Category Archives: France

France, Loire Valley

Henri II Style Furniture

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We’ve been haunting second-hand furniture shops and websites since we signed the promise of sale for our house in Blois last October and having a lovely time. Now that it’s actually ours and we can’t live there permanently until Relationnel retires in 2014, we’re getting it ready for self-catering holiday rental. When we first started looking for furniture, we didn’t really know what we wanted.

One of the styles we kept finding at incredibly low prices is called Henri II. Considering that the French king by that name was born in 1510 and died in 1559, it hardly seemed likely that the  furniture we were seeing actually corresponded to the time of his reign, particularly since Relationnel said it was the sort of thing his grandparents had. So I checked it out.

It turns out that it corresponds to the “second” French Renaissance, also called Renaissance Revival, which took place in the second half of the 19th century. The main piece is the buffet made of solid oak or walnut and consisting of two parts with torsaded columns and spindles holding up the top part, sculpted bas-relief figures on the doors, complex heavy cornice and base mouldings and bun feet. The table is usually an almost-square with two or three extensions and the chairs are frequently upholstered in deeply sculptured, dark brown leather which rarely stands up to the test of time. Chairs with cane seats and sculpted wooden backs also exist. It’s difficult to find ones with the cane still intact and it costs a fortune to have them redone.

Henri II furniture is not at all popular in France. It is considered to be dark and old-fashioned. Also, the buffets are usually very high which makes them unsuitable for modern houses and apartments. They are perfect, however, for our Renaissance house! Some of the figures on the bas-reliefs are somewhat naive, but there are some very intricate and very beautiful pieces to be found, particularly on www.leboncoin.com.

Our first Henri II purchase was a table with six chairs in which the cane has been replaced with fabric-covered padding. We thought they would be perfect for our large kitchen. We then set about looking for a buffet, table and leather chairs for the dining room. On the phone, I specifically asked if the chairs were in good repair and was told, each time, that they were. Each time, however, they proved to be torn and cracked!

After driving for two hours (and being reassured, once again, that all six chairs were in good condition), we found a buffet we really liked. The first two chairs were fine, but that was all! Fortunately the owner, who was selling off the contents of his parents’ 17-room home, also had 8 cane chairs as well so I guess that will have to do. At least the cane is in good condition. It’s a pity, because I love the leather chairs but unless they are maintained well, the leather dries out and cracks.

Family, France, French customs

Cleaners I Have Known

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My current Maria

I love my cleaning lady! We joke together that the only time I’m not so happy with her is when her holidays don’t coincide with mine (dammit, she goes away most of August) or when she stays home to look after a sick child (which I approve of naturally). One of the hardest things when I left the suburbs to come and live in Paris was losing my Portuguese cleaner whom I’d had since I was pregnant with Leonardo 30 years ago! She had a wonderful sense of humour (like my current Maria), was very devoted, obviously went back to Portugal for the whole of August like everyone else (I can forgive her for that!), and adored my children.

When she learnt that I was pregnant with Black Cat, she said that I’d never to able to make another baby as beautiful as Leonardo. But when she came to clean just a few hours after Black Cat was born, she declared that I’d done it again! Black Cat was born at home by the way, in case you’re wondering. I’d had enough of interfering French hospitals by then! I had a midwife and doctor present and everything went perfectly.

The French government has a good system for domestic workers called “chèques service“. If you declare them and pay social security contributions, they become a tax deduction. You have to set it up with the bank first so that when you declare their hours on the website, the social security contributions can be taken directly out of your bank account. That way you’re covered if there is an accident and they get a better old age pension and even sick pay. The scheme doesn’t just apply to cleaners, but also to nannies, gardeners, handymen or whoever else you might employ on an hourly basis.

So when we moved to Paris, Relationnel told me to be very nice to one of the Portugueuse concierges on our street (there are five altogether) because she knows absolutely everyone and decides who’s going to work where! He was right. Not that I wouldn’t have been nice to her anyway. I mentioned my need for a cleaning lady and very soon Maria arrived on my doorstep. All Portuguese cleaning ladies are called Maria Something by the way. Maria A. and I immediately got on. She likes cleaning, she takes pride in her work and she likes the freedom it gives her. She works for four or five different people in the same street.

We also go back to visit my first Maria in January each year for a galette des rois and whenever we visit a European city with a special Catholic church such as the Macarena in Seville or Assisi or Our Lady of Loreto near Ancona, I buy an icon to give her.

Leonardo’s first cleaning lady was also Portuguese but when she had her first baby and decided, quite understandably of course, to stay home and look after him, he had to find someone else, but never managed to find another Maria. Maybe that’s why he moved to Australia!

