We first met in the Luxembourg Garden where I was sitting by the small Statue of Liberty after my morning class at the Alliance Française of Paris. It was the fall after graduating from Ohio State and I was now ready to make something of myself though I didn’t yet know what. My parents were pleased that I was continuing my education. I was studying French at the Alliance and pastry-making at the Ferrandi Paris cooking school.

I’d bought myself an exquisite chocolate éclair on the way to the park. After creating an Instagram post of a selfie in which I’m holding up the éclair like the statue her torch (Statue of Delicious #paris #thelife #frenchpastry), I sat down nearby to enjoy the pastry with the intent of then studying the passé composé of irregular verbs.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle,” he said. I looked up. He had lovely little brown eyes and smoothed-down brown hair, greying at the temples.

“Bonjour Monsieur,” I answered.

He lifted his palm toward the chair beside me and asked if it was occupied. Understanding his request more from his gesture than from his words, I removed my notebook and purse from the seat so that he could take the chair. Instead of moving it further away, he sat down beside me. He excused himself for remarking but said that he detected un petit accent.

“Je suis américaine,” I said.

“Amay-we-can,” he echoed with a scrunched smile without parting his thin pink lips, then, immediately switching to English, he added, “your accent is very char-ming. Do you know why we have a Statue of Liberty here?” he asked.

I did not.

He said, “But you should because you are Amay-we-can, so I will explain to you.” And so he did, as he would teach me much else, with intense, informative, endearing condescension, before concluding, “You have so much to learn.”

On our first date, the following evening, he took me to a wonderful little bistro, where a surly waiter served us a nice house red. When he told me again that I was charming, I felt myself blush. He called me his Mona Lisa because my name is Liz. I called him Bruno because that is his so adorably French name. When I told him that I would like to try the French onion soup, he said that was for tourists and he recommended instead the bone marrow, telling me that there was a sincerity to the presentation and sensuality to the texture. I marveled at the way used adjectives to describe food and accepted his suggestion. He ordered the pâté for himself, which he ate with thick chunks of sourdough bread. Then chicken supreme for me and andouillette for himself. We shared profiteroles for dessert. He wiped the chocolate from my lips with his napkin.

Afterwards, we walked along the Seine, where he lit a cigarette, and when it was finished, he flicked the butt into the river then turned and kissed me as the Eiffel Tower sparkled as though on cue. His breath tasted of a mix of cigarettes, coffee, wine, intestinal sausage, and a breath mint. It was a beautiful spring evening in Paris. I remembered the old song. He took my hand and we walked on, eventually reaching my chambre de bonne in the Latin Quarter.

I had only had sex with boys my age before, so this was different. He was 20 years older than me and knew not only what he wanted, as did the boys, but how to please. I was glad that I’d shaved that morning. After making passionate love, he opened the French window to smoke as I lay naked and mostly satisfied beneath the sheet. Leaning against the wrought iron railing, he blew rings out toward the zinc rooftop across the courtyard.

If you crane your neck to the right, I said, you can see the top of Sacré Coeur.

“Socray Core,” he repeated, mocking the way I pronounced it, then he stepped toward me and brushed his hand against my cheek and said that his Mona Lisa had a charming accent. He said that he would help me with my French, when it improved, but for now it was best to continue in English. He told me that since I was new in Paris it was natural to admire “Socray Core” from the window but that a real Parisian looks discreetly into the windows across the courtyard to watch people undress, and he pointed to a woman across the courtyard and one floor below who was removing her blouse.

He then told me that his wife and children were returning from vacation the following day, but he would be available on Wednesday afternoon.

“You’re married?” I ask, redundantly.

He waved away both the smoke and my question. He said that he and his wife were now old friends and stayed together only for the three children, so I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about it. I ignored my mother’s voice in my head and thought, When in Paris…

Every Wednesday afternoon at about 5 o’clock (known here as 17 hour), he came up the stairs to my 7th-floor garret bearing gifts, either a pastry to die for or chocolates from what he said was the best chocolatier in Paris or a bottle of wine that he knew all about. Occasionally he would show up late, saying that he was stuck in court, and tell me that though he’d had a long, tiring day he couldn’t let a week go by without seeing his Mona Lisa. His Dior cologne arrived even more exhausted than he did, so several weeks into our relationship I asked him to shower on arrival. He said that despite man’s intelligence and ability to build great cities such as Paris, we are animals and should not fear our natural odors. I handed him a towel and reminded him that I was not born in the same den as he. He laughed and said that he would do anything to please this pretty lady.

He taught me many things. He taught me how to wear my hair and how to tilt my beret just so. He told me which exhibitions to see and how to appreciate movies without happy endings. He always left by 7:30—I should say 19:30. He called that a “reasonable hour for a lawyer.”

We rarely went out to dinner after that first time. He said that we had all we needed right here. The pastries and chocolates weren’t good for my diet but they were great for my Instagram.

We had plans to go to Deauville one weekend while his wife and children were visiting his mother-in-law in La Baule, but he texted me to say that his daughter was sick so we would do it another weekend. When I texted back to tell him that I was already waiting for him at the Gare Saint Lazare, adding an angry emoji, he texted back a reminder that he’d told me about his family responsibilities from the day we met and that he was the one with sick child, so I shouldn’t be a selfish about it.

The following Wednesday he brought me a gift as an apology. In a box bearing the name of a fancy shop on the rue Bonaparte in the Saint Germain Quarter there was a beautiful lavender scarf with a Galeries Lafayette label. He showed me different ways of wearing it, before lightly tying my wrists together with it while we made passionate love. He continued to teach me things, such as how to read the label of a bottle of wine and where I must go one day in Provence and when cherries are in season and why the Americans did not like the General de Gaulle.

In July, he told me that his wife and daughters had gone to Bormes les Mimosas for the summer and that he wouldn’t be joining them there until the end of the month, so we would have more time together over the next few weeks. “More time” ended up being two Mondays as well as the usual Wednesday. I suggested a weekend in Deauville but he said that there were too many lawyers in Deauville in summer. Instead, he said, it would be his pleasure to take me someplace nice for dinner on Wednesday. I’d been living in Paris for nine months by then so I knew right away that the bistro he’d selected in the Latin Quarter was unexceptional; it had only a 4.3 rating on Tripadvisor. But I was intent on enjoying myself. I’d checked out the menu online and asked AI what wine would go best with foie gras and pike quenelles, which I intended to order, and with whatever offal he might, and was told Pouilly Fuissé. So I proudly suggested that as we ordered. Instead, he asked the cute and efficient waiter for a bottle of a Sancerre red, telling me that I would understand the subtleties better with time. The young waiter nodded as he said, “Oui monsieur.” It took little time to discover that the Sancerre fell flat with my order. When I asked if he wanted to split an order of profiteroles for dessert, he said that I should profit from them (that was his profiterole joke) myself while he went outside for a smoke and to call his children. In his absence I chatted with the cute, young, efficient waiter, whose chestnut brown hair that fell adorably over his espresso eyes. He complimented me on my French and agreed that Pouilly Fuissé would have been the better choice. When he delivered the profiteroles, I asked him to take my picture with them. He sensed that Bruno and I were not married. He said that a man should not leave a charming young lady like me alone at the table. I agreed, and when he efficiently asked for my Instagram, I agreed to that and asked for his as well. His name is Pascal.

Pascal tells me that he adores me, and I feel the same. We’ve been together for three months now. He’s got me listening to rock from Brittany and using French slang, like kiffe for like and ouf for great, though we mostly speak in English. I’ve got him listening to Taylor Swift and wearing deodorant. We’re looking for a two-room flat to move into together. He supports my ambition of giving pastry tours to tourists while writing a book about how a girl from Ohio became a true Parisienne, illustrated with some of my Instagram photos, which he never fails to kiffe. When I tell him my dream of opening a donut, cupcake, cruffin and cake coffee shop that I would call Morning Liza, he says that would be ouf. I haven’t told him that my father runs the largest car dealership in Ohio, nor that I’ve been seeing my old lover on Wednesdays.

