Loire Valley weekend

We left Paris last Thursday for a long weekend in central France.  After an easy train trip we found ourselves in the town of Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire.  We stayed in a bed and breakfast situated on the banks of the Loire River.  Not only did we have a bathroom in a former wine cellar that was bigger than our bedroom here in Paris, but there was a heated pool in the garden.

The building housing the bed and breakfast was a Benedictine abbey prior to the French Revolution

View from the garden at sunset

While we did get out into the surrounding towns quite a bit, we also enjoyed exploring Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire and the summer entertainment put on by the town. We ran across a bicycle race one night after dinner and there was live music every day.

On our last day, we took a long walk along the Loire River and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Eventually we ended up back in the center of town and inspected all of the offerings of the local market. We bought some bread to use for dinner when we got home with another of our purchases, a delicious local goat cheese called Crottin de Chavignol.

Nous sommes allés à la plage

From mid-July to mid-August, sand beaches are constructed along the right bank of the Seine river across from the Île de la Cité and in the Parc de la Villette next to the Villette Basin.  A series of activities are hosted at the two beaches and in the place in front of the Hôtel de Ville, including free concerts, dance classes, mini-golf, pétanque, a big screen set up for viewing the Olympics (they did something similar for the French Open), a temporary library of books available for enjoying on the beach, and educational programming related to health and the environment.

The beach makes for a fun and summery backdrop walks along the river, but I think what we are enjoying most is the warm, sunny weather that seemed to arrive in Paris with the construction of the beach.

Reims

We recently took a quick overnight trip to Reims, a town about 90 miles northwest of Paris.  It was a quick trip in part because taking the high-speed train (called the TGV) from Paris to Reims takes just 45 minutes.  We were able to take the same sort of train when we went to Strasbourg and made the 300 mile journey in two-and-a-half hours.  It’s a pleasant change from flying: you can travel directly from Paris to the center of another city without needing to factor in time for getting to and from airports or going through security.

There is a lot of history packed into the small city center of Reims.  It contained General Eisenhower’s headquarters during World War II and was where the German army surrendered to end the war in Europe.  There are also a few Roman ruins: a gate built in 2nd century A.D. and the cryptoportique, an underground structure from the 3rd century A.D. that was used for grain storage.

Reims is also home to the cathedral where many of the coronations of the kings of France took place.  

The cathedral was constructed between 1211 and 1311, but was partially demolished by shelling in World War I.  It has been meticulously restored, but it is interesting to see the difference in color between the old and the new parts of the cathedral.  

One thing we particularly enjoyed was the mix of original and modern stained glass windows.  In addition to the windows that are as old as the cathedral itself, there were windows replaced in the 1970s and 1990s.  My favorite was a window designed by the artist Marc Chagall.  I am fond of the Chagall mosaic near Monroe & Dearborn in Chicago and his pieces in the Art Institute of Chicago, so it was really interesting to see his work in such a different setting.

But history aside, what we were really visiting Reims for was the champagne!  Reims is the largest city in the Champagne region of France and many of the bigger champagne makers have houses (maisons) in town where you can take a tour of the cellars and taste the champagne.  We decided to go to Reims just a few weeks before our trip and I didn’t try to book champagne tastings until about a week and a half prior to the trip.  This was a big mistake - a number of the places that I contacted were booked up a couple of weeks in advance.  I did manage to book a tour for each day, one at Mumm and the other at Lanson, but we would like to take another trip to see the places we missed.

Our two tours taught us a lot about how champagne is made.  Champagne is a mixture of three different kind of grapes: pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier.  Grapes are harvested in many different villages, then crushed, and the juice from the different varieties and locations are all fermented separately.  Both tours discussed the evolution of the fermentation vessels over time: oak barrels were used first, then ceramic tile-lined cement tanks, now stainless steel vats.  On one of the tours we got to peek inside a decommissioned ceramic-lined tank.  I was expecting a smooth lining, but it looked a lot like tile in a bathroom!  

