Arras — glad I went

I drove the 30 miles up to Cambrai (pop. 32,000) from Péronne today because Cambrai is a town I've heard and read about for 30 or 40 years but had never seen. You know, I studied French literature and civilization for many years, along with linguistics, and one of the major 17th century French writers was from Cambrai. His name was Fénelon, and he was an archbishop in the Church.

Two photos that I took on the Grand'Place in Arras,
in northern France. Click them to enlarge them.

Then I drove the 30 miles over to the city of Arras (pop. 43,000), which I had never heard much about. It turned out to be a much more interesting town to see, photograph, and walk around in. It has a real Grand'Place — a main square in the Flemish style. If you've been to Brussels, you know what I mean. From what I've read, Arras is also an important university town, with a large population of young people.

Three shots of houses around the smaller square in Arras, called
the Place des Héros. Click them to see enlargements.

Cambrai also has a Grand'Place, but it doesn't possess the architectural unity of the one in Arras. And Arras actually has two big squares in the center of town. The second one is smaller than the Grand'Place but still vast and impressive. Both squares are surrounded by houses with pignons, or gables, on the front façade. Another feature of the houses on the Grand'Place is their covered arcades at sidewalk level.

Some closer views of façades on the Grand'Place in Arras

Since I don't really know a lot about Arras, I'm just going to post a few of the pictures I took there today. They can speak for themselves. I'd like to go back and spend more time in Arras at some point.

C'est Arras, en Flandre

The city I posted about yesterday is Arras (pop. 42,000) in French Flanders. Arras was nearly wiped off the map (75% destroyed) during World War I but, like so many French cities, it was rebuilt à l'identique after the war. The city didn't suffer as much during World War II. Below are some photos of buildings and shops around one of the city's two expansive places publiques (plazas, squares) in the Baroque style.

The French Wikipédia article about Arras says: Arras est réputée pour ses deux magnifiques places baroques qui forment un ensemble architectural unique au monde, son beffroi et sa Citadelle, tous deux classés au patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO. Avec 225 édifices protégés au titre des monuments historiques, Arras est la ville avec la densité de monuments la plus importante de France.

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We took delivery of our new refrigerator late yesterday afternoon, pretty much exactly a week after the old one broke down. It was only 6½ years old, but since we paid about 650 euros for it in 2015, it only cost us 100 euros a year. Except for the scramble we've live through for a week now, that's not too bad.

            The new fridge is a frost-free Samsung model.

I who can't stand to put good food in the garbage had to recognize that it was advisable in this case. But we saved as much as we could by packing our upright freezer downstairs in the utility room as tight as possible, and by using an even older chest freezer as a refrigerator. That one is in the garage still, even though we emptied and de-commissioned nearly a year ago. We hadn't yet figured out how to dispose of it. It has served us well since 2005, including over the past week. It was not fun to have to run downstairs half a dozen times a day to turn it on and off, in an effort to keep it cold enough, but not so cold as to freeze the cheese, cream, etc., that we had put in there. It really helped to set alarms upstairs to keep us from forgetting to go down there at the appropriate times to turn it on or off.

Arras: cats and a belfry

The bell tower or belfry (le beffroi in French) in Arras is listed as part of the UNESCO world heritage site Belfries of Belgium and France. There are 56 belfries in the Flanders region of Belgium and in French Flanders (la Flandre Française) in France. The bells in belfries are (or were) rung to alert the local population to imminent danger.

     The belfry in Arras was built in the 14th and 15th centuries. It had to be rebuilt in the 1830s, after decades of neglect,
and again in the 1920s, after the Great War of 1914-1918, each time à l'identique. It stands 75 meters (250 ft) tall.
Just a few days ago, my blogger friend Susan at Days on the Claise published an informative post about belfries and sirens.

     The belfry in Arras is topped off by a gilded lion. I'm not sure how I got a decent close-up photo of it from ground level.
The big cat was looking down as these two house cats were keeping watch over the city the day I was there in 2011.

Cambrai and other trips

About a month ago was up in the northern part of France, thanks to my friend CHM. He has family up there, and he had business to attend to. He asked me to go with him and serve, partly, as the chauffeur for the trip.

On a day when CHM was busy in the town where his family comes from, I decided to take a drive to two towns just slightly farther north. Those towns are Cambrai and Arras — I posted some pictures of Arras earlier — and both are in Flanders, the Flemish area of France, just across the border with the old province and current region called Picardie.

Houses and buildings around the main square in Cambrai

There was something I noticed immediately. As soon as I had driven 40 miles north, I started getting radio stations in Flemish (related to Dutch) along with the regular French-language stations. If you listen carefully and tune your ear, you can start understanding a little Flemish, because it's very close to English both historically and linguistically.

In fact, Cambrai didn't become French until 1678, when Louis XIV took it away from Spain, which back then had control over the region that is now Northern France, Belgium, and Holland.

Two café-restaurants in Cambrai named after birds

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Cambrai was that I have heard about it all my life, or nearly. I started learning French at the age of 14, in high school, and by the time I went to college (or "to university," as non-Americans say) I was studying French literature. Cambrai was famous for a 17th-century writer and academician named Fénelon (b.1651-d.1715), who came to be known as the « Cygne de Cambrai » – the "Swan of Cambrai" — because of his graceful writing and enlightened mind. More about him later...

No matter what French town you're in, you'll likely find a charcuterie resembling this one

Visiting these places I've always heard of but never seen is one of the joys of living in France. I remember clearly the first time I saw Paris and Notre-Dame cathedral, of course, in 1970 — not to mention Aix-en-Provence. And the cathedral in Rouen in 1972, as well as the Château de Chambord in 1973. The white cliffs along the English Channel, the rocky coast of Brittany, the Mont Saint-Michel, Toulouse, Cognac, Chartres — and on and on.