But I don’t have to think about the latter anymore because I told Bruno yesterday, after we made unimaginative love and while he was smoking by the window, that I wouldn’t be able to see him anymore because I was moving in with someone.

“A boy?” he asked, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth.

“A man,” I said.

He stubbed his cigarette in the flower box. He said that this—the two of us—hadn’t been working out for a while anyway because I was too much of a child and that I shouldn’t call him anymore, and anyway, he’d met someone more beautiful and mature, a real Parisienne. He then turned to look out the window, first to the right for brief glimpse at the top of Sacré Coeur then to the windows down below. It crossed my mind that I could push him over the railing then tell the police in perfect French, using the passé composé, that he jumped out when I told him it was over. But he’s taught me so much over the past year that I’m actually grateful to him. Anyway, I’d rather have the pleasure of watching him leave my apartment angry and forlorn, the way he likes movies to end. For myself, I still prefer a happy ending.

© 2026.

Cliché, a Paris Love Story by Lainey Harper. Lainey Harper is the pen name of a writer who’s leaving the dream.

The post Cliché, A Paris Love Story appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

For most of my life in France, Paris was my compass. I taught at the Nouvelle Sorbonne and Sciences Po and lived just outside the city, close enough to feel its constant pulse. I drew energy from its rhythm, its lectures and cafés, its insistence on momentum. Which is why it still surprises me that my husband Pierre and I left that all behind for a 17th-century château in the Loire Valley. In Paris, my mind was always moving ahead, cataloguing lectures, meetings, errands, and ideas I wanted to explore. Here, there was nothing pressing, nothing urgent, and that empty space made me notice how I thought. Thoughts that normally skittered past caught themselves mid-flight, lingering long enough for me to consider them: memories of my childhood in Australia, music I had been playing, questions about the life we were beginning in this new place. It was strange, unsettling, and quietly exhilarating to feel my mind slowing, stretching, and expanding in ways I hadn’t realized it could.

I became aware of the rhythm of my breathing, of the subtle warmth of the stone under my hands, of the almost imperceptible shifts in light across the château walls. I noticed the crunch of my footsteps on the gravel, the whisper of the wind through the trees. For the first time in years, I could feel the shape of my thoughts as they moved, how they curved and bent around the silence instead of rushing past it. I realized I was paying attention not just to the world outside, but to the inner world that had been quieted by the constant pace of the city.

It was in that stillness that the château first revealed itself—not just its history, its stones, or its chapel, but the way it invited observation, reflection, and imagination. Every carved cross, every moss-softened stone, every mark etched by centuries of hands waited to be noticed. And when I finally looked up from my own thoughts, the fields blurred in the sun, the air thick with the scent of dry grass, the trees alive with birdsong. The silence remained, but it was no longer empty—it was full of possibilities I hadn’t seen before.

What drew us to Détilly wasn’t grandeur but the odd, intimate details that made the place human. The medieval chapel, dedicated to Notre-Dame de la Pitié and Saint Marc, bears crosses carved by the Knights Templar, reminders that this stretch of the Vienne River was once more frontier than refuge. I don’t consider myself mystical, but stepping into that space, I felt its weight. The chapel isn’t solemn so much as steady, a sanctuary where centuries and everyday life meet.

That same sense of continuity shaped how we saw our role here. From the start, we never felt like owners. We are caretakers—of leaking roofs, moss-softened stones, and a story that began long before us. Our Irish wolfhounds seem to know this better than anyone. Ramsès roams the grounds like a watchman, while his son, Aramis Destilly, lingers by the chapel door as if tuned to something the rest of us only half-hear.

Of course, history here isn’t just romance—it’s cracked stone, doors that stick, and roofs that groan under winter rain. Preservation is rarely dramatic; it’s patience, repetition, and learning to live with the slow, uneven tempo of a place that’s seen far more seasons than we have.

At Détilly, imagination rises differently. One afternoon I sat watching light shift across the west-facing chapel door, and from that stillness a scene for a novel took shape—something I never would have found in Paris’s constant rush. Guests at our summer writers’ retreat often feel it too. One, standing beneath the old arch, said she felt “history leaning close, but kindly.” Another, after an evening in the garden, told me she had “heard my thoughts for the first time in months.” I know what they mean. The château doesn’t just provide a backdrop—it participates.

And yet, the château’s voice is just as present in the mundane. The real surprise isn’t that we moved here, but that we’ve come to love the small, daily negotiations: coaxing life from a sulky boiler, finding warmth in stone that holds the cold, and tackling repairs that never quite end. None of this was in our plan, and maybe that’s why it feels so alive. There’s something steadying in that work, a quiet satisfaction that comes from tending to the place rather than simply fixing it. It isn’t about efficiency anymore, but about learning to move in step with the château’s slower rhythm, letting its needs shape the pace of our days—and, eventually, shape us.

Living at Détilly keeps us asking: What does it mean to dwell inside history? How do you make a life in walls that have already sheltered so many others? We don’t have the answers. For now, we walk the grounds with the dogs, patch the roof when it leaks, welcome guests when the season allows, and watch evening light pour through the chapel door.

Maybe that’s enough—to live alongside the past, not only to look at it, with all its imperfections, its demands, and the quiet rewards that come when you stop trying to shape a place and let it shape you.

Château de Détilly, 18 Rue des Fromentaux, 37420 Beaumont-en-Véron, is located near where the Vienne River joins the Loire, 5 miles from Chinon.

© 2025, Grahame Elliott

The post Home in the Loire Valley: Unfamiliar Thoughts at Château de Détilly appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

He’s the man of two worlds, of two revolutions and of two languages.
He’s a fellow who understands the politics of a republic, an empire and a kingdom.
He’s a citizen of France and an honorary citizen of the United States.
He’s Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette—call him Lafayette—and he’s returning to America for the first time in two hundred years.

Yes, Lafayette is back – in the new series Lafayette in America on Instagram, launched on September 23, beginning with Episode 1: The Awakening in Paris. New episodes will be posted weekly. Follow now as Lafayette prepares to embark on yet another American adventure.

Absurd, intriguing, irreverent, timely and occasionally historical, Lafayette takes to the streets of Paris before returning to the United States, where he reconnects with old comrades, meets Americans, does food reviews, and tries to understand how the country of his dear friend General George Washington has changed over the centuries.

Follow Lafayette in America @lafayetteinamerica now!

Why now?

At the invitation of the United States government, Lafayette made a grand tour of the United States in 1824 and 1825, visiting the then 24 states of the union, where he was celebrated as the oldest surviving major general of the American Revolution and a reminder of the promise of the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the creation of the democratic republic of the United States of America. Two hundred years later, in 2025, told that he’s needed, he returns on a quieter but no less significant journey, on a secret mission at the behest of unknown figures, accompanied at times by the charmante Mademoiselle Lilly.

Yes, Lafayette is back!

Here are a few images from the upcoming series, filmed and photographed in France and in the United States.

Left: Lafayette tries to go incognito in Paris, yet, once recognized, he gladly poses with fans by the Eiffel Tower.
Right: Lafayette stands by the equestrian statue of his dear friend the General George Washington, a work by the American sculptor Daniel Chester French, on Place d’Iéna in Paris.

Left: Lafayette takes a seat at Les Parisiennes, 17 avenue de la Motte Picquet, 7th arr.
Right: Lafayette reflects on the evolution of the American project as he walks on Omaha Beach, Normandy.

Left: Lafayette with Axel Robb and fellow patriots at Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania, with the charmante Mademoiselle Lilly by his side.
Right: Lafeyette and Will Krakower toast the memory of fallen soldiers of the Continental Army at Princeton Battlefield State Park in New Jersey.

Yes, Lafayette is back! Follow his adventures on Instagram @lafayetteinamerica.

© 2025

Learn about Lafayette’s tomb in Paris.
Learn about Lafayette’s relationship with George Washington.

