Corinne earned the “Regard de la presse étrangère” award for her article Château de Beauregard: A Castle Road Less Taken published on France Revisited in May 2015. The award includes a prize of 1500 euros.

Brava Corinne! Looking forward to seeing more of your terrific and perceptive work on France Revisited in 2016.

The post France Revisited Contributor Wins Foreign Press Award appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Aspiring 21st century novelist Gil Pender walks away perplexed but elated after a conversation with Ernest Hemingway at Restaurant Polidor in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. Hemingway promises to show his novel to Gertrude Stein, and Pender is off to pick up the draft when he remembers that he never established a place to meet Hemingway on his next magical midnight excursion to the 1920s. Turning back to retrace his steps in the darkness of early morning, Le Polidor has vanished and Gil finds a sleepy green glow illuminating dormant machines in a laundromat where moments before Hemingway had been drinking wine and imparting truncated macho aphorisms.

At that moment I was still laughing at the caricature of Hemingway. He was so like the cartoonish image I had envisioned decades earlier within the penumbra of mid-20th century America when many English majors  suffered what Hemingway biographer A.E. Hotchner described as “an affliction common to our generation: Hemingway Awe.” But I laughed more when I recognized the laundromat as the one that is directly across the street from the Polidor on rue Monsieur le Prince. My laundry had tumbled in those machines a number of times. I suspect that, like me, other aging English majors continue to be charmed by the “lost generation” that Woody Allen eulogizes and laughs at in Midnight in Paris. And like me, they may still carry a notebook wherever they go—even to a laundromat.

The last time I did my laundry on rue Monsieur Le Prince it was early morning. My husband was off to a business meeting in Lille and I was alone on a rainy and chilly summer day in Paris. I looked forward to just walking and finding a comfortable spot to read and write. After depositing my laundry in a washing machine, I headed toward the Luxembourg Gardens. I was attired very casually since I couldn’t dress for the day until my laundry was done. I felt comfortably anonymous, and when I stepped under the awning of Le Rostand, I chose to sit outdoors even though all of the other customers were inside.

I took a table next to the door, furthest from the street and the rain. The waiter came and then went to get my café and I opened my notebook. I glanced toward the gardens just opposite and felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction.

I looked up when the waiter returned and saw that another woman was electing to sit outdoors, but in contrast to my well-worn zip-front and Velcro nylon rain jacket and Teva sandals, this woman wore an elegantly tailored fitted raincoat, an indigo silk scarf shimmering around her neck, and flesh-colored pumps. She carried an umbrella and a small buttery handbag.

When the waiter noticed her he almost clicked his heels. She greeted him by name and looked toward my table: I knew instantly that it was hers. When she took the table next to mine the bulge of my backpack in which I had carried the laundry seemed to groan with shame. As she sat, she put her purse on the table; our eyes met and she smiled. She knew I felt ill at ease. I murmured “Bonjour, Madame.”

The waiter took her order and then she rose to go indoors. She was about my age and I knew where she was headed. She was about to take her pocketbook with her when she changed her mind. No matter how nice the café, the toilettes is a limited space at best. She intimated with gesture and a knowing smile that I should keep an eye on it, and with some stumbling French I nodded in accord. How many times had these same silent messages been passed between me and female friends at home? I was amazed by her delicate sense of civility and at her graciousness in acceding to a sisterhood of trust. The rain came down harder as I waited for her return and I felt a compliment that almost moved me to tears.

The watched purse engendered conversation when she returned. She thanked me with a warm, sincere smile. I introduced myself as Elizabeth and she said she was Josette. There was no need to say I was an American. She told me in French that although she knew some English, she did not speak it because her mastery of it was flawed. At that moment I was grateful that this was the last leg of a three-week trip that had taken us through Provence and into the Dordogne; as always, language improves with immersion. I was happy to struggle with French and she was gracious. The waiter watched as we chatted.

Josette asked what brought me to France and I told her about our vacation in the south and the few days in Paris where my husband had business. She asked where I was from in the U.S. and I told her I lived outside of Philadelphia, not too far from New York City. She said she had lived briefly in New York and that was where she had practiced the English she had learned in school but never quite mastered. She said that she felt inadequate during that time and that it ruined any desire to stumble with English again. I encouraged her by citing my own joyful struggles with French, but I understood that this was a matter of principal and pride that was deeply woven into her being. In response to my question as to what took her to New York to live, she told me her husband worked for the government. She did not tell me his position and I refrained from asking, but she said that because of it, they had lived around the world for many years. When she spoke of “his work” I was acutely aware that we were close to the French Senate as well as the University of Paris. I also recalled how the waiter deferred to her.

For the next forty minutes I extracted from myself all the French I knew, and because of both her patience and steadfast avoidance of English, as we spoke of children and schools and travel, I learned a few new words and validated my long-held belief that great conversation is always possible when strangers look to each other with respect.

The richest part of our conversation was about Paris. When I told her how I had come to envision and love France and Paris as a young woman reading de Maupassant and Hugo and Flaubert and Fitzgerald and Hemingway, she nodded with understanding and said that Madame Bovary was a particular favorite of hers. It was one of mine, as well. She asked if I had been to the Pantheon to visit the tombs of Hugo and Zola. She said that to her Paris was very beautiful in a physical sense but that more importantly it was a reminder that mankind is capable of beauté et dignité.

When we first began talking I was dreading the moment when my laundry would be done and I would have to excuse myself from the conversation; I was certain that this was a woman who rarely washed her own clothes. My pride, bedraped by worn travel clothes and a backpack, was inflamed. In my mind I had conjured excuses: “Excusez- moi, mais j’ai un rendezvous” or perhaps “Excusez-moi, je dois quitter de rencontrer a un ami.” As the hands on my watch approached the time, however, I felt that I was at the end of a chance meeting with an elegant, perhaps important woman who had savored our forty-minute conversation on a rainy morning in Paris as much as I had. I knew that she appreciated my enthusiastic, often bumbling French and she complimented my accent a couple of times. More than that, however, we had spoken as women speak everywhere; we unfolded a bit of the panorama of our lives before each other, and in between words there were smiles, nods, and eyes that met in understanding—just as they had met when I realized I was sitting at her usual table and when she asked me to watch her lovely handbag.

