That Paris trip

Montparnasse, 6:00 p.m. — not Saint-Aignan!

We left for Paris in rain at 10:00 a.m. but it stopped just as we drove into Paris at about 1:00 p.m. We had lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant in the 13th arrondissement and went shopping at Tang Frères supermarket as planned. We even had time to go do a little errand over in the 5th on the rue des Écoles before heading over to Montparnasse to see the movie at 4:00. All that worked out as planned too. We parked in an underground garage at the Gare Montparnasse (10 euros for three hours).

All these films were playing

We picked our American friend Mimi up at her hotel in the Marais at 7:00 -- believe it or not, we found a parking space there, just across the street from her hotel, with no trouble. It was a small space, but the little Peugeot fit in just fine, and it was even legal. Mimi was surprised that we were driving; she said she thought we were brave. We don't mind driving in Paris, though parking isn't always easy.

The Tour Montparnasse

It had started pouring rain in Paris about 6:00 p.m., just as we got out of the movie theatre. We got in the car and drove over to have dinner at a restaurant called Le Petit Prince de Paris, over in the 5th not far from the Sorbonne and the Panthéon. We'd been there once before on friends' recommendation, and we wanted to go again. It wasn't a mistake.

I had a salad of mixed greens with thin slices of duck breast and foie gras in it. And then I had rognons de veau aux champignons à la crème (veal kidneys with mushrooms in a cream sauce) as my main course. Walt had bow-tie pasta with escargots as his first course, and broiled sea bass filets as the main dish. The wine was a 2003 Petites Roches Chinon red from Charles Joguet's winery, which we visited last October. It was very nice, I thought.

Montparnasse street scene at nightfall

We ended up leaving Paris at midnight and driving back to Saint-Aignan on little country roads. It was still pouring rain when we left Paris, but it let up some when we were about an hour out of town, near Milly-la-Forêt. We drove down through Bellegarde (nice château) and Orléans.

At that point we thought better of driving through the forests of Sologne, where there are of course a lot of trees as well as a lot of wild animals along the roads. There had been strong winds and there were small tree branches down on the pavement even in the towns. I thought the forest might be worse. We drove on to Blois along the Loire and then south from there to Saint-Aignan. The only animals we saw were some rabbits and a couple of big white owls. We got home at 3:30 a.m.

Today's picture: Pork roast & vegetables

Start the pork roast in a hot oven. When it's browned, turn the oven down to low and pour a cup or two of well-flavored broth (chicken, turkey, or vegetable) into the pan. Let it cook for at least two hours. Three is better.

Meanwhile, peel the vegetables (here, carrots, turnips, celery root, and potatoes) and cook them one kind at a time in broth until they are done. Remove them and set them aside.

When the roast is done, put vegetables all around it, make sure there's some broth in the bottom of the dish, and baste everything. There will be some fat floating on the broth, and that's a good thing. Put the dish in a very hot oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until the broth is boiling and the vegetables are browned a little on top.

Driving to Paris

Paris cobblestones

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but temperatures are in the upper 40s F (between 5º and 10ºC) so we don't have to worry about snow or ice. We'll be leaving for Paris at about 10:00 a.m. and hope to be in the city by 1:00 p.m. Rain means the speed limit is 110 kph (66 mph) rather than the normal 130 kph (78 mph) on the autoroute, which is a toll road. I think we'll take the toll road, even though the toll is more than $20.00 US one way for the 125-mile trip, because we don't want to spend the whole day on the road.

J'écris ce blog en anglais parce que je pense que la plupart des gens qui le lisent sont des anglophones, et puis l'anglais est ma langue maternelle. Mais je connais maintenant au moins trois francophones qui eux aussi le regardent -- une amie en Normandie que je connais, grâce à l'Internet, depuis cinq ans ; une Parisienne que je ne connais pas (encore?) mais qui est l'amie d'amis américains à moi ; et un ex-Parisien désormais installé à la campagne, un vieil ami que je n'ai pas vu depuis 25 ans... Je vous salue. Bon, je continue en anglais.

Our first stop will be the big Tang Frères Asian supermarket near the Porte d'Italie to get some imported grocery products -- spices, sauces, noodles, dried mushrooms, etc., that we like to use to make Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese food. Or maybe we'll go get some dim sum for lunch first, and then do the shopping. The area between and around the Porte d'Italie and the Place d'Italie in the 13th arrondissement of Paris is a neighborhood full of Asian restaurants and shops. There aren't really any places near Saint-Aignan where you can get such products and ingredients.

Paris traffic on a December evening

The next stop is the movies. We want to see Brokeback Mountain (called Le Secret de Brokeback Mountain in French) and we want to see it in English. There is one cinema in Saint-Aignan, and I don't believe it shows any films in what is called version originale -- the original language. Everything is dubbed into French. Walt just told me he looked on the Internet to see if the movie is playing in English in Tours, but he hasn't been able to find it. In Tours, too, the movie is dubbed into French.

