Déjeuner de poissons au Relais d'Artémis

Last Saturday, we went back to the restaurant named Au Relais d'Artémis for lunch. We had enjoyed a delicious lunch there with CHM on June 1. This time we were accompanied by our friends Tom and Harriett from Illinois.

The Relais d'Artémis is located in the town of Bracieux, just outside and south of the park that surrounds the Château de Chambord. Here's the web site. Last Saturday (July 13, so Bastille Day weekend in France) the restaurant was crowded and busy. The weather was so nice that we were able to have lunch outside on the patio.

Here are photos of the lunch that Harriett and Tom ordered. They both had a starter of smoked salmon and a main course of the European fish called sandre in French or 'zander' in English, with risotto and a beurre blanc sauce. Sandre is also known as "pike-perch" and it's not well-known in North America.

Carpaccio de saumon, tartare de légumes au parmesan

Filet de sandre, beurre blanc

For dessert, Harriett had the upside-down apple pie called Tarte Tatin. Tom chose the strawberry nougat with vanilla-flavored marshmallow.

Tarte Tatin et sa crème glacée vanille, caramel  à la fleur de sel

Nougat de fraises, guimauve à la vanille

The menu we selected from was priced at just under 25 euros per person (approximately $32 U.S.). Wine and coffee were optional (can you believe I wrote that?) and cost extra, of course. We had a nice bottle of local rosé.

Tomorrow, what Walt and I ordered and enjoyed.

Photos of Saint-Aignan wall paintings

These are all photos of wall paintings in the crypt of the church at Saint-Aignan. The paintings date back to the 12th and 15th centuries — 600 to 800 years ago. This is not the first time I've posted photos of these wall paintings, but they are worth another look.

And I'll just quote some information from the Cadogan Loire guidebook:

“The high point of the church interior is the crypt.” [Ha ha ha. The crypt is actually the lowest part of the church.] “This was an older church upon which the larger one above was plonked. The dark, dank place contains some fine vestiges of Romanesque wall paintings and capitals; it also offered excellent conditions for a local wine merchant to keep his stock in the last century, saving this level from the clinical restoration carried out above.”

“The most original painting depicts events not from the life of St Aignan but from that of St Gilles; here he performs acts of charity and miracles, clothing a beggar, healing a man bitten by a snake bite [sic] and even praying powerfully enough to rescue a ship from being wrecked.”

“A grandiose Christ in Majesty was painted in the inner chapel. He is flanked by St Peter and St James Minor, who appear to bow before his glory thanks to the curve of the ceiling. At the feet of their robes, cripples grovel, one with a stick holding out a coin, another moving along on walking irons.”

“The frescoes to the side of this scene are much later, from the 15th century, but also show penitent, frail mortals, the lord of St-Aignan, Louis II de Chalon, and his second wife, Jeanne de Perellos. They caused a terrible scandal...

...in 1420, when they eloped from the Burgundian court — Louis was unfortunately already married to Marie de la Trémoille.”

“Look out too for a 16th-century interpretation of the Last Judgement [sic], illustrating what Louis and Jeanne might well have lived in fear of.”

I haven't tried to coordinate text and photos in this post. I'll leave that up to you.

Saint-Aignan comeback?

We are actually having a summer. The weather has been beautiful since July 2, which was the last time it rained. Temperatures have slowly risen to highs in the mid-80s F and we are enjoying time outdoors, finally.

The Renaissance wing of the Château de Saint-Aignan

One specific time we enjoyed outdoors was Sunday morning in Saint-Aignan. We took our friends Tom and Harriett into town to have a look around. It was le 14 juillet, and we ended up marching in the Bastille Day parade for a few minutes, behind the band and the firemen.

Rooftops, chimneys, and the massive church tower in Saint-Aignan

We went up onto the upper terrace of the château, and I took the photo that is the new blog banner above (assuming you are reading this in July 2013 — I change the banner every few weeks or months). We went into the church, and down into the crypt to see the ancient wall paintings.

Inside the church in Saint-Aignan

We walked through the narrow streets of the old town down by the river. We checked out the new cheese shop in town — nice, but very expensive. We went to do a little shopping in the little Coccinelle grocery store across the square, and there I bought a cheese for two euros that was identical to one on sale for twice the price in the fromagerie.

One of the main intersections in central Saint-Aignan

I think Saint-Aignan is picking itself up and dusting itself off after several years in a slump. I'm sure the increased attendance at the Beauval zoo has a lot to do with it. The two pandas the zoo acquired from China a year or two ago are a national attraction.