When I knew I had to leave I said, “Excusez-moi. Je dois prendre mes vêtements à la laverie de la rue Monsieur Le Prince.”  We smiled, shook hands warmly, uttered each other’s name as we said au revoir, and I walked back to the laundromat in the gentle rain.

While my clothes were tossing in the dryer I took out my notebook and jotted down what I remembered about my early morning café at Le Rostand. I wanted to save the moment because I knew that if, like Woody Allen’s Gil, I retraced my steps, it would be gone.

© 2013, Elizabeth Esris

Other great travel stories and poetry by Elizabeth Esris can be found here.

The post Notes from the Laverie appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I’d come to the western edge of Vaucluse for three days to visit the city of Avignon, the vineyards of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the town of Orange. Before leaving on a trip like this I typically imagine that I’ll eventually write at least two texts:
– something practical about a subject that I’ve usually defined in advance, in this case a round-up of some of the nicer hotels in Avignon, and
– something that I come upon by following my nose, with or without some guidance from local tourist officials or others in the know.

In relation to the second article, I thought upon leaving Paris that I might compare my experiences in and impressions of Avignon and Orange with those described by Henry James in “A Little Tour in France,” which the American (and eventually British) author wrote in 1883, recounting his six weeks of travel of the previous year. I may well get around to that, but in case I don’t I take this opportunity to recommend the book, particularly for travelers who enjoy meandering around France and for bloggers, journalists and other writers interested in learning some of the basics of good travel writing: observe, research, experience, encounter, favor well-informed opinions over clichéd commentary.

Upon my arrival in Avignon, however, I forgot about Henry James’s little tour when, sitting in a café waiting for my first appointment of the day, I read in Vaucluse Matin, the local newspaper, that an Avignonnais had won the national title as best coffee roaster. I added him to my list of people to meet while in Avignon, and by the end of the day I’d decided to base an article on individuals who are cheerfully in tune with the workspace they inhabit.

This is not that article.

Instead, I’d like to introduce you to the individual that fit the bill for that theme in Orange: the cat Diva.

On the way in I’d spotted her splayed on the ticket counter and on the way out I found her again contemplating life by the illustrated gladiator books. A woman behind the counter introduced me to Diva. She told me that Diva had adopted the Roman Theater of Orange as her backyard about eight years ago. Her indoor home is the ticket office/boutique at the entrance and exit to the theater.

I learned much else that afternoon during a tour with Rose Papalia, an excellent guide with the Orange Tourist Office: about the Théâtre Antique and Les Chorégies, Orange’s spectacular summer festival of opera and lyrical music, about the museum and its fragments of a Roman cadaster, and about the arch on the opposite end of the Roman town. The Roman wall in Orange is the only remaining Roman theater wall in existence in Europe. I might have written at length all that, fascinating as it is, but this Diva isn’t mentioned in the audio-guide that you can listen to when visiting the theater.

Individuals such as Diva aren’t rare, but because we tend to plan trips in terms of sights and meals we all too frequently ignore them. Which leads me now to regret that I didn’t go speak with the person sweeping the stage by the 2000-year-old theater wall where Tosca, Aida, Carmen, Macbeth and so many others have died in the past 40 years alone.

But I did meet up with a young backpacker: me, 30 years ago.

You see, I had been to Orange before while backpacking through Europe on some ridiculously low number of dollars a day. The number stayed especially low that particular day in Orange because I had managed to see the Roman Theater without paying the entrance fee by climbing up the hill behind the hemicycle and standing on the edge of the cliff for a glimpse.

Looking up from where the town’s top Roman officials would have sat, here is where I stood.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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Some impressions and practical information concerning the area covered in Parts 1 and 2 of “Eat like a sixth grader, drink like a wine enthusiast,” including Nyons, Taulignan and Grignan and featuring olives, lavender, silk and Madame de Sévigné.

* * *

Nyons
After dinner I set out alone from the Hotel Colombet to haphazardly explore the cobbled streets and alleys of the oldest portion of Nyons. I eventually made my way an ancient bridge arching high over the narrow Eygues River. It was dark. The bridge was blocked at my end. In the dark it didn’t appear to go anywhere one would want venture at night. The area felt abandoned, forgotten.

It was just an impression on a cold night but the truth didn’t matter. There’s an attractive mystery that comes from wandering through an old town at night, a hesitation before turning corners and walking under archways, a mix at apprehension and relieve at seeing someone walking towards you in the opposite direction against a backdrop of stones walls and strangely cast shadows. It’s the reason I’d set out alone rather than accept an invitation from the others to visit the town with them once they’d finished the wine. I didn’t want to visit; I wanted to explore.

In daylight the following morning the mystery had evaporated. The shops were opening. The ancient bridge was now interesting for its form rather than its enigma. The shutters and the rooftops of the old town and the vegetation along the hill on the opposite side of the bridge all spoke of Provence.

Nyons is best known for the table olives and olive oil produced in the surrounding area. The olive oil is a smooth and light with a mild taste of spice and a nip of pepper. The unlikely traveler passing through the area from the end of November through December can enjoy the view and buzz of the olive harvest. Visitors in summer will more likely be seeking out lavender fields in bloom when exploring the area of Provence and Haute Provence, including the Nyons region.

The cultivation of lavender has increased substantially since the early 1980s in the provençal areas of southeast France (Drome, Alpes de Haute Provence, Haute-Alpes, Vaucluse), whose land and various altitudes lend themselves to growing three main types of lavender—aspic lavender, “true” lavender and lavandin. Lavandin, the most ordinary of the three, is what grows in the lower-lying areas around Nyons.

Nyons has a distillery for lavender and other aromatic plants, Bleu Provence, one of about 120 such distilleries in France. Visitors can learn about the production and distilling of lavender now and in the past I the distillery’s little museum open. There’s also a selling all things lavender. See Bleu Provence’s website for opening times and entrance fees. www.distillerie-bleu-provence.

