I'm Baaaaack.
I'm sorry that I just couldn't keep up with my last trip's journal. But my journal for this trip is done except for the polishing. I'll be posting in installments and her's number one.
10/18 Saturday
The flight from JFK to Paris/CDG was par for the course, although you have to wonder if they can make the seats any more uncomfortable. We managed. Cross-aisle seating helped. The food was edible. I even enjoyed the couscous with little shrimps on top, a combination that Cathey found annoyingly strange. We connected to the flight to Montpellier with no trouble after figuring out how the inter-terminal shuttle busses worked and we arrived in Montpellier on time on a sunny Saturday afternoon with a temperature of about 70F.
For the first time, we decided not to book our car rental over the internet and just take our chances on arrival. The Hertz counter had a line so we tried Avis. No cars available. I guess that they don’t try harder in France. Europcar had the best price on the internet and, sure enough, they had several cars available. A young gent with fair English told us that the rate would be about 350 euros including basic insurance for the type auto that we wanted, small but with four doors, manual transmission and using diesel fuel. He took a 1,000 euro deposit. I’ll be interested in seeing the final bill because that’s half the internet rate. Perhaps he meant 350 per week? We’ll see.
NOTE: Credit card bill came in at 330 euros plus tax. That over 300 euros less that the internet quote. Whether we would have had to pay that much I can't say, but we are certainly pleased with the outcome.
We found our way to our little village of Cazouls les Beziers without incident and without getting lost. A first. We usually get lost navigating our way around Beziers. We stopped by the Champion supermarket on our way in for essentials – milk, eggs, butter, bacon, cheese, a six-pack of Pelforth Brun (dark beer), and the fixings for my birthday dinner tomorrow. Duck will be the featured dish.
There was road construction throughout Cazouls. Detours. Little portable traffic lights that let one lane of traffic through at a time while major league machines took chunks out of the roadway. We later learned that the French government had decided to put the entire country on a fiber optic network and lines were being buried everywhere. Massive public works. Good for employment. Hell for out-of-town drivers unsure of the back way into town.
Our house seemed to be in good order but not without a surprise or two. On pulling into the garage we noticed that the washing machine had been brought down from its spot next to the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. We knew that there had been a problem with it. We had told Ina, our property manager, that she should see about getting it fixed. If it couldn’t be fixed, I wrote in an email, it would have to be replaced. When we came upstairs, voila. A replacement washer had been installed. Interesting. We have no idea how much it will cost. I must try to impress on Ina the need to communicate more precisely. And although we’d asked Ina to see to it that the television was fixed, we assumed that she understood that meant that the object of the exercise was to set up the satellite dish for English language channels. We’ve got channels all right – all French from the cable, not the satellite, and not a weather report in sight. Again, the need for precise communication made apparent.
We napped for a while, then prepared a quick bite. We’d purchased some leeks and potatoes that Cathey turned into a bone-warming soup and picked at an assortment of meats and cheeses accompanied by rounds sliced from a loaf of coarse, country bread. I have a feeling that a lot of our meals will be like that and that’s just fine with me. We sampled a number of wines that we’d left behind from our visit last year…many of which were undrinkable, primarily the vin primeur, the new wine that’s bottled right after the harvest. It really must be drunk immediately. We’d bought cases when we should have bought bottles. Well, the last trip we went on a bit of a wine-buying jag. We’ll be more selective this time.
Bed early.
10/19 Sunday
Rise late. Why not? It was my birthday. Cathey had a silly card and a purple shirt out for me, but no pain au chocolat. Some things will have to wait until the jet lag goes away.
In addition to a bit of sauicisson (dry, cooked sausage) and country pate that we’d purchased at the Champion, we’d tried a form of salami that was sort of raw and very porky – not so good for tasting by itself. So Cathey diced it into our morning omelet and it worked just fine. We didn’t hang around, though. We went off to a harvest festival in the little village of Berlou.
Berlou is well off the beaten track, north of our house in the Haut Languedoc National Park along very twisty, narrow mountain roads. The joint, such as it was, was jumping. We had to park along the main road outside of town and walk in past villagers doing a yard sale thing. As we got closer to the center of town, the pros took over…local apples, meats, cheeses, preserves, an artisan who was selling hand-carved soapstone and demonstrating his craft, and a jewelry guy…the same guy (gal, actually) that you see in the States selling silver rings, ear rings and necklaces. The only difference was that she spoke French.
In the town center, after you passed by the donkey ride, they’d set up a little table where you could buy a wine glass for 2 euros, ticket for a drawing included. You took your glass to the caveau, the cooperative selling the local wine, or to a tent featuring local vin primeur or to other places where food and drink were offered and they’d happily give you a taste or fill your glass. I don’t know what they were drawing for and we didn’t stick around to find out.
The wine mirrored the country, rough and tasting of minerals. But there were a couple of older St. Chinian reds that were interesting. We bought two bottles at 12 euros a bottle, steeper than we usually spend but we’ve discovered that if you want a drinkable red around here, you’ve either got to take a chance that younger inexpensive bottles will cellar well or pay the freight for a decent vintage - in this case 2001.
We made it home in time to freshen up before the concert at the local church. Every year they hold a concert to the benefit of the group that helps to maintain the church’s pipe organ and it seems to fall at about the same time that we visit. During the 18th and 19th centuries the Laguedoc, which is the largest wine producing area in France with three times the acreage in vineyards than Bordeaux, supplied all of France and much of Europe with table wine, cheap and not very good, but it made the winemakers rich. They displayed their wealth in part by donating to their local church. In the case of Cazouls, that meant a beautiful solid silver altar that’s on the National Register and a pipe organ of impressive size compared to the size of the church.
The concert is free but the collection basket was full of primarily ten euro notes. I threw in about four euros in coin. Last year the organist, who always seems to be Christopher Hainsworth, a New Zealander who married a French woman twenty-five years ago and followed her home, accompanied a soprano during the first half of the concert, than a local massed chorus after. This year, baritone Pasqualino Frigau was featured. Pasqualino even brought out his penny whistle. It sounded like a penny whistle, anyway. Caused quite a stir. You see, the pipe organ is in the back of the church in what we’d call the choir loft. Since all of the pews face front, the audience generally just sits facing front and listens. When Pasqualino blew the first notes, everybody wheeled around to see what was up. Quite a ruckus.
A good time was had by all…all being the 100 or so Cazoulines in attendance.
Home for a birthday dinner. The oven works! Duck. Yum. No dessert, but I’ll get up early in the morning and get something nasty and chocolaty at the patisserie and Cathey will be all right with it.
We’ve discovered a few things about French ovens – our French oven, at least – in the two years since it was installed. There is no pilot light and no true thermostat. That’s to say, once you light the oven, it simply stays lit. How do you control temperature, you ask? There is a valve that regulates the amount of gas going to the burner. The trick is to start the oven on low and work up to the temperature that you need. The oven control knob is numbered from 1 (low) through 8 (Hades). We’ve learned that if you light the oven on 2 you get a fairly steady 325F. The rest is pure conjecture.
All in all, it was a very relaxing day. The ride was encouraging. There seems to have been a slowdown in new construction. We saw new residential buildings going up everywhere last year. We have yet to journey to the more suburban-type areas, so there is still the opportunity for disappointment, but so far so good.
Bed early.