Black Cat has a male cleaner who’s Philippino and speaks English. Being a cleaner is a traditional profession for Philippino men and they do a wonderful job.

Now when we move to Blois in two years’ time, I’ll have to find another cleaner. I do hope there’s going to be another Maria.

Cycling, France, French customs, Restaurants

Use Your French to Help Combat Hunger – Paris for Lunch – Atlantic Coast by Bike

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As usual on a Wednesday, here are some snippets from other blogs. Thank you to the authors: Femme Francophil, Petite Paris and Experience France by Bike!

Use Your French to Help Combat Hunger

by Femme Francophile

Each year, on 20 March, French-speakers around the world celebrate the International Day of Francophonie.

This year to mark the day the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) and the United Nations’ Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM), known in English as the World Food Programme (WFP), provides you with the opportunity to not only extend your knowledge of the French language and the French-speaking countries but at the same time help those who are hungry. Read more

Paris for Lunch

by Petite Paris bed & breakfast accommodations in Paris

Bonjour Petite Friends. It’s 2.30pm and I havent had lunch yet. Looks like im going to work straight through AGAIN; picking away at an emergency (don’t have time to step away from le bureau) stash off tuna and crackers at my desk! If I were in Paris, I would eat at: Read more

The Atlantic Coast of France, My Destination for Spring 2012

by Experience France By Bike

This is my 100th post about biking in France, and I thought it was the perfect occasion to reveal the destination for my upcoming trip to France.  Having spent the last two years exploring the Loire Valley, Burgundy, Brittany and the Dordogne, this spring I will finally journey back to the Atlantic Coast of France. Read more

Cooking, Food, France

Franco-Australian Curry!

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When Fraussie suggested I write a post for her blog (I’m the Aussie exchange student who appears in this blog under the name of Brainy Pianist), I really didn’t have too many ideas. “Talk about food”, she told me, “everyone loves to read about food”. Fair enough, I thought, but how can I make it a bit different? And then it hit me. When I was leaving Australia last August, never having lived away from home, and (almost) never cooking (although I am capable), most people would ask what was the one thing I was going to miss most. Beyond my family and friends, the answer would inevitably come back to a good, home-cooked meal. In my case, that’s synonymous with pretty much everything that comes out of our kitchen, but especially a good curry.

I guess in part that’s one of the greatest things coming from an Anglo-Indian/Australian background and being exposed to different cultures and cuisine. Dad grew up in India, and Mum spent hours and hours watching and learning from my grandmother (and the trusty copy of Charmaine Solomon’s The Complete Asian Cookbook). As a kid I couldn’t stand most curries, whereas my little brother was getting stuck in before he could even walk! But times have changed, and more often than not, I’ll be hankering after a good hot curry. And moving to Paris, it’s surprisingly easy to find fantastic Indian restaurants (particularly around the 10th arrondissement), and spice shops. I get a real kick ferretting around in the stores up near Gare du Nord on Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis.

So, here’s a recipe for one of our family’s favourites – and it’s easy as well!

The ingredients are:

–          500g mince (I generally use beef – but you could probably use lamb as well)
–          1-2 tablespoons oil
–          1 large brown onion, finely sliced
–          2 cloves garlic, crushed
–          1 piece of fresh ginger, about 2.5cm long – peeled and chopped
–          1 teaspoon ground turmeric
–          1 teaspoon chilli powder
–          ½ cup natural yoghurt
–          2 teaspoons garam masala
–          1 teaspoon salt
–          Freshly chopped coriander leaves to serve
 

Now the method:

1)     Heat oil in saucepan and fry onion until soft.

2)      Add garlic and ginger and fry until onion is golden brown.

3)      Add turmeric and chilli powder and fry for a few minutes.  If you like, you could add some ground coriander at this point as well.

4)      Add meat and fry, turning meat constantly until colour changes.  Break up any large lumps of meat.

5)      Stir in the yoghurt, lower the heat, cover and cook for 15 minutes. (This should be a gentle simmer)

6)      Add garam masala and salt, leave the lid off, and continue cooking until meat is cooked.

7)      Stir through fresh coriander and serve.

Just a couple of helpful tips: the amount of chilli powder depends a) on how hot you want the curry to be, and b) the individual chilli powder. Every powder is slightly different in its strength, and its potency also changes with age. If you’re opening a new packet, be cautious in the quantities!

The final cooking stage varies, but Mum told me just to leave it as long as it takes to cook the rice.