For suggestions of itineraries of “Lavender Roads” throughout Provence and the Alps that can by car, motorcycle, even bike see this official tourist board website.

Taulignan
Taulignan is a small town that’s a 20-minute (12-mile) drive from Nyons. It has a population of 1600 of which only 160 within the medieval walls. A quick walk through that medieval portion gave the impression of a gated community that hasn’t yet figured out parking restrictions. I suspect that it’s deserving of a more leisurely stroll, however Taulignan’s Silk Museum was my actual destination.

The history of silk production is one of those many things that I’d hardly think myself curious about, but once inside the museum I found myself absorbed for a good 30 minutes by the history of silk production beginning in the area from the 17th century until the end of the 19th century, with a particular emphasis on 18th- and 19th-century developments in techniques and machinery. There are explanatory panels in French and English. The museum also tells the story of local silk factories that housed and employed orphans and disinherited girls.

Locally produced silk thread was transported to Lyon, formerly the center for the production of silk fabrics and products in France. France no longer produces silk though a tiny remnant of the silk fabric and garment business still exists in Lyon. The agriculture surrounding Taulignan, once marked by up to 13,200 mulberry trees and their silk worms, is now devoted to vines for Cote du Rhone wines and lavender with the occasional honey producer and truffle hunter, as throughout the region.

The Silk Museum (Musée de la Soie) is located just outside the main opening in the medieval ramparts. See the musem’s website for opening times and entrance fees. More information (in French only) about the village itself can be found here.

Grignan
The hilltop castle of Grignan, four miles from Taulignan, can be seen in the distance as you approaches from the plain. Its architecture and interior are less notable than its place in French literary history. This is where Madame de Sévigné, the celebrated figure of 17th-century epistolary literature, would come to visit her daughter Madame de Grignan, with whom she otherwise and frequently corresponded with by letter.

“My heart is at rest when it is next to you” (Mon cœur est en repos quand il est auprès de vous), she wrote upon leaving her daughter after a visit in 1673, before concluding “alas, here we are back in letters” (hélas ! nous revoilà dans les letters.) Reading that letter makes me feel nostalgic for the days not so long ago when people were more interested in voice communication rather than in texting.

Madame de Sévigné’s collected letters reveal this intense mother-daughter relationship as well as life, fashion, literature and politics at the Court of Versailles during the time of Louis XIV. Those letters are likely to be on the curriculum of those students now eating 25% organic food at lunch throughout the department.

The countryside of Grignan, Tricastin and the Popes Enclave, all in this same general area, is leading producer of the hunted black truffle “tuber melanosporum.” Grignan is just five miles north of Europe’s largest truffle market held on Saturdays from mid-November to mid-March in the town of Richerenches (see this article on France Revisited). Truffles are integrated into menus throughout the region at that time of year, in dishes such as the creamy scrambled eggs with truffles (brouillade de truffes) that I had just outside of the old town at one of the finer local restaurants La Table des Delices.

For a photo-reportage about this region in winter see here.

End note for cyclists: We are just north of Mont Ventoux, the largest mountain in the sector, known to cyclists both amateur and professional for challenging gradients up to 10%.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

– Return to Part 1 of Drome Provencale: Eat Like a Sixth Grader, Drink Like a Wine Enthusiast
– Return to Part 2 of Drome Provencale Eat Like a Sixth Grader, Drink Like a Wine Enthusiast

The post Drome Provencale: Medieval Towns, Castles, Olives, Lavender and Silk (Part 3 of 3) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

This year’s crop of celebrations goes from the 1800th anniversary of the edict granting Roman citizenships to all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire (including Gaul) to the 50th anniversary of the referendum for the election of the French president through universal suffrage, by way of the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc and the 250th anniversary of the opening in Lyon of the world’s first veterinary school, along with more than 60 other notable anniversaries.

Notable? Certainly not to top-10 minded travelers and even to most French.

Nevertheless, taken together these historical markers give fascinating insights into the memory of France and, at least in an academic sense, to its national identity. Well-educated French love to hear and read about their history. Historians are literary stars here; academiciens, as members of the prestigious Académie Française are called, pen 500-page tomes that get read at the beach; museums jump at the chance to dust off art and craftwork and documents in their tremendous reserves to celebrate an anniversary.

So even without going into details about this year’s commemorations, it’s worth considering what the very serious “Mission for National Commemorations” deems memorable. And since such recognition typically leads to funding from local, regional and national government toward the mounting of cultural events and exhibits, you may well encounter exhibitions or concerts or special events honoring these centennials and semicentennials as you travel and read about France this year.

Here are some of the events that have been selected for national commemoration in 2012.

Year: Event

212: Edict granting Roman citizenships to all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, including Gaul.

512: Death at age 89 of Saint Geneviève, for Catholics the patron saint of Paris. Her sarcophagus (emptied of her remains during the French Revolution) is found in a chapel at Saint-Etienne-du-Mont Church in Paris, behind the Pantheon.

1412: Birth of Joan of Arc / Jeanne d’Arc in Domrémy, a village on the eastern edge of the kingdom. She was burned at the stake in Rouen (Normandy) in 1431.

1512: Beginning of the creation of the celebrated Issenheim altarpiece, painted by Matthais Grünewald. The altarpiece is the main draw to Colmar’s Unterlinden Museum. The commemoration of this anniversary is less revealing of national character (Grünewald was, after all, German) than the polemic surrounding its restoration and plans to move it to a new extension of the museum in 2013.

1612: Birth of architect Louis Le Vau, one of the prime forces of French classicism, the architectural style of Louis XIV. Among his works: the Hotel Lambert (mansion on Ile Saint Louis in Paris), the chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, a portion of Versailles, and the building that is now the French Institute. He died in 1670.

1612: Inauguration of the Place des Vosges (originally called the Place Royale) in Paris. It was inaugurated by a parade celebrating the engagement of Louis XIII and Anne, Infanta of Spain. Construction of the square was launched by Louis XIII’s father Henri IV.

1662: Death of Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician, born in 1623.