The post Return of the Marquis: Lafayette in America appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

My parents were both great readers. In the family room, my father had built wall-to-ceiling shelves that my parents then filled with books. These were mostly adult books, poetry for my mother, fiction for my father. As I grew up, I came to enjoy his favorite authors: Mark Twain, with “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” of course, but also the less well known “Life on the Mississippi,” “Innocents Abroad,” and “Puddn’head Wilson,” a detective story.

They passed their love of reading on to me. I had my own large Philippine mahogany bookcase in my bedroom. It held, among others, the Oz stories, but I was a purist. I had only the original ones, those written by L. Frank Baum himself. The Oz books written by a successor after he died were just not the same. I also had a large collection of fairy tale books, notably the “color” series by Andrew Lang.

My father, an engineer working for a large oil company, was often gone on business, especially during World War II, which America joined after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when I was six years old. My father did not fight in the war as a soldier. He was an engineer, and the military draft authorities considered him more important in that role. Still, Papa would be away for weeks at a time, in the Pacific Northwest and Canada where there were oil deposits. He would send me postcards, including a humorous one showing a giant mosquito carrying off a deer. They were fun, but it wasn’t the same as having him there, reading me grownup stories like “The Count of Monte Cristo” instead of just the Mother Westwind stories Mama read to me about animals named Jimmy Skunk, Jerry Muskrat and Joe Otter.

I was bored staying home with Mama alone while my father was away. Luckily, I was saved by the neighbors. My father was often transferred because of his work, so we rented a lot of the time rather than buy a home. In 1942, we moved to Hillsborough, California. The Hammonds, our landlords, lived next door. They were not demanding or oppressive, the way landlords are often portrayed. They were open and friendly. Mrs. Hammond was particularly kind to me. One day she gave me a great gift in the form of an invitation. “I know how much you love our old house,” she said to me. “Our doors are never locked, you can come in whenever you want.” This was an unusual invitation, but for me, Mrs. Hammond was an unusual person because so unlike Mama. Her dress style was a great contrast to Mama’s. Instead of straight skirts and crisply ironed white blouses topped by cardigan sweaters, Mrs. Hammond’s home attire was faded blue jeans. They were perfect for the gardening she loved. During the war the Hammonds had a vegetable garden, a “Victory Garden” as they were called, the idea being that by growing a part of our own food, we were helping the war effort. I followed their example, and was proud of the carrots, beets, peas and string beans that I eventually provided for our dinner table.

I took advantage of Mrs. Hammond’s offer to visit next door whenever I wanted and I’d wander around the house, a big Victorian that had been in the family for generations. I mostly stayed in the downstairs rooms, which had the most character, where I would soak up the atmosphere of warmth and kindness I felt there. Especially, I’d visit her daughters Kate and Jane. Kate was six months older than I, and Jane, six months younger. They were my best friends. We played together almost every day, always at their house. Sometimes we went up to the attic, which had a trunk full of old clothes we could dress up in.

The Hammonds had only one bookcase, kept in what they called “the music room” because there was an upright piano against one wall. There, I often joined Kate and Jane to practice our scales. Music lessons were a must for nice upper middle-class girls like the three of us, the piano being the most popular instrument.

One day, when it was not my turn on the piano, I drifted over to the bookshelf across the room and explored its small collection. There were mostly medical textbooks left over from Mrs. Hammond’s time as a nurse before her marriage. But I also discovered a slim volume called “The Snow Goose” by the American writer Paul Gallico. It is a tale deriving from a real event of the Second World War, prior to the entry of the United States. It recounts the desperate sea evacuation of mostly British along with French soldiers trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk in northern France in 1940, using many small non-military ships and craft along with British destroyers and other military vessels. In the story, a large Canada goose plays a role in the rescue. “If you saw the goose,” one of the story’s fictional survivors says, “you were eventually saved.”

I read “The Snow Goose” for the first time right there on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. It is a beautiful story, about a hunchbacked painter, an orphan girl, and a Canada goose, but because the painter dies during the evacuation it is very sad. It made me weep. Kate and Jane, busy working on a duet at the piano, did not notice my tears.

I continued to find “The Snow Goose” compelling. Seated on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room, I read it over and over. I kept rereading it until my father was transferred to Texas in 1948 and we moved away, when I was 13. Before we moved, I thought, briefly, of stealing “The Snow Goose”, carrying it off with me, but I could not do such a thing to the Hammonds, who had been such good friends to me. I left it where it was.

Years passed before I saw another copy of “The Snow Goose.” I came across it in a used bookstore in Montreal, when my late husband Earl and I were on vacation in Canada. This lovely book would be all mine, forever. It is a nicer copy than the one the Hammonds had, a special edition with four full-page color illustrations: one of the orphan girl with the goose in her arms, two of geese flying over the old lighthouse where the painter lived, and one of the Snow Goose alone in flight.

In my home in Paris where I now live, I have a bookshelf holding books that have special meaning for me. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up just to hold it in my hands or to flip through its pages or to reread it. Recently, for no conscious reason, I found myself drawn to my old and beautiful copy of the “The Snow Goose.” I reread it that afternoon and I loved it just as much as ever. I felt a connection with my six-year-old self sitting on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. Though I hadn’t picked it up in many years, I realized that the book had been a part of my life for more than 80 years. Yet in the decades that I’ve lived in Paris, I had never been to Dunkirk, even though it’s only about 180 miles northwest of the city. I felt a sudden desire—no, a need—to go there.

I made plans to go on my own for one week this past September. I took the train to Dunkirk, a 2½-hour ride from Paris’s Gare du Nord. My daughter had reserved for me a nice hotel near the beach in Malo-les-Bains, once a distinct seaside resort, now fully a part of Dunkirk. It was from Malo that much of the beach evacuation took place in 1940.

My first day there produced typical Northern France weather, a sky like homogenous gray soup threatening rain, and a brisk wind. Reluctantly, I postponed my plan to stroll by the beach. I settled for visiting the nearby Dunkirk War Museum, Musée Dunkerque 1940 – Opération Dynamo. Operation Dynamo was the codename for the wartime evacuation. Visiting the informative museum was well worth my time. While many of the displays and photos naturally tell about the war, the evacuation and its aftermath, I was intrigued by two photos of Dunkirk and Malo before the war, before they were pounded into rubble by German bombings. In the few hours I’d been in Dunkirk, I could already see that most of what now stands has been built since the war. Always a book lover, I bought two books, one in French, one in English, both titled “Operation Dynamo.”

The following day the weather began to clear. I went for a walk on the paved promenade, what the locals call la digue (the dike), that runs the full length of the beach. I could see far out across the water, beyond the low dunes with gray-green marsh grass growing in the sand. This was one of the sites of the evacuation. There was still wind, but not so strong, and it didn’t buffet the numerous small white sailboats I saw. In a trick of the mind, I imagined that they were part of the flotilla of small craft arriving to carry the stranded soldiers away to safety to the larger ships waiting farther out, to take them on to safety in England.

The next day, I returned to the path along the beach, now with “The Snow Goose” in my purse. It wasn’t the beautiful copy I had at home, but a pocket-size edition that a friend whom I had told about this touching story and about my plan to visit Dunkirk had kindly sent me from England. I found a wooden bench where, under blue skies with powder puff white clouds, I sat and began to read. From time to time, I looked along the beaches around me where the men had awaited rescue and out to the sea before me. I noticed how shallow the water was for a good distance out. For the first time, I truly understood the need for small boats to evacuate the soldiers. The larger boats that had tried to come in to pick up the stranded soldiers could not, because there was not enough depth. Thus hindered, they made easy targets for the German planes overhead, diving and strafing. Still, the little boats were not spared.