You can also control the final consistency of the curry: if you like a lot of gravy, you can add a little water at the final stage (but be careful you don’t add too much, especially if the meat gives off a lot of fat or liquid). If you prefer a drier curry, you can increase the heat in the final stage – but watch it closely and stir frequently– with the yoghurt, the curry will have a tendency to stick to the saucepan.

And don’t forget – if you’re increasing the quantity of meat, you mustn’t increase the amount of spices in the same proportion. For instance, cooking a kilo of mince, I would only put 1 ½ teaspoon of chilli powder – otherwise it can be very spicy!

Serve with cooked basmati rice (I like to add some dried curry leaves while I’m cooking the rice – I can’t get the fresh ones we have in the garden back home, but dried ones give quite  a lot of flavour), natural yoghurt, pappadums, and for that extra kick, a spicy Indian pickle. Bon appétit!

Accommodation, Australia, France, Travelling

Our First Home Exchange

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The idea of a home exchange first came to me when a French friend told me that her stepson and his Australian wife were going back to Melbourne to live. I consoled her by saying she and her husband could visit them for longer and at less expense if she did a home exchange. I even recommended a website I’d been told about: www.homeexchange.com. And it has an iPhone app as well. The next thing I knew she had organised a 6-week stay. I immediately set about persuading Relationnel to do the same thing despite his reluctance in the past.

We were planning our next holiday in Australia to include a family reunion in Armidale. During our absence, friends from Canberra were to stay in our apartment in the Palais Royal in Paris for part of the time. They recommended that we go to Tasmania so we organised a 12-day exchange in Launceston and Coles Bay including a car. Our exchangers will be using Paris and our new house in Blois as well as our second car while they are in the Loire Valley. We then started receiving other offers – Victoria, Hobart and Adelaide – so we set up some non-simultaneous exchanges as well, some of which won’t be redeemed until our next trip in 2014!

Palais Royal Gardens

With Blois and the Palais Royal combined, the possibilities seem endless. I thought that we might appreciate a break in sunny Spain before the final signature in Blois in mid-March.  Miguel, who lives in Madrid, had written earlier on to see if we were interested in a swap over Christmas but we were having our bedroom ceiling repainted, so I contacted him again to see if there was a weekend in March that might suit us both. Bingo! We bought our airline tickets, arranging our flights so that he would arrive in Paris before we left and thus exchange instructions and keys.

The next question was how to get the apartment ready, especially for a short stay of four days. Should I empty the fridge or just leave a couple of shelves? What about sheets and towels? How about kitchen essentials? Our Adelaide exchanger, Kathy Stanford, a fellow blogger (Femmes Francophiles) is much more experienced (she uses www.homelink.org) and offered to share her “instruction manual”. It provided me with a good base that I could adapt to suit our particular situation (and country).

After a rather frenetic morning on the day we were going to Madrid, I now know that we need to have some spare room in our cupboards to be able to easily free up space for our guests. We had decided to buy extra sheets and towels so that there wouldn’t be the problem of changing our sheets before we left and finding enough clean sheets to make the bed when we got back. But just storing all this extra linen takes up space we don’t really have. Fortunately we will be able to transfer a lot of things to Blois which is much bigger. That should make things easier in the future.

Courtyard in Madrid

Next time, I will specifically leave a tray with kitchen essentials that don’t need replacing and indicate food in the fridge that our exchangers are welcome to use. For just a few days, it’s rather silly to have to buy oil and vinegar, tea, coffee, butter and sugar, for instance. Miguel left us a basket of fruit which I thought was a great idea. I regretted not having done the same. I put clean tablecloths and serviettes in our usual drawer in the living room but it would have been much more sensible to leave them on the table as he did. I also forgot to put the remote controls for the TV in an obvious place.

The other thing I think is essential is to have a blown-up map of the local area and indicate the closest supermarkets, grocery stores, bakeries, restaurants, pharmacies, etc. We didn’t find the supermarket in Madrid until the day we were leaving! When you don’t know a country and language well, it’s not always easy to find such basic commodities. I’ll also take along some Earl Grey tea bags with me next time. I strongly believe in “When in Rome, do as the Romans”, but not for breakfast!

I’d love to have feedback on your home exchange experiences, particularly any advice you’d like to give a new home exchanger. Oh, and I nearly forgot to say that we found it a very positive experience and are looking forward to the next six we’ve already organised over the next year. Relationnel totally regrets his former reluctance!

www.homeexchange.com (which turns into www.trocmaison.com, www.intercambiocasas.com, www.scambiocasa.com, www.haustauschferien.com, etc. depending on your language!)
 
www.homelink.org (not always easy to follow, but you can sign up as a visitor to consult the listings without joining)
 
www.homeexchange50plus.com/ (a newcomer but promising because of its speciality)
 
http://www.lovehomeswap.com/
Food, France, French customs, Paris

Summer in Paris – Obligatory Breathalyser – Let’s Make Duck

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Snippets from other blogs that I’ve enjoyed recently. Thank you to all those who wrote the posts.