1712: Marshall Villars led French forces to victory against the Dutch at the Battle of Denain during the exhausting European coalition war—this one pitting France and Spain against Austria, England and Holland—known as the War of Spanish Succession, a war that help bring about an inglorious end to the reign of Louis XIV.

1712: Birth in Geneva of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and writer, author of Emile, The Social Contract, Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, and Confessions. The Rhone-Alpes region (Lyon, Annecy, Chambery) is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of this giant of the Enlightenment (died in 1778) and the 250th anniversary of the publication of Emile and of The Social Contract with various exhibitions and events.

1762: Opening in Lyon of the world’s first veterinary school.

1812: Birth of the artist Theodore Rousseau, cofounder of the Barbizon School that preceded the Impressionist period. He died in 1867.

1862: Publication of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

1862: Birth of the composer Claude Debussy (died 1918) and of the playwright Georges Feydeau (died 1927).

1862: Measurement (slightly modified since) of the speed of light by Léon Foucault (1819-1868), who is also famous for his pendulum providing visual evidence of the earth’s rotation, a version of which can still be seen at the Pantheon in Paris.

1862: Creation of the National Museum of Antiquities in the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a former royal residence just west of Paris.

1912: Birth of Abbé Pierre (né Henri Grouès), a Catholic priest, founder of Emmaus, an association promoting solidarity with and assistance for the poor. He died in 2007. The Emmaus International Movement now consists of 317 working in 36 countries, including 185 in France, 15 in the United Kingdom, and two in the United States.

1912: Birth of the novelist Pierre Boulle (died 1994). Though his name is largely unknown, movie adaptations of two of novels were major hits: The Bridge Over the River Kwai and The Planet of the Apes.

1912: Treaty of Fez makes Morocco a French protectorate. The treaty was eliminated in 1956 when France recognized the independence of Morocco.

1912: Birth of the actor and director Jean Vilar, creator of the Avignon Theater Festival (1947). He died in 1971.

1912: Birth of the photographer Robert Doisneau, whose 1959 picture of a beach scene at Les Sables d’Olonne graces the cover of this year’s directory of national commemorations (shown above). He died in 1994.

1962: Release of Francois Truffaut’s film Jules et Jim starring Henri Serre, Oscar Werner and Jeanne Moureau.

1962: End of the War in Algeria and recognition of Algerian independence.

1962: Referendum on the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, meaning direct election by the people, as opposed to the system then in force of having the president elected by an electoral college comprised of about 80,000 elected officials. The referendum was passed with oui votes from 61% of voters.

A full list in French of National Commemorations for 2012 in France can be found here.

(c) 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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The following year, Mrs Helen Carew, a friend of Robert Ross and who had known Wilde in his heyday, anonymously offered £2000 to erect a monument by the young and controversial sculptor Jacob Epstein on Wilde’s new resting place in Père Lachaise.

The commission, a flying angel with Assyrian overtones, was executed and finally unveiled in 1914. Apart from the appearance of a few graffiti in the 1950s and the hacking off of the angel’s private parts by person or persons unknown sometime in the early 1960s, the monument survived relatively unscathed until 1985. It was then that the graffiti started to increase exponentially in number.

The expense of regular cleaning prompted the descendants of Wilde and Ross (whose ashes were placed in the tomb in 1950) to seek listing for the tomb as a French Historic Monument, in the hope that classification would, to some extent, deter those who were defacing it.

In 1995, after a thorough cleaning and resoration thanks to the generosity of the Irish government, the Monuments Historiques included it on their ‘Liste Supplementaire’ (the equivalent of about Grade II* in the UK) and suggested that an application be made at once to apply for a full status. This was accorded two years later, almost as a matter of course. Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise is now a fully classified French Historic Monument – a Grade I listed structure.

Since about 1999, the graffiti have been replaced by a far more worrying phenomenon – the placing of lipstick kisses on the stone. The grease base of the lipstick penetrates the stone and long after the colouring pigments have faded, a grease ‘shadow’ is still visible. A bronze plaque at the base of the tomb since the early 1990s asking visitors in English and French to “respect the memory of Oscar Wilde and do not deface this tomb…” no longer has any effect at all. ‘Kissing Oscar’s tomb’ on the Paris tourist circuit has become a cult pastime, the continuity of which is proving impossible to break.

From a technical point of view the tomb is close to being irreparably damaged; each cleaning has degraded some of the stone surface and rendered it more porous and has subsequently necessitated a more drastic cleaning.

Now, once again, the Irish have come to the rescue and have funded a radical cleaning and ‘de-greasing’ of the tomb, as well as a glass barrier which will surround it to prevent the lipstick-kissing fans from causing further damage.

The renovation and protection of the tomb was celebrated in Père Lachaise on 30 November, the 111th anniversary of Wilde’s death, in the presence of the Irish Minister of State at the Dept. of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Mr. Dinny McGinley TD, the Irish Ambassador and high-ranking French officials, and Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson. The actor Rupert Everett, who has played in film adaptations of Wilde’s plays  The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ideal Husband, was special guest of honour at the event.

It is hoped that the event will draw attention to the problem and will make those who visit Wilde’s tomb from now on aware of the damage their predecessors have caused and appeal to their sense of respect.

*

The information above was provided by Sheila Pratschke, Director of the Centre Culturel Irlandais, 5 rue des Irlandais in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.

The France Revisited article “Spotlight on the National and Religious Cultural Centers of Paris” includes information about the Irish Cultural Center.

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There’s no greater sign to a Parisian that she is justly appreciated by her husband, partner or married lover than to be whisked off for the weekend to a luxury hotel within two or three hours of the capital—to the Flowered Coast of Normandy, for example.

Two French female friends of mine in Paris have separately confided in me their dreams of just such a weekend. Not with me, mind you.

For one it’s the dream of a weekend at the Hotel Normandy in Deauville, the most luxury-minded town of the coast. She’s Norman by birth but it wasn’t until recently that she had the occasion to stay at the Normandy during a business meeting. That, she says, gave her a taste for the place. She is now awaiting the proper (or better yet, improper) invitation to return there for a carefree princess weekend a two-hour drive (or train) from Paris. She would do nothing all day but lie on the beach beneath a colorful parasol and make appointments at the seawater spa and sit in a café in town and lounge in the bar before going out for a long late dinner, or call for room service.

