Miscellaneous comments

coming around the corner to the cathedral

replacement bell tower

look at window

bosses in ceiling

altar

great facade

cloister

Pursuant to our visit to Bayonne ("jambon de Bayonne"!, e.g., HAM, what an American kid would consider normal ham) after our visit to St. Jean de Luz, I have a couple of questions as well as some fairly decent photos. First the photos of the cathedral at Bayonne...it had these great angels on either side of the high altar, no transepts, great bosses up on the ceiling, and a window design I've never seen before. And an enormous porch...photos are above; again, I can't seem to get them to go "left" when I say "left" or "right" when I say "right" or get text to wrap or anything, and I think it's a Google problem rather than a Lillie problem. So the cloister is much-admired and is, indeed, big and lovely. Hey, though, it pales in comparison with the cloister at Gloucester Cathedral in England. And the Cathedral itself could be English (we've been visiting too many of these bastide churches over here, and are both sort of hungry for English Cathedrals, or Notre Dame or Bayeux...); it's lovely. Those angels on the sides of the altar are lovely, too. The bosses in the ceiling sort of (this is stretching it..) remind me of those in York Minster (yes, yes, that's stretching at bit). The place is lovely, though. Problem is, we got there about 5:15 on Saturday and there was this sign outside which we ignored saying no visitors, service in session. There wasn't a service in session. And then a guy comes over and very autocratically tells us there are no visitors allowed because of the service (there was nothing going on, and if there were a service about to start, it was going to be a Mass with about 6 people in the congregation). So we sat down; I pointed out that, although they'd pegged us for tourists, they couldn't do anything if we acted like we were going to participate in the service. A bit annoying, actually.

The service wasn't to begin (I found out as we were leaving when I picked up the service leaflet) until 6:00 p.m., and people were starting to actually trickle in as we were leaving.

A couple of questions, though. The next day (Sunday) as I was driving to the Issigeac market there was a sung Mass being broadcast on the Culture channel (better than any of the French music channels, or, God forbid, the English music channels). Very bad acoustics, I trust, as I hope the organ and choir weren't as bad as they sounded, and I don't know where it was coming from. I realized they were referring to Jesus as "tu" and "toi" which is the familiar form of "you", which you use to children, your spouse, very close friends, etc., as opposed to the "vous" form which is more formal, but not necessarily all that formal. Was wondering why one didn't use the "vous" form, which indicates respect, for Jesus. Still haven't figured out what they do with God and the Holy Spirit. But when I got back, I looked at the Bayonne service leaflet. All the prayers use "tu" for Jesus, but prayers to Mary use "vous". Anybody out there know the explanation for this?

Cheers, Lillie

Eglise St. Jean-Baptiste, in St. Jean de Luz (e.g., Atlantic, part 2)

Altar

up in back where servants used to sit

One of chandeliers

It seems to be random spacing again; maybe I will someday get this figured out. OR maybe someday I will once again have Office on this computer and can draft these posts in Word and the paste them into Blogger. That's another story...So my narrative (IF you're still reading) will, er, jump around the photos a bit...

view across nave

doorway on outside of church

One of the claims to fame of the town of St. Jean de Luz (besides being a resort where the rich and wannabe rich go on holiday) is its cathedral. It's down very near the port and should, IMHO, be famous even if it weren't where Louis XIV of France (see, Versailles, Hall of Mirrors, Sun King, etc.) was married to the Infanta Marie-Therese of Austria on June 9, 1660. I finally looked up "Infanta", as Catherine of Aragon who married Henry VIII of England was also referred to as the "Infanta" and neither of us knew exactly what it means; Infante or Infanta means a child of the reigning monarch who is NOT the immediate heir to the throne. The cathedral is incredible. Seriously old, rebuilt in 15th century after a fire destroyed was was there before, but with 17th century inside.   Possibly the interior was re-done in anticipation of the king's marriage. At any rate, it is incredible, and just left me speechless, from the altar to the painted designs (or whatever they are) on the walls, to the upper galleries, to the chandeliers, not least of which is the one that is a sailing boat dangling up there. After the wedding they sealed off the doorway where he and his new queen left the church; just above is a photo of the sealed doorway with a plaque on it.

