Apr 28

Back to the Bastides

We’re back in France, this time in the Dordogne Valley to revisit the bastides. We were first here in 2015. These are hilltop fortress towns that were fought over for centuries. Now tourists fight over limited parking spaces in these towns.

Our home base, as it was seven years ago, is Domme. This is a gorgeous village with views of the valley below. The Hôtel Esplanade is still under the same ownership. Unlike last time, we’ll be spending three nights here instead of one. Our friend Bruce is here for the fun, although Laurie had to go back to Michigan yesterday.

We went back to two villages we also visited in 2015, Beynac and La Roque-Gageac. The former has a fort built into the side of the cliff that one can climb and visit – for a fee. Despite our aging knees, Bruce and I made it up there. The fort was rebuilt after a rockslide took it and six buildings below out in 1957. The fort now has modern metal reinforcements holding things up, along with a metal stairway. Beynac is also built into the side of a cliff.

The specialties of the Dordogne are walnuts, foie gras, and strawberries. You will find many purveyors of foie gras in the bastides. We brought a couple of cans home last time. The strawberries are excellent. We’ve had some with our breakfasts at the hotel. The red-veneered tasteless ones one gets in the US are no match.

We had to take Bruce to a rail station so he could catch a flight home from Paris. On the way back to Domme, we stopped at Sarlat. This is one of the larger cities in the area. We were underwhelmed. The ratio of souvenir shops to genuine attractions was too high. Parking was a mess. If the city was so crowded at the end of April, July and August would be an absolute nightmare. I think I’ll stick to Domme.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/28/back-to-the-bastides/

Apr 24

More on Pintxos

Pintxos are small portions of food, called tapas in other parts of Spain. You can have hot or cold pintxos. Some are on skewers, others on French bread. They’re often inexpensive, because the bar makes most of its profit on alcoholic beverages. Here’s a spread of pintxos we got at one of the oldest bars in San Sebastian.

A pintxo lunch at Bodega Donostiarra in San Sebastian. Photo courtesy of Julian.

At the far left is pig snouts. Julian ordered this on a dare. It was a bit chewier than ham, but just as tasty. The small plate in the middle holds two gildas, the classic pintxo of green olive, anchovy, and guindilla peppers on a skewer. To the right of the gildas are two open-face salmon pintxo. This was more like lox. To the far right is chorizo, the classic cured Spanish pork sausage flavored with a good bit of paprika. [Do not confuse Spanish chorizo with its Mexican cousin. The latter is more like Italian sausage links.] The tomato salad at the top of the photo was on the tapas menu, presumably so some vegetable could get served. Pintxos tend to be meat- or fish-based and often deep-fried.

Here’s a more limited pintxo menu from a restaurant near our rental apartment. It’s also a bit more upscale.

A pintxo menu. Photo courtesy of Julian.

I ordered the mejillon (mussel) and rissotto with mushrooms. Julian had the foie (liver) with applesauce. All were excellent.

As I said in the previous post, pintxos are often consumed at successive bars with alcohol. However, having pintxos at a single place is acceptable if you don’t want to do much drinking or if your kids are with you. Think of pintxos as the Basque equivalent of dim sum.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/24/more-on-pintxos/

Apr 23

Never Been to Spain…

Until now. A more appropriate question might be, what took us so long? We’re in San Sebastian, the heart of Basque country. The Basques may be the oldest civilization in Europe, with a distinct language that bears no resemblance to other tongues in Europe or elsewhere. San Sebastian and Bilbao were industrialized cities in an otherwise agrarian and impoverished Spain. The Spanish and French governments alternated between tolerating and brutally oppressing the Basques over the centuries, but now there’s a truce of sorts.

We took a train down to Bordeaux, then rented a car. Our friends Bruce and Laurie had taken a separate train and got stranded in Hendaye, the last town before the French-Spanish border. We picked them up and proceeded to San Sebastian.

The city is much like Seattle topographically, with a coastline and mountains in the periphery. The architecture is a mix of old, renovated old, and modern. Our rental apartment is gorgeous, two blocks away from the Cathedral on a pedestrian street. The kitchen is suitable for real cooking, with a three-burner induction range, microwave and convection ovens, good-sized refrigerator, and real washer and dryer. Even better, the building has an elevator and decent stairs for my poor knees.

The food here is excellent. The Basques were early adopters of Western Hemisphere ingredients such as corn, tomatoes, and peppers. In addition, Basque sheep milk goes into excellent cheeses. The dining culture is pintxos – small plates that would be called tapas elsewhere in Spain. One goes into a bar/restaurant, orders a pintxo and a drink, pays, then goes onto the next bar to repeat the process. This is too much alcohol for me and trying to negotiate crowded bars in the time of Covid is risky business. So we’ve gone to two sit-down pintxo restaurants so far. Thursday night we went to an amazing restaurant, Restaurante Rua 887. Laurie, Julian, and I split a huge rib steak that was probably the best piece of beef I’ve ever had. Julian and Laurie had Basque cheesecake for dessert.

We’ve also done some dinners at the apartment. Julian made a typical pintxo last night – open-faced Iberico ham sandwiches with sheep cheese, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes from the Brexta Market. See below.

Julian’s riff on pintxos.

More tasty experiences to come.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/23/never-been-to-spain/

Apr 18

Love Finds a Way

You may recall the story of the Pont des Arts in Paris. Couples would attach padlocks to the wire grates on the bridge to signify their love. Unfortunately, the weight of the padlocks caused several of the bridge railings to crash into the Seine. I wrote about it in this post. This is what the bridge looks like today:

The Pont des Arts, Paris, Easter 2022.