The other imagines that there’s nothing more romantic than a weekend at the Grand Hotel in Cabourg. She once walked through the lobby and now dreams of two day/two nights of bathing in a hotel where history and culture walk hand in hand, where she’d enjoy a long promenade along the beach followed by a long lie in the sand while her man tells her amusing stories while she watches sail gliders nearby, before going up to the room for a view that in itself it would be a form of kind of foreplay, and sighful post-play, too.

My two friends are sworn enemies to each other. I can’t invite them both to the same party because they’ll hiss at each other across the room. I don’t understand why. Well, I do, but it’s a long story involving a professional corporation, the French government, and perhaps a handsome stranger at a cocktail party, so it’s better not to go into it here.

Nevertheless, in order to understand my friends better, I set out for a few days from Paris to visit a luxury and otherwise potentially romantic hotels on the Flowered Coast of Normandy. I prefer to go on hotel investigations on my own, but I figured that whichever hotel I was most frustrated to be in alone would get my vote as the most romantic.

The Flowered Coast, la Côte Fleurie, stretches between the estuaries of the Seine and the Orne Rivers. It includes pretty port town of Honfleur, however I’ve set aside Honfleur for now so as to focus this three-part investigation on the area between Deauville and Cabourg.

The D-Day Landing Beaches of June 1944 start on the opposite side of the Orne, so all of the hotels in the three parts of this articles is practically situated for a daytrip to the WWII sites, 45-90 minutes away depending on your point of attack for the war sites. For explorations in the Landing Zone beyond a single day I typically recommend staying within that zone.

The Grand Hotel, Cabourg

All roads lead to the Grand Hotel and the adjacent casino in the planned town of Cabourg, just they lead to the Hotel Normandy and the adjacent casino in Deauville. In both cases, the final approach involves driving around or walking across around a grassy garden to get to the front door.

The Grand Hotel has only 72 rooms, including two vast suites, whereas the Normandy has 290, including 28 suites and apartments, but Cabourg’s garden is more impressive, a manicured circular spaced bordered by villa.

Going around or through the grassy circle feels grand from the start, and it feels grander still to enter the lobby and see, through the opposite end, the walkway above the beach and the sky beyond. It’s that direct access to the shore line that makes the Grand Hotel so special on a coast where the hotels are generally a full block or two from the beach.

My room was on a high floor overlooking the English Channel. The French call the channel La Manche, meaning The Sleeve, but think of it as the sea, as do I. On the afternoon of my arrival the sea is thrown about by a northwesterly wind. I hadn’t intend to take sides so soon on my friends’ Normandy fantasies, but looking out the window at the foreplay of the sea I felt a special affinity to the friend who dreams of weekends at the Grand Hotel. This is the best view of any of the major hotels on the coast.

Yet the Grand, now a 4-star hotel, is no longer as great as it was a century ago. In Deauville, The Normandy and its sister The Royal have five stars. Once rivals, they are now alternatives.

The original Grand Hotel was built on this site in 1861 as one of the first luxury establishments on the coast. For the next 50 years it was mostly uphill for this resort town, and Cabourg became a highly prized beach resort for aristocrats and the upper class during the Belle Epoque of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1907 the Grand was built as we see it today. The adjacent casino, now far outshined by Deauville’s, was rebuilt in 1909.

Accompanying the well-to-do on their seasonal stay at the new Grand Hotel was the writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922). He’d visited Cabourg as a child with his grandmother, but the town especially promotes a remembrance to his prolonged stays from 1907 to 1914, a period during which he began work on A la recherché du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time). Caboug, which he calls Balbec in his work, is particularly present in the volume entitled In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.

Proust’s bedroom, furnished as it would have been at the time, can still be rented (at the same price as any other in its category). It’s among the smaller of the hotel’s 70 bedrooms (there are also two vast suites), but even the smallest rooms here are of comfortable size. Many of the rooms, including my own, are spacious. Rooms on the garden side, facing the town, are certainly appealing. I would sing their praises further were it not for the fact that my stay this time called for that magnificent sea view.

For the past century Proust’s name has been intimately associated with Cabourg. Quotations from his work are posted in the garden in front of the hotel and on the walkway, named Promenade Marcel Proust, between the hotel and the beach.

WWI would put an end to the association of aristocracy with the Grand Hotel, and the Normandy (1912) and the Royal (1913) in Deauville, built to rival the Grand, would eventually take over as the most celebrated hotels of the coast. The Grand Hotel was occupied by Germans during WWII as the local population deserted the town. I remember visiting Caboug in about 1990 and finding it limping along as a handsome has-been property of a chain hotel.

The Grand is now an Accor hotel, a group not known for the personality of its hotels, though its MGallery collection does include some nice properties, including this. (The ambassador of the MGallery collection is the actress Kristin Scott Thomas, who always manages to look so impressively bore.) Recent investments have restored much of the Grand, if not to its historical grandeur at least in such a way that it can hold its head high along the coast.

It’s rather straight-forward in its luxury these days, without surprises and, one might say, without excess (no extra staff to fawn over guests, no spa). A 3k run the length of the promenade is free. For coffee you go next door. There are golf courses a few miles away.

Unlike the Normandy it is not surrounded by a pride of luxury good shops, but a walk around Cabourg town reveals villas that still house discreet well-to-do seasonal visitors. Radiating out from the center of this planned town an aimless stroll reveals magnificent brick-and-stone villas with bay windows, built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (The slopes of the nearby resort of Houlgate have them in spades.)

For dinner that evening I went to Le Baligan, a moderately-priced fish bistro a few hundred yards from the hotel. I turned my back to the sullen muzzled blue lobster in the tank in the middle of the room and quite enjoyed the warm atmosphere. Fresh catches are simply prepared and served by men who appear to have recently changed into their waiter gray and blue after spending their youth out at sea. I ordered simple: a heart-warming fish soup with a peppery kick to it, a pleasing smoked haddock with mashed potatoes and carrots.

