Au revoir, Oléron

I think the reason I've spent so much time posting about the île d'Oléron is that it reminds me so much of home. Home for me is the coast of North Carolina. I'm so glad I went home in October 2019 to spend a couple of weeks with family members and friends. To walk on the beaches. To smell the salt air. I don't know when I'll get to go there again. As for Oléron, it would be easy to go spend a week or two there, and maybe Walt, Tasha, and I will someday. Meanwhile, I have memories and photos. Here are few random pictures I took on Oléron when we were there.

I like this one because if you look carefully, on the horizon to the left you can see one of the bridges that links islands including Ré and Oléron to the mainland (you can enlarge it). It's not an old stone bridge like the one in Saint-Aignan or some of the bridges across the Seine in Paris. It's a modern high-rise bridge like the bridges along the North Carolina Coast. And how about those blues? It's hard to tell what's bluer, the sea or the sky. One reflects the other.

I saw this chicken — rooster — in the Marais aux Oiseaux bird sanctuary on Oléron.

It's interesting to see how these French houses are built. No wood framing, just hollow bricks. I suppose they put sheetrock — plaster board — walls up inside nowadays, not just plaster on the bricks as in our house in Saint-Aignan. (Here's a picture of the same house in much more recent times that I found on Google Maps.)

Translation: « Charentais Chowder — One of the region's best dishes. It is to the Charentes what bouillabaisse is to Provence. It's a generous fish soup, for which there are many recipes. Our version includes cod, skate wing, pollock, salmon, squid, and a whole Dublin Bay prawn (Norway lobster). It's a garlicky chowder with potatoes cooked in the broth. »
  That sounds a lot like the clam chowder people make and eat on the North Carolina coast. No tomato or cream in the broth. Just broth and potatoes and seafood. I have a recipe and I might make the Chaudrée charentaise soon.

This is a peahen. It took me a while to recognize it as such when I started looking at these old photos again a few weeks ago.

Saint John on a stained-glass window in the église Saint-Denys on Oléron.

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I'm not sure where I'm going next with this blog. Maybe it's time to move on from the "pandemic posts" that have been I kind of lifeline for the past year. I found out a few days ago that I now qualify for a Covid-19 vaccination. Walt called the doctor's office yesterday and asked for an appointment to get himself vaccinated. Somebody is supposed to call us back with a date and a time. I need to do the same.

Anyway, the next trip for which we rented a gîte rural was a few days in the Cantal département, in the Auvergne region, in September 2009. Less than a year ago I re-processed and re-posted a lot photos from that trip — you can see them here (about 10 posts). Click the link and then scroll down. That area couldn't be more different from the île d'Oléron. It reminded me very much of the western end of North Carolina — the green mountains and valleys of the Appalachian chain.