Summer in Paris by Petite Paris, an Australian based service for Australian travellers and fellow francophiles on www.petiteparis.com.au

Summer transforms Paris!! To all our guests who have booked their summer in Paris…enjoy Paris Plages as the banks of the seine will be yet again be transformed into temporary sandy beaches with Palm trees brought in, deckchairs, ubiquitous ice cream sellers, and concerts for French and foreign guests! :). Read more

Obligatory Breathalyser by Kaz Reilly, Get Real France, an Irish Biddy living near Perpignan for the past 10 years.

If you’re travelling by car to France this year, don’t forget to furnish yourself with a breathalyser which you must by law have in your car from July 1st, 2012. If you are found without an “alcootest” or an ” éthylotest ” , you will face an on the spot fine of 23 euros… Read more

 

Let’s make duck! My lesson at La Cuisine Paris by Un Homme et une femme, Tales of Paris with Sir and Lady Lancelot

My second date with Sir Lancelot was planned for an early September night that turned out to be a horrible rainy day. Knowing that any plans to be outside were foiled, I received a text message from him that morning inviting me over for a “euro-trash” dinner cooked by Sir Lancelot himself. “Oh, a man who cooks!” I thought. Read more

Accommodation, Food, France, French customs, Lifestyle, Paris, Travelling

Paris Apartments – Travel Tips – Baguettes & Boulangeries

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I keep reading all these interesting posts on other people’s blogs so I’ve decided that on Wednesdays, I’ll bring you some snippets so that you can enjoy them too and perhaps discover some blogs you didn’t know. Thank you to everyone I’ve quoted!

Writing the unwritten rules of travel

Femmes Francophiles at  www.femmesfrancophiles.blogspot.com

Fairfax media’s Ben Groundwater has published his Ten unwritten rules of travel. My personal favourite on his list is about not reclining your seat on planes during meals. His article started me thinking as to what are my rules for travel. In no particular order here is my list. Read more

Renting an Apartment in Paris: 10 Dos and Don’ts

by Doni Belau at www.girlsguidetoparis.com

A Just France apartment rental in the 7th Arrondissement.

Renting an apartment in Paris, particularly if you are going for a week or more, is always a good choice. You’ll enjoy more space than a hotel room, and you’ll save money. A lot of the apartments for rent are truly gorgeous, but there are always some things to watch out for, and it pays to ask a lot of questions and do your research. Read more

Paris: Baguettes and Boulangeries

The Local Way by Bryan and Anna at www.paristhelocalway.com

Want to know the places to get baguettes in Paris? Our hosts will guide you through the city in search of the best bread. Read more and see the wonderful video in English on how baguettes are made!

France, French customs, Paris, Sightseeing

Slow Walking on Rue du Louvre

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Now if you happen to walk down Rue du Louvre, with your back to the Seine, you should stay on the left side until you come to the remains of a stone wall that is actually part of the fortress built by Philippe Auguste at the end of the 12th century to protect Paris while he was off at the Crusades. It was later to become the Louvre.

Cross over to the other side and you’ll come to a large round building. Few people realise that it’s open to the public and that you can just wander in. It used to be the Bourse du Commerce which, despite its name, isn’t the stockmarket which is about ten minutes away, but the commodities market. It was originally built by Louis-Philippe in 1763 to store and sell wheat. Its location was chosen due to the proximity of the Seine and it was financed by constructing rental buildings around it.

Today it’s the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It’s built on a circular plan, 122 metres in circumference. There were two concentric galleries above 25 covered arcades. The galleries housed the police, the weights and measures office and the statistics bureau. Enormous wheat lofts on the first floor were accessed via two beautiful spiral staircases, one of which had a double revolution so that the administrative staff and merchants didn’t have to rub shoulders with the porters! The courtyard was orginally open but later covered with a wooden dome to protect the wheat.

After a second fire in 1854, the building was closed for 30 years before being renovated and converted into a commodities market in 1885. Wheat, rye, oats, flour, oil, sugar, spirits, rubber, cocoa, coffee, potatoes, and rape were sold by auction until 1998 when it was disbanded due to computerisation of the futures market. If you stand right in the middle and speak, your voice will be amplified.  The inside is decorated with murals depicting the four cardinal points. You’re not supposed to take photos, I discovered after I got to the third cardinal point, so you’ll just have to go and see for yourself !