Another view of the main square in Cambrai

Now I've seen Cambrai and Arras. When Walt and I moved here, I thought we would spend the rest of our lives traveling around France. It was a whole country to explore — you could never see it all, and as CHM says: « Tout est à voir en France » – "Everything is worth seeing." The traveling continues, even though I don't go as far afield as I once thought I would.

And then what French city doesn't have a restaurant named L'Escargot?

We have a dog and a cat, a garden and a house to take care of. The dollar is low and the price of everything (especially fuel for the car and food in restaurants) gets higher and higher. But the fact is, we are in France. Every place in France is worth seeing, but then again every place in France is just like every other place in France, in many ways. Living here, I feel less driven to see it all and am content to go traveling less frequently.

Andouillettes for lunch

One of the few local foods I have a problem with is a kind of sausage called an andouillette. It's such a nice sounding name — pronounced [ahn-dou-YET] — for something that has a strong odor and taste, at least to the American nose and palate.

Andouille is basically a bigger sausage made pretty much the same way as andouillette. Louisiana-style andouille is a different thing entirely however. In Louisiana, andouille is straightforward kind of pork sausage (though one book I have says it is made from "stomach and neck meat"). It can be pretty spicy.

Fluorescent roses in the back yard to dress up this odiferous topic...

In France, andouille and andouillette are made from the pig's intestines. In other words, it's what we might call a chit'lin' (or chitterling) sausage in the U.S. South. The Larousse Gastronomique says: « Les andouillettes sont préparées comme les andouilles, mais avec des boyaux moins gros. » That is, "andouillettes are made the same way andouilles are, but with skinnier bowels." I'm using the word "bowel" because it is a literal translation of the French term boyau. And because it gives you a better idea what we are talking about here.

Why did we decide to eat andouillettes yesterday? Well, it wasn't really a decision. We were invited to lunch by Maryvonne and Bernard, our neighbors across the road. They also invited an old American friend of theirs who is now 84 years old and who hadn't been back to France in five or six years, plus a French friend of his.

A hibiscus flower

Why Maryvonne decided to serve andouillettes to a group of Americans, I'll never know. Even she knew it was a dangerous thing to do — she actually said so as she brought the plate of sausages to the table, their odor filling the room — and she also brought out a plate of lamb chops that those who couldn't eat the sausages could have instead.

Well, I figured that since Maryvonne bought and prepared the andouillettes, I should try them. Her food is always delicious. The andouillettes she had were made in Vouvray with Vouvray wine, which is one of the highest-quality local wines. The older American gentleman didn't didn't turn up his nose at the prospect, and the three French people were enthusiastic about the andouillettes, almost oohing and aahing about how good they smelled and how good they would taste.

Mille-pertuis, a.k.a. St. John's wort

I told Maryvonne that andouillettes are one of the rare French foods I wasn't crazy about, but that I would try them. « Il y a de la moutarde, j'espère, » I added. Some of that strong Dijon mustard, the kind that sets your nostrils on fire and feels like it's going to blow the top of your head off when you put a little too much of it on your steak or sausage, would go a long way toward masking the taste of the pork guts... er, lovely andouillettes.

The andouillette is kind of a cult food in France. If you like it, you are French. If you don't, you are probably not. It's that simple. I guess I am not. There's a club. It's called the A.A.A.A.A. — L'Association amicale des amateurs d'authentiques andouillettes. It holds competitions and gives out awards to the charcutiers who make the best andouillettes in France.

A salmon-colored rose in the neighbors' garden

The city of Troyes, east of Paris, is probably the best-known andouillette-producing place in France, but cities and towns including Arras in the north and Lourdes in the south, along with Cambrai, Paris, Aubagne in Provence, and Fleurie in Beaujolais also brag about the andouillettes they make.

The standard joke about andouillettes goes like this: « Une bonne andouillette, ça sent la merde... mais pas trop ! » — A good andouillette smells like sh*t... but not too much!

Andouillettes and andouilles are sold pre-cooked — poached — and ready for grilling. I assume the ones we ate were poached in white wine, and the ones made in Troyes might be poached in champagne. (Some might say that's a waste of good champagne, but never mind.) By the way, the word « Andouille ! » can be hurled at someone as an insult, usually in the form « Espèce d'andouille ! » It means something like " You bloody fool!"

A pork butcher's shop in Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule,
a wine village in the Auvergne region.
The owner claims to be the "King of the Andouillette."

Afterwards, I asked Walt what he thought of the andouillette he ate. He said he put so much Dijon mustard on it that he couldn't really taste it. He said he thought it contained a hint of cinnamon, and he might be right. And he also pointed out that he didn't have seconds.

Well, I did have seconds. Southerners are polite that way, you know. I didn't enjoy the second piece any more than I had enjoyed the first, either. I slathered on the mustard both times. And when I say a piece of sausage, I mean exactly that. Neither one of us ate anything approaching a whole andouillette.

But even the Larousse Gastronomique is clear on this point. It says, after a paragraph listing the various side dishes — mashed potatoes, apple sauce, sautéed onions, raw red cabbage, celery-root purée, lentils, red beans, etc. — that you might serve with andouillette: « Une seule certitude : l'andouillette exige une bonne moutarde forte. » One thing is certain: andouillette demands a good strong mustard.

Callie lurking behind bunches of wine grapes

I'll tell you how good the andouillette was: on the same platter, Maryvonne also served some of the sausages called boudins noirs — variously known in English as "blood sausage" or "black pudding." Between the two pieces of andouillette, I ate one of those just to cleanse my palate.

By the way, you really learn to appreciate a good red wine when you eat foods like these!

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.

Arras

I'm in Paris at CHM's and I'm experimenting with blogging from my tablet, without a 'real' computer...