Paris Journal 2010 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Photos and thoughts about Paris

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We had a fine time in Aguitaine. Our friend was staying in a friend’s house near La Romieu. The friend of the friend is Mary, who’s British, and who did a very nice job turning what Sally Jane calls “a pile of rocks” into a nice, charming home. The place was actually a large chicken coop, or rather more of a barn, but now is a comfortable home with a fabulous view. It is isolated, in the country, surrounded by huge farm fields, on a country road lined with trees as only the French can do a country road. Sally Jane picked us up at the train station in Agen and somehow, the three of us were able to navigate out of Agen in spite of the fact that 85 percent of the street signs are missing. She had her friends Barbara and Clive come over for dinner, which was a simple but nice meal of already roasted chicken, pork and potatoes from the butcher, salad, and a plum tart. It was put together by two nice young ladies who are coming in occasionally to help Sally Jane with domestic chores during her stay. Barbara and Clive each have their own homes in a tiny village called Castelnau d’Abrieu (pop. 67, according to Clive). We saw their places on Friday. Both have a fabulous view. Barbara’s was a former chateau that she lovingly has turned into a beautiful home over the past five years. She’s originally German, but has lived in Britain and France for a very long time. On Thursday, we explored La Romieu with its very interesting collegiate church, cloisters, and towers. The town was founded in 1062 by two Benedictine monks. The collegiate church was constructed in 1318. La Romieu has a wonderful legend that is the center of its soul. It goes like this: In the year 1338, in a village of Gascony called La Romieu, known for its collegiate church founded only 20 years earlier, lived the happy couple Vincent and Mariette. He was a lumberjack, and she often accompanied him in the forest to make bundles of firewood. They worked hard, but with the chickens, pig, vegetables and fruits from the garden, the table was plentiful. They’d been married for three years when Mariette gave birth to a little girl whom they named Angéline. But alas, Vincent was crushed by a tree that fell on him. Mariette was inconsolable, and let herself waste away. Two months later, she was found dead, holding Angéline in her arms. The little girl was taken in by a neighbor and grew up with the neighbor’s children as if she were their sister. Angéline showed a great attraction for cats. There were always two or three around her who, during the night, would sleep on her bed. She often shared her food with them. Angéline grew up to be a good young lady who helped her adoptive parents by working in the fields, often accompanied by her cats. In 1342 and for the next two years, the winter was very harsh, and the spring and summer were so rainy that it was not possible to plant the fields. There followed a great famine and in spite of the distribution by the priest Arnaud d’Aux of the reserves of the collegiate church, the residents of La Romieu soon had nothing to eat. They thought then that since there were numerous cats in the village, they’d make them into a fricassee. Angéline’s adoptive parents, knowing well that she loved her cats, allowed her to keep one male cat and one female cat, on the condition that she hide them, because the neighbors would otherwise break their necks. Angéline stayed in during the day, with the two cats in the granary, and during the night let them go out to hunt. But the famine accentuated and much of the village died. Angéline and her parents barely subsisted by gathering roots in the woods, and sometimes mushrooms, but it was just a pitiful pittance. Very thin, they nevertheless survived this sad period. The more temperate weather came at last and finally permitted a harvest of what plants there were. However, at La Romieu, where the cats had disappeared, the rats proliferated to the point of threatening the harvested stores. Angéline, with infinite precautions, had been able to hide her cats and they had several litters. There were twenty-some cats frolicking in the granary. Happily, the house was isolated. Meanwhile, the villagers were lamenting the great damage and losses caused by the rats. It was then that Angéline announced that she was going to give up twenty-some kittens that the villagers could adopt. The rats disappeared rapidly, and so it is that Angéline saved La Romieu from a new tragedy. The legend also says that the face of Angéline, at the end of her years, resembled more and more that