided that this was the best place to be at Christmas. I’ll share more about Colmar in a later post, but here is the Christmas version in pictures.

As for our Christmas shopping…we did much of it on line and all of it WAY in advance.  Every child and grandchild has received a present and, we trust they’ve been kept hidden until next week. We’re giving each other the gift of this adventure and asking our children to give us the gift of their time when we return to the States in March.
I did buy one trinket to decorate our Colmar house – a paper garland that fits right in hanging from the stairs…  And – one special Christmas gift – here is a picture of Owen’s stocking – stitched lovingly by me, carrying forward the tradition begun by my mother (and appreciated by all of HER grandchildren…)
   

We wish you all health and happiness this holiday season.

Rick here…Kathy has done most of the writing so far, but I have some comments about our car and driving in France.  We’ve now logged almost 3000 km, about 1900 miles.  As Kathy said in an earlier post, we leased a car through the Peugeot Open Europe program. What we have is a 308…one step up from the entry level 200 series.  We were upgraded to “Select” from basic because that’s what was available.  We were told that the difference was a sun roof. We can always spot our car because it’s the only one we’ve seen in three months that has a red license plate!  We’re told that this indicates that we’re not European and hopefully locals would exercise restraint on their horns and  middle fingers!

The car is equipped with a user friendly GPS in English (a nice British female voice who doesn’t sound scolding, even when she’s saying, “At the next opportunity, make a U-turn.”).  It has front and rear proximity sensors which display on the monitor, but also four corner sensors which have proven quite helpful on the narrow streets and tight parking spaces that we encounter quite frequently.  We opted for the higher fuel mileage stick shift diesel (45 mpg) which is quiet and plenty powerful.  It handles surprisingly well–fairly tight steering, short throw shifter, good brakes and no torque steer from the front wheel drive.  The cruise control will even slow you down if you approach another car too closely!   The dashboard digital display shows the posted speed limit beside our actual speed in either mpg or kmpg as does the GPS screen.  For the automotively challenged, the car will suggest that you shift up or down when it determines you should–actually helpful since the car is so quiet that we don’t get the usual auditory signal to shift gears.  Our four carry-on size bags fit neatly into the trunk.

In much of Europe, traffic circles or ’round-abouts,’ as they are called here, occur at many intersections instead of traffic lights.  They facilitate a smoother flow of traffic once you learn how to navigate them.  Except in ‘Centre Ville’ most or round-abouts are two lane affairs.  If you are exiting at the first opportunity,  you enter in the right lane with your right turn signal on.  If you are going further around, enter into the inside lane with your left turn signal on.  Then flip your turn signal to the right as you approach your exit.  Once in the circle you have the right of way.  Being alert and using the turn signals ensures smooth sailing.

I’ve been doing the bulk of the driving as Kathy tends to freak out on the narrow streets of towns and she’s not crazy about the roundabouts, either.  She’s not a bad navigator, though…helped, of course, by our trusty GPS gal.

Well, we’re on the road again (isn’t there a song about that??). We are evolving a pattern of choosing one area in which to spend an extended time just about every month. October was Paris; November the Languedoc; December is Colmar; January will be Tuscany, and February will be Barcelona (now you know the plan, come join us!!) In between each of these destinations, we take a road trip where we spend a few days in several  places along the way, sometimes scouting them out for future long stays and sometimes just using them as a stop-over.

So now we’re on our way to Colmar, and our first stop was Arles, an ancient Roman city in Provence where Van Gogh produced the bulk of his work (187 paintings!) in only 2.5 years. Throughout the city, there are replicas of his works in the location they depict, and tourist shops sell postcards of his paintings. But when we visited the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, there was only ONE of his paintings on display! The rest of the museum was taken up by works of a single artist who was apparently inspired by Van Gogh, but it was hard to see the connection.


Our Airbnb hosts in Arles were the BEST!  The house was like a miniature of our old Patterson Park House – wine cellar in the basement (stocked with local wines!), well-equipped kitchen on the ground floor, bedroom on the second floor, and a bonus room with a wonderful terrace on the third floor.  We felt so at home that we’ve made plans to return there next October for several weeks.