Just next to the Bourse du Commerce, you’ll see a tall column which has an interesting history. It’s the last vestige of a private hôtel built by Catherine de Médicis in 1572. The queen had the 31-metre high tower built for her astrologist, Cosimo Ruggieri. They often used to go up to the top of the tower together, where he whispered, not sweet nothings, but magic spells.

The top part of the column used to be glassed in but all that’s left today is a metal frame. After Ruggieri died in 1615, it fell into disuse and the building was demolished in 1748 to pay the debts of the last owner, Amédée de Savoie. Only the tower was saved and bought by the City of Paris in 1750. A fountain was added, which has now run dry, and a sundial. Legend has it that on stormy nights, a long black silhouette appears in the iron cage every time there’s a flash of lightening! I’ll let you go and check that out as well too.

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Accommodation, France, Italy

My Croatian Itinerary – Part 1: Paris to Milan

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Apéritif to accompany the travel diary

Now that we’ve given up spontaneous travelling and plan our itinerary practically down to the last detail, we spend a lot of time pouring over guide books. Or rather, Relationnel does, because I do the bookings (much more productive in English because you have a greater choice) and then once the holiday has begun, I do the talking because Relationnel’s capacity in this respect is somewhat limited. He keeps reading the guide books. And we both write up our (French) travel diary over our daily apéritif, one of the best moments of the day!

Our travel diary

Once I had convinced him into going to Croatia and Slovenia, we bought an enormous map of Europe to determine how to get there and back by car. There was no really obvious route, so in the end, we decided to go across Italy and take the ferry at Ancona on the Adriatic Coast across to Split in Croatia then come back overland via Germany. The next step was to see how we would divide up our 28 days. We have discovered that, on the whole, it’s very tiring to change places too often so we usually alternate 2 and 3-day stays. We also try to keep the journey time to a maximum of 3 hours after a 2-night stay and 5 hours after a 3-night stay. Relationnel does most of the driving.

Lake Annecy

The most important booking was the ferry, because that would determine everything else. Another thing we like to do is to start the trip with 3 days somewhere in France where we can wind down and get plenty of rest and exercise before moving onto the more serious stuff. Annecy looked like a good choice, after an overnight stay in Dijon to see family. The photos of the lake in our cycling book looked very enticing. As we’d never been to Milan, we decided that would be our second stop for 2 nights before going to Ancona.

View from the window of our room

So I found a B&B about a half an hour from Annecy at a short distance from Thones. It was a cosy little wooden chalet, the owners were very friendly and helpful, we had a little kitchen to cook meals in if we wanted to and a small dining room to eat them in. There was free WIFI and the breakfast was excellent. The B&B is up on top of a hill with some lovely forest walks and views. Unfortunately, despite the fact it was mid-July the weather was cold and rainy and we were somewhat restricted in our cycling excursions as a result. But I can definitely recommend both the area and the accommodation. We had visited Annecy before, but we enjoyed going back again.

Umbrellas in Annecy

We then took the Mont Blanc tunnel to Italy. A word of warning – make sure you get there early – not like us – or you’ll find yourself in a long queue, particularly in the summer. It took us an hour of stopping and starting before we were finally able to take the extravagantly expensive 11.6 km long tunnel (38 euros one way, 49 return). It was 10°C when we left Thones and 31°C when we came out the other side of the tunnel. A rude shock!

Castello de la Sarre

We looked for somewhere to picnic. I personally think the food on the Italian motorways is awful. They have a funny system for buying things as well. First, you have to line up at a cash desk to pay for what you want to eat and drink, then you take your tickets over to the bar and line up again. You obviously have to know exactly what you want (and know how to say it, which is worse) or someone else will push in front of you. That’s why I had cleverly packed a picnic. They also have toilets with an automatic chain which I haven’t quite mastered yet. The cappuccino‘s good!

View from Castello de la Sarre

Just as we came out of Aosta, which we’ve visited several times in the past and is definitely worth a detour, I saw a beautiful castle high up on the hill on the left and decided we’d have lunch there. We followed the signs to Castello de la Sarre and parked at the bottom. We staggered out in the heat, planting our hats firmly on our heads and walked up the path, oohing and aahing at the view on the way up. We found a lovely shady spot at one end with the most spectacular panorama in front of us. We practically had the place to ourselves.

We left reluctantly, but Milan and further adventures were awaiting us!

Patricia et Rémi, Chalet Les Lupins, La Clossette Glapigny, F – 74230 THONES
Tel:    +33 (0) 450 63 19 96, email: chaletleslupins@orange.fr, http://www.francealpes.com 
(65 curos / night for 2)

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