Marie-Therese stayed here until the wedding

Maison Louis XIV

sign in front of Maison Louis XIV

Two other buildings (shown above) down by the actual port (just a couple of hundred meters away from the cathedral) are also interesting. Both are currently privately owned, but are at least partly open to the public (also there are businesses on the ground floor, of course!) Louis XIV spent most of the summer of 1660 in the one called Maison Louis XIV, and Marie-Therese stayed at the other one after her arrival in St. Jean de Luz until the wedding. The two building are next to the port about 100 meters apart.

houses

more houses

The architecture in the town in general is different from what we've seen anywhere else, period. Couldn't put my finger on what exactly it is that is different, but it is different.

Cheers, Lillie

visit to the Atlantic, sort of---part 1, food

Actually, we did see the Atlantic beach at St. Jean De Luz, and, I suppose, again at Bayonne (after a fashion, not up close and personal) and had glimpses again on the drive home. Rather like we saw the Mediterranean when we were in the Cote d'Azur. St. Jean de Luz and Bayonne are down there in Navarre in Basque country (still haven't figured out the boundaries of Basque country, but I guess the best way to tell is by looking at village names for those that are clearly neither French nor Spanish), on the Atlantic coast by the border with Spain. We weren't but a couple of miles from Spain, if that, and we foolishly made the trip in only one day...

Menu

It's a serious resort area. Not like Cannes, with BP's all over the place, but a serious and seriously expensive resort area. Beach lined with hotels, just like in Nice. We got there and were starving (took twice as long to drive as I'd calculated, sorry about that). The centers of these ancient towns are all small, which is a blessing. I'd made a list of restaurants, and we found one post-haste. It was full and fully-booked (not the same thing). Ended up on the terrace down the road a piece at what appeared to be a real dive, a sleazy bar. We were, however, desperate for food and drink. The menu was, of course, written in seriously bad handwriting on a chalkboard that they carry around, and all of the fish over here are different species but similar to fish we have in the US, so I'm always having trouble. It's usually more or less okay if I can look at it, because it'll look similar to something I know BUT...

moules farcies (stuffed mussels)

gazpacho

On top of which, we're in Basque country, you see, and when the waiter was talking to us, it was supposedly French, but I couldn't understand a word, and he of course spoke no English. He did understand me. Phil ordered two from the Appetizer list, gazpacho and stuffed mussels. I ordered this dish that I THOUGHT he said had fish in it and asparagus and moules (mussels) and green peas and was a "marmite", which can mean any number of things.

marmite

Hey, this is wrapping better than I expected. Not that it's good, but....So the menu you can see above. The mussels around here right now are those tiny ones, and the "farce" (stuffing) was mostly finely chopped mushrooms, I think, with some breadcrumbs, Italian parsley and, I suspect, some esplette, which is this kind of pepper found in Basque and used a lot. It's actually quite nice stuff. And my marmite turned out to be some really, REALLY good fish broth that was seriously yellow, probably from that fake saffron they have (MUCH cheaper than the real stuff, and good but not AS good). It had in it lots of things: potatoes, which Phil refused to acknowledge as potatoes until I gave him one; several steaks of this white fish; tiny mussels; canned green peas and canned white asparagus (those skinny white things you can see on top there...); a boiled egg in the middle there; and some other unidentifiable pieces of food. It was actually really, really good. Phil ate some of it; I ate basically every drop of the rest except for fish bones, mussel shells, and the egg yolk. It was good. Well, maybe not so much the canned asparagus and green peas, which I object to on principle and didn't eat either.

We each had a glass of rose with the meal; it's not as good as the vin de table rose you get all around Perigord, but it was okay. Found a couple more restaurants that were on my list as we wandered around the old port area, but left before dinnertime...

St. Paul, take two

I just realized I sorta said nothing, NOTHING negative about St. Paul. It is indeed "Picture-perfect". Everything is perfect. It doesn't look like anyone lives there, although I guess there must be people living there. No vehicles are allowed in the village "sauf riverains", which I some time ago finally figured out means "except residents". There seem to be only two restaurants in the village, maybe three, lots and LOTS of shops selling art as well as the usual stuff to tourists. And then there are the visitors; as well as people wandering around aimlessly up the hill, there are literally hordes of tours. Many, many groups of "seniors" being herded around by British and American tour guides, walking backward on that curvy cobble-stone road up the hill, talking to the group. The whole experience was rather artificial, even though I wasn't (!!!) with one of the groups.