Once the grapes are fermented and have become wine, the winemaker blends different types together to produce the desired flavor.  Vintage champagne is made with grapes that are all harvested in the same year, but only when the grapes are considered particularly good.  Not every year is declared a vintage year.  Most of the champagne that you see at the store, and any bottle that doesn’t specify a year on its label, is made by blending wine from from grapes harvested in different years.  The winemaker chooses the blend that will match the character of the champagnes typically produced by that maker.

Once the champagne is blended, it is put into the bottles.  Some yeast and sugar are added to start a second fermentation, and then the bottles are sealed using a cap, not a cork.  The carbon dioxide gas produced during the second fermentation remains in the capped bottle as the carbonation in the champagne.  When the second fermentation is complete, the wine is then aged.  The fermentation leaves sediment in the wine, so after the aging the bottle is manipulated, either by machine or by hand, to gently shift the sediment into the bottle’s neck.  The bottles are then immersed in some type of cooling medium while upside down, causing the sediment and liquid in the neck of the bottle to freeze.  The bottle cap is then removed and the pressure that has built up inside the bottle from the carbonation pushes out the frozen sediment. Sugar is added to the champagne to produce the appropriate level of sweetness for the particular type of champagne and the bottles are corked and labeled.

The two tours we took were really interesting.  Lanson’s tour includes their fermentation and bottling facilities in addition to the cellars.  Mumm had a “museum” of old barrel-making and bottling equipment in one part of their cellars.  On both tours, it was amazing to see the vast number of bottles aging or stored in the cellars.  

We are both eager to go back to Reims or another part of the Champagne region, but luckily we can enjoy champagne here in Paris until we return!

View from our bridge

One of the things I like about where we live in Paris is that we are just a short walk from the Seine River.  I am always reminded that we really live in Paris when I cross the bridge nearest our apartment and catch a glimpse of some of the city's landmarks.

Le quatorze juillet

Saturday was le quatorze juillet, or la fête nationale, the French holiday that is called Bastille Day in the United States.  The big celebration in Paris consisted of a military parade down the Champs-Élysées in the morning, fireworks by the Eiffel Tower, and parties at some of the fire stations (bals des pompiers) lasting late into the night.  Normally the bals des pompiers take place the night before the holiday but with the holiday falling on a Saturday there were parties on both Friday and Saturday.

We got up on Saturday morning and took the metro line that would drop us right into the parade route.  Unfortunately we learned while on the train that the metro stops running under the parade route were mostly closed or open only for transfers.  We ended transferring to another line so that we could approach the parade route from just across the river.  When we emerged from the metro stop in front of the Hôtel des Invalides we discovered that we were at the staging area/endpoint for the military regiments marching in the parade.  We got to see a lot of soliders marching away from the end of the parade route, graciously taking pictures with civilians, and even playing tourist.

  

The parade also included all sorts of military vehicles driving down the Champs-Élysées with one carrying the president of France.  We tried to cross the nearest bridge to the side of the river where the parade was taking place but it was closed, as were the next closest bridges.  We finally found an open bridge and set off walking towards the Champs-Élysées only to find that all of the streets had been barricaded by the police within a block of the parade route.  We found a street that military vehicles were using to speed away from the parade route, but failed to reach the parade itself.

We gave up on seeing the actual parade and headed back toward the metro stop.  While we were walking back across the river we saw the finale of the parade, which was a series of helicopters and planes flying over the parade route and soldiers parachuting into the Place de la Concorde (the official endpoint of the parade).

Right next to the entrance to the metro we saw a recruitment van for the French Foreign Legion.  If only they accepted women, I could be on my way to French citizenship.

We were almost home from our ill-fated attempt to watch the parade when we saw a large convoy of military vehicles driving down our street.  There were a few sites around the city where people could go to meet the members of the French military.  Our apartment is quite near to one of them, so we had tanks and jeeps driving through the neighborhood all afternoon.