I reread the “The Snow Goose” entirely that afternoon, occasionally pausing to contemplate my surroundings. In my mind’s eye I could see those little boats trying to dart away from the diving planes. Some got through. Others did not. The little boat in “The Snow Goose” was one of the latter. For the lonely painter and the orphan girl who had come to love him, there was only loss. Although I usually prefer happy endings, such an ending would never have touched me the way this sad one has. I was moved in an unusual way, not to tears for a beautiful tale, but by the realization of how very close this evacuation, a “non-victory” as Churchill put it, came to becoming a resounding defeat. Yet in the final accounting, 340,000 British and French troops were successfully evacuated. They formed the nucleus of an army which would fight again, and, four years later, with Americans now on their side, return to the shores of France to eventually defeat Germany.

Though this was my first time in Dunkirk, being there was like visiting my own past. I thought of the kindness of the Hammonds and our peaceable lives in California. I thought about the effects of World War II on the American home front, with our sense of a just and necessary war, and the effort to engage ordinary civilians, women and even children like me, through Victory Gardens and War Bond drives, events that marked my childhood and have stayed with me as “The Snow Goose” has for over 80 years. As I sat there, watching families now walking peacefully in the sunshine along the beach and looking out to the calm waters and little sailboats sliding on the sea, I realized that I am now old enough to remember a time that fewer and fewer do. I realized this not with sadness or even nostalgia, but with a sense of privilege at having been a part of those heroic times.

© 2024, Alice Evleth

Read the accompanying article Dunkirk 1940, Dunkirk Today: Advice for a Day Trip or an Overnight by Gary Lee Kraut.

The post The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

As the train set out from Paris for the 2½-hour ride to Saint Malo (from there I would take a taxi to Dinard, across the bay), I wondered what I might write about. I had been to this corner of Brittany several times already, so I couldn’t, without putting on false airs of naiveté, write about first-time discovery. As a re-visitor I would have to find another angle, something more personal and insightful than “Brittany, wow!”

I made a list in my notebook of angles to consider based on my expectations of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; or something with more of a storyline: taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. Maybe I would find something new and unexpected while there. I gazed out the window at the passing damp spring countryside and soon dozed off, awaking only as the train, having entered Brittany, approached Rennes before turning north to the coast.

My friends are warm, generous hosts. They laid out an abundance of pre-shucked oysters for lunch. With one of the couple we visited art galleries. We examined ads in the windows of real estate agencies. The other bought pastries, which we ate at teatime while watching a nature documentary on TV during a brief bout of rain. We separated and reunited. We went to their favorite creperie for dinner. Afterward, we lounged on long, deep couches in the living room. We removed our shoes at the door and wore slippers in the immaculate house.

I took seaside walks with the two of them, and with one or the other, and alone. I shot photos and videos as future prompts or reminders for the as-yet-undefined article: a statue of Alfred Hitchcock, cliffside and clifftop houses, rock, sea and sky, and more rock, sea and sky. Once, when taking the seaside walk alone, I watched a water walker, a grey figure in a grey sea against a grey sky. Later, rounding a bend, I observed two women approaching from the opposite direction with the hand of the one holding the crux of the elbow of the other, as friends and couples did more often long ago. Suddenly, one of the gals slipped on the damp seaside walk and let out a high-pitched yelp, but she was held secure by the grip of the other. They stood locked in place and laughed as though on the edge of a precipice. As I passed by, their broad smiles invited me, as their witness, to share in the joy of their accidental choreography. I obliged. Further on, I stared into the crevice of a dark, damp inlet and imagined that a hermit lived there. On the way back, I looked up to a steep-gabled Belle Epoque villa on the cliff and envisioned the ghost of an old aristocrat standing sentinel by a parted velvet curtain. I raised a hand and waved, and was amused by the thought that if anyone was actually looking down at the walkway just then, they would be startled to think that they were the one being watched.

With one or the other of the friends, or when the three of us were together, the conversations were fluid and droll, occasionally mutually mocking, at times requiring political or cultural or gastronomic analysis. We agreed, we disagreed, we informed each other, we told stories. The tête-à-têtes were more personal and jokey with the one, more work-related with the other, equally engaging, none troubling.

I enjoyed a restful, well-fed, sea-bracing stay. There had been but one moment of tension the entire time. At the end of the meal of enhanced leftovers the second evening, and in the midst of a light and teasing exchange about housework, a brusque gesture between me and the less prim of the couple caused the helpless slip of a wine glass that I failed to save and which then crashed onto the sparkling tile floor. The resulting tension was within the couple. My comment that luckily they hadn’t brought out their best stemware for me anyway failed to resonate as humor. Instead, I was told that I was “not helping” and shooed into the living room.

As far as I could tell, and like the shards themselves, no trace of the event remained by the time we all retired to the couches to watch an episode from season three of a Netflix series that the couple had been following. I had never seen the show, so one of them launched into explanation, perhaps excessive, and stopped the episode twice within the first few minutes to provide additional details, which aggravated the other, who then went upstairs for a bath, leaving the first to decide whether to watch the episode with me now or save it for later. I might have been wrong about the shards, I thought, as the one who remained pushed play.

On Sunday afternoon, after 48 hours in Dinard, I hugged and kissed the friends good-bye—they would soon be returning to Paris—and took the small ferry across the bay to Saint Malo. With no obligations in Paris until Monday afternoon, I’d decided to stay in the area another 24 hours. I didn’t have a care in the world. Being alone on a boat at sea after a warm embrace on the quay carried with it the thrill of solitary freedom and possibility. I stood at the stern by the fluttering French flag watching Dinard fall away, then turned to Saint Malo with its central steeple poking out from the level town, then back again to see Dinard receding beyond the bay, then again to Saint Malo growing larger. I felt eager, inspired, untethered and buoyant as I turned back and forth as the ferry approached the granite expanse of the walled town. That—that feeling, that sense of possibility—that’s something I could write about, I thought. It felt like the culmination of the weekend. But I had only just arrived at Saint Malo. I picked up my bag and disembarked.

I set off from the quay for the hotel where just that morning I’d reserved a room. My memory of previous visits to Saint Malo allowed me to find the hotel with a single glance at the map.

The hallway lobby sat still and quiet, with the only light coming from a tall side window. I rang the bell on the counter. After a moment, a door marked Privé opened and a woman with a tea-towel over the shoulder of her pale housedress shuffled out to greet me. She switched on a single light overhead but the ceiling was so high that the twilight atmosphere of the lobby barely changed, though I now saw that her housedress was pale blue and the tea-towel, which she set aside, dark grey. I said Bonjour, Madame, announced my name, and said that I’d called just that morning for the reservation. She repeated my name when she found it in the reservation book, said, “One night,” and asked if I’d have breakfast in the morning. “No thank you,” I replied. She then grabbed a key attached to a red tassel from a hook on the board behind the desk and invited me to follow her. She was welcoming enough, though I thought she could be warmer, even chatty, given that no one else seemed to be around. I supposed that I’d interrupted her cleaning.

While being shown to my room, I remarked on the quiet. She said nothing in return. I inquired if I was the only client for the night, half-hoping it were the case for the eerie pleasure it would give, half-hoping it weren’t for the mystery of encountering one or two other travelers. Her abrupt response, “No, there are others,” indicated that she had been offended by the question, perhaps compounded by my unwillingness to pay for a hotel breakfast.

I was given a large room on the second floor with a high ceiling, a king-size bed, and a view over a little square. It was quite attractive for the price, greatly reduced for this off-season Sunday night. If I cared to write about the hotel—handsome, comfortable, inexpensive—I’d need to ask her to see other rooms, and I’d then feel obliged to take breakfast, none of which interested me. She handed me the key and wished me a pleasant stay.

I set down my bag, removed my shoes to lie on the bed, as though that’s what I’d come for, then immediately put them back on. I took the foldable umbrella from my backpack and went out to explore the walled town.

After a few blocks I climbed onto the ramparts just as the blue sky was being overwhelmed by billowing smoke-like clouds. Wind roughened the sea. A mist enveloped me, then a light rain fell, but it only lasted several minutes before giving way to clear sky, until the smoky and darkening clouds reappeared as if out of nowhere, renewing the cycle of mist and rain before the return of a sky so startling blue that I thought this time it was meant to last through the day.