But I'm glad I went.

Cheers, Lillie

St. Paul

I've sort of decided that chronological order for blogging in overrated. The second day I was at sort of loose ends in the Cote d'Azur, after I'd dropped Phil off at his meeting a Sophia Antipolis, just north of Antibes, I went to St. Paul. I'd only wanted to visit St. Paul and Vence for about 35 years or so, can't remember, but ever since I'd read about them, and all the artists who hung out there.

Alley

Art in a shop

Cannon in a wall

fountain

interesting door

hey, it's American, but it's named after me

my lunch

less than 2 meters wide

St. Paul's street and fountain

Art in restaurant La Colombe d'Or

more art

street scene

steep alleyway

And after I read more recently, I realized they were very different, although both were thick with history and 20th century artists, and also they aren't the same place, what with being very near to each other, but each being on a big (seriously BIG) hill that by most people's standards would qualify as a mountain, with sort of a big gorge separating them. You can see across it from one village to the other, but you sorta can't get there from here (actually you can, but you have to go around). That first day I visited St. Paul. Had read about La Colombe d'Or restaurant for many, MANY years; it's famous for all the 20th century art there.

entry and exist way

The guy who started the hotel/restaurant evidently wasn't all that great a cook, or at least didn't run a great kitchen, but over the years he accepted art as payment for rooms and meals, and it became a destination more because of all the art -- Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, etc., etc., -- around the place, as for the food. Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, as I understand it, met there and were later married there. So I decided to see if we could have lunch there...I asked while I was in St. Paul and was very haughtily told by a French woman with a well-cultivated British accent (after I asked in French) that they were "fully booked" the rest of the week...

St. Paul the village was perfect, though, in a lot of ways, and I'm very glad I went. Did a great deal of shopping. It's a beautiful, beautiful medieval village, picture-perfect.

Don't seem to be able to get the photos to be where I want them. My lunch up there was in the restaurant with the photo of the (VERY narrow) room; it is less than 2 meters wide and is the width of the BUILDING.

Art everywhere in St. Paul. Beautiful place, despite the fact that there's a "restaurant" which is a burger shop called "Lily's place"...but hey, they spelled my name wrong...

Cheers, Lillie

Monday, July 4

As it's not a holiday over here (!) today, we got mail, an unusual occurrence any time. This was from Martin...

Made the mistake of going to the supermarket, actually TWICE, today (not the same one, but hey, I first didn't have anything to fix for lunch and it was too late to get to Carrefour about 20 minutes away by the time I managed to get out of the house about 11:30 this a.m., so I went to the Intermarche in Lalinde and then went to Carrefour late p.m. for supper after it was good and hot, e.g., about 5:30 p.m.--a case study in how to maximize the hassle and discomfort). Everybody, and I MEAN EVERYBODY, almost, in both places was German. This week being the beginning of the traditional European vacations, schools got out last week...the area has been descended on by Germans on holiday. The markets should be fun for the next few weeks (Evelyn, if you're reading this, I'm sorry, but SO many of the vendors in those big markets are farmers from the area, and lots of them are, shall we say, not young...and they, er, don't like Germans...) If you don't know who Evelyn is, she's my pal who's a German economist (actually a mathematician turned economist) in Marburg. For that matter I'm German, too, but from sorta before the 20th century when there were all those wars and things...

This all means that the merchants at the markets will probably be even nicer to me than they usually are (hey, they figure out I'm either English or American, and then they figure out I'm American, and they are actually very nice to me...).

Weather okay. We had one seriously humid, ghastly hot day...42 degrees, e.g., about 107, was hot, Hot, HOT that night, and then the next day it cooled off considerably. It has since been hot in the daytime (80's or so) but it stays cool inside if I keep the shutters closed, and really cool at night. No rain.

Bought my sister a present for her 60th birthday, September this year; it's (the present) much, MUCH older than she is. Nineteenth century, actually. Got it at a Vide Grenier yesterday (which means "empty attic", and basically means "yard sale", "garage sale", if you're American, or "car boot sale" if you're a Brit. There are also "Brocante" sales, which are basically "flea markets", but there's shall we say overlap. Both are rampant on Saturday mornings and all day Sundays in the heat in the summertime around here.