Down in the vaulted crypt of the Saint-Aignan church

Many more shops were open on a holiday Sunday morning than I expected to see. Many more people were out and about. Maybe it was just the nice summer weather that made the place seem livelier and more attractive.

Departing friends + Chambord artwork

Our friends from Illinois left us yesterday to continue their travels in the Alps and then on to Paris. They are following the Tour de France bicycle race.

Did you know that there is a direct train from Saint-Aignan to Lyon? That fact surprised me when I first found out about it, because most trains from this area go to Paris, where you can connect to lines leading to other regions and cities.

The train from Saint-Aignan to Lyon originates in Tours — our largest local city — and includes stops in Vierzon, Bourges, Nevers, Moulins, and many more towns and villages along the way. The trip takes just more than five hours. At Lyon, you can get a train to Grenoble or Marseille, for example.

Anyway, I'm pretty exhausted after four days of touring around by car, preparing food at home, and coping with our "hot" weather. In fact, we had a beautiful weekend, with temperatures in the 80s F and bright sunshine. We had lunch on Saturday at the Relais d'Artémis in Bracieux, just outside the walled park of the Château de Chambord, and we sat outside on the terrace.

In fact, even at home, we had all our lunches and dinners out on the front terrace. It was a treat, and it was a great weekend. We hadn't seen Harriett and Tom since 2006, when we visited them in Illinois, and they hadn't come to France since 1985. We've been friends for 35 or 40 years.

Today I'll just post a few more pictures that I took at Chambord Saturday afternoon. The first is of a portrait of the Renaissance king François Ier. The others are details of a gigantic Renaissance-era tapestry showing hunting scenes.

Le défilé du 14 juillet — marching in the parade

Yesterday we marched for a short distance in Saint-Aignan's annual défilé du 14 juillet — the town's Bastille Day parade. We didn't plan it; it just happened.

We had gone down to Saint-Aignan in the morning to show our visiting friends the town and to take some photos. We went up to the château for the panoramas and down into the crypt of the church to see the medieval wall paintings. We walked through the narrow streets of the old town down by the Cher River.

Then we walked back up to the big parking lot of a square at the top of the town, where we had left the car. We heard oom-pah-pah music in the distance and we notice three or four bright red  fire department vehicles on the square. The parade, consisting of a dozen firemen in shiny helmets and several musicians, was just forming and starting to move.

As some other tourists or local people starting following the marching band and the firemen, our friend Harriet said we had to join in. We stepped off our sidewalk viewing point and marched with the crowd who, like us, were in shorts and t-shirts enjoying the fine weather.

After a few minutes, we split off and watched the parade disappear down Saint-Aignan's main street before we went to the grocery store on the other side of the square to pick up some supplies for lunch.

 
It was a great way to start a day that included a five-kilometer walk with Callie, our short Saint-Aignan tour, followed by lunch at home on the terrace — Walt made us a delicious clafoutis with cherries we picked the day before — and visits to the Château de Chenonceau and the town of Amboise.

Five photos from Chambord

Our travels yesterday included a couple of hours at the Château de Chambord, that monstrosity and/or marvel located just south of the Loire River near Blois. We had finished a fine lunch at the Relais d'Artémis restaurant in Bracieux, and we braved the July 13 crowds at the castle.

This was the first time I'd been inside Chambord in a few years. I took a lot of photos. Here are five of them. More later, of course.

French Renaissance king François 1er, who had Chambord built

François 1er's symbol/mascot, the salamander, as an architectural feature

The king's bed in the royal apartments at Chambord

Lichens on an exterior wall at Chambord

François's folly, built in the 1500s — just in case you've forgotten how grand it is

Today: Chenonceau. Happy Bastille Day — Bon 14 juillet à tout le monde.

Le chantier des Halles à Paris

I went to the central Les Halles market in Paris only once. It was in 1970, and I was spending two weeks in the city as my spring break from classes in Aix-en-Provence. The weather that March was cold, gray, and wet. I wandered around Paris in the bluster and gloom. It snowed when I went to see the park and château at Versailles.

Here's what's going on at Les Halles these days. The Eglise Saint-Eustache sits once more on the edge of a gigantic construction project.

One day I took the metro from the hotel in the Latin Quarter where I was staying and went to see Les Halles. The old market pavillions were in the process of being demolished one by one. The market was being moved to the suburbs, and a new transit center was going to be built underground on that land in the heart of the city. Paris was too congested, and the streets around Les Halles were just too narrow to accommodate all the car and truck traffic that the central wholesale food market attracted.