Across the estuary I spied the seaside promenade of Dinard that I’d walked along several times over the previous two days. The moment had come, I thought, to settle on the topic for an article. I’d lost the wave of feelings and thoughts of the crossing—something about freedom and possibility. I now had nearly the same view as from the ferry, yet the rocks, the sea, the sky, appealingly forceful and unstable as they were, now seemed more inevitable than promising. I tried to think of what I found especially interesting about Dinard or now Saint Malo. Interesting—such a bland word. Looking for “interesting” suggested boredom. I lifted my phone to photograph the statues on the ramparts of the navigator-explorer Jacques Cartier and the corsair Robert Surcouf and, beyond the ramparts, the island where writer-politician François-René de Chateaubriand was buried. Maybe the life or deeds of one or two of them could form the subject of an eventual article. Yet was anyone interested in these historical figures? I wasn’t. Anyway, I didn’t care to think about researching anything. What was left of them but statues for tourists to photograph? And here I was doing just that: taking pictures and making sweeping videos, recording what I saw, without particular interest or attention.

It made me feel like a bored tourist, looking for something to be “interesting.” Was I bored, already, with Saint Malo—rather, with myself in Saint Malo? Did I need to create anything at all from the weekend beyond my immediate enjoyment and thoughts, my time with friends, my encounter with the coast? I put away my phone, telling myself that I’d rather just walk, visit and explore than think that my footsteps or my surroundings needed to be organized thematically. No one was actually waiting for an article from me about Dinard or Saint Malo, or about Brittany at all for that matter. The prospect of not writing one, however, felt now like a failing given my earlier intent. But why feel married to intentions? If the original intent no longer inspired me then… Yet I was a travel writer—was I still?—and here I was.

I am here, I thought. I took in the view of the rugged coast, the powerful seascapes, the rocky outposts, the innumerable skies. I wanted to go out on the beach and down to the water.

I descended from the ramparts and exited the city gate to walk along the beach. It was low tide; water’s edge seemed unreasonably distant. An old fortress was planted on the rocks several hundred yards from the town walls. Vaguely linking the two was a dark, craggy outcrop that became increasingly nebulous as it approached the fortress. Mostly submerged at high tide, the uneven band of rock was now exposed. It promised a sweeping view of the walled town, the fortress, the ambiguous coast to one side, and to the other the wide beach and straight extension of the town with its thalassotherapy hotel complexes.

I stepped over the lower rocks then climbed onto the outcrop for a high central point of view. No, I wasn’t bored in the least. My mind at that moment felt as bright and clear and intangible as the naked blue sky overhead as the wind tugged at my jacket. I put my cap in pocket so that it I wouldn’t fly away. Minutes later, an unsettled and unsettling grey arrived like a lid over the mist that now surrounded me, and I sensed an unsettled and unsettling change within me as well. Turning west, I faced the formidable and uncompromising sea and felt it’s reflection in my churning mood. Then turning east, I fathomed an ambition—or was it a disillusion? —as relentless and stealthy as the remote tideline imperceptibly making its way toward me.

This was what I’d been looking for. I took the phone from my pocket to shoot a video of the full panorama, and in panning the surroundings I wondered if I truly felt any of what I’d just thought. Or was the sight of the changeable skies unattached to any needs, concerns, questions or desires of my own. Had I simply been reciting to myself seaside weather clichés as I stood straddling two boulders? What did I feel in this place? The wind blew strong. I looked away from the screen while still holding up the phone to complete another circular pan of the view, and then another. In doing so, I sensed a gap between what I saw and my own intimate experience of climbing along the rocks and standing there twisting and rotating as I shot the video. I sensed a metaphor of how cliché meets reality the way the sea meets the sky, whether as a clear line along the horizon or with no discernable separation. Or was that a simile? In trying to parse the comparison I lost hold of the original thought. And at that moment, I also lost my balance and slipped. I fell directly onto my rump on one of the boulders, dropping my phone in the process.

I was unharmed, I sensed that immediately, other than possibly a bruised buttock, but I also felt shaken by the realization that I’d come dreadfully close to falling between the rough and slippery rocks and risking serious injury. My phone had landed in a shallow, sandy pool. I climbed down to retrieve it and found with relief that it, too, was unharmed. How stupid, I thought, to have climbed along the slippery rocks, in this wind, with a phone in my hand no less, at my age! I wiped off the phone, placed it in my pocket, then slowly and carefully made my way back across the wet rocks. Once past the higher portion of the outcrop, I stepped over shallow pools of water and circumvented small boulders and rocks to reach open beach.

Yet I still felt the fright of the slip, the quickened heartbeat of a lucky escape. I envisioned the injury that might have occurred—a broken leg, a head wound, a fractured wrist, not to mention a busted phone. As I walked along the beach, I found myself spinning a yarn in which a traveler slips from a boulder, breaks his leg (and his phone) in the fall, and gets his foot caught between two rocks. No one hears him cry out as night falls and the inescapable tide rises.

The smoky sky had returned and was veering to charcoal. As a beating rain then fell, I realized that I’d dropped my umbrella when slipping on the rocks. Should I go looking for it now and truly risk harming myself? No. The rain drove me off the beach and back intra muros. I began to run in the direction of the hotel but after several minutes realized that I was lost. How could I be lost in such a rectilinear town that I’d visited several times in the past? I stopped under an awning to regain my bearings. Eventually, a man with a black labrador walked by as did other people. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there before it registered that none of the passersby was holding up an umbrella; the rain had stopped. I recognized the shop across the street and was amused to realize that my hotel was just around the corner.

Rather than return to my room, however, I would find a place for dinner. I peered into restaurant windows for a seat and an atmosphere that would suit me, and eventually entered a pub. Strangely, while waiting for my order, I again felt the fright of the fall, as though stuck in that instant of losing control on the rocks, before I had landed unharmed. I remembered the women who’d laughed on the seaside walk when one had slipped, and how they’d invited me to share in their survivor’s joy and how I had. But now, once again, I found myself thinking of the harrowing tale of the man with the broken leg whose foot was stuck between rocks, out of view, in a dip in the outcrop, while the tide inexorably rose. I looked around the room for the type of character who might save me in that story. But why did I keep seeing myself as the protagonist in a panic before the rising tide when here I was, eating fish and chips, finishing a beer, ready to return to a pleasant hotel? Why couldn’t I let go of the tremor of near escape that I felt in my heart?

It stayed with me on the short walk back to the hotel, and into the dimly lit hallway lobby, and up the steep stairwell to my room. Looking at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I was unable to shake the shiver of what might have happened. And once in the large bed, turned on my side with one arm wrapped around a long, firm pillow, I listened to my heartbeat repeating what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if as the tide rose. I must have fallen asleep before the water reached me.

The following morning, as the train left the station, I took out my notebook and pen. I read the list that I’d written at the start of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. I began to add to the list, starting with “the sensation of solitary freedom and possibility when crossing the bay,” but no sooner did I finish the line than I felt in my heartbeat the cry of the injured man faced with the rising tide: what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if. The train rolled south to Rennes. I gazed out the window at the fleeting tangle of trees. From Rennes the train turned east toward Paris, and somewhere, I wondered where exactly, the train left Brittany. It was in that somewhere that I decided I would have to save myself.

© 2024, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Brittany Tale: The Fright appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

… you’ve looked in many stores for a new armchair and finally select one from BHV Marais, the department store located across the street from City Hall. You choose the fabric and the color. It’s Oct 22. Delivery is promised in handwriting by the mannerly floor section manager: Délai : +/- 19 Janvier 2024 ou AVANT ! LE PLUS TOT POSSIBLE !! – [Delivery] Date: +/- 19 January 2024 or BEFORE! AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!)–capitals and exclamation points in the original. You have the choice between pick-up at the store or, for 115€, delivery chez vous. The delivery fee seems exorbitant. You’d rather ask a friend with a car to help then take him to dinner. You pay for the chair in full (717€), without delivery, and go about your Parisian life.

