December 15, 2005

Thanksgiving - Part 3: Nantes and a little Loire

After waking up to snow in Giverney, we traveled on departmental roads west towards Nantes, largely through lovely rolling hills, still very green in spite of a dusting of snow here and there. We stopped for lunch in a village called Verneuil, and have a very, very, good lunch indeed in a bright little restaurant called "Le Madeleine".  Should you ever be in Verneuil (the one in Normandy, that is...) I recommend it.

There was less and less snow as we traveled west, winding our way along. Eventually we realized that as pretty as the countryside and villages were, we would need to hop onto the autoroute at Le Mans if we were to arrive in Nantes anywhere near the time planned.

We arrived at the home of our friends Lika and Pierre-Yves after crawling through the Nantes rush hour and circling around (so to speak) to find parking near their house - yes, the one with the tower - for a bit.  Nantes is a rapidly growing town and "stationnment" is a daily problem. You have to be a very good parallel parker, to say the least!

As always, we were given a warm welcome by Lika and Pierre, and I was able to retrieve my raincoat that I had left at their house back in May! We were also brought up to date on some of the politic developments (post "Non"

At this point, I have to confess that I totally forgot that I had a camera, and there are therefore no pictures of the Thanksgiving festivities...

18 x 4 x 2 = 144

   That's the number of kisses required to say hello and goodbye in Nantes for a party of 18!!

The Nantais custom is to kiss 4 times.  In Paris it is generally 2, in the south it is 2 or 3, sometimes 4 for family.  The people of Nantes say that the Parisians are too busy to take the time to kiss 4 times! (They mean too self-involved, I think. People in the rest of France like to complain about the Parisians - about how fast they drive*, how fast they talk, how they always want a bargain: much like Americans like to complain about New Yorkers.)

But back to "les bises" [the kisses]. Whether one starts on the right or the left cheek is still unclear to me. (David says - wisely - just let the french person take the lead here.)  And I am not always sure when in the relationship one is supposed to transition from the handshake to the kiss. With families (or at least in Nantes) it would seem that you kiss on the first meeting when you are introduced by other friends or family -- or at least the children do.   Lika and Pierre-Yves had invited two families - both headed by American born fathers - to share in the fête. There were total of 8 adults and 8 kids (mostly between 15-19).  Both fathers had come to France about 20 years or so ago on a visit and had met and fallen in love with french women....and there you go - hence the 8 kids.  Gene teaches English and American Government (!) at the university of Nantes, and Charles is a translator.  Neither wife (Helène and Nicole) speaks english...which is why both Gene and Charles speak such good french, I imagine.  But Gene said, that like David, for the first year he lived "only in the present", meaning he didn't know any other tenses.

The 8 "ados" (adolescents) sat at one end of the table, and the 8 adults(?) sat at the other. After finishing off our two pintades (guinea fowl) with a wonderful chestnut stuffing on the side, the ados all filed into the living room to talk and watch japanese animé.  I was really impressed at how the kids (most of whom had not met before) integrated themselves and began politely chatting with one another (I thought they were all old friends, but it turned out that most of them had just met).  They were all quite charming and well mannered.   Some hours later, after a pumpkin pie, a tarte de pomme, et une gateau chocolat, (not to mention a grand cru chablis and a grand cru bordeaux), the second half of the 144 kisses were given, and we trooped up the very tall stairwell to bed.

David and I decided that since we were so close to the famed Loire Valley (Nantes is on the Loire) that we would drive back via Saumur and perhaps stop in a one of the renaissance chateaux that line the valley. In our mad dash north (11 hours, did I mention that??), we had driven by Saumur and I could see the multi-towered chateaux perched on the hill.  So we thought we would drive east along the Loire and stop at Saumur for lunch, and perhaps the night.

The drive along the Loire was very pretty -- more rolling green hills and lovely little villages of pale yellow stone.  Different from both Normandy and the south in style, with more of a renaissance and less of a medieval feeling.   Saumur was quite pretty, but the Chateaux was closed for restoration (and will be for a year or so!), so after lunch we decided to drive on towards Chinon.  Chinon was the favorite castle of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry the 2nd of England, and was also the place where Joan of Arc came to meet and encourage the displace Dauphin of France to continue his fight against the english.  It was also the birthplace of Rabelais.

