The north-facing façade of the château...

...de Saint-Aignan looks like this. It's the château as you see it when you cross the bridge over the Cher river, coming into town from Blois or, via the autoroute, from Orléans or Paris. The church is on the left in the photo below. The 10th century donjon (fortified tower) is visible on the right.

Below is a closer view of the château seen from the north. It doesn't look much like a château, except that it is built on a high promontory and soars over the river as well as over the town, which grew up around it. From this perspective, you can see that the buildings are built of a combination of stone and of brick.

And here's a photo of the church, which dates back to the 11th and 12th centuries. It's especially known for the centuries-old wall paintings down in the crypt. That's part of the château on the right, below.

Terrasse bis

I mean the terrace at the château de Saint-Aignan, of course. Here is one more panorama (a stitch) and five detail shots. I took them in June 2006. The château is about a mile and a half from our house. It's built on a promontory so there are views over the town and the river. Only the terrace is open to the public. The château is privately owned and lived in. I hope it will be opened up to the public one day.

Sur la terrasse du château...

...de Saint-Aignan. It's more than one building and it was built over the centuries starting in the year 1000 or so. The counts of Blois, a small city 25 miles north, built the first fortifications here, including the tower or donjon you see on the right in the first photo, known as la tour d'Agar or la tour Hagard. The second photo shows the 16th century Renaissance château built here by the Beauvilliers family, whose decendents still own it. The building was très restauré in the 19th century, according to the Monumentum web site. You can also see the château and the donjon in the photo that is my blog banner above.

Oven-baked ratatouille

I've posted about this several times already. There's nothing new under the sun, especially if you're somebody who has been blogging for almost two decades. This oven-baked ratatouille is a summertime specialty. The first photo here shows how it's put together. Rounds of fresh eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes are packed into a baking dish. Optionally, add some red and green bell pepper strips. I had some, so I added them.

What you can't see is what's under the vegetables. Dice up an onion, and maybe a shallot or two, as well as three or four cloves of garlic. Sauté those lightly in olive oil and put those in the bottom of the dish along with two or three bay leaves. Then layer on the vegetables. Before putting the dish in the oven, drizzle olive oil generously all over the vegetables. Pour into the dish half a cup or so of water and season everything with salt, pepper, and dried thyme or other herbs. Preheat the oven.

Put the dish in the oven, uncovered. Let it bake between 160 and 180 degrees C (325 and 350 degrees F) — it all depends on your oven. Keep an eye on the dish, adjusting the temperature and adding more water as needed so that the eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers steam and bake at the same time. Don't stir it. When the vegetables start browning, collapsing, and softening — test them using a skewer, fork, or paring knife — it's up to you to decide when they are cooked enough. It will take an hour or even 90 minutes. Serve this gratin de ratatouille hot, warm, or cold, as you like it.

Le jardin donne

Our weather warmed up again after a week or more of high temperatures in the 60s and low 70s F. For a while there, we thought summer might be over. Now the garden started producing again, thanks to this week's temperatures in the mid-80s to low 90s. Walt said yesterday that there are green beans to pick again. Our neighbor the mayor brought us 6 or 7 lbs. of little yellow plums and I'm trying to make plum jelly with most of them. Walt also made a clafoutis with some of the ripest ones.

Our neighbors across the street, the ones who really live in Blois but have a country house here, invited us over night before last. They said they have a tree in their yard that is weighed down with little red plums that aren't quite ripe yet. They told us to taste them and when they are ripe to pick as many as we want. They are generous that way. They also have a lot of little peach trees that will start giving us ripe peaches in September. We can't keep up with it all. What a dilemma!

Speaking of those neighbors from Blois, they cooked a simple dinner for us and three other neighbors Thursday evening. During the conversation, M, whose 93-year-old husband is unfortunately in an assisted living facility now, mentioned that they will celebrate their 68th wedding anniversary this month. M is 88 years old now. She and her husband have seven children — two of them adopted; 40 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren at this point.

Actually, they sort of adopted Walt and me when we arrived here 20 years ago, often inviting us to their summertime family events like birthday and anniversary parties. They are people who are well educated and well off, but who have never traveled much. M has never flown on an airplane, and I think she once told me she had never traveled by train. All their children except the youngest one, who they adopted when he was 5 or 6 years old, live in or within 10 miles of Blois. The one who doesn't live close by is an officer in the French navy and serves on a submarine based in Brittany.