of a cat, and that her eyes transformed into the eyes of a cat. Or maybe it was just her cataracts? Ahem. Anyway, we had a nice time that morning in La Romieu, getting pastry and coffee at the bakery and eating at a picnic table in the bakery’s garden. We went on to Lectoure, a market town of Armagnac, and were surprised to see the market not as busy as usual. Charming town, however. Just outside of town, we stopped at Bleu de Pastel, where the official dye for French Blue is made. While we were in the shop, it poured rain outside. By the time we were finished petting the shop’s Siamese cat with blue eyes, and Sally Jane was finished shopping, the rain stopped. We went on to lunch at La Terrauboise in Terraube (Tel. 05 62 68 94 83), where the proprietors Denis and Manou recognized Sally Jane from years earlier. They gave her a great, big welcome. The location is surprising. You enter a bar-tabac that isn’t so chic. But you climb some old, narrow wooden stairs, and then you are in the dining room with a view to die for. And the food, oh the food . . . . Chef Denis is a fine chef indeed. And the prices in this part of France are so much more reasonable than in Paris, bien sur. I had the fixed price lunch menu, for 15 euros, including a starter of thonade aux capres, basilic et mesclun aux pignons (a tuna spread with capers, basil, and mesclun greens with vinaigrette and pine nuts), followed by tasty slices of roasted duck breast in a rich, fruity sauce, and then the best crème brulée I’ve had in years. Tom also had the 15-euro menu, but his starter was a galette a l’oeuf roti et au parmesan (a pancake with a whole roasted egg inside, dusted all over with parmesan cheese). Interesting. I can’t remember what Sally Jane ordered, but it was a different fixed price menu, at about 30 euros. Needless to say, we did not have a big dinner that evening. We just nibbled on leftovers, which I pulled together and served from Sally Jane’s fridge. Going back to Lectoure, one of the most fulfilling experiences for me was helping Sally Jane at the pharmacy. Her French doesn’t really exist, but she does marvelously well with the few words she knows combined with her great comedic acting talent. However, she was a few days short on two of her prescriptions, and she needed advice on what to do. She thought she’d have to have pills fed-exed from Massachusetts. I said let’s go to a pharmacy, even though she didn’t have her prescriptions with her. I have noticed on several occasions at the pharmacy on Sanibel that German tourists who are short on their high-blood pressure medication think they can just go to the pharmacy and buy it. That doesn’t work in the U.S., of course, but I remembered their expectations that it would. That told me that perhaps in France, we can just go to the pharmacist and ask. Sally Jane was intrigued by this possibility, but she said “YOU’RE going with me,” because of her nonexistent French. I said, “with enthusiasm!” And so we did go into the pharmacy in Lectoure, and I explained exactly what the situation was (all in French). The very nice young pharmacist had to look things up on the computer and in the big PDR book, because drug companies use different names for the same thing in different countries. They had both of Sally Jane’s prescriptions. The first one, however, was only available in a lower (half) dosage. It was no problem, the pharmacist explained, because she could just take two pills instead of one. This I understood immediately, but I had to break away from French to assure Sally Jane in English that yes, this is the same exact drug, you just take two pills instead of one. It was no problem buying the pills with no prescription. “Life is good in France,” I explained to Sally Jane. The four women working in the pharmacy, who supposedly don’t know English, certainly understood that sentence and liked it a lot. They were all ultra polite in wishing us a good day. Sally Jane was very happy to have this problem solved. We also helped her figure out several things having to do with her rental car – a Mercedes compact diesel. Not too far from Lectoure is another charming town called Condom. Guess what? Sally Jane claims that this really is where condoms were first made, a very long time ago. (So why do the French call them preservatifs? Anyway, the town does have a Musée des Preservatifs.) The church at Condom is a UNESCO site (as are a number of other churches in the region) because it is on the route that pilgrims took to Santiago de Compostela. Near that church is a great bronze statue of the four Musketeers, because, as we all should know, the forth Musketeer, D’Artagnon, was from Gascony. Russian tourists surrounded the statue