Six weeks later, you receive a text message from BHV announcing a delivery delay. The new date is 31 January. You respond that the delay is inacceptable. Your message is ignored. Mid-February, you receive a message announcing that the armchair will be available as of 28 February. This time the message promises, as compensation (dédommagement) free delivery/assembly (livraison/montage), “[normally] billed at 139€.”

A week later, you’ve received no further news of the actual delivery date. It’s now February 21, four months since you paid for the armchair. You’re in the area of BHV so you enter the department store to find someone to speak with. You’re pleased to come upon the same floor section manager who sold you the promise of an armchair. She’s chatting with a colleague.

You greet them kindly: Bonjour. They turn to you with wary expectation. Looking only at the floor section manager, you calmly explain that you’ve received several (plusieurs) delay notices for an armchair that you purchased from BHV Marais four months ago and counting, and still no armchair. She leads you over to her desk and looks up the purchase order, the one with the buoyant and promising capitals and exclamation points, in her own hand: Délai : +/- 19 Janvier 2024 ou AVANT ! LE PLUS TOT POSSIBLE !!

She immediately blames the delay on the supplier, with whom “we always have problems.” Annoyed by the immediate deflection of responsibility, you ask why she kept that detail from you when you purchased the armchair. She says that she didn’t know at the time. You tell her that you have no direct relationship with the supplier, only BHV, so that for you BHV is responsible. “It should arrive next week, monsieur,” she says. “C’est comme ça”—That’s the way it is.

There’s no greater sign of your acculturation in Paris than feeling properly self-righteous and seizing the proper moment to râler (grouse, gripe, grumble). This is it. The battlelines are drawn with a c’est comme ça. Her why-are-you-still-here expression tells you that she thinks that should be enough.

You hadn’t actually intended to râler, you’re not a râleur (grumbler) by nature but by cultural adoption. The floor section manager’s rigid refusal to acknowledge the store’s responsibility is a sign that the moment has come. If you don’t start now, you’ll find yourself wondering while in the metro or in bed or trying to work what you would say or write to best express your frustration with BHV. So you begin with the word that signals to all within hearing distance—the floor section manager and her colleague who is standing nearby. You look the floor section manager in the eye and tell her that the situation is inacceptable. If you’d known it would take so long for the armchair to arrive, you say, you wouldn’t have purchased it.

She returns your square look in the eye as her colleague moves a step closer. She looks to him, he looks to her, they both look to you.

“Un instant,” she says, a sign that she will look on her terminal for proof that the situation is more than acceptable because it is what it is. Indeed, she points at a spreadsheet on her screen and says, “They say it will arrive in one week.” She repeats the offer for free delivery or, she now adds, an 89€ refund. Her tone in presenting the choice is like that of a bored waiter proposing pommes frites or haricots verts. It also bothers you that she’s offering 89€ when the last message spoke of a 139€ delivery value and four months ago she’d offered delivery at 115€. You call her on it. She has an immediate answer: 115€ was an old price. It’s now 89€ for delivery and 139€ if the deliverymen mount the piece of furniture and dispose of the packaging. You tell her that the only mounting required is screwing on the legs.

You’re not sure what to say next and you don’t want to repeat inacceptable so you chose another missile of a word from the râleur’s handbook—you tell her that this is inadmissible.

“I explained the situation,” she says. “Do you understand?”—Vous comprenez? She may or may not be making reference to your accent, but leaving it at that she remains within the rules of engagement. Her colleague inches closer. He can’t seem to focus on his own job until the situation is resolved. You can tell he’s dying to get involved, and he does as he, too, says, “Do you understand?”

What you understand is that you are now culturally obliged to râler further.  You say, “I understand that delivery of my armchair is so long overdue that I’d like to a refund.”

“I’ve given you a choice, Monsieur,” she says. “Delivery at home or an 89€ refund and you pick up the merchandise.”

Yes, you know that you’ll presumably soon have your armchair, whether picked up with your friend’s help or delivered with the legs screwed on and the box removed, and that you can then decide for yourself if you ever want to shop at BHV again. So even though you’re unlikely to make any headway against a business as detached, in your experience, as BHV Marais, and a salesperson as doctrinaire as this, with a workplace rubbernecker by her side, you proceed to tell her (you don’t acknowledge him) that she’s presented you with a false choice (un faux choix), one that is intellectually dishonest (intellectuellement malhonnête; it’s an expression that would get you laughed out of Walmart, but here the number of syllables alone signals that you’re a worthy Parisian adversary) since any reasonable choice would involve a full refund (remboursement total).

As her colleague watches, ready to leap to her defense, she tries to goad you into insulting her personally by asking if you thought she “lied” (menti) when she gave you the original delivery deadline (délai de livraison). You know how this works: Calling her a liar (une menteuse) would label you an aggressor and allow her to call victory and store security. The rules of an in-store râlerie require steadfast concrete reasoning. You won’t fall into her emotional trap. So you tell her that you aren’t here to discuss her feelings. You tell her that you were “duped” (dupé) into buying the armchair, with her own handwriting as proof (la preuve). Four months after the original order, you tell her, the honest choice is between a total refund and, you now add, appropriate compensation.

She says, “Do you want to give me a delivery address or not?”

You’ve had your say and there’s nothing more to do here. Despite your elevated heartrate, you coolly give her your address for delivery, should you decide to accept it. Her colleague walks away. Obtaining an 89€ refund sounds too complicated and isn’t an acceptable number anyway. That thought leads you to declare one more time that the situation is inacceptable and to ask now for the contact information for the complaint department.

She writes down the customer service email address.

One might think that any store salesperson properly trained in customer service would know that few clients would bother making a complaint at that point—after all, the chair is due to be delivered in one week and you’ve apparently accepted free delivery—and so would revert to the customary etiquette of farewell, perhaps with a kind assurance that you’ll be happy with your beautiful armchair. If so, one hasn’t shopped in Paris. As she hands you the slip of paper with the email address, and apparently feeling the need for a final power play, the BHV floor section manager says, “Whatever you send will be forwarded to me and you already have my answer.” You now have no choice but to formalize your grievance (réclamation).

At home, you write to BHV Marais customer service. You keep your message short and direct, just the facts of the delay and the unacceptability and inadmissibility of the offer of simply free delivery. You include a scanned copy of the invoice with its capital letters and exclamation points. You make no personal comments about the floor section manager other than to note your incrédulité regarding her parting shot about this réclamation being dead in the water (lettre morte). You conclude by requesting a full refund for the as yet undelivered armchair.

You’ve done your Parisian best. You’ve presented logic, you didn’t once lose your temper, and you’ve made proper use of two of the three most important words in any proper râlerie: inacceptable and inadmissible, using them sparingly, while throwing in an incrédule and an intellectuellement malhônete to let customer service know that you’re no stranger to complaint departments in France. For the time being you’ve refrained from using the third important word, scandaleux, so as to deploy it at the appropriate time with the appropriate interlocuteur.

Two days later you receive a message signed with a guy’s first name inviting you to please be assured that your request is being treated by the head of the concerned department so as to provide you with a response, and thanking you for your understanding. Business-speak for good luck (bonne chance). Since you’re also invited to rate and comment on his response, you give it a 1 of 5 and comment that the client is only reassured when a matter has been fully resolved, and you thank him in return for his understanding.

Several days later, on a Sunday afternoon, you get a phone call from BHV customer service. The female voice is young and sweet and her words are spoken with a smile. You’re offered free delivery (with the legs screwed on and the box disposed of) plus a 60-euro refund. You comment on the strangeness of that number, 60, remarking that it seems to be resting on its way somewhere. She explains that that’s the amount the manufacturer is willing to reimburse and they won’t give more. Since the number is clearly n’importe quoi (rubbish), you tell her that it is inacceptable for BHV to deflect responsibility in this manner. You further tell her that the so-called free delivery isn’t truly a gift because you had planned on picking the armchair up yourself at the store in January. She responds that delivery nevertheless costs BHV and that you could be reimbursed 89€ if you still wanted to pick up the merchandise. Actually, you would like it delivered but are still annoyed that she’s using 89€ as the figure for dédommagement. You tell her that 89€ is n’importe quoi given that BHV’s text mentioned a delivery value of 139€. She says she doesn’t understand. She says this with such innocent-sounding sincerity that you’re about to lose your own thread of logic, when suddenly you remember that you’re the wronged party and have yet to deploy the most important term of any self-righteous râleur. You use it now.

