Travels with Forty Roses: April 2019

Because many people ask us why we spend so much time in France we thought it best to complete some analysis. We did. And, we have a list. Not terribly analytical or prioritized. Here it is …Voila!

1. First and foremost and ranked as our best experience in France to date are our patient, kind and generous French friends who gently help us with our atrocious abuse of their language, guide in specific cultural nuance; for instance the etiquette of cheese as one tiny example, and always offer help and advice about what to see and where to see it. Plus a myriad of tidbits to help adjust our North American ways to their country.

2. Baguettes and boulangeries. It was interesting to find 8 boulangeries within a 2 to 10 minute walk from us this winter. Naturally, we had our favourites, especially for Sunday morning croissants. For those we were tempted to travel a bit further. Paris has an annual contest for “the best Croissant of the Year”. We have taste-tested a few of those and found The Moulin de la Croix Nivert product to be outstanding. We have quickly adjusted to the cultural convention of picking up a baguette and munching a good junk as we carry it home. This was an easy transformation.

3. Lace curtains in every design imaginable. I have planned to do a series of photos highlighting the patterns and just have not taken the time to collect them. It will be a next season project so you too may fall in love as I have.

4. The best linen dish towels anywhere on the planet. And that goes for wipeable linen-like tablecloths. A joy!

5. Apèro hour with friends at a local bar. A beer, a glass of wine, a tea or coffee, a tiny snack of green olives or fresh radish with salt and much conversation.

6. A greeting upon entering any shop and an acknowledgement of your departure by the owner or staff. This is something we Canadians ought to adopt. When we arrive home we do miss that genial greeting that is often missing, even when we initiate one ourselves.

7. The fact people take lunch and enjoy it.

8. The canals and rivers. The network is extensive from major commercial shipping routes to those far less traveled waterways. For instance in our travels to Metz these past 2 weeks we saw 4 pleasure boats and 2 commercial craft in about 500km.

9. The VNF. We should explain. The VNF is the Voies Navigables de France, the department that looks after the canals and waterways. They are incroyable. We traveled this week through the “Valley of the 70”, along the Canal latéral de la Marne au Rhin. Three different VNF employees moved along with us through 4 days of traveling, each responsible for a specific section and driving the canal path sometimes ahead, sometimes behind but always minutes away. We were the first boat through that incredible canal this season and so, to ensure we had safe passage, we were accompanied. The mere thought of keeping all these canals trimmed out and locks in working order with flooding and various issues, is daunting. Every VNF employee we have met has been helpful and a delight. Even the guy that bicycled through the Souterrain des Mauvages ahead of us, stopping to guide us where the rail might catch the boat or where the tunnel narrowed was cheerful in that bone chilling cold. 5km of it. We gave him a bottle of wine for his duties all the previous day and a coffee before the tunnel, which we suspect, he enjoyed just as much.

10. The opportunity for temperate weather in winter.

11. The flower baskets on bridges and throughout each little town. The Marie or Town Hall in each village with flags flying proudly.

12. The cheese. One cannot count the varieties, the range of flavours the pride in which it is made and the complexities of serving just the right kind, at the right time with appropriate accompaniment, let alone the correct method of cutting each splendid or interesting shape.

13. Truffles in the regular grocery store. Escargot in the freezer section, same with Coquille St. Jacques.

14. The wine. We certainly have our favourites here as well but they are numerous and un-listable because we may not have met them all, as yet! We can say that Bordeaux we look to with reverence and Champagne region with love and laughter, Sancerre for delightful sipping and all those regions and locales in between with curiosity and delight at the variables we find. We love the vineyards in spring and fall. The straight steep rows, the time-honoured tending methods, complex and labour intensive and individual to the owner and producer. We love the small houses and the owner/growers who enjoy teaching their customers about their product and the enjoyment of it.

15. AOP festivals and the way the French cherish and ennoble their regions. There are specialties upon specialties from every corner of the country and they are fiercely and rightly promoted. Here butter is not butter. It is a divine product with different delicious top and bottom notes depending upon the region of origin.

16. A different potato type for every cooking method or traditional dish. Non GMO food! Vegetables are delicious, strawberries smell and taste like strawberries.

17. French pharmacies

18. Badoit, Pulco

19. The libraries. The Mazarine in Paris is magnificent, Chateau Chantilly and many others. The book stores old and new.

20. Flower shops and the imaginative floral displays therein. Fabulous bouquets.

21. Brocantes. You can spend an entire day and never see ¼ of things for sale at a large one.

22. Fresh Markets everywhere.

23. The fact shops place the price of each item displayed in their window on a card easily readable. Big department stores included!

24. Première Dimanche; which means museums and official buildings, historic houses etc., are open free of charge to all who choose to enter.

25. Music…all kinds but classical being our ‘thing’ we find it so accessible and reasonable to attend wonderful concerts with top flight conductors and musicians. Students have special low prices and young people fill the seats. Attendance is encouraged as music is taught in school and it is evident that such strategies pay off.

Of course, there are negatives too, but that isn’t what this little write up is about.

Our true love will always be our home, family , friends and community in Canada; it is after all, where our roots belong. However, we have adopted France as our second home and our desire is to wrestle with the French language until we are able to carry on genuine and wide-ranging conversations with those we meet on this journey.