so I didn’t get a photo. Aha! I now see on this Musketeers fans web site (with photo, if you scroll down) that the statue was created by the Russian-Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, hence the Russian tourists. After our visit at Barbara’s and Clive’s homes on Friday morning, we went back to Lectoure for lunch at the luxurious Hotel de Bastard. I commented that this would be a good name for a hotel in the town of Condom. But it is in Lectoure, and it is one of those elegant places tucked away where you don’t expect it to be. The reason it is where it is I’m sure is that the view is astoundingly lovely. The chef is the talented Jean-Luc Arnaud. Sally Jane and Tom had the bargain 18-euro three-course lunch menu, with a smooth gazpacho with shrimp mousse, slices of potroast (a braised cut of beef called the paleron) with a purée of chestnuts and potato raviolis stuffed with sausage (andouillette, I think, but I didn’t dwell on it), and a plum tart with sorbet. Sally Jane wanted the more expensive fig dessert, and the server let her do that substitution with no surcharge. I ordered the 29-euro three-course fixed-price menu “of the season.” The starter was a very creative thing called “Une fantaisie terre-mer,” a sea and land fantasy. This really was thin slices of marinated haddock used to tightly wrap a mélange of roasted pieces of meat from lamb’s feet into something that resembled the size and shape of two egg rolls. There were a couple zingy sauces on the plate to consume with the “fantaisie.” It was a top-notch, delicious appetizer. Sally Jane and Tom refused to taste the “fantaisie.” I guess they couldn’t get past the idea of lamb’s feet wrapped in marinated haddock, but I’m telling you, it was a wonderful, delicious dish. My main course was a pike-perch (sandre) filet served with a frothy white sauce. Also on the plate were two craquants de sandre, where two slices from the thin end of the fish, skin intact, were broiled to make crispy cracker-like things. A delicious, flat, little tart filled with tiny, dark mushrooms, herbs and sauce was an accompaniment. My dessert was seasonal figs, one stuffed with a yogurt sauce, and the others in a fruity drizzle, with a bit of white chocolate and caramel sauce drizzled on the side. It, too, was delicious. We did a bit more sightseeing in charming villages in the afternoon, a look at the cathedral in Agen, before ending with a cup of tea at l’Armandine, a tea room in Agen (46 rue Molinier), where once again Sally Jane was immediately recognized and gleefully welcomed. Tom and Sally Jane amazed me by eating yet another dessert. I just had a decaffeinated espresso. Then it was off to the train station to take the 5:13PM train for a 4-and-a-half-hour high-speed ride into Paris’ Montparnasse station. We walked home from the station, up the rue de Rennes and rue Vaugirard, so we were not home until 10:15PM – very tired, and not very hungry. This morning, with absolutely no food in the house, we went for breakfast at Le Mondrian. It was good, reasonable, and friendly. Then we braved the chaos at Carrefour to buy essentials for our last week in Paris. Finally, we bought newspapers at my favorite presse shop, and stopped in the Marché Saint Germain to buy blue cheese from the Auvergne as well as country ham and terrine. So we’re back, in Paris, and loving it after having a nice vacation (away from computers!) in Aquitaine. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook. Note: For addresses & phone numbers of restaurants in this journal, click here. And here’s the 2009 Paris Journal.

Saturday, September 25, 2010 Cloister at the St. Pierre collegiate church in La Romieu. We climbed all the way up one of the two towers of the church, where we had an incredible view, and we also were able to see the older roof structure beneath the newer one (below). Collegiate church at La Romieu. Rooftops of La Romieu, seen on our way up the tower of the collegiate church. Cat sculptures by Maurice Serreau are scattered throughout La Romieu. Sally Jane, Tom, and me, as crusading knights in La Romieu. La Romieu’s collegiate church’s cloister, again, and below a statue and windows in the church. The visitors’ center is next to the church, and a small admission is charged for visiting the church. The guy running the center spoke no English at all, but we had a great time chatting with him. He told us all about how to tell the difference between cat and rabbit when it is served to you at a restaurant or at someone’s home. The ribs are flat in one, and turned sideways in the other. I said to him, “this is useful to know!” We all had a very good time there. Bleu de Lectoure. ← Previous Next →