A Paris intersection with a car careening through

Right now, we think we might have waited too long. All the movie listings for Paris that we can find on the Internet show Brokeback Mountain's run ending today. It opened January 18, and it might be closing Febuary 14. It's hard for me to believe that it won't still be playing in at least one movie theater in Paris, though. There are hundreds of them. We'll buy a Pariscope as soon as we get to the city -- it's a little guide that lists all the movies and plays and exhibits in the city. It comes out on Wednesdays, and new films start showing on Wednesdays in Paris as well.

After the movie, we are meeting an American friend at her hotel in the Marais neighborhood and then going out to dinner in a nice restaurant in the Latin Quarter. I'll probably write more about that when I'm back in front of my computer on Thursday.

A Paris café at dusk in winter

After dinner, probably around 11:00 p.m., we'll get in the car and drive back to Saint-Aignan. We won't take the toll road -- there's no need, because there's no traffic on the other roads at that hour, and we won't be in any particular hurry. I'll drive and listen to the radio, and take my time. We'll take the Nationale 20 highway from south of Paris down to Orléans, and then cut across the old province known as the Sologne to get to Saint-Aignan.

The only thing we'll have to worry about is wildlife. We'll be on little country roads. After midnight in the forests of Sologne, there are lot of deer, foxes, big owls, and even wild boars out, and they can of course cross the highway just when you least expect them. Last year, on our way back from Paris on a similar trip, an adult boar with four little ones crossed right in front of us. We had to stop the car and let them pass -- we were that close.

Where do we sign?

If you want to read this series of postings in chronological order, start here: Quitting California. Click Next at the bottom of each posting to jump to the next one in the series. This is installment number seven.

That Thursday December 12, 2002, after a very busy Wednesday during which we saw at least seven houses near Montrichard and in Amboise, I think we must have had the morning off. It gave us time to think about the house at La Renaudière, which we were scheduled to see again in the afternoon.

There were no horses on the property at La Renaudière except this poster
pasted onto a door in the entryway. We remember Monsieur Ed with fondness.

At 2:30 we met Bourdais at his office and drove with him back toward Saint-Aignan. We went directly to the house, and we must have spent two hours walking around the yard, opening all the shutters on all the windows, and exploring the house from the ground floor up to the attic. Bourdais stayed with us all that time. He let us look around and talk about what we were seeing without butting in or giving us a lot of opinions. He was there to answer questions.

The house seen from the back of the back yard.
We use this open area for our vegetable garden.

At the time, we were in awe of the size of the yard. After nearly 15 years of living in apartments in Paris, Washington DC, and San Francisco, and then eight years in a San Francisco townhouse with a tiny back garden, it was amazing to be able to be so far from the house while still being on the property.

The house had been empty for two or three years and there was an alarm.
This sign in a garage window warned burglars and vandals to beware.

The yard doesn’t seem as big any more, and a lot of people around here have a lot more land than we do, but we realize we are lucky. When Walt was taking driving lessons (that's another story) last summer, he was talking with his teacher and a fellow student, who were both French. They asked him if he had bought an old farmhouse to renovate. They were trying to figure out why he was in France, I’m sure. He said no, his was a fairly new house that only needed updating and it was on only half an acre of land. They rolled their eyes and laughed and said, ONLY half an acre? That was a lot to them.

There are two rows of grape vines in the back yard.
These are table grapes, not wine grapes, we were told.

When we finished our tour of the house and yard and were ready to leave, Bourdais said he had asked his office staff to draw up all the papers for us to sign to begin the buying process. Were we ready? I was surprised, and told him I didn’t know if we wanted to take that next step yet. But you are going back to California this weekend, aren’t you? When will you sign if you don’t sign now?

The front of the house, with green tarps covering the front deck.

He explained that under French law we had a week during which we could change our minds (la période de rétractation) after signing the agreement to buy (le compromis de vente). When you get back to California, think it over. If you change your mind and don’t want to buy the house, send me a registered letter postmarked by Friday, December 20. That seemed reasonable. After all, he wasn't asking us to shell out any money on the spot.

The neighbors across the street have a couple of acres of land.
It's like living across the street from a park.

It just dawned on me that the next day was Friday the Thirteenth. That turned out not to matter, fortunately.

If you don’t change your mind, Bourdais said, send me a deposit by bank-to-bank wire transfer. He gave me a piece of paper that had on it all the information about his escrow account that an American bank would need to process the wire transfer.

The living room is a nice big space with big windows.

Escrow is an interesting word. In French, Bourdais called the equivalent account his compte séquestre. The money is sequestered until all agreements are finalized. I told him that the American term for that was escrow, trying to make sure I understood the process. He blanched, and I realized he had understood the French word escroc, which means crook. Un escroc (the final C is silent, so it’s pronounced sort of like escrow) is a swindler or con man. It took a minute to straighten that one out. He thought for a second that I was accusing him of being dishonest.

After a sudden shower during our December inspection tour, we saw
this rainbow from an upstairs window. We took it as a good omen.

So the impossible had happened. We went back to his office and signed the papers. In four days, we had bought a house in France, and at a very good price. We had arrived with very low expectations, and it had all worked out very smoothly. The only question we asked ourselves was: what are we going to do now?

Next: Back to California