Venturing Forth: First days in France

Thursday, Oct. 11

Jake is on his fall break and we are in France for 12 days for vacation. We are staying 9 nights near Narcy, in the Loire Valley at the border between Burgundy and Centre, and 3 nights in Paris. I'm just going to say up front, that I'm including a lot of info on food and our flight because a friend of mine in Maryland made a special request for details!

My first first-class flight and boy was it comfortable compared to coach! On the AirCanada flight to Toronto we sat in the first row of a small executive class section. Not a long flight but we were served a nice cheese plate as a snack. The weather cleared as we flew over Central New York and I got a beautiful view of the Finger Lakes and of the wind turbines nearby. Amazing that you can see them from 10,000 feet! As Jake predicted, upon boarding our flight from Toronto to Paris we were offered champagne as we set up our little pods. The seats were arranged in a chevron pattern of 4 rows with the seats slanted towards each other across the aisles. Each seat was in its own little cubicle. This means that I couldn't really talk to Jake without leaning forward and him twisting around back to see me because the sides of our pods were about 4' tall. It made it very private though from other passengers and the seats reclined and adjusted in multiple ways ultimately laying nearly flat as a bed for the overnight flight.

The frequent travelers appeared to forego the dinner menu and get right to sleep. Jake and I on the other hand being on vacation figured why sleep when you can eat and watch movies? We were given our choice of 4 hot entrees for dinner preceded by a seared tuna appetizer. I went with the lighter entrée of black cod in a lemon caper sauce with mixed grains. I skipped the cheese and fruit plate and went for dessert of a warm chocolate pecan tart served with a glass of port. While eating dinner I watched a few of the Canadian short films that were part of a film contest sponsored by AirCanada. They were quirky but not terribly memorable. As the main attraction I went with The Internship, about middle age salesmen who do a summer internship with Google. Although it was amusing, to me it came across as a giant ad for Google. I think I got an hour or two of sleep, but they were turning on the lights and serving breakfast in a seemingly very short amount of time. I skipped breakfast except for juice and coffee feeling like I'd just finished dinner! Instead I watched the sun rise over Ireland and caught a view of the white cliffs of Dover as we made our way over the English Channel. Just before landing an attendant announced that our approach was being slowed by a work slowdown by the Air Traffic Controllers Union. Welcome to France, land of perpetual strikes!

Going through customs in France was incredibly easy. We got in some priority line as first class passengers (didn't know that was one of the perks!). There was no declaration to fill out beforehand, they just stamped our passports, we picked up our luggage and were ready to go!

We picked up our rental car and headed out with Jake driving and me navigating. The roads are fairly well signed, but somewhere along the way the E15 disappeared and we ended up on the A? (The roads are all named with a letter and number and providing navigation sort of feels like playing in a game of Battleship! A3 to E15, merge with A6 to A77). But we just took a slight detour and eventually were back on our original set of directions. Traffic on the Paris beltway was crowded, but not impossible. Once we were south of the city on the A6 the road cleared considerably, and then we just had to worry about staying awake! We stopped at a couple of the numerous rest areas to stretch. That particular stretch of road is called the Tree Route, and along the highway groups of trees have a big sign with the common French name. Great way to learn my French tree names!

We got to our house with no problem. We are staying at an old mill house owned by some friends of friends who stayed at Jake's house in DC a couple years ago. The house is next door to a huge mill that is apparently operational, but not operated (see photo). It looks like it is good shape from the outside. The small Mazou River runs under the building. The house is surrounded by farm fields of sunflowers, corn, and maybe a cover crop of radishes in some fields. We are 15 minutes from Charite sur Loire, a small town on the banks of the Loire River.

In the late afternoon we went into Charite-sur-Loir for some supplies, stopping at the bakery in Narcy for a pate-stuffed pastry to snack on and 2 pain au chocolate for breakfast. It's a town of narrow streets lined with white-walled stone buildings with red tile roofs. Colorful geraniums fill window boxes. We went first though to the big supermarket on the outskirts of town. We got a disposable phone and 10 euros worth of minutes for making phone calls within France and in future other countries outside the US. The young Frenchman who helped us asked whether it was easy to find a job in the US. What sort of job? Rugby. He'd like to make it a professional sport in the US.

Back in town we bought a pinot noir from Sancerre in Le Vin, a small wine shop. A bar of handmade dark chocolate with cocoa nibs at a lovely little confiture shop and tea salon next to the old church. A slab of country chicken pate at the takeout food shop, and some salad items at the in-town grocery (which did not have a great selection, but the other alternative was to drive back to the big grocery). Besides food stores, the town also boasts a number of book stores, several flower shops all in a row, and miscellaneous other stores.

We had a glass of wine and a salad for dinner, managed to read until nearly 10pm, and then I at least slept straight for 10 hours!

Friday

This morning we got going on the late side heading to another nearby town, Pouilly-sur-Loire. It is a grey and chilly day, but it wasn't raining. We took a couple narrow, winding country roads from our house to town passing quaint hamlets and farms. And one enormous green metal granary sitting like a behemoth surrounded by corn fields. Pouilly was having a small market, just 5 vendors, but it's a pleasant town for a walk and is located right on the Loire with a nature center and biking trail along the river. We picked out several cheeses from the market's cheese vendor and a fresh baguette from the bakery. The nature center was closed until 2pm, so we decided to do a wine tasting at one of the vineyards just outside of town. However, it is grape harvesting season, so one winery was closed and another was closing for lunch in 10 minutes. So, back into town to see if we could get lunch at a place recommended by our food and wine guidebook. Menerve is a small restaurant with a daily 3 course menu. We apparently got the only unreserved table for lunch since the next couple that came in was turned away. Basically they served about 24 people for lunch. Next to us was a local couple and their little dog who had her own seat and got a few morsels through lunch.

We ordered a half bottle of Pouilly fume, a dry, minerally white wine. For the first course I had the plate of 2 terrines, one pork and one chicken, both very good. Jake had the sausage plate, thin slices of summer sausage. For the main course we weren't quite sure what we were getting. Jake ended up with 2 small pieces of cured pork loin in a spicy mustard sauce and mine was filets of a small fish in a lemon herb sauce. Both were served with duchesse potatoes and zucchini cooked with tomatos. The fish were about 4" long and an inch wide with a fairly strong, but nice flavor. Not quite as strong as bluefish. For dessert I had a chocolate pudding doused in chocolate sauce and Jake got the excellent apple tart with an almond custard. After waddling back to the car we went home to nap and will need to take a good long afternoon walk to make room for dinner! We've already made reservations at a popular restaurant in Charite.