Back home under gray skies

Our rather austere village center — it's not
exactly the thatched-roof cottages you might imagine

I dropped Joanna (my sister) and Janis (a good friend of hers) off at Charles de Gaulle airport yesterday morning at 8:30 and left them to stand in the line to get their baggage checked in. I wanted to hit the road and get back to Saint-Aignan as early as I could. It took me more than four hours.

The little church in our village near Saint-Aignan.
There's been a church here since the year 500.

I decided to drive my regular route through the countryside south of Paris, passing through Milly-la-Forêt, Malesherbes, Tousson, Puiseaux, Beaumont-du-Gâtinais, Bellegarde, Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, Tigy, Marcilly-en-Villette, La Ferté-Saint-Aubin, the Sologne forest, and Romorantin and Selles-sur-Cher before coming down the hill into the Cher river valley just before Saint-Aignan.

View out over the Cher river and the countryside north of Saint-Aignan

It started raining before noon at about Bellegarde, and I drove around the south side of Orléans and into La Sologne in a hard rain to the rhythm of the windshield wipers on the Peugeot. I guess my sister and Janice brought the good weather with them, and then took it home with them. Radio Bleue-Orléans was broadcasting from a very damp festival that was taking place on the banks of the Loire river all day Saturday.

Entering the courtyard of the château in Saint-Aignan

On the blog, I'm running about a week behind events. I told Joanna and Janice that I would do a little travelogue over the next few days so they could remember the names of the places and monuments we visited and match them to their photos.

The château in Saint-Aignan

Last Monday, 17 September, we spend the day in Saint-Aignan. Callie had a late-morning appointment to get her stictches out, after her spaying a few days earlier, and J, J, and I were worn out after our travel adventures over the weekend. It was a morning of rest and of getting some food plans together for the following few days.

Saint-Aignan's château seen from the banks of the Cher

In the afternoon, we went to visit our village outside Saint-Aignan and the town of Saint-Aignan itself. The village has about 1100 inhabitants, who are spread out over a wide territory. The village center is fairly small, with a church, a library, a bakery, a post office, a grocery store, two cafés, and the village hall. We looked around inside the church and walked down to the banks of the Cher river, where there's a campground.

The massive towers of the old church in Saint-Aignan

Then we went on to Saint-Aignan, population 4000, where we walked up onto the grounds of the château, which is privately owned. The owners live there, and you can't tour the interior, but you can walk around the courtyard and enjoy nice views of the river, the surrounding countryside, and the rooftops of the town. Part of the château is about 1000 years old and is in ruins, and another part dates back to the French Renaissance, 500 years ago.

The rooftops of old Saint-Aignan seen from the château's courtyard

We also went into the church, which is a massive Romanesque building. The interior was radically restored about 150 years ago. We walked down into the crypt, which is actually an older church on top of which the "newer" one was built hundreds of years ago. In the old church, there are frescoes painted on the walls between the 12th and 15th centuries.

The church in Saint-Aignan seen from the eastern riverbanks

It was a cloudy day but it was about the only cloudy day we had all week. The next morning we went to Valençay to see the street market and the château there. That afternoon, we had a good time climbing around in the medieval fortress at Loches. And finally, we went on our area's grand châteaux tour, which includes Chenonceau, Amboise, Chaumont-sur-Loire, Blois, and Chambord.

Joanna and Janice in front of the château at Saint-Aignan
17 September 2007

I'm falling behind... here's Bellegarde

The château de Bellegarde reflected in its moat

I can't keep up with our travels and activities on this blog. The blog is still on Sunday and in Fontainebleau and Bellegarde. Today is Thursday already and our tours of Loire Valley sights are nearly finished now. I thas been much too short.

An old road sign on the Nationale 60 road in Bellegarde
says that Orléans is 47.5 km in one direction
and Montargis is 23 km in the other.

I'll be able to report more on this week's activities next week. Joanna and Janice fly back to North Carolina on Saturday, and we'll be on the road until then, without Internet access, starting tomorrow morning.

One of the staircases at the château de Bellegarde

Bellegarde is a place I've photographed and written about several times (here and here) since I started this blog. It's a convenient stopping point for us, it being about half way between Saint-Aignan and Paris if you take the route that goes through Orléans and Milly-la-Forêt, near Fontainebleau. The château de Bellegarde and its setting are beautiful.

Vanishing France

Bellegarde itself is a little down-at-the-heels. It's a village in transition. It has been bypassed by the main highway. The old road is a narrow street that passes through the middle of the village, and the houses and abandoned storefronts along that street are covered in black soot from automobile and truck exhaust. I posted this picture a couple of days ago.