Summertime food — ratatouille

I spent some time going through hundreds of slides yesterday, looking for some pictures of our 1993 trip to Provence. I haven't found any yet, but I have another big box full of slides to inspect today. Meanwhile, yesterday was another ratatouille day. Ratouille is a pot of stewed summer vegetables — tomatoes, zucchini (courgettes), bell peppers (poivrons), eggplant (aubergines) cooked with olive oil, onions, and herbs including thyme, oregano, and bay leaves.

Julia Child, who spent a lot of time in Provence, says of ratatouille it that cooking it "perfumes the kitchen with the essence of Provence and is certainly one of the great Mediterranean dishes." It's good served hot or cold (with a little bit of olive oil drizzled on it).

One thing I did this time that I don't always do was to lightly sauté the peppers, zucchini, and eggplant, all cut into strips or cubes, to give them a little color before putting them into a wok to cook them completely. The color turns into wonderful flavor. I put less liquid in the wok, too, letting the ripe tomatoes from our garden produce enough liquid for the cooking process. Separately, Walt grilled a couple of chicken breasts to complete the meal.

Ratatouille originated in the city of Nice on the Côte d'Azur and is widely served and appreciated in Provence and all of southeastern France. The first time I ever tasted it was at a sidewalk café in Marseille in 1970.

About staying in gîtes in France

Walt and I started traveling around in France together in the late 1980s. The first time we ever stayed in a gîte was in 1993, when we went to spend two weeks in Provence to celebrate our 10th anniversary. We had both lived in Paris a decade earlier — me for three years, and Walt for one. That's where we met each other and became friends. Between 1982 and 1993, we lived for four years in Washington DC and 6 years in San Francisco. We didn't return to France until 1988, when I went to Grenoble on a work junket and Walt flew over to spend three or four days in Paris with me, for old time's sake. (The first time we rented an apartment for a stay in Paris was in 1994.)

Berzé-le-Châtel is a fortress that dates back to the 10 century A.D. It's located just three or four miles south of the famous town town of Cluny in Burgundy. We just saw it from a distance. I'd like to go back there again...

In June of 1993, we flew to Paris to spend two or three nights in a hotel there before driving down to Provence. It was so hot that we cut the Paris visit short, leaving after just one sleepless night. The hotel we were in didn't have air-conditioning. We thought it would be cooler out in the country. Our first stops were in Fontainebleau and Provins, which were places we had visited together in 1982. In Provins we bought some strawberries to have along with a picnic lunch. We ate lunch on a park bench in Chablis, near Auxerre. Those were the best strawberries I had ever tasted. The weather was hot there too but it was less oppressive than in Paris.

The Château de Sercy is a 12th century fortified building located in the village of Sercy (pop. 102) about a dozen miles north of Cluny and not far from the town called Mâcon. Neither Berzé nor Sercy seems to have an English language Wikipedia article, but both are on French Wikipédia (Berzé, Sercy).

I think we also went to Vézelay and climbed up the hill to the huge church at the top of the town. Then we spent the night in Dijon. The next day we drove south on little roads, still headed toward the gîte we had reserved in Provence. We passed these two châteaux along the way. I happened to find these two photos that Walt, probably, took back then. I wasn't taking pictures at that point. I had a film camera, but I didn't use it much. I was always slightly disappointed with the pictures I took after I had them developed. Walt has a lot of slides, I think, from that 1993 trip. I might have some too. I'll have to go search for them.

Un gîte à Angoulême

Can you believe how many towns there are in France that have names that start with an A? Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Auxerre, Amiens, Angers, Annecy, Albi, Antibes, Arras, and more. This post is about our plans to visit another of these A towns: Angoulême. Have you heard of it? It's in southwestern France and has a population of 40K+. That's about the size of Blois, the big town 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan. Angoulême is a city that has existed since Roman times.