When it's finished, the "new" Forum des Halles will look like this. You can see
the Saint-Eustache church in the background in this artist's rendering.

When I arrived at Les Halles all those 43 years ago, the whole scene made me uneasy. It was too busy and too grimy for my young American sensibilities. There was something raw and crude about it. It was already a construction, or demolition, zone — an open wound in the middle of a beautiful but worn-out-looking city. I didn't stay. After just a few minutes, I fled to more tranquil, less disturbing neighborhoods.

Temporary "containers" house architects' and engineerss offices around the latest Les Halles construction zone.

Ten years later, I would be living in a small apartment just north of Les Halles, a few steps off the now-trendy rue Montorgueil. By 1980, the area that had been Les Halles and a throbbing, chaotic market was known as « le trou des Halles » — "the hole at Les Halles." As a pedestrian, you crossed it on temporary boards and plywood planks thrown down on the muddy ground. Instead of tunneling under the neighborhood, the authorities, engineers, and construction crews had dug a deep, wide hole in the middle of Paris and were putting in a huge metro station and shopping center on a site that resembled a pit mine.

Another old neighborhood landmark at Les Halles is the Fontaine des Innocents, which dates back to the French Renaissance in the 1500s.

Even when finished, the underground shopping center — Le Forum des Halles — was left open to the sky. Rain poured in, and dampness took its toll on the stone and tile of walls and walkways. Then fairly ugly, garish buildings in glass and sheet metal were built all around the edges of the big hole in the ground. Now in 2013, the Les Halles neighborhood is again being completely redone. The ugly above-ground buildings are gone, and a gigantic steel and glass canopy is being built over the Forum shopping center to protect it from the elements. Les Halles is once more a construction zone. It will be interesting to see how it looks when the work is finished.

Bastille Day visitors

We have friends from the Urbana, Illinois, area spending the weekend with us at Saint-Aignan. Harriett and Tom arrived yesterday from Paris by train. We have a full weekend of activities planned.

I tried to recreate those delicious olives I had at a café in Paris last week for last night's apéritif.

They are flavored with tomato, lemon zest, garlic, and cilantro.

This morning, we'll be going to the open-air market in Montrichard. It's one of the best in the area, though not nearly as big as the Sunday market in Amboise (which will be a zoo this holiday weekend. This afternoon, other friends are coming over to spend the afternoon. We'll watch some Tour de France coverage on the TV and sit out on the deck eating and talking. The Tour is going through our area (Montrésor, for example) this afternoon.

Walt made a Swiss chard and onion quiche with Emmenthal cheese for last night's dinner out on the front terrace.

Tomorrow we're planning to drive up to Bracieux, near Chambord, for lunch at the Relais d'Artémis restaurant. After lunch, we'll see Chambord, Blois, and maybe the château at Chaumont-sur-Loire. Sunday will be the châteaus at Montrésor, Montpoupon, and Chenonceaux.

As you can tell, it's busy. And the weather is just perfect. We are finally getting the pay-off after all the gray and damp weather we had in April, May, and June.

Le 15e arrondissement de Paris

Did you know that the 15th is the Paris arrondissement that has the highest population? Nearly 250,000 people live in the 15th which would make it alone one of the 10 largest cities in France if it were separated from the rest of Paris. More than 10% of the population of Paris is in the 15th. The 15th also makes up about 10% of the area of Paris — but it covers only about 3.25 square miles.

The rue Lecourbe in the 15th, and the elevated metro line that runs along the edge of the arrondissement

The 15th is not a tourist area. It's a middle class neighborhood, mostly residential, on the southwestern side of the city. There aren't any major monuments in the 15th — but there are many cafés, restaurants, shops, and markets. I once did some research using the French Pages Jaunes web site and found that there were more boulangeries (approximately 75 of them) in the 15th than in any other Paris arrondissement. That makes sense, because so many people live there.

Nineteenth-century buildings in the 15th arrondissement with their street-level shops

The longest street in Paris is the rue de Vaugirard, which starts near the Jardin du Luxembourg and runs all the way out to the Porte de Versailles, all the way across the 15th. In fact, the neighborhood is also knows as the Quartier de Vaugirard. Among the other major streets that run through the 15th are the rue Lecourbe, the rue de la Convention, the boulevard de Grenelle, the rue Cambronne, and the avenue Emile-Zola.