If you look carefully at the lower left corner of the photo, you’ll see some renegade locks. In addition, some lovers have attached their locks to a cable headed to a street lamp over the quay. Others have found other bridges or structures to affix their locks. Proof positive that love will find a way.

This looks risky. But so is romance.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/18/love-finds-a-way/

Apr 17

Easter in Paris

Easter is a big deal in Paris. It’s a religious holiday, and the kids are out of school tomorrow. Today’s a big deal for me as well, as it was 40 years ago today when I was nearly killed in an auto accident. Most years the day goes by without my remembering, but this year was different. Maybe it was the juxtaposition with Easter.

After breakfast at the apartment, we headed toward the Eiffel Tower. First stop was Notre Dame. We heard bells ringing. Since it was unsafe for mere mortals to go into the towers, we were puzzled. It was a carillon on wheels.

Have bells, will travel. At the time I took this picture, the chimes master was playing “Stormy Weather”.

We walked along the quay on the Left Bank for a while. We found a Muscle Beach of sorts on the riverbank below the Musée d’Orsay. A yoga class was in swing, some people were boxing, and others were doing strength training.

Lunch was at the Bistro PTT on Rue Cler, near where we stayed on our last two visits. An oyster shucker was hard at work on the sidewalk. A French bulldog discovered the bucket full of empty shells and dove in. The dog was obviously a regular, as it came into the restaurant and visited us.

It was quiet when we left the apartment. Not so when we got back. Every Berthillon ice cream stand had a long line. We went to Sacha Finkelsztajn to get sandwiches – chopped liver for Julian, pastrami for me. Because it’s Passover, our sandwiches were made on Matzoh bread – matzoh meal reconstituted and baked. Very heavy. The pastrami was good. Not quite a traditional Easter dinner, but it worked for us.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/17/easter-in-paris/

Apr 17

Laundry à la Française

Doing laundry is inevitable on a lengthy vacation. While having a washer and dryer in a rental apartment seems to be the ideal situation, French home laundry appliances are inscrutable to these two Yankees. The dryers are rarely vented to the outdoors, so it takes forever to get even the smallest load dry. Our apartment has a washer-dryer combo machine. If you’re not careful, you won’t activate the drying function and you’ll wind up with soggy socks. I think our apartment in San Sebastian has a washer and/or dryer. Maybe the Basques have better appliances.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/17/laundry-a-la-francaise/

Apr 16

Under Reconstruction

Paris is in a constant state of reconstruction. Centuries-old buildings have been retrofitted over the years with indoor plumbing, electricity, telephones, and internet connections. Some buildings need to be strengthened as old bricks and mortar deteriorate. The building we’re staying in will undergo a renovation after we depart.

By far the biggest construction project in the city is the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral, which was heavily damaged in a fire on April 15, 2019. There’s a huge crane hovering over Île-de-la-Cité (see below). With the exception of the façade, the building is shrouded in scaffolding. The north side of the building has a covered walkway with pictures and explanations of the rebuilding process. The south side of the island (on the left of the picture) is a construction staging area, with heavy equipment and a multistory modular edifice for contracting offices. Yesterday morning we watched from a nearby bridge as a crew inspected one of the towers on the front of the cathedral. You can see the cherry picker in the photo. When we came back from our travels yesterday afternoon, National Police had blocked the bridges to Île-de-la-Cité. President Macron was inspecting the construction site on the third anniversary of the fire.

Notre Dame. The flying buttresses are stabilized by wood arches. Photo courtesy of Julian.

The preservation instincts of the French are a sharp contrast to what’s seen in the United States. In some cities (looking at you, Dallas and Seattle), perfectly good buildings are razed for ugly contemporary construction. A small bungalow can be bulldozed and a starter castle or two built in its place. A 25-year-old building can be considered a historic landmark. While some old buildings may have outlived their usefulness, others can undoubtedly be saved with conscious retrofitting. This results in less waste going to landfills and more affordable housing and workplaces. The French believe in building to last, Americans are more into planned obsolescence.

Postscript, 4/17/22: We ambled over to the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower today to visit the Rue Cler neighborhood, where we rented an apartment the last two times we were in Paris. Even the Eiffel Tower has scaffolding around it.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/16/under-reconstruction/

Apr 16

Not Quite Haute Couture

I think the pandemic has affected French fashion much as it has American. We’ve always been amazed that the average Parisian dresses in black and dull-colored clothes, even though the clothing racks in department stores here show eye-popping hues. This year the populace has doubled down on dullness. I haven’t seen many stiletto heels strolling down Boulevard St. Germain. Even outside the student-heavy Latin Quarter, jeans and t-shirts are de rigueur. If you see someone wearing a baseball cap with a New York Yankees logo on it, chances are they’re French. As they say on the Champs-Élysées, go figure.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/16/not-quite-haute-couture/

Apr 15

More Gallows Humor

Several years ago in Lyon I saw the following:

The Sausage Guillotine!

On Wednesday we went to the Musée Carnavalet, which focuses on the history of Paris. One whole floor is devoted to the French Revolution. Julian took this picture of earrings that were made after Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lost their lives. Even 200+ years ago, the French had a macabre sense of humor.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/15/more-gallows-humor/

Apr 13

Unplugged – Sort Of

Because I haven’t had more than a week of vacation per year in the last two years, I decided to be offline from work for the duration of this break. I told a coworker that I should only be contacted via my home email if there’s a zombie apocalypse or similar disaster at work.

How’s it going so far? So far, so good. I’m obviously not unplugged entirely from the outside world. We’ve been watching CNN. Both of us are sending and receiving emails and calling family and friends in North America. I’m (obviously) blogging. However, I have not tried to access my work email yet. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2022/04/13/unplugged-sort-of/

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