After dinner and a brief walk on the promenade above the beach, where I nodded kindly to a young terrier leading an elderly man on a leash, I returned to my room. No need to draw the curtains. The room was too big to sit in alone. At 11:30pm I went downstairs to feel the pulse of the hotel at night.

There was a whistle of wind in the hallway on the second floor. There was no one in the lobby. The bar was closed. A sign at the reception desk said “Dial 9.” Another whistle of wind called from the dining room, a grand space that once welcomed fame and fortune and beautiful hangers on and would, in the morning, offer croissants and coffee. It was a wondrous moment, an entire grand hotel for myself. Imagine how this would be à deux!

A town with a more effusive nightlife would allow a solitary travel have a drink the bar at this hour on a weekday. A more fabulous hotel would have some staff in sight. A more expensive hotel would have some luxury goods to promote.

But my friend with the Grand Hotel dream may be onto something. In its own, nearly forgotten off-season way, this may well be the most romantic hotel on the Flowered Coast.

Click here to continue to “Dreams of Romance on Normandy’s Flowered Coast, Part 2: Les Manoirs de Tourgéville.”
Click here to jump to “Dreams of Romance on Normandy’s Flowered Coast, Part 3: Deauville, Villers sur Mer, Houlgate.”

Le Grand Hotel, Jardins du Casino, 14390 Cabourg. Tel. 02 31 91 01 79. The hotel back onto the 2-mile long Promenade Marcel Proust, a nice seaside stretch for a morning jog or an evening stroll. The hotel has its own private beach space and there’s an indoor municipal swimming pool facing the beach by the hotel.

Cabourg Tourist Office, near Town Hall, place de l’Hotel de Ville. Tel. 02 31 06 20 00.

“Romantic Days” Film Festival. Since 1983 Cabourg has hosted an annual film festival in June focusing on romance. The festival has attracted about 11,000 visitors per year in recent years. The major film festival on the coast is Deauville’s American Film Festival, held in September.

Restaurant Le Baligan, 8 avenue Alfred Piat, 14390 Cabourg. Tel. 02 31 24 10 92.

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The post Dreams of Romance on Normandy’s Flowered Coast from Cabourg to Deauville. Part 1 of 3: Cabourg appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Over the course of a single day, the novel follows the parallel stories of the three Americans and their respective tutors through separate walks on the streets of Paris: A woman who’s traveled to Paris alone after the death of her married lover; a women living in Paris and seeking freedom from family life; and the husband of a well-known actress who’s in the French capital to make a film.

Their parallel stories are explorations of love, loss, fidelity and loneliness—and of course of the beauty of Paris. In each case, the characters must decide what to do about their attraction to their opposite-sex French tutors.

Originally from Trenton, New Jersey, as is this interviewer, Ellen and her husband Neal now live in the San Francisco Bay area. She has two grown daughters.

Gary Lee Kraut: How did you learn French and was your teacher cute?

Ellen Sussman: When I moved to Paris I had a one-year-old and I was pregnant with my second child. So I never had time for real French lessons. For a short period of time I did set up for a French tutor to come to my apartment to give me lessons. We’d sit at the kitchen table and my daughters would be a constant distraction. No wonder my French is so bad! When I created the character of Riley in French Lessons I wanted to make two major differences between us so that I would feel freer to write fiction rather than memoir. Riley hates Paris – I loved Paris. And Riley got a hot French tutor. Mine was definitely not hot.

GLK: What is it about Paris that arouses fantasies about sex and romance?

ES: Come on – you guys are always making out on the street! Well, maybe not always. But there are more kisses and caresses on Parisian streets than we might find in the US. And I don’t blame the French. Paris is very romantic. It’s a gorgeous city – and there’s a long history of romance tied to the place. So when we visit Paris we think about love, we think about sex. We might also think about loneliness. A long walk along the Seine at night will make a person yearn for someone, maybe even someone they haven’t yet met.

GLK: Two of the American characters learning French in your novel are women, one is a man. In your opinion, do men and women have different perceptions of Paris?

ES: I used all three characters to explore different perceptions of Paris. I’m not sure the differences are gender-based. In fact, Jeremy might be my most romantic character, rather than either of the women. And the one who lives in Paris hates it – at least, in the beginning of her day. Maybe Paris is a reflection of our own need for love and romance in our lives.

GLK: Did you write any of French Lessons while in Paris?

ES: No, but I was taking notes! I think I spent every day of the five years I lived there taking mental notes, and sometimes filling notebooks with my observations. Every walk I took – with one baby in the stroller and one in the Snugli – every dinner conversation – every hour spent in the parks, became material for French Lessons. When I finally started writing the novel – years after I left Paris – it poured out of me. I was so ready to use my Paris.

GLK: How did you select the three specific walks that your characters take?

ES: That was a joy to create! I wanted my characters to hit some of my favorite spots in Paris. So I led them through the different arrondissements, stopping at small museums or parks along the way. My writing challenge was to make Paris matter. I didn’t want each location just to be a pretty background. I wanted each spot to make a difference to the characters – to change them in some way. So, for instance, when Josie and Nico reached the Eiffel Tower, they had to walk up the stairs; they had to gaze from the top – they had to be transformed by the Tower.

GLK: Paris is so associated with romance. Do you recommend it for single travelers?

ES: Yes! I think romance is good for the soul, even if it’s the romance of dreams. And Paris moves us to dream.

GLK: When did you first visit Paris? Do you remember how you felt that first time?

ES: I was 24 on my first visit to Paris. But it was too quick, too short. When I moved there I was 33 and I discovered the real Paris, not the tourist’s Paris. I think everyone who visits should stay awhile. Walk the streets of Paris and take it in. You can learn so much from the city. Explore the nooks and crannies – the secrets of Paris off-the-beaten-track.

GLK: Has your appreciation of Paris changed over the years?

