Wonkybusker

Agen

I'm listening to the thunderstorm outside after successfully arriving home from Agen.  Today we toured a fantastic art museum, saw yet another cathedral, tried chocolate covered prunes, tasted cheese, and had the quintessential French picnic of bread, cheese, fruit, sausage, and wine.  And on the way home from Agen we happened across an organ grinder festival.  That's right.  There were dozens of organ grinders along the streets of a little town, dressed in period costumes, although we didn't see any with pet monkeys.  Some of the tunes became sing-a-longs, but I couldn't join since I didn't know the words.  Next time...

Yesterday we toured around the various little bastides in the region and on Thursday we saw the city of Toulouse.  I am working on pictures and will add them soon, I promise.  Earlier in the week, we went on a hike in the area and saw an 11th century church and an old pigeonnier.  Fortunately, the rain has been holding off most of this week, so it's perfect sight-seeing weather. 

Tomorrow we will be attending a festival and meal in our village and tonight we are headed back to our neighbor's restaurant.  Life in this part of France seems to revolve around food.  And considering how amazing the food is, that makes perfect sense.

Vins de Pays

Over the last few days, we have done a lot of wine tastings.  This region of France has, of course, Bordeaux wines, but also quite a few other wine producing regions.  Currently, the Bordeaux region is just a little overwhelming due to far too many options, however I will venture over there eventually and have, in the meantime, greatly enjoyed trying and comparing some of the other regional wines.

Gaillac
The area is northeast of Toulouse and known for its white wines.  It is said to be the first place in France ever to grow wine, in the sixth century BC and they still have many hundreds of hectares of vineyard along the Tarn river.  My favorite wine of the region is the Perle which is a dry white with a slight natural carbonation.  The wine is also very reasonable as we found at Chateau Lastour.

Cahors
The wine of Cahors is centered on the Malbec grape.  This deep red wine, called the black wine, is very strong and goes very well with all the duck eaten in the region.  The price ranges greatly from LaGrazette's Pigionnier at 90 euro a bottle (and we got to try some!) to Chateau Noziere's "loose" wine that makes absolutely fantastic vin de table and can be purchased for a little over a euro a litre.  The Cahors wine is a bit strong, even for a red wine, but quite good.  And there are some vineyards, like the Clos Traguedina, that still makes wine the same way it was made in the Middle Ages.

Moissac
Although we have gone to Moissac already, we did not stop to taste their sweet wine, made from chasselas grape.  It is supposed to be a beautiful white grape that is almost translucent and the wine is supposed to be a French treasure.  But that just gives us the perfect reason to go back there. :)

We'll have to return to these great wine areas and vineyards after I learn to drive stick shift so that Chris doesn't have to be the designated driver all the time.

Zombie Lion

For the summer, we have leased a Peugeot. 

We call him zombie lion because of the symbol on the front, which unfortunately I do not have a good picture of yet.  I will make a point of adding that.

So far zombie lion has been very reliable and with it we have traversed windy, narrow roads and covered many kilometers.  And it's only been a week.  Sadly, he has already lost a hubcap, but bravely travels on.  Chris insists that our car needs a theme song, since it's the first car he has ever named, but so far we haven't come up with one. 

We are accepting submissions if anyone has an idea of what zombie lion's song should be.

Castles!

One of the fantastic elements of southwest France is the castles.  Between the Hundred Years War and the War of Religion, every little village and bastide needed to be able to defend itself from attack.  Some were more successful than others.  Many of these castles are still around, although they are in varying states of restoration or disrepair.

Windmills, Tapestries, and Dolmen

Sunday was a day for exploration.  Despite a little rain, we went out to Castelnau to find the windmills.  We found two out of three despite a terrible lack of signs, so we were quite happy.

And Chris felt the need to tilt at windmills.

Then we found lunch. ;)

After that, we went on to see the St. Martin Collegiale in Monpezat with its spectacular 16th century Flemish tapestries.

Lastly, we hunted down a dolmen.  It wasn't quite as impressive as we had anticipated, but we found it, finally.

Moissac

On Saturday, we headed down to Moissac to see the St. Pierre Abbey.  This 11th century church and cloister is the main attraction in the town and is a highlight of the region. 

In particular, the cloister columns are decorated with beautiful sculptures of various scenes from the bible.

The church also holds a number of 14th century wooden sculptures of note. 

The monks at the abbey were known for creating beautiful illuminated manuscripts, however they are no longer displayed in Moissac and have been moved to Paris.  We toured the church, the cloister, and the house of the abbot, which is now a museum. We also stopped to watch some men of the village playing petanque, French bocci, and then headed home for dinner.  Chris cooked some spectacular maigret de canard (duck breast) in a cassis sauce with roasted potatoes and aoli and a side of warm spinach salad.  Tres bien!

Caves

Our first guest is leaving early this morning and our next guests arrived last night.  Today I think the plan is to visit our local market and perhaps go sightseeing a bit around the area. 

Yesterday we went up to Gourdon to see the Grotte de Cougnac.  It was just amazing to think that people had actually stood there 25,000 years ago and drew these pictures that are still there today.  Our particular cave had paintings of mammoths, ipex, and deer.  In addition, it had a strange painting of a person stabbed with spears, which is very rare and not quite understood.  There were also fingerprints that were unexplained, put there 12,000 years ago, well after the rest of the cave paintings.  I'm so glad we went to see them.  These caves are true treasures in our region.

We also tried to go on a dolmen walk that would have taken us by neolithic structures.  We walked and walked down a dirt path in the woods, but never actually got to see dolmens.  The lack of signage posed a significant problem.  The guidebook let me down and this makes me a bit hesitant to continue to trust it.  We shall have to see how it does during the rest of the holiday weekend.  Fortunately, on our way, we did get to see beautiful villages and towns and came home to an absolutely amazing dinner last night at the restaurant owned by our neighbor.