Cheers, Lillie

Beginning of stay in Cote d'Azur

I find it hard to believe, but we spent a week on the Cote d'Azur and I never actually managed to set foot in the Mediterranean. I even took a swim suit. The first evening we were there, our landlord suggested we go to Cabris, this lovely little town not far away (!), up a "hill" (! again), and eat at either the Auberge de la Chevre d'Or (golden sheep or maybe it's goat); if we couldn't get in there, we were supposed to go to a place sorta next to it called Le Petit Prince. For the record, Antoine St. Exupery, who wrote the book "Le Petit Prince" grew up around there, was a pilot during the war, and was, of course, a writer. I think there are some relatives of his still living in the area.

Sooooo, we ate at La Chevre d'Or. It was GREAT. We had their house aperitif, which involved some "vin de cerise" or something they had made themselves (more about these liqueurs people make later), some fruit juice, and some dry white "methode champenoise", which of course is champagne that wasn't made in the Champagne region, so they can't call it champagne. It was lovely, and arrived with a small dish of olives.

There's a problem here: the batteries in all three of (1) my camera, (2) my iPhone and (3) the French cell phone were dead, so there are unfortunately no photos, which is a serious pity. For his first course, I think Phil had one of these salads with chevre on toast, with honey drizzled on top or something. I had their soup, which was (get this) asparague and fava bean soup, and it was FANTASTIC. It had some crunchy thing on top, and was drizzled with EVOO with some pesto mixed in. The soup had no cream, and I couldn't tell if it had broth (probably). It was nice on its own, but when you mixed in the EVOO and basil, it was to die for. I had the fish; can't remember what Phil had, but it may have been the fish soup or something. There was a palate cleanser between first and second courses that was grapefruit sorbet in a glass with a sweet white wine poured over it, like Monbazillac or Sauternes or something. That was fantastic, too. We drank a bottle of the house rose, which was from the region, and was so unbelievably pale that I actually asked if they'd brought us their house white instead of rose, and was told "No".

I probably had sorbet cassis and/or sorbet citron (lemon) for dessert. The first course and the palate cleanser and wine were so fantastic, the rest of the (EXCELLENT) meal pales in comparison. And I (sob) have no photos.

amuse bouche

only photos you'll see of me

I was watching a baby

my calamari and risotto

salade rustique

phil's main course

So the last evening we were there, we went back UP that mountain (did I mention the multiple hairpin curves? at least I wasn't driving) to Cabris (great view of the Riviera from the edge) to Le Petit Prince for dinner. It was so bad that I later wrote to our landlords suggesting that perhaps they shouldn't ever recommend it again. For the amuse bouche, we had a glass full of unseasoned raw stuff; it was fine, cucumber and things like that, if you salted it. Phil didn't finish his.

So I'm having trouble with the formatting here. We had "salade rustique", both of us, for a first course. As you can see, it was HUGE; neither of us ate it all. However, it was pretty good, what with good ingredients and all and fairly difficult to screw up, at least not badly. It would have been a really good lunch for us with bread and wine. For our main courses, Phil had their beef stew with pasta, which was dry, and the beef stew was essentially inedible, as was the roasted asparagus spear, what with it being seriously overcooked. I had their calamari with risotto. The calamari was tough and inedible; the rice was undercooked, and the risotto was drowned in cream. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think it was even HOT. Same asparagus.

Neither of us ate much at all of our main course, which was too bad for the (very expensive) half bottle of red wine we had, what with it being very good. The waitress, who we think was also the owner, commented on our not eating much of our main courses, and THEN Phil wanted a dessert. Can't remember what it was, but it had ice cream in it and was good. I decided I wanted two scoops of sorbet, e.g., cassis and citron (hey, the scoops you get in France are probably less than half the size of an American scoop of ice cream). That woman actually asked (in a rather snide way, I thought) if I was actually going to eat all my dessert.

And those were our first and last meals in the Cote d'Azur.

Stay tuned. I know the photos are all clumped, but I'm doing the best I can...at least there are photos, right?

Cheers, Lillie