ES: Yes. It helps that I finally speak French (sort of – well, at least on the level of a five-year-old.) And that I know the city and push myself to explore new areas every time I’m there. I’d like to live in Paris again for a long period of time. I think the city has changed a great deal and I’d like to get to know this new diverse city. It’s less formal, less traditional. It’s younger!

GLK: You lived in Paris from 1988 to 1993. How did your time in Paris influence you as a writer?

ES: I think all writers should live abroad for a period of time! It’s a remarkable experience – it opens your eyes and makes you see the world in a brand new way. I think it’s good for writers to be outside their comfort zone – and living abroad will do that. We also learn the world in a bigger way – so that the vision of the world we bring to the page can be a deeper, more expansive one.

GLK: What’s your process for writing a novel?

ES: I write a first draft fairly quickly. It might take 6 months to a year. Then I spend another six months or so revising that draft many many times. I don’t have a plan when I write the first draft – I discover the characters and the plot as I write. So there’s a lot of work to be done on that manuscript. I’m also a very disciplined writer – I write every morning, for three or four hours.

GLK: What’s your next writing project? Are you working on a new novel? Where does it take place?

ES: I’m almost done with my new novel. It’s called The Paradise Guest House and it takes place in Bali. (Yes, I like exotic locations!) The story: A young woman is caught in the terrorist attacks in Bali in 2002 and returns to the island five years later to find the man who saved her.

I’m already thinking about the next novel – and I know where it takes place: the south of France. Back to France!

“French Lessons” by Ellen Sussman. Published in paperback in July 2011 by Ballantine Books. 256 pages.
Ellen Sussman’s website.
A schedule of Ellen’s book readings can be found here.

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It was in the 1960s that the rehabilitation of the Marais took off, thanks to Malraux’s Bill (La loi Malraux) initiated in 1962 by President De Gaulle’s Minister of Culture. It didn’t happen overnight and for a while property remained affordable (that was the time to buy) and courtyards wide open to outsiders (that was the time to visit). It took the Autumn Festival of classical music (alas no more) to bring the magnificent heritage of the Marais to the attention of the public and to nudge the public authorities into restoring it.

Today the Marais is a secret to no one and is saturated with day trippers and tourists on weekends and holidays. La Place des Vosges is the most expensive square in Paris, as it was right from the beginning, the city’s first open-air square — La Place Royale —, inaugurated in 1612 on the occasion of the double betrothal of Louis XIII to Anne of Austria and of their respective siblings.

Surrounded in neat order by 36 brick-and-stone townhouses, these were occupied by the most prestigious families of the nobility, among them the maternal family of Madame de Sévigné, the great letter writer who was born at no. 1. Or the Duc de Sully, the retired Minister of the murdered Henri IV, who resided on the  southwest corner of the square, no. 7, now the French Heritage Trust (Caisse des Monuments Historiques), complete with an excellent bookshop. His daughter married into the great Rohan family, several members of which lived in this palace in the years that followed.

A branch of the Rohan family, married to the equally great Guénémée, resided at no. 6, on the southeastern corner of the square. It was a fabulous palace “all gilded and painted by Cotelle,” whose sketchbook of the drawings were made for this palace is now kept at the Ashmolean Library in Oxford.

The splendor was gone by the time Victor Hugo lived in this townhouse (1832 -1848), now his museum. So was the lovely garden. For after the court moved to Versailles (1682), the Parisian aristocracy shifted its centre of gravity west, causing the remote Marais to decline. The French Revolution dealt it a final blow; which is why Victor Hugo could afford to occupy an entire townhouse at this address. It is also during the French Revolution that the square was renamed after the Vosges, a thank-you gift to the newly created department (district) in eastern France for being the first to pay its taxes to the new republic.

Today Dominique Strauss-Kahn, now famous outside of France for the Sofitel chambermaid affair, and his wife Anne Sinclair reside on the Place des Vosges, in a 240 square-meter (2583 square-foot) apartment, though not a full townhouse. You would have to belong to the uppermost financial echelon to own a full-size townhouse in this kind of neighborhood, like the ruling family of Qatar for example, the new proprietors of the listed Hôtel Lambert on the eastern edge of the Ile Saint-Louis, now undergoing major restoration.

Apart from sharing this superb address in two different time zones, Victor Hugo and DSK, reports have it, also shared an insatiable sexual appetite. Victor Hugo was the most notorious fornicator of 19th-century France, resisting neither glamorous actresses nor humble chambermaids. During his time on Place des Vosges he seduced la petite boulangère from the corner bakery still standing on rue du Petit-Musc, south of rue Saint-Antoine. A back staircase in his study allowed him to repair unseen to his rendezvous by way of the Impasse Guénémée. I knew nothing about Victor Hugo’s connection to the boulangerie when I was a student round the corner in the early 1970s, and bought here occasionally my pains au chocolat and baguettes. The hotel across the street where the two of them retired was demolished in the 1950s.

DSK was thrown into jail, publicly humiliated and castigated, perhaps career-wise ruined. Victor Hugo was adulated as a national hero and honored with the biggest funeral ever held in the capital. Two million Parisians gathered along its itinerary, all the way from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon.

Other members of the Rohan family lived at the magnificent no. 87 rue Vieille du Temple west of Place des Vosges, now part of the National Archives. Between 1766 and 1778  they had Caron de Beaumarchais as a neighbor, now no. 47 of the street, the Hôtel Amelot de Bisseuil, alas invisible from the street behind its splendidly carved doors that won’t yield.

The son of a watchmaker, turned arms dealer, Beaumarchais founded here the Rodriguez and Hortalez Company for the purpose of selling arms to the budding American nation in its fight against the English. He also used his time here to compose an opera and, more  famously, to write a play, Le Mariage de Figaro, better known internationally in Mozart’s operatic version, a satire on the popular theme of troussage de domestique (the rolling up of a female servant’s skirts) as the journalist Jean-François Kahn (JFK) referred to the DSK affair.