The old bridge at the château de Bellegarde

More next week about Saint-Aignan, Valençay, Loches, Chenonceaux, Amboise, Chaumont, Blois, Chambord, and other places along the way. Today we are leaving to go to the Mont Saint-Michel, which my sister really wants to see, and on to Paris for 24 hours. On Saturday, Joanna and Janice fly back to the U.S. and I drive back to Saint-Aignan. There are many gardening chores to do now.

Fontainebleau with J & J

A good street sign in Fontainebleau

After an afternoon walking around in the 7th arrondissement and a drive through the center of the city to see Notre Dame and the islands, it was time to start the drive to Saint-Aignan. We decided to go to Fontainbleau along the way. Janice has a friend in North Carolina who once lived there and wanted to be able to show her a picture or two.

Janice in the white doorway

Many other people had decided to spend Sunday afternoon at Fontainebleau too. The big parking lot just south of the château was completely full of cars. We had to ride around for a few minutes and wait for somebody to leave before we could park. It was typical of a beautiful Sunday in September: everybody and his brother (or his sister, in this case) was out taking a stroll, taking advantage of what might be one of the last sunny, warm weekend days this year.

The main courtyard at Fontainebleau

Janice's friend said she had lived in a building with a white doorway, so we walk little streets looking for a white doorway we could take a picture of. We found several. Her friend, who lived there when she was a little girl, can pretend that was her house.

Janice and Joanna in the gardens

Janice's friend won't the be the only one interested in more descriptions and pictures of Fontainebleau. I know several others of you who will enjoy memories of past visits when you see all this. I know I have enjoyed going back there this month.

We had seen this fife-and-drum corps marching
through the streets of the town earlier

We walked around through the town and onto the grounds on the far side of the château instead of going in the front entrance. I noticed that the flower beds looked a lot drier than they did when I was at Fontainebleau about 10 days earlier. We've had almost no rain this whole month of September. Sunday, it was windy and warm, and kind of dusty.

I like the look of the man on the right in the white britches

Around the château itself, groups of people in period costume marching around, some playing fifes and drums, others just marching to their own rhythm, for the entertainment of the crowds of visitors. We took a lot of pictures before getting in the car and driving on to Milly-la-Forêt, Malesherbes, and Bellegarde, on our way to Saint-Aignan.

On a big door at the château de Fontainebleau

Sunday arrivals and departures

Joanna and I needed to be at the airport by 6:30 a.m. on Sunday to be sure we were there when Janice arrived. I set my alarm clock for 5:00. I had told Joanna I would call her and wake her up as soon as I was out of bed.

The gilded spire at the top of the Eglise du Dôme at Invalides

I tried to call her room, but it rang busy. I went downstairs and tapped on her door. No answer. I didn't want to knock too hard because I didn't want to wake up the people in the adjoining rooms. I tapped and I tapped for what seemed like five minutes. Still no answer.

The cupola over one of the side chapels at the Eglise du Dôme.

Does this qualify as as squared circle? Or a squared oval?

There was a phone on the wall in the hallway, so I picked that up to dial Joanna's room number again. Instead, the phone automatically called the front desk, waking up the night clerk. He told me to come downstairs and he would give me a passkey so I could let myself into my sister's room. He said her phone must be off the hook.

We took a walk along the Rue Cler just before lunch.

He was obviously very trusting. I walked back up the two flights of stairs and turned the passkey in the lock on her door. As soon as I pushed the door open a little, I saw Joanna sit bolt upright in her bed. "What are you doing in here?" she said. Then she recognized me and I told her what was going on. Jet lag, I assume, had her in such a deep sleep that she didn't hear me tapping on the door. But she sure heard that key turn in the lock!

This menu at the Bistrot du Septième was
tempting, but I wanted to go to Le Centenaire.

We made it to the airport by 6:30. Janice finally came out of customs at CDG terminal 2E at about 8:00. It was a long wait for us. Her baggage was nowhere to be found. Now it is 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday and she still doesn't have her suitcase. Air France promises it will be delivered to our house in Saint-Aignan tomorrow.

15 September 2007

We drove back to the Hôtel des Carmes, all three had showers, and by 10:00 we were checked out and back on the streets. I made the mistake of taking the car out of a perfect, free parking place on the Rue des Carmes, thinking I would easily find a place to park it over in the seventh arrondissement near the Eiffel Tower on a Sunday morning. Big mistake! There was some kind of foot race going on, and all the streets within two or three hundred meters of the tower had been closed off by the police.