C’est scandaleux, you say.

You take a deep breath then launch into a mild rant about being dupé by BHV from the start and the floor manager’s faux choix, which was intellectuellement malhonnête, and how your many followers, as they say in French, will soon know that this is inacceptable, inadmissible and scandaleux, until finally she interrupts.

Monsieur, she says, you didn’t let me finish my proposition. You’ll get free delivery and assembly of the armchair, 60€ refunded through your credit card, and a 50€ voucher for in-house purchase.

Whether or not the extra 50€ came from your excellent and emphatic use of inacceptable, inadmissible and scandaleux, you can’t tell. But you know that this is clearly the moment for you to stop de râler and to accept that the négociation has come to an end.

So, with the proper air of resignation, you accept her proposition. And like that, the unacceptability and the scandalousness of the situation disappear like vampires at sunrise.

Once you’ve accepted the offer, you and the customer service rep discuss how and when all this will occur. Her voice is even more soothing and reassuring than before as she explains the timing: the armchair delivered next week, the voucher from BHV within 24 hours, the refund from the manufacturer in 2-4 weeks*. You can nearly smell the floral scent of her perfume. Your own tone is melodious, with a hint of sandalwood, as you provide her with your email address and mailing address. When she says that she knows where that is, you tell her to stop by sometime to see your armchair. The banter is so light and cheery that you nearly forget that you’ll both be glad when the conversation is over. But the time has come for her to ask if there’s anything else she can do for you today, for you to say, “No, that’s all,” and to wish each other un bon dimanche, a good Sunday. She will then return to other dissatisfied clients and you can now decide how strongly you want to advise against ordering anything from BHV Marais.

Very strongly indeed.

© 2024, Gary Lee Kraut

*Six weeks later, when the 60€ has failed to arrive, you wonder if BHV has pocketed the refund from the manufacturer.

The post You know you live in Paris when… BHV Marais and the vocabulary of complaint appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

A food lover, I worked my way through the Breton catalog of culinary wonders during my first few months in Brittany. I ate delicately spun buckwheat crepe-like galettes, my favorite filled with a perfect balance of musky smoky sausage and briny seaweed. I feasted on piles of mussels coaxed to open their shells in a savory brew of mellowed alliums, wine and then the sea broth given up by the crustacean, a baguette there to soak up every single drop of buttery, tangy broth. At my friend’s cottage by the roaring gray ocean, I slathered slices of dark buckwheat bread with the famous brilliant-yellow Breton butter salted by the sea and ate it alongside razor clams we had just dug up from the sandy beach. And my cheeks got round with weekend brunches ending in flaky, caramelly kouign amann pastry.

Those first few months I don’t know if I ate even one potato. “Earth apple” in French and Breton: pomme de terre, aval-douar. I wondered where the produce from all the fields of green went if not to the Breton table. In fact, my introduction to those potatoes – Amandine, Charlotte, Marianna, to name just a very few – began not à table but on the streets of Brest. Literally on the streets.

I was on my way home from school one evening, later than most commuters. It was a typical drizzly gray spring but the eerie silence was more like a city after a winter storm. Farmers protesting low prices had dumped tractor loads of potatoes at major intersections. The piles were now a whispering soft mush like when you add too much milk to the spuds.

Cars quietly shushed through the slush or got stuck, like me, in a foot of puree. A tall lusty gendarme, in the normally menacing all-black uniform, directed traffic with the glee of a child on the first real snow day in December. He lifted up my car’s back right rear where the tire was spinning in the muck with a hearty, “Hop là!” The thrust sent a spray of potato up the front of his jacket and his feet slid out from under him on the slippery sliding mess. He fell flat on his derriere, laughing up at the sky; I half expected him to make a snow angel in his delight. “Oh, la, la, quel bordel!” he laughed.

My introduction to the importance of potatoes to Breton chefs happened at a small café on a blustery winter day, the wind roaring in off the Atlantic. The waitress standing at my table, a round older woman with remarkable posture, tapped a pad with her pencil. Her apron was pristine, white and pressed, a towel tucked on the side to give a table a quick swipe. She was all business and waiting for my order. The special of the day? Lapin chasseur – rabbit, hunter-style. With potatoes.

It sounded lovely. But in my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed naïve American way, I asked in my clumsy French, “What is there as vegetables?”

The waitress, a bit like my stern second-grade teacher, Mrs. Bodfish, who said a lot with a little, stared silently. She must have realized Americans can be dense. “Potatoes,” she repeated.

Not to be deterred I went on, “Well, in my country, potatoes are not truly considered as a vegetable.”

She continued to stare. I matched her ability to be frugal with her words, with my ability to go the extra mile. “It’s like the rice or the pasta? How do you say, a ‘starch’?”

Nothing. Surrendering, I ordered the lapin that the hunter had slaved over with the potato vegetables. The rabbit was tender and fell away from the bone with a simple touch of a single fork tine. Mushrooms melted away on my tongue in a caramelly brown sauce and a medley of herbs teased my palate. And with each bite? A bit of potato to perfectly bind and carry the woodsy meat, mushroom and sauce without disturbing the delicacy of the flavors.

The waitress came by and asked brusquely how everything was. “Très, très bon – délicieux.” She gave a short and sure “of course” nod and went back to the other customers. My stomach gloriously warm and full, the bill paid, I was calling my farewell when the waitress remembered something and gestured for me to wait.

She called to the chef in the kitchen. He appeared at the window where orders were placed – tall and thin, eyes quick and gray-blue like the Breton sea, cheeks red and glossy with the heat of the kitchen. She presented me ceremoniously with a dramatic sweep of her arm. “This,” she emphasized, “is the woman who said potatoes are not a vegetable.”

He looked me over from head to toe and back again. He enunciated. “C’est le légume de baaaaase, madame,” which translates to “Lady, it is the foundation on which all other vegetables rest, on which all food rests, in fact.”

There it was. The reason for the glorious green and rolling fields laying down a carpet from the city to the sea as I passed on the drive to work each day. And from that moment on, I began to see them everywhere. Humble, unassuming potatoes – the necessary support to the dishes that stole the culinary thunder but were not complete without them.

There was Kig ha farz – buckwheat flour dumplings cooked in a linen sleeve alongside boiled meats and vegetables – with potato cooked in the salty, savory broth. Not a restaurant dish but a simple stick-to-your-ribs meal meant to gather family around the table after Sunday mass. Poulet à la Bretonne, simmered on the stove in a Breton cider as fine as any dry white wine, only became a full dinner when served with golden roasted potatoes. Historically, the fisherman of Brittany took potatoes with them for long days out on the water and would add a medley of fish from their catch with a bit of water and sea brine to make the working man’s cotriade, a nourishing soup at sea. And every Breton village had its own recipe for the fisherman’s soup perfectly suited to the many many rainy, windy days of Bretagne.

In 2023, I will be heading back to revisit the land of pommes de terre. I know I can expect some rain, I can expect drives through lovely countryside, and I can expect some incredible meals with the essential foundation of potatoes.

© 2022, Francesca Cannan, for first publication on France Revisited.

The post The Potato Chronicles: Memories of Brittany appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Best viewed on a full screen with sound on.

The post Bastille Day, a Paris Vignette appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

It was particularly thrilling to me that M. Chevalier chose to include my all-time favorite, “Ah! Si Vous Connaissiez Ma Poule” in his program. Not as well known as “Valentine” or “Mimi,” the song was so familiar to me I couldn’t wait for him to come to my favorite part where he injected his very French laugh into the notes of the title: “Ha ha ha… ah si vous connaissiez ma pou ou ou ou ou ou ou ou le.” If I had known how to say, “stage door” in French, I would have gladly stood in line to get his autograph—unfortunately, I left empty-handed.