In addition to the Van Gogh (?) Museum, we visited several monuments of note in Arles.  Probably the most impressive was the arena that dates from Roman times and still hosts bullfights (but in France, they don’t kill the bull; the razeteurs pluck ribbons from the bulls horns as their prize).

Our next sop was Lyon.  Our apartment here was TINY but functional.

We were in town for the last of the 3 nights of the Fête des Luminéres that happens around Dec 8 every year.  Because of the bombings in Paris last year, it was cancelled.  So this year it was even bigger than before. We met the couple seated next to us at dinner and learned, through them, that the Metro had been closed making it difficult to get to the site of the Fête.  They offered to drive us and bring us back, so how could we turn that down??  [I hope that we would be so gracious to some newcomer to our town…]

Lyon is set on the banks of the Saône and Rhône Rivers and its neighborhoods rise high on all sides.  A number are reached most easily by funicular and our apartment in Croix Rousse was thousands of stairs above the center city (easy enough to descend, but you really wanted a Metro to take you back!). Even the walking street was named “Montée!”


We also visited the awesome Basilica Nôtre Dame de Forvière.  Pictures couldn’t capture the beauty of this church!

Lyon is a very foodie town, but we were there such a short time that we opted to save our food experience for the drive from Lyon to Beaune.  Guy Lassausaie is a Michelin 2 star about 30 minutes north of Lyon AND they are open on Monday!  We made a reservation for lunch and had a fabulous meal with impeccable service.

Our final stop was in Beaune, in the heart of Burgundy. Out gîte was a compact but functional space in ground floor of centuries old home about .25 miles outside the Beaune ring road – too far for walking in the bitter cold weather.

Fortunately, Beaune has numerous free carparks around its periphery.  We spent some time searching for the TI and finally found it right across from the Hôtel Dieu staffed by a lovely and helpful young lady. With her help, we 0ver-scheduled ourselves for the day and a half we had for touring.  We visited the only remaining mustard factory in the region (a great tour where the guide accommodated us in English even thought tour was technically in French, the Hospices de Beaune, and a tour of the cellars at Bouchard Aîné et Fils.

Next stop is Colmar.  We’re ready for cold weather because we’ve had a fair amount of it in Lyon & Beaune, and we’re really ready for Christmas.  Colmar should provide both.

 

Between our three bases – Durban-des-Corbieres, Paraza and Narbonne, we’ve spent more than 5 weeks in Languedoc-Roussillon.  It’s been a real change from Paris, but a lovely stay.

We made a short foray north to Béziers on a rather cold and windy day.  We made it to the TI (Tourist Information) just before they closed for lunch and picked up a map that was somewhat helpful and a booklet that was in English but told us no useful information at all!  We visited the impressive cathedral and grabbed a sandwich before heading to our next stop.

We did find one other thing worth a photo in Béziers, though – a mural on the side of a building that really made you stop and look.  Are those guys really out on their balconies painting on this blustery day?!

We continued south of Narbonne to Peyriac-de-Mer and then around a body of water (a very large ‘pond’) to the lovely hilltop town of Bages. Along the way we encountered a partially closed road with this sign:
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I pulled up Google Translate on my phone and found that this meant “Road Flooded.” There was not a lot of traffic so we decided to press on…figuring we could always turn around.  We saw evidence of recent flooding (wet grasses washed onto the road), but the only water we had to ford was quite shallow.  And, while I was taking this picture, a car coming from the other direction made it through just fine!

Bages was worth the trip.  It is a small village (aren’t they all?) that crawls up a hillside at the edge of the water. We found a place to park and walked to the top of the town where we had a view all the way to Narbonne (about 5 miles away).

A remarkable sight was this sundial atop the old port into the city.  Still accurate today!

On a rather rainy Monday afternoon, we ventured about 10 miles out of Narbonne to an ancient Cistercian monastery – Abbaye de Fontfroide, built during the Middle Ages and saved from ruin by a wealthy person who bought it and restored the abbey and its wonderful gardens.  It is still in private hands and very well-maintained.  It’s also one of the few places that is open EVERY day (even Monday)!

One remarkable note was this stained glass window, one of several made in the 20th century from fragments of ancient stained glass windows, mostly from churches in northern France that were bombed during the First World War.