Janice and Joanna at Le Centenaire
getting ready to order lunch

We finally parked farther away and took the metro to the tower. Joanna really wanted to go up to the top, but the lines were just too long. Instead, we went to a café where I have often had good simple meals and had a nice lunch. We were all hungry. The café is Le Centenaire on the Avenue de la Tour-Maubourg.

Vanishing France

After lunch, we walked through the Invalides complex and went to see Napoleon's tomb. Then we walked back to the car and headed out of town (taking the scenic route through the center of Paris) toward Fontainebleau, Orléans, and, finally, Saint-Aignan. The weather was perfect.

Joys and trials of air travel

My sister Joanna arrived Saturday from North Carolina, via Atlanta. All went fairly smoothly. I picked her up at Charles de Gaulle airport, outside Paris, at noon. Just one problem: nowhere to be seen was her friend who was supposed to meet her at the airport in Atlanta and fly to Paris with her. Joanna said she had looked everywhere for Janice but hadn't been able to locate her.

View of rooftops and the towers of Notre Dame
from my room at the Hôtel des Carmes

It turned out that Janice had missed the connection in Atlanta because of bad weather in her area of North Carolina. Her plane was late. She ended up having to spend nearly 24 hours in the Atlanta airport before boarding a Delta flight for Paris the next afternoon. She finally arrived in Paris at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday. But her bags didn't. We are still waiting for those.

Paris was hot and sunny Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday. Joanna and I got checked into our hotel, the Hôtel des Carmes between the Place Maubert and the rue des Ecoles in the Latin Quarter. Then we set out on foot across the center of Paris.

The Rue Montorgeuil wasn't as crowded as
some of the other places we walked through.

I have almost never seen Paris so full of people. There were several major events going on in the city over the weekend: something called the TechnoParade, Les Journées du Patrimoine, and some of the Rugby World Cup hoopla. People were just kind of shuffling along, shoulder to shoulder, past the book stalls along the Seine, on the big square in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, in front of Paris City Hall, up the Rue Beaubourg, and over to Les Halles. It was incredible.

The gilded cupola above Napoleon's tomb at Invalides

We walked up the Rue Montorgueil and then over toward Opéra before getting on the metro. We rode over to the Champs-Elysées and admired the Arc de Triompe in the late afternoon sun. There was some kind of ceremony taking place, with a brass band and some people in a procession carrying flags.

Procession stops traffic at Arc de Triomphe

Afterwards, we walked down to Trocadéro and admired the Tour Eiffel. By the time we had had some dinner at the Café du Champs de Mars and caught the metro back to the Hôtel des Carmes, it was past 10:00 p.m. I was tired out, and I'm sure my jet-lagged sister was too. We had to get up at 5:00 the next morning to drive back out to the airport and try to find Janice.

One for the weekend

Here's one final shot of the grapes that I took yesterday morning. They may all be harvested before I get out there again.

14 September 2007 at La Renaudière, near Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher

Another trip to Paris

L'Eglise du Dôme at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris as seen
from the Place de Breteuil. Napoleon's tomb is in this church.

My sister and a friend of hers arrive tomorrow in Paris. Their plane lands around noontime and I'll be leaving Saint-Aignan early in the morning to drive up there and meet them. It takes about four hours for me to get to Roissy/CDG by car. It's a bit of a schlep, as we say, but then I am going to Paris. Poor me, right?

A look down the Champs-Elysées from the Arc de Triomphe

My sister has never come over to France before, so we will try to see some of the highlights of Paris (where to start?) Saturday afternoon and Sunday before driving back to Saint-Aignan. We are staying in a hotel in the Latin Quarter, not far from the Place Maubert. According to the forecasts, the weather will be beautiful — bright sun and temperatures in the mid- to upper 70s. You can't ask for better than that.

The view west from the Arc de Triomphe is the "new city"
at La Défense with its own Grande Arche.

I probably won't have a chance to do any more posting before Monday. And by then I'll have so many pictures I won't know where to start. We have to come back here Sunday night because Callie has an appointment at the vet's to have her stitches taken out. The operation she had last week was planned — we decided to have her spayed. She's recovering nicely.

A very long shot of the Eglise Saint-Augustin
taken from street-level at the Arc de Triomphe,
looking up the Avenue de Friedland

Meanwhile, in this post I'm including some pictures I took last week when I was out and about in Paris with CHM for our Arc de Triomphe excursion. It was a gray morning but it wasn't raining (yet). We had a delicious lunch of sushi and sashimi in a restaurant on the rue Lecourbe that day. I took the metro over to the Gare d'Austerlitz late in the afternoon to catch my train back to Saint-Aignan. It was raining on that side of Paris by then.