 There are a lot of cafés with outdoor seating in the 15th arrondissement.

The 15th didn't become a part of Paris until fairly recent times — less than 200 years ago. It was annexed by the city in the mid-1800s. Until then, the area was outside the city walls. A new wall was built between 1840 and 1860, and the 15th was then included in Paris. The population of the area increased five-fold between 1850 and 1950.

 Newer and older buildings side by side in the 15th

CHM's family has lived in the 15th arrondissement since at least the 19th century. His grandparents lived in the same neighborhood where he lives now. His father, a well-known doctor, had his medical office in the same building that CHM still lives in, and he started his practice there before the year 1900. By then, nearly 100,000 people lived in the 15th.

The Invalides church isn't actually in the 15th, but like the Eiffel Tower and the Tour Montparnasse,
it's right on the edge of the arrondissement.

Back in the 1970s, I became friends with a family that lived a little farther out in the 15th, on the rue de la Convention. The "matriarch" of the family was a woman born in 1903. She had lived in Paris since she was a young girl. She told me she remembered when, on weekends, she, her sister, and her mother would go out to the Porte de Versailles, on the edge of  the 15th, and pick flowers in the fields. You'd be hard-pressed to find a field of flowers around there these days.

Plats en inox

‘Plats’ are serving dishes or platters, and ‘inox’ means ‘acier inoxydable’ — stainless steel. They are standard or classic serving pieces in Paris bistrots. One of the reasons why I went to Paris was to bring some home in a big suitcase.

I didn't buy them; they were a gift from CHM. He's a very generous man. He told me that these dishes were his mother's. She passed away nearly 40 years ago, if I remember correctly. CHM also said he would probably never use the platters and other dishes again, so he offered them to us.

You can be sure that we will use them. They will appear on our table on a daily basis from now on. Walt and I say a public thanks CHM for his generosity and for thinking of us when it came time to give up the stainless ware.

These platters and bowls are not only practical and unbreakable, but they are or soon will be antiques. They remind me of the hundreds of times over the past 40 years that I've had lunch or dinner in Paris restaurants and have seen these kinds of platters brought to the table.

L'Institut Pasteur

Last Saturday morning I took a walk over to the Institut Pasteur in Paris. It's only a couple of blocks — a few hundred meters — from CHM's apartment. I went to have a look because my friend Evelyn has said she really wants to visit it the next time she comes to Paris. Maybe I'll be able to go with her.

I was surprised that I had no memory of seeing this building before. I must have seen it, though. Back in the 1970s, I knew somebody who lived not far south of its location and I walked through the neighborhood many times. The Pasteur Institut has existed since the late 1880s.

There's a sign saying Musée next to the front door of the main building. According to Wikipedia, that's the oldest building and it contains Louis Pasteur's private apartments, the crypt where his body is interred, and an information center — those make up the museum.

Since 1908, eight of the institute's scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize. The Institut Pasteur is just a few minutes' walk from the Gare Montparnasse.

L'Eglise du Dôme aux Invalides

One of the main landmarks in the neighborhood where I spent the last few days is the gilded dome of the Invalides church. The Michelin Green Guide describes it as "the masterpiece of the age of Louis XIV" — he was king France from 1643 until 1715. Work on the church began in 1677 and it wasn't completed until 1735.

Running south from the front of the church, the avenue de Breteuil provides fine views of the gilded dome and is itself a beautiful green space in the middle of the city. As you can see, with the warm weather came hordes of young people picnicking, sunbathing, or just enjoying the fresh air on the grassy median. Finally, it really felt like summer (and still does).

The dome is an irresistible subject for photographers, I guess. You can see it from many points around the neighborhood, with a variety of views from close up or far away. The gilding, when the sun shines, really attracts your eye and camera lens. By the way, this is the church where Napoleon's tomb is located.

I'm back in Saint-Aignan now and, as usual, those few days in Paris seem like a dream. A nice dream, but somehow unreal. In fact, every time I stepped out the big carriageway door of CHM's building, I was astonished to find myself in the city and see all the people and cars rushing by. CHM's apartment is on the courtyard of the building and is very quiet and calm. But the neighborhood is a beehive of activity.

This was my first time I'd spent more than 24 hours in Paris since 2009, and my longest visit since 2006. I lived in Paris for five years back in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Walt and I spent many vacations there between 1988 and 2002, before moving to Saint-Aignan. I have so many good memories of the city. Now I have more. Somehow, just knowing that Paris is still there is reassuring to me.