I was driving, and shortly after leaving Saumur, David cried,"Stop! Stop!" I thought there was something wrong with the car or something,...... but it turned out to be a row of "troglodyte" (cave) dwellings cut into the cliffs that lined the valley at that point.  

  People have lived in these caves for perhaps millennia - and still do...most of these places are occupied. As you can see from the photo they have been fitted with windows and doors, and some have fairly elaborate extensions with towers, etc.   You can sometimes see the chimneys rising out of the top of the cliff!

I suppose that it makes a great deal of sense in terms of heating, etc., but it must have been/be awfully dark inside... especially since most of the dwellings that we saw were facing north.

It was fairly late in the afternoon when we reached Chinon, and we liked the feeling of the town, so we decided to stay the night.  We went to the tourist office, where they were very friendly and helpful.  They gave us a list of the various hotels and chambres d'hotes, but said that they couldn't really make a recommendation of one over the other (understandable).  However, after it turned out that one of the places we selected was closed, they said, "Oh, of course, if you would have liked that place, you will like L'hotel Diderot! So off to L'hotel Diderot we went.  And we did, indeed, like it very much! A nice rambling manor house/inn, where one of the owners, Laurent, immediately gave us warm welcome and the choice of a couple of rooms.  Not only that, but they had a wonderful big yellow and white cat, "Bobi", who added greatly to the ambience.  When we first met Bobi he was laid out at full length on top of one of the radiators in the hall, but he clearly owned the house and could be found just about anywhere.  Including, as it turned out, in our room the next morning (but only after asking very politely to be let in!).  It had been a long day, and it was pretty cold, so we were happy to have an aperatif in the little bar, and then go out to the closest restaurant.

We did walk up to the bridge (which was blown up by the germans in the summer of 1944, but rebuilt) hoping to get a nighttime picture of the old castle on the hill -- but there weren't any lights! Unusual for France...maybe they turn them off at 10:00, or during the week or something. So I have borrowed a photo from their website:

We drove around the castle the next morning, but decided not to visit, since it was starting to rain and we had a long drive to get back to Carcassonne that night.

We also decided to skip visiting the other chateaux in the area, leaving them for another time in better weather.

We wound our way on departmental roads through the Vienne valley (Chinon is on the Vienne river, not the Loire) and then south towards Limoges where we met up with the autoroute (and some more snow - for about 5 minutes!).  By 20:00 (8:00), we were back in Carcassonne, just in time for dinner at Le Bistro Augustin!  We had to go out to dinner, because, after 10 days with the heat turned down, the house was pretty cold, and it took some time to heat up the stone walls.  Even after turning all the radiators on, and the thermostat way up it was only about than 13° c (about 54-6 farenheit - a good rough conversion is to double the degrees centigrade and add 30) in the house. But no matter, off to bed, and it was nice and warm in the morning.

Travel Data:

Hotel in Chinon:

We would certainly recommend Chez Hicher-Lee, but we're not sure quite how Lika and Pierre would feel about that!

L'Hotel Diderot

Hôtel diderot-4 , rue de buffon- 37500 Chinon
Tèl. 00(33/2 47 93 18 87)
diderot@hoteldiderot.com

This was a really sweet hotel with (yay!!) great parking in an enclosed courtyard. A big rambling manor, some of it built in the 15th century, some of it built in the 20th. Run by the Duthiel family (Laurent, and his two sisters, Françoise and Martine), and absolutely owned by their big orange and white cat "Bobi" (pronounced Beau-bee). Our room was not quite as elegant as those shown in the promo pictures - but it was quite nice and well appointed. We were served petit dejeuner in front of the big fireplace as promised, and there really were over 30 different types of homemade jams and jellies on the tables. It was fun trading favorites with the other guests!

 

Restaurants in Verneuil, Saumur and Chinon:

La Madeleine

Le Grand Bleu

Le Treille(?)

 

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