Although they have the same family name, the journalist is no relation of the ex-head of the IMF, but he does happen to be a long-standing friend of his wife. This exacerbated the furor caused by his comment which sounded as though he was condoning DSK’s demeanor because it’s culturally commonplace and traditionally played down. Not so Beaumarchais who, most daringly in his play, on the eve of the French Revolution, questioned the right of a nobleman to the thighs of his female servant (le droit de cuissage), an audacity for which he was briefly jailed by order of the king.

Hailing from 21 Place Royale half a century earlier, the Duc de Richelieu and great nephew of Cardinal Richelieu bragged about his sex life with all the female residents of the square. At times the duke could be violent, notorious for experimenting with his victims on his famous armchair. The Duke went on to seduce the regent’s daughters and their cousin, but when he carried off three of regent’s mistresses, the latter had him removed from Paris by appointing him Ambassador to Vienna.

Incidentally, Mozart too stayed in the Marais, in the magnificently restored Hôtel de Beauvais, at 68 rue François Miron. The palace was built for Catherine Belier, Anne of Austria’s lady-in-waiting and better known to history as Cateau la Borgnesse (one-eyed Kate), a gift from the Queen for having initiated young Louis XIV to the facts of life! A century later seven-year-old Mozart stayed here with his father and sister Nennerl. The threesome was the guests of the Ambassador of Bavaria, Count Van Eyck, whose residence this was. Today this is the Administrative Court of Appeal which graciously keeps the courtyard open to the public. On its façade can be seen the carved heads of Cateau and of Anne of Austria. On your next visit to the Marais, don’t forget to drop by.

Thirza Vallois is the author of Around and About Paris, Romantic Paris and Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadia. Around and About Paris, Volume 1 is now available on Amazon as an ebook.

Thirza’s selection of businesses that enjoy the patina of time and/or are well-known landmarks:

Fine lodging, a 4-star hotel:
Hôtel Pavillon de la Reine. 28 Place des Vosges, 3rd arrondissement. Tel 01 40 29 19 19.

Fine dining, Bernard Pacaud’s 3-Michelin-starred restaurant:
L’Ambroisie. 9 Place des Vosges, 4th arrondissement. Tel. 01 42 78 51 45.

Dining with a side dish of operatic singing:
Bel Canto. 72 quai de l’Hôtel de Ville, 4th arrondissement. Tel. 01 42 78 30 18.

A favorite timeless old-time tearoom:
Le Loir dans la Théière. 3 rue des Rosiers, 4th arrondissement. Tel. 01 42 72 90 61.

Tequila, margaritas, guacamole, nachos, quesadillas, and perhaps a smattering of beautiful people:
La Perla. 26, rue François Miron, 4th arrondissement. Tel. 01 42 77 59 40.

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During my long nap I was both traveling and writing, aware that lying in bed on a holiday afternoon was the best place to be doing both, even while truly doing neither.

For at least an hour children in the otherwise calm street below were setting off firecrackers every minute or two or three. On other days the occasional pop of the firecrackers and the screams or laughter may have disturbed a nap, but here they served as a happy reminder that this holiday nap was well deserved.

I had been traveling in France a lot for the past six weeks, since early June, and even when at home in Paris I had appointments most days, so a guiltless afternoon nap like this was well overdue.

The articles that would result from those travels and appointments were also overdue, or at least they hadn’t yet ripened into actual text. For a travel writer, travel, pleasurable as it may be, is indeed work; for me that means napless days of research, encounters, visits, tastings, tours. It’s the kind of work that is practiced “in the moment” after a certain amount of logistical planning.

It would be great if the writing end of travel work could always be equally in the moment. Sometimes it is, in which case writing is as fluid a gesture as taking a train while watching the countryside change out the window (a bit like this page). But most often it isn’t; travel writing and the associated research is a struggle between moments past, present, future, along with the nagging desire for “being there” to have been work enough.

That’s why napping on a holiday is such a wonderful state for both travel and writing; no logistical planning is involved, no attention to detail, no ordering of thoughts, no rewriting. In fact, napping on Bastille Day in Paris while children set off firecrackers outside produced some of the best travel and writing I’d done in months.

And so I was able, without moving a hand, to write the opening paragraphs and assorted, telling anecdotes about many of the places, people, landscapes, history, hotels, meals and wines that I’d sought out or come across during my travels over the past six weeks, and to show how interconnected everything was:
– while in Champagne visiting small sparkling wine producers and stopping by the Cathedral of Reims on the 800th anniversary of its construction,
– while in Biarritz for the opening of Cité de l’Océan, a major new museum dedicated to the ocean, taking a surfing lesson, and visiting the town’s most notable hotels,
– while in the department of Alliers in the Auvergne region to visit the national Museum of Costumes of the Stage and to get to know Saint Pourcain wines, local cheeses and local beef (Charolais),
– while in Burgundy, where I tasted over 30 different wines from that mini-parceled area around Beaune, toured a Anis de Flavigny candy factory, and where I was reminded of how beautiful the green rolling hills of the region are,
– while in Paris at various wine bars, shops, exhibits, restaurants and hotels.

And while I was inspired during that nap, I worked on texts about prior trips from the past year or so that I’d yet to adequately cover, trips to Alsace, to Deauville, to the Riviera and to the Chevreuse Valley just outside Paris.

For about an hour I wrote and traveled and wrote with peaceful and inspired fluidity while firecrackers punctuated my imagined texts from the street below. There was then a long flurry of pops as a succession of about 50 firecrackers went off. Either the had decided to end their firecracking session with a bang or they had mistakenly set off an entire roll. I listened for sirens or screaming mothers, but luckily none came. The street was silent. I was awake enough to contemplate getting up from my nap and set down some of the words I’d written horizontally. But I drifted off before resolve took hold.

Today, the following day, the street is just as quiet. There were a few more firecrackers in the morning, but none now. The French vacation period is now semi-officially underway. Other than a 2-day trip to Picardy next week to learn more about the American presence there during WWI, I won’t be doing any significant work travel until the end of August.

It’s time to sit down to write some of those texts, vanished, perhaps, but now ripened from my Bastille Day nap.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

For a snippet of Bastille Day fireworks in Paris click here (then click again): Bastille Day 14July2011 DD

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