Sunrise

Chris got up early today and walked down to the boulangerie for bread and croissants.  While he was out, he took spectacular sunrise pictures.

Fortunately, we found out where the boulangerie is on our tour of town yesterday.

Daily Life

So we're starting to settle into a routine. The pilgrams still wander through the village each day and rest in the main square.  The children at the school down the street have recess at about 10:30.  In the afternoon, a group meets to play bocci in the gravelly area beneath our window.  The church bell tolls every hour during the day.  Just as my day is starting to wind down in the late afternoon, everyone else at home signs online and begins their day.  We have a soft boiled egg and toast for breakfast.  Bread, cheese, fruit, and wine makes a fantastic lunch.  And then in the evening it's time to go out and take sunset pictures.

Bank of America put the obligatory hold on my account for overseas activity despite the fact that I already told them I would be overseas.  And they told me they couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't happen again.  Ah, well.  I guess that's to be expected.  Fortunately, it's nothing that 15 minutes on hold and a discussion with a representative couldn't solve.

The weather has been warm and lovely, although rain is expected for the next week.  Great, just in time for guests. :(  But that will be great for my newly planted herbs. Even if it does rain, I'm excited to take this Memorial Day weekend and explore.

Market

This morning we headed down to our first market.  While not as big as the Saturday market is supposed to be here, there were lots of different kinds of fruits, vegetables, fish, and meats.  We stocked up on things like zucchini, tomatoes, spinach, and carrots.  I even got a few herb plants to put in the hanging basket outside.  The man who sold us eggs was very nice and tried to start a conversation, although we had a bit of a hard time following.  My poor French compounded by his particular accent left me wishing I could understand more than just a few bits and pieces.  I'll have to work on that.  Fortunately, Chris was able to follow along.  At any rate, he was very friendly, we came home with great things to eat, and I think it was a very successful market day.

Pictures

I've finally uploaded a dozen pictures that Chris and I took our first few days here and have put them on the France photo album.  Take a look!  And be sure to come back throughout the summer because I plan to be adding more as we take them. 

Tomorrow is our first market day, so I'm excited to see what they have to sell and to plan meals around fresh French produce.  Chris has already found some great regional recipes to try and I'll post about our culinary successes as we learn French cooking.  I might omit the cooking fiascos we're sure to have along the way, dealing with conversions, duck fat, and other complications. 

Tomorrow is also the day our first visitor arrives.  From then on, we'll have guests continuously for the rest of May, so we will be playing host to friends. :)  I hope to continue blogging about village life and sight-seeing as well as uploading pictures, but please forgive me if I lapse a bit in posting while guests are here.

First Days Here

This evening we wandered around the village, toured the Pilgram's Garden, and gave our camera a workout.  I find it incredible that all these buildings are so well cared for and preserved after all this time.  I was a little cold on the walk, although it was warm earlier in the day when the sun was out.  We came home just in time to catch the beautiful sunset out our window.

Lafayette, nous sommes ici

And so our adventure has finally begun and we have arrived in France.  The flight was annoying as any plane travel is these days, but otherwise uneventful.  Chris got our leased car and we drove through many traffic circles on our way through the countryside and up to Lauzerte.  I kept looking in the distance to see if I recognized our village. 

Finally, a little over an hour later, we rounded a bend and there could be no mistaking the bastide at the top of the next hill.  The village looks like it belongs in the middle ages.  It's like you just stepped back in time, as long as you mentally photoshop out the cars.  In fact, pilgrams are coming through town on a fairly regular basis on their way to Compostella, just as they've done for hundreds of years. 

We tried to find our house by the address and ended up giving up since houses aren't really numbered here.  We parked the car and wandered into the village center to sit in the square, gaze up at the old church tower, and survey our new surroundings.

When we did get to the house, it was spectacular.  It belongs in another era entirely.  Chris had a great description that he sent around to our frisbee team.  I'm copying and pasting the passage below:

The house is amazing, even more so than we expected.  Our bedroom looks like something out of a movie - a giant fireplace that, by all rights, should have wolfhounds in front of it, a very French hand-made carpet, large windows with heavy wooden shutters, 14-foot ceiling with original (i.e. from 1251) beams.  And the whole room is almost 30'X30', roughly the same space as our apartment at home.  The bed seems tiny in the middle.  And the other three bedrooms are nearly as large and medievally.  Out the window is a panoramic view (and a three story drop, followed by a promenade, followed by a bigger drop) of the French countryside, complete with grazing sheep, vines, orchards and fields. The whole village clings to a steep hill and towers over a valley, and our house forms part of the curtain wall protecting it.  We were attacked by Huns last night, but easily beat them off with the crossbow the owner keeps on the wall, just in case.  We have already met a Pierre (really), and my first friend in town was Matthew the bartender, whose place on the main square is an easy hammer throw away.  The chef for the best restaurant in the region, Frederick, lives next door.

I don't know what else to add except we're here.  We're finally here.  This will be a fantastic summer.

Leaving Tomorrow

I guess it's time to say goodbye.  Tomorrow we're getting on a plane and heading to France.  Sunday, we will arrive at our new home for the summer.  Actually, I'll probably be blogging more often, not less, since there will be more to document and share.  Anyway, it's exciting to be leaving so soon!  This weekend will be annoying, mostly standing in security lines and sitting in tiny airplane seats and all that, but after that it will all be worth it.  Yay!

Almost There

Chris and I are getting closer to leaving for France.  Throughout the summer I'll be updating this blog with pictures and stories from our adventures. :)