On November 29, we celebrated our 14th (!) wedding anniversary.  Hard to believe we’ve been married that long.  We’re both grateful that we share so many common interests, like wine & travel, even while we continue to argue about politics.  We enjoyed home-cooked Duck a l’Orange that night – delicious!

Finally, we had a chance to see our new friends again before departing.  Joanne (from Durban) came for lunch when she was in Narbonne for a massage and, on our last day, Marie-José and Harry invited us to Paraza for lunch – their incomparable moules & frites!  What a nice send-off!!

We’ll now undertake another short road trip – Arles > Lyon > Beaune – on our way to Colmar, where we’ll be for Christmas. Stay tuned…….

We are almost 3 months into this adventure so it seems like a good time to reflect on some of the pleasant and no-so-pleasant realities of living in France.

Good wine is everywhere and it’s cheap!  We feel like we’re splurging if we pay more than $10, and often we can find a really nice bottle for under $7! Even on restaurant cartes du vins, prices seldom exceed $20.  We’re happy!!  And, speaking of restaurants, we’re getting used to the fact that no tips are expected.  The bill is service compris and waitstaff are thrilled if you leave a few euros in acknowledgement of an extraordinary experience.

It is easy to have Foie Gras every day! We’re learning, with pleasure, to differentiate between frais, entier, block, mi-cuit, paté, mousse and parfait…and haven’t yet found one we don’t love.  We’ve found wonderful mi-cuit (half-cooked) in the Narbonne market and have served it with sautéed apples, onion confit and, last night we had it served to us in a restaurant accompanied by a confiture du thé.  Yum!

Every boulangerie sells baguettes, but they’re not all the same.  We found the most consistent quality in Paris.  Elsewhere, some have crunchy crusts while some are more chewy (my preference); some are more dense while others are airier inside…bigger ‘holes,’ less bread (again, this is what I look for).  And, have I talked about the butter?!  We are spoiled forever by this demi-sel raw milk butter with actual salt crystals in it.  Have to figure out how to bring some home!

Many French take their primary meal at mid-day and EVERYTHING shuts down (except cafés and restaurants) from noon to 2 or 3pm. Children go home from school and work stops! and everyone, from bankers to construction workers, sits down to eat and have a glass or two of wine.  Most businesses close on Sunday and Monday; and restaurants close after the mid-day meal Sunday until Wednesday.  We’ve learned to plan for home-cooked meals Sunday through Tuesday and, if we eat out, make reservations for other nights, since many places (outside of Paris) are small and can’t take you without a reservation.

Who knew that I’d have to learn my ABCs all over again?!  While French uses the same letters as English, they pronounce them differently, which I found out while trying to spell out my email address over the phone. K_A_T_H_Y = kah_ah_tay_ahsh_eegrek.  You get the idea.  But, on the positive side, I never have to spell my last name when I make a restaurant reservation…everyone can spell Sabatier, and no-one mispronounces it!  Numbers are a similar challenge. Fortunately, most shopkeepers are patient when I ask them to repeat the amount due, or they just hand me a cash register tape when I look at them blankly. I’ve started to count my reps at the gym in French as a way of practicing, but my ear is not trained yet…

I always think of French women as glamorous and well-groomed.  And they are.  So why is it impossible to find a pedicure anywhere? There are plenty of hair salons – I’ve had my hair cut twice and been happy with the result – and a few lovely nail salons, but they only do fingernails.  I’ve asked women who live here and they just shrug.  Guess I’ll have to wait until we’re back in the States for painted toes!

One final thing that I miss is radio, specifically Public Radio. At home, Morning Edition played while I showered and dressed in the morning and All Things Considered kept me company while I made dinner.  Here, the radio speaks in French, of course, and even the music stations we find in the car are elusive. I do have an NPR News app on my iPad and I’m getting used to taking it into the kitchen with me.

Rick knew he would miss TV, so he planned ahead.  Most of our accommodations include TV, but we’re lucky if we have access to more than one English news channel.  Rick has found tricks to allow us to watch US television on my laptop. He moved his Direct TV box to his daughter Ginny’s basement and installed a Slingbox there that allows him to control the DVR from here! So the Redskins and the Terps games are recorded, along with the PBS NewsHour and several favorite series (Blue Bloods, Madam Secretary, Black List).  It’s almost like being at home, but the screen is much smaller…