Flash forward—Back in the States, ten years and two children after that first Parisian encounter, when I read that M. Chevalier was coming to this country to do a one man show at The Ziegfeld Theater in New York. I immediately wrote for tickets. My husband, who had always tolerated this rival and even brought him into the house (musically speaking) on several occasions, agreed to accompany me to the theater.

It was a blustery winter night in February 1963, but the house was full, and neither the audience nor Maurice was daunted by the weather outside. If his bio had not revealed his age as being 75, nothing in his performance would have given it away.

I sat enthralled as he went through his repertoire from “Mimi” and “Louise” in English to “Valentine,” “Place Pigalle,” Quai de Bercy,” and many of my other favorites in French. Mind you, I scarcely knew a word of French—I took Spanish in high school—but his gestures, his bearing and the tilt of his straw hat made the meaning of each song as clear as if he had been born on 42nd Street.

The audience that night was made up of equally enthusiastic fans who joined me in applauding wildly and shouting “Bravo” at the end. His curtain calls sent the audience into a tizzy of excitement. “Toujours Maurice,” we shouted. But many of us forwent the last of the bows to be first in line at the stage door where we could see our idol emerge and perhaps, just perhaps, get his autograph. I left my husband, still seated, with strict instructions to shout all my “Bravos” and Encores” and to meet me outside when the final curtain went down.

Almost tripping on my spike heels, I was still not the closest to the door. Others, savvier than I in the ways of autograph seeking, crowded in, but when a representative of M. Chevalier’s appeared in the doorway and said Monsieur would see a few people at a time in his dressing room, I took an uncharacteristic action that surprised even me. I elbowed my way to the front and boldly included myself in the very first (and for all I know the only) group to be ushered into the presence of The Star.

We were escorted past the guard at the entrance, who in an old movie would have been called “Pop,” and then we were there. And there he was, a tall, unsmiling, even dour man in a dressing gown and the obligatory ascot. Without his straw hat, he did not seem as jaunty as he had on stage until I heard him speak. Then I thought I would faint. It took me a moment or two to realize he was asking for the Playbill hanging limply from my hand so that he could write his name on it. That lilt, that accent, that voice.

And that was all there was to it. I walked out onto the street where my husband was waiting for me. In my hand was the autograph on my Playbill. Over the years, my 78’s became 45’s became tapes and now “Ah! Si Vous Connaissiez Ma Poule” is one band on a CD, “Le Roi Du Music-Hall.”

I never saw Chevalier in person after that. I have only my memories, my recordings and a precious piece of paper signed in his own hand. But if you walked into my office on any given day, you would see a large poster of that gentleman in the straw hat hanging over my desk, and in the background hear the unmistakable voice of my all-time favorite chanteur: Maurice Chevalier.

© 2022, Lyla Blake Ward

The post Toujours Maurice appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I’d barely passed the social distancing sign at the entrance when I spotted one: a man and a woman walking hand in hand just ahead of me. I entered the first room of the permanent exhibition just behind them. They walked up to the panel on the wall and stood shoulder to shoulder reading it. From a proper meter to one side, I, too, read about the origins of the town that the Romans called Divodurum Mediomatricorum.

Madame either read faster than monsieur or she gave up before finishing the panel. She let go of his hand and moved on. Or did the gesture reflect something deeper, some dissatisfaction or annoyance, even something as simple as the way he moved his lips as he read to himself in an audible whisper? It was certainly annoying to me.

I walked on among the extensive Gallo-Roman collection.

To some, the very idea of a museum is foreboding, and the term Gallo-Roman, indicating the Romanized culture of Gaul from the first through the fifth centuries AD, would be unlikely to reassure them. Neither would subsequent signs pointing to collections of the Early, High and Late Middle Ages, though those eventually give way to the mildly promising sign for the Renaissance.

Some travelers imagine that knowledge is required when visiting such a museum, or, crueler still, appreciation. But nothing more is required in this free museum, or any museum for that matter, than when visiting a park: a simple stroll will do. Something is sure to come of it—you’ll catch a sight or sensation that draws you one way or another or the scent of a thought or an idea—at the very least a bit of physical or mental exercise.

The couple I’d first seen soon disappeared. I was alone on my stroll. How fortunate not to be encumbered by anyone. It was then that I truly began to notice the couples and twosomes. They were everywhere: complicitous duos, ‘til-death-do-us partnerships, unselfconscious hand-holders, shoulder-to-shoulder soulmates, undying friends and eternal companions, along with complex trios, bosom buddies of indeterminate gender and questionable confidantes.

In the first several rooms I educated myself by reading the wall panels about the development of the Gallo-Roman city, but I was more curious about interrogating these ancient pairs without the voice of a historian. So I ignored the panels and focused on the figures.

They didn’t appear to be newlyweds, new lovers or fresh affairs. They seemed to belong together, cut from the same stone, so to speak, in it for the long run. I tried to decipher their expressions. None of them looked particularly happy. Nor did they look particularly unhappy. Did their inexpressiveness mask distress, dissatisfaction or disappointment? Resignation? Reproaches unanswered or ignored? Were those expressions of consent? Or of exchange or transmission? Were those faces of contentment? Now there’s a goal!

I studied them closely, each one, as though examining them that way would allow me to understand why they had stayed together as long as they had? As I scrutinized their stance, their dress, their fixed or absent gaze, I wondered: Did they rationalize their union? How so? I mean, did they not give in from time to time to a torrent of thoughts about alternative possibilities—would I be better off with someone else, or alone? Or did such questions have no meaning within the spans of their lives and the mores of their time?

Still, as a couple, or individually, did they think of themselves as virtuous or acquiescent or constrained? Or was theirs an easy, nearly natural covenant, one of comfort, convenience, family and/or love? Or the consequence of a contract imposed by one or the other or by some outside force? Were they putting on a good face for the sake of posterity?

I strolled on. Decades passed, and centuries. As time went on, the anger, the meanness, the drama and cross-purposes grew.

A third party occasionally entered the scene—an evil or supernatural force, a counselor, a savior, a commander, a sage? Was the couple in danger? Had new laws circumscribed their relationship? What help did they need? With communication? With sexual satisfaction? With forgiveness? A need to placate a new ruler or deity?

Did they, could they, “work” on their relationship or had the material of their union hardened to the point that it was no longer workable but simply accept-able? What did “settling” mean to them? Did they make their bed and then lie in it? And was that so bad? Had their bed been made for them?

I’d been in the museum for nearly an hour and a half by the time I left the Middle Ages. I was ready to leave. I skimmed through the Renaissance, following signs to the exit.

It was a fine summer day. I walked in the direction of the cathedral. The yellow limestone of the city’s old buildings glowed in the late afternoon sun.

The museum had presented me with nothing but questions. Yet what a curious and magnificent stroll it had been—unplanned travel therapy. Rarely has a museum felt so personal. I’d received no answers, yet I felt clear-headed, content, nearly euphoric. I felt a need to talk. I stood by the café nearest to the cathedral. I took out my phone and thumbed a text: Où es-tu? / Where are you?

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée de La Cour d’Or, 2 rue du Haut Poirier, Metz. Located one block from the cathedral. Open daily except Tuesday, 10AM-12:45PM and 2-6PM. Free entrance.

Metz, capital of the historic Lorraine region of northern France, is attractively set along confluence of the Moselle and Seille Rivers. Other highlights of the city include its sunbathed Gothic cathedral, aka The Good Lord’s Lantern, with its acre-and-a-half of stained glass; its buildings made of a yellow limestone called pierre de Jaumont; its covered food market by the cathedral; its train station, itself a prodigious Germanic temple. See the site of the Metz Tourist Office for more.

The post Couples Therapy in the Cour d’Or Museum in Metz appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.