Le gîte rural à Thésée (2)

I forgot to mention a few things in my post yesterday. First, the gîte (vacation rental) we stayed in while we were cleaning the house we had recently bought, getting it ready for us and our furniture to move in, was in the village of Thésée. That's where the house for sale with those horses was located. It one was only about half a mile away. And the gîte we were staying in six months later was less than three miles from our new house. Those are flying-crow distances; the drive from house to house took 10 to 15 minutes. It was convenient.

Above is a Google Maps aerial view of the gîte property. You can see the owners' house on the left. The house we stayed in is the one right above the red map pin, and the barn is just in front of it. Oh, and I remembered the name of the people we rented from. It was Courtault. It appears that both the couple's sons are in the wine business in Thésée, so I plan to go see them in the spring, when the new wines are released. In the slide show below, the gîte is the house in the first photo. The third photo shows a view out over the river valley from near the gîte. That's the château de Saint-Aignan off in the distance.



Other photos in the slideshow might give you a better idea what the Loire Valley looks like in early June. (Actually this is the Cher Valley — the Cher is a tributary of the Loire, which is 25 miles north.) And this is wine country. There are dozens of châteaux all around, too, including some of the most famous ones: Chenonceau, Chambord, Cheverny, Blois, and Chaumont-sur-Loire.

From urban to rural

After finding a house in France that we thought we might want to buy and live in, we spent a few days in Paris and then returned to San Francisco. Walt had to go back to work. We had to decide what we were going to do — would be stay or would we go? The next time we came to France together was in June 2003, having sold our SF house and bought the French one. I had made the trip alone in February 2003, for different reasons — one was to measure the rooms in the French house so we could see what pieces of furniture we owned might fit and what we would have to get rid of. Walt had to stay and work.

No, that's not our place in the photo above. It's the gîte where we spent our first few nights here in the Loire Valley. When we arrived in Saint-Aignan in early June, we rented it to stay in for a week while we cleared out and cleaned up the house we had bought. We couldn't move right in. For one thing, we didn't have any furniture or appliances except a boiler and a water heater. During our first week here, we went out a bought a refrigerator, a kitchen stove, a washing machine and dryer (there were no laundromats in the area), a telephone, a coffee maker, and a couple of air mattresses on which we would sleep before our furniture arrived from SF in July. A friend had loaned us some sheets and towels.

Here's what the kitchen looked like. It was old-fashioned, but perfectly clean and well furnished. I think there were three bedrooms. There was a full bathroom — I remember that the shower pan was actually a laundry sink that had been set on the bathroom floor and plumbed in. The price we paid for the gîte was more than reasonable: about $250 U.S. for the week. The people who rented it to us lived in a bigger house nearby and they were very helpful and welcoming. I remember being invited to their house one evening and sitting in their kitchen with their two grown sons talking and enjoying a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc wine they made. It was a nice evening.

The woman who sold us the house in Saint-Aignan had left a lot of stuff (junk might be a better word) behind. We hadn't yet met her. We had a lot of cleaning out to do. We filled up our rented Opel and made numerous trips to the local déchetterie (dump and recycle center) to haul stuff away. Also, the grass and weeds in the big back yard were at least knee-high because the seller had cancelled her gardening service two months before our arrival. We had to go buy a weed-eater and a lawnmower for Walt to use outdoors while I was scrubbing floors and walls inside. The house had sat empty for about two years before we took possession.

Looking at these pictures, you can see why these French vacation rentals are called "rural" (gîte rural is their name). They are in the countryside, and they often really feel rural. The older couple who owned this property kept rabbits — for food, I'm sure — and the man (I wish I could remember their name) came and fed them every day. We could see him out our back windows.

We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, dog in tow. By Thursday, we had ordered and and received delivery of essential appliances. We bought a vinyl table and chairs (patio furniture from a garden center) and used it as our dining room table for more than a month. Walt got the yard under control. Starting on Thursday, then, we slept on our air mattresses — we had been on many camping trips in California over the years, so we had the right skills.

We were excited to be living (or camping) in our own house. When we left the gîte two days early, I told the people we rented it from that I wanted to give them some money to cover the cost of having the place cleaned. The woman refused. I insisted. I told her we had been there with a dog who tracked in quite a bit of sand as she came and went. She finally relented and I gave her 25 euros, with our thanks.

Paris street scenes

Our lockdown here in France has changed again. We are no longer required, before going out of the house, to fill out a sworn statement specifying what time we left our house, our address, and the purpose of our outing (groceries, doctor's, pharmacy, etc.). Instead of being allowed out for only three hours a day, we no longer have a time restriction during daylight hours.

However, all of France is under curfew from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. every day. We're not allowed out in public between those hours unless we fill out and sign a form (une attestation) specifying that our outing has to do with going to or coming home from work, dealing with a medical emergency, or providing aid and assistance family members or other people in need of help.

This must be a lot easier for the gendarmes to enforce, since nearly nobody is authorized to be on the streets after 8 p.m. Over the past few weeks and months, Walt and I have been very careful to fill our the form with the required information, but neither of us has actually been stopped or questioned by anybody. Face coverings are required indoors (except at home).

Speaking of being out on the streets, here are some photos that I took in Paris back in the days when we were allowed full freedom of unmasked movement.

The building at 27, quai Anatole France, between the Palais Bourbon and the Musée d'Orsay

The Palais Bourbon is where the French Assemblée nationale meets. Across the river is the place de la Concorde.

Stepping out of the Cour Carrée du Louvre to cross the rue de Rivoli into the rue de Marengo

Around the Louvre

On the rue du Louvre

At the place du Châtelet

La Conciergerie de Paris

Across the place du Louvre from the grand colonnade of the Louvre itself stand the église Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and the mairie du 1er arrondissment. The tower in the second photo below is the belfry of the mairie. The chuch you see today was built in the 1400s, replacing two earlier churches on the site. One was destroyed by the invading Norsemen in the 800s. The mairie, to the left of the belfry, was built to mimic the look of the medieval church.

Continuing upriver along the right bank, in the photo below you can see the place Dauphine in between two buildings, one which is on the place while the other is part of the Palais de Justice complex. It's the Cour de Cassation, France's supreme court of appeals.There's only one Cour de Cassation for all of France.

Then there are three old towers — one in which prisoners were tortured in medieval times and another where the crown jewels were once stored. These are photos I took on December 14, 2002, very late in the afternoon. I've "enhanced" them in Photoshop to make them — I hope — less hard on the eyes.

The square tower below, the 14th-century Tour de l'Horloge, is where in 1370 the first public clock in Paris was installed. It's still displaying the time on the Île de la Cité after 650 years, according to what I read in the Michelin green guide. However, the big silver bell that used to ring out from the tower was melted down by revolutionaries in 1793 because it was a symbol of the monarchy.

This is the Conciergerie, which has been called the "antechamber" (waiting room) for people headed for the guillotine (to be beheaded) during the Revolution — the most famous was queen Marie-Antoinette. Thousands were executed after spending time there. The building with the dome on the other side of the boulevard du Palais is the Tribunal de Commerce, where disputes between merchants, disputes over commercial acts, controversies involving commercial corporations, and bankruptcy proceedings have been adjudicated since medieval times.