Yesterday's post covered half of a top ten list of things we'll miss about France. Here's the second half.
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Our courtyard: Oh, how much joy our pretty little courtyard brought this past year! I’m always smitten by aesthetically pleasing surroundings with character, and our rented home delivered big time. Although we experienced more than our fair share of old house issues—plus living without a dishwasher, clothes dryer, any air conditioning, etc. sometimes was a serious drag—the rose bushes, honeysuckle, and old exposed stone had a way of making me forgive any such hassles.
I keenly remember the “secret garden” feeling of delight as we pushed open the door from the street last August when we first arrived. And yes, my eyes were teary as we closed the door on the courtyard last week for the final time in the still-misty dawn hour that saw our departure from Thouars. Throughout the year we ate countless meals outside, watched the boys play there, and found it to be a place of peace and respite. On hot days, it was always cooler inside the stone walls when coming in off the street, and on cold winter days, the high walls blocked the wind. Outside of November to March, the courtyard hummed bee-loud from sunrise to sunset; they apparently were equally enamored with the spot. The small courtyard was a physical sanctuary and, I think, became a symbol to me of the year as a whole.
I quickly turned and snapped this, teary-eyed, just before closing the door for the last time.
The temperate climate: No doubt part of the reason I loved the courtyard so much was because we could enjoy it almost year round. We have a perfectly lovely piece of property of our own in Lancaster, but I sometimes struggle to appreciate it fully; several months of the year it’s too bitterly cold to spend much quality time outdoors, and many other months it’s too miserably hot and humid! As someone who heartily dislikes hot weather and flat-out shuts down in wretchedness when humidity builds, the climate of the Loire Valley was pretty much perfection. It was almost scary how quickly I turned into a scowling, headachy, grump of a woman the few really hot and humid days we got in Thouars…the same “delightful” person I realize I am for about four steamy months straight in Lancaster! So, I know the weather is a silly thing to miss, but for me, it feels like a real loss in quality of life!
Ah, the magnificent gardens of Chateau Villandry.
Clearly plants and veggies thrive in the Loire Valley climate.
French places and history: It’s not just me who appreciated the climate of the Loire Valley. It’s known as the “Valley of Kings” because centuries of royalty and nobility, both French and English, built their castles there to take advantage of the region’s mild winters and lovely summers. We visited so many sites—castles, churches, museums, parks, exhibits, caves, rivers, gardens—and yet didn't scratch the surface of the area’s history and offerings. Separately, I also was struck by how different it felt to be in a place that lived and breathed the presence of WWII. Given how many millions of Americans were involved in the war, I’d always thought of it as being an important part of US history—and of course I still do! Yet it felt somehow very different to live in a country where bullets actually flew, where Germans physically occupied, where resistance efforts were secretly planned, where families were ripped apart, deported, executed. It was sobering and eye opening and felt like a still-very-present part of the cultural psyche.
The war memorial at the bottom of our street in Thouars
The Louvre in Paris
Fireworks over the Thouars chateau on Bastille Day, just a few days before we departed.
We went into countless cathedrals and churches through the year. This one is Notre Dame in Paris.
At the beach, Les Sables d'Olonne
We were astonished at the marriage of exquisite art and brilliant engineering at the Island of Machines in Nantes. For instance, this enormous, gorgeous, wooden, mechanical elephant carried people around the grounds, spraying huge blasts of water at passers-by!
Great food: Food is certainly something else we’ll miss. We ate our bodyweight in fresh bread and patisserie on a near weekly basis, and I have a newfound love of good cheese that will be difficult and costly to support when we get home. (The cheese and bread was sooo good and so inexpensive!) I also will miss the fact that on average, prepared foods had shorter and better ingredient lists than what is normal in the U.S., with fewer chemicals and preservatives and a lot less added sugar and salt. On the flip side, though, I should note that I’d often be frustrated by feeble packaging; it seemed that the cardboard was always thinner, the aluminum always more prone to breaking, the plastic always more easily torn. I can’t tell you how often I broke off pitiful tabs from pop-top cans of diced tomatoes or whatnot, no matter the care I took! With that said, I’d sooner the problem go in that direction; in the U.S. it seems we excel at high quality packaging around heavily processed food, whereas in France they sported maddeningly poor packaging on better quality food. ☺
I believe we had guests the day I took this picture, but it's a very typical lunch: bread, cured meat, fresh fruit, lots of cheese, little pickles...
The soundtrack of our days: I already mentioned the humming of bees in our courtyard, and there are so many other sounds that became a familiar backdrop to our lives. Chief among them was the tolling of bells from Saint Medard just behind our house, chiming out the hours and half hours from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. year round. We especially enjoyed when the bells would peal at length during special events. Other familiar sounds were loud diesel car and motorbike engines; the brightly uttered “bonjour!” and “au revoir!” at every turn; shutters banging each morning and evening as houses opened to greet the day and closed up for the night; hearing Josiah and William chattering to their friends in French during play dates or after school; the squeak of the ancient staircase in the house; and the rather terrible but oh-so-enthusiastic playing of Thouars’ aging volunteer brass band at a dozen outdoor town events through the year!
Here's a little video file of the church bells:
Tolling bells of Saint Medard from
Krista Casler on
Vimeo.