L'Arc de Triomphe with a purpose

When I was in Paris last week, I stayed overnight at my friend CHM's apartment. One of the things he wanted to do when I came to Paris, he had told me, was to go to the Arc de Triomphe to take pictures of the wall where the names of Napoleon's generals are carved in stone.

General David's name is in the third column from the right.

One of those generals of an ancestor of CHM's. His last name was David. CHM said he had been intending for years to go the Arc and take a picture of the name, and we finally did it. We took the metro over there, walked what seemed to be miles through underground corridors to find the right exit, and then went through another underground passageway to get to the arch itself.

L'Arc de Triomphe seen from the Avenue Marceau

The Arc de Triomphe, which is at the top of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, was ordered built by Napoleon in 1806, but it wasn't finished until 30 years later. It sits in the middle of a big round place, or plaza, from which radiate out 12 wide avenues. If you've been to Paris, you've probably been to see it, or you've seen it from afar.

Tourists under the arch

The arch is 50 meters tall and 45 meters wide. That's 165 feet by 148 feet. For comparison, the towers of Notre Dame are higher at 69 meters, or 226 feet. Under the arch lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, placed there in 1920.

La tombe du Soldat Inconnu
sous l'Arc de Triomphe

The names of 558 generals are listed on the walls of the arch. Some of the names are underlined, and CHM and I wondered why. According to the Michelin Green Guide, those are generals who died in the field. As for General David, he was one of CHM's great-great-great uncles. He died
in the early 1800s at the age of 35 or so.

More about the grape harvest

Yesterday afternoon I had occasion to go chat for a while with Jean-Christophe Mandard, one of our local grape-growers/wine-
makers. Mandard makes excellent wines on the west side of the village of Mareuil-sur-Cher, on the south bank of the Cher river. That's about 30 miles east of Tours and 25 miles south of Blois.

A couple of years ago we went with some friends from California for a nice dinner in the trendy 11th-arrondissement restaurant in Paris called Astier. Two of J-C Mandard's wines, a white and a red, were on the restaurant's wine list. We tried them both and they were excellent. I buy wine in bulk from Monsieur Mandard, and the white I got from him yesterday is 70% Sauvignon Blanc and 30% Chardonnay. I tasted it and it is good.

Mandard and I talked about the vendanges, the grape harvest. He said he has started bringing in some of his Gamay grapes, which could be a touch riper but will be riper by the time he gets the rest of them harvested next week. Some less ripe and some more ripe grapes should make for a good Gamay wine, he said, and better safe than sorry...

I asked about the other red grapes he grows. Amy H. had said on her blog that over near Bourgueil and Chinon, where she lives, the harvest wouldn't start until September 20 or even September 24. In a comment on my blog yesterday, she mentioned that the harvest here seemed to start earlier than on the west side of Tours.

I wondered if there was that much difference in the climate. Mandard said it has more to do with the grapes themselves. Gamay can be harvested now, but the Côt (a local name for Malbec grapes) wouldn't be ready to harvest until late next week, and the Cab. Franc wouldn't be ripe until the week after that. That puts it into the same timeframe as the Bourgueil/Chinon harvesting of the same grape.

I'll be glad when all the grapes have been picked so that I can stop taking pictures of them! I took all the ones above before sunrise this morning.

Getting the grapes in

Yesterday morning the grape harvest started in the Saint-Aignan area. Bruno Denis and his father, owners of the Domaine de la Renaudie winery, were just outside our back gate between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. with their harvester and tractor.

Starting the grape harvest at La Renaudière, 10 September 2007

They didn't stay long and they harvested "white" grapes only. All the "black" grapes are still on the vines. I assume that they harvest each variety as it reaches the right level of ripeness.

On my way back from Paris last week I read a set of articles about the harvest that our local paper, La Nouvelle République, printed. It focused on the Sancerre, Mennetou-Salon, Quincy, Reuilly, and Châteaumeillant wine areas to the east of Saint-Aignan near the towns of Vierzon and Bourges. But the issues and the weather are the same.

Conditions these past two weeks have been perfect, the articles said. Fairly warm days, cool nights, and light, dry northerly breezes are slowly bringing the grapes to just the right stage of maturity. Some grapes were lost earlier to mildew, especially in our rainy August, but the harvest should be good.

The authorization to harvest has been issued by the AOC authorities, but the grape-growers are taking their time. If a period of rain is forecast, they will probably work pretty fast to get all the grapes in. So far, so good. 2007 might turn out to be a good year after all.