(our favorite neighborhood restaurant is in the background of this picture)

It rained off and on all day, but luckily it was dry for the parade.  Nonetheless, we did not want to brave the intermittent rain to wait outside all evening at the park next to the Eiffel Tower to reserve a spot for viewing the fireworks at 11 pm.  We decided to watch the fireworks from the one of the bridges over the river instead.  The fireworks were gorgeous, even from afar, and it was interesting to be packed into a huge crowd of people filling the sidewalks of the bridge and spilling into the street.  My pictures of the fireworks did not turn out well, but a 40+ minute video of the fireworks is available online.  It is even more exciting than our viewing, as it lets you fully enjoy the disco theme of the fireworks this year.  I found a few pictures of the parade online and it looks like we missed quite the affair.  The parade is televised, so maybe next year we will just watch it at home!

Summer vs. Winter

The high season for tourism has arrived in Paris.  I’ve noticed a gradual increase in the number of people clutching maps and toting rolling suitcases in our neighborhood over the last few months.  There has also been an uptick in the amount of English I hear spoken at the market and the number of hop-on-hop-off buses driving down our street or past J’s office building.  

We’ve often observed that there is an overflow area around tourist attractions filled with crowds from the attraction but that outside that area the tourist density drops sharply.  The difference between the crowds in the middle of the winter and the middle of summer seems to be that the overflow areas are larger so you have to get farther away from the tourist attractions to find things back to normal.

I don’t think I’ve ever walked by Notre Dame during the hours it is open without noticing a line of people waiting to go in.  The place in front of it was filled with people when we visited in the middle of the winter and it’s still crowded now.

December

July

But the sidewalks in the neighborhood around Notre Dame are much more people-filled now than in the low season.  I’ve often walked past the cathedral if I am in the neighborhood because it is really lovely, but working my way through the crowds at this point in the year makes visiting the cathedral a much less pleasant detour.

At the Louvre, the room containing the Mona Lisa has been crowded every time I’ve visited it.

February

July

But the neighboring rooms are much more crowded than they were over the winter.

February

July

And the crowds in the courtyard at the Louvre are no longer limited to people waiting in line to get into the museum.*  The fountains surrounding the glass pyramid in the main courtyard are lined with people all day long.

January

July

While the city does feel quite a bit more crowded, there are benefits to having so many tourists in town.  I get to see a lot of American flags around town on the clothing of many of the tourists from the United States.  And French people seem much more impressed with my beginner French when the city is filled with people that speak even less French than me.

* There are a few entrances to the Louvre and the only place where I’ve seen long lines is the entrance through the pyramid in the pictures above.  There is rarely much of a line at the entrance in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping center that you enter at 99 Rue de Rivoli or from the Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre metro station.  I would recommend using the underground entrance and leaving the museum through the glass pyramid.

Summer cooking

While it doesn’t always feel like summer here to me (I think the temperature has been above 80º F three times so far), we are starting to get summery produce in our baskets and at the market.

Apricots, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, fava beans, lettuce and eggs.

The apricots barely made it through the weekend, but the rest of the basket contents have made for some delicious lunches and dinners this week.  I made a salad using the lettuce, some of the tomatoes and part of a cucumber, that I topped with steak and a little grated Havarti cheese (from our trip to Denmark).  I also made a version of this salad with some of the potatoes and cucumber (and picked up the remaining vegetables in the recipe from the market).  Finally, we had pasta (which I made from scratch, using up some of the eggs) with the fava beans and the rest of the tomatoes.  

I took a break from cooking on the 4th of July so that we could get cheeseburgers at Big Fernand.  We thought a little American food in Paris would be a great way to celebrate the holiday.  We arrived just before restaurant opened for dinner at 7:30 pm and there were already a few people waiting.  While we waited, one of the employees brought menus out and explained to me and J that all of their vegetables are picked up at the market each morning, the beef is ground in-house to ensure the quality of the meat, and the rolls are baked specially for the restaurant.  You can choose your own toppings, but we each went with one of their suggested combinations.  They were by far the best hamburgers we have had in Paris and we will definitely be back.