I'm writing about Angoulême because Walt and I have decided to go there in October for an autumn getaway. It's just a three hour drive southwest of Saint-Aignan. We'll drive down there and spent four nights in a gîte rural (a vacation rental) just outside the city. I want to spend a day in Angoulême itself and a day each in the nearby cities of Limoges, Périgueux, and Rochefort, not to mention smaller towns and villages along the way. We'll leave on a Monday, stay four nights in the gîte, and then drive back home on Friday.

The pictures here show you some photos of the gîte that I pulled off the Gîtes de France organization's web site. This gîte is a free-standing house on a decent-size lot in a park-like setting that is entirely fenced in. If Tasha, who'll be with us, barks a lot, she won't be bothering anybody. There are three bedrooms and no stairs to climb. There's a bathroom and a fairly big kitchen, plus the main room with living and dining areas. Wifi. Television. All the comforts of home, and all for 95 euros a night.

This will be our first road trip since 2019. Angoulême and the other cities nearby are all places we've never seen before. We've never driven through them or even past them. Because the drive time on Monday and again on Friday is only three hours each way, we'll be able to do some sightseeing on those days too, making this a five day trip.

Auxerre en Bourgogne

When we flew from San Francisco to Paris with our friend Sue on our way to Provence in Sept. 2001, we decided to drive south from CDG airport for a couple of hours. We were pretty exhausted and jet-lagged by that point. Even so, we drove to northern Burgundy and spent the night in a hotel in the big town of Auxerre (pop. 30K+). I don't remember if we had already reserved rooms or whether we just walked in and asked if two rooms were available. Either way, that's where we stayed. About 10 years later, on one of my car trips with CHM, he and I booked rooms at the same hotel for a night before continuing our drive farther down into Burgundy.

That's the hotel just above, where we stayed. I can't remember whether Walt and I had stayed there before, but I have a memory of a dinner we had in Auxerre some years earlier. We had a delicious bœuf bourguignon (a beef stew made with red wine) in a restaurant right on the riverfront. I believe it was in a brasserie called Le Quai. The river at Auxerre is called l'Yonne. It's considered to be a tributary of the Seine, even though the distance from the point where  the two rivers become one to the source of the Yonne is greater than the distance to the source of the Seine.

In Paris in the 1980s, I knew a family that had lived in Auxerre for many years and then relocated to Paris. I had been to Auxerre with them back then, so I knew the town. Walt and I went back there on another trip to Burgundy in 2014. We were staying in a village not far from the wine town called Chablis, where tasty wines are made from Chardonnay grapes.

This is the cathdral in Auxerre. It's dedicated to saint Étienne (Saint Stephen). By the way, the X in Auxerre is pronounced as an S — it's [oh-SEHR]. It's a town I would seriously consider moving to if Walt and I ever decide to leave Saint-Aignan and move to a city again. I'd also consider Tours, Blois, and Bourges.

Riding the rails...

 ...at high speed

This is the TGV station in Avignon as it looked in 2001. TGV means train à grande vitesse. On the day I took these photos, I was taking the train to Paris and on to Rouen to see friends there. Walt and Sue were staying a few more days in Provence before driving back to Paris for our return flight to San Francisco. Ten years earlier, Walt and I were in Paris for a couple of weeks. Walt was working with a professor at Berkeley on a high-speed train plan for California. The professor and Walt were having meetings with their French counterparts, and they asked him if he'd like to take a ride on a TGV in the driver's cabin to see what the experience was like. Walt asked if he could bring a friend: me. They said yes. So we rode in a TGV train from Paris to Nantes at 300+ k.p.h. — nearly 200 m.p.h. It was an amazing experience.

Avignon street art

These are just a few pictures I took as we walked around in Avignon on that day in Setp. 2001. I took them with a Kodak DC4800 digital camera. I was wrapping up my stay in Provence. Because of the cold I'd caught early in the trip, I hadn't had a chance to go to Aix-en-Provence or Arles. Now I was headed to Paris and then Rouen.

Avignon views

Above left is a view out over the city of Avignon that I took from near the palais des papes. Above right, is a view looking west toward the town of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, with its 14th century fortifications, le fort Saint-André.

Voici le fameux pont d'Avignon où l'on danse tous en rond. The bridge has looked essentially like this since 1669.

Left, a typical house near the palais des papes. Right, another view from on high.