Mostly a wonderful, moderate temperature month but it did have a few stretches of hot weather. One of our upstairs neighbors brought us a lovely little souvenir from a trip she made to Brussels and we got to talk about our favorite day trip spots.
A perfect example of a day trip, we decided to check out Calais during the first week of August, an hour’s train trip from Lille. Because my birthday coincided, we choose instead to stay a few days. The train was packed with students going home, or returning to the universities – no surprise there. We had booked a room in the Hôtel Meurice which boasted of access to a private garden. We arrived at the hotel which was originally built in the mid 1700’s to cater to the British upper class. It was destroyed in WWII and rebuilt in 1953. It is an elegant 40-room hotel within walking distance of the beaches. The lobby had high ceilings with a lot of attention to detail and had a lovely, wood paneled sitting parlor/bar, which was our favorite area. They had some lovely touches throughout but most of all, I was fascinated with their quaint hotel key rack. I had never seen a system so elegant and unique!
Our room garden access was a sliding door to a small bricked (but not attractive) patio, partially ensconced by tall hedges and trees. It was in the back end of the building facing a very modern addition, next to a slatted fence edged against a bright lit street. No a/c in the room, so it was quite warm but after we opened the slider door and windows for air and got the large standing fan on high, it all worked to air out the place. Regardless of the less than appealing patio, we did enjoy our breakfast there on our first morning.
It was 4pm by the time we walked the main streets, decorated with multicolored ribbons and balloons, to the beach.
After we stopped for a quick, light bite we arrived at the beach. It’d been a very long time since either one of us had walked a sandy beach, into ocean water. It was a number of nice sensations to revisit. The beach was incredibly pristine and we spent time as we used to when we lived on the California coast; walking ankle deep in the waves, picking up seashells, enjoying the sounds, the sights, the bird activities. Along the way to the beach are some good seafood restaurants, Compagnie du Dragon (a mechanical dragon from the steampunk park Les Machines in Nantes), and an amusement park to keep the kids busy.
The town of Calais is both a major ferry route to the UK used for people and automobiles, as well as being the French port for the Eurotunnel (right next to Calais in Coquelles) which carries passenger train, freight and car vehicles, so it came as a surprise to us that it appears as a depressed seaport. It has sad, old worn 1950’s vacationer hotels which all need a huge shot of economic recovery and a do-over. With the major Eurotunnel and ferry traffic , it clearly has a large British influence and also very dependent on tourism. But either the owners of the buildings haven’t the funds for upkeep or they’re just neglecting to reinvest income for it. Without the 50’s block vacationer hotels, it has all of the possibilities of a very charming town, which made us wonder what architecture those particular buildings had replaced. The beach still has the individual beach chalets for changing, which according to some sources were constructed in the 17th century to house people during the plague. Other sources state they were constructed as fisherman huts but regardless of their origins, it is clear from records that they were rebuilt in 1936 and after WWII.
However, Calais is economically challenged; one third of the population lives below the poverty line. Additionally, the city has been a magnet for displaced immigrants and asylum seekers for decades who are trying to get to Britain, many with family ties, but being blocked by British immigration authorities in Calais from getting into Britain. Here, the English Channel has also seen the unfortunate and heartbreaking incidents of illegal immigrants on boats attempting to get to Britain. It’s a complex issue whereby French authorities are responsible for controlling migrants from entering Britain illegally, but Britain controls the entry and heavily limits the numbers coming into their country. The result is that there are many temporary immigrants who are homeless living in Calais in poverty and attempting to leave for Britain.
{The old part of the town, Calais proper (known as Calais-Nord), is situated on an artificial island surrounded by canals and harbours. The modern part of the town, St-Pierre, lies to the south and south-east. In the centre of the old town is the Place d’Armes, in which stands the Tour du Guet, or watch-tower, a structure built in the 13th century, which was used as a lighthouse until 1848 when a new lighthouse was built by the port. South east of the Place is the church of Notre-Dame, built during the English occupancy of Calais. Arguably, it is the only church built in the English perpendicular style in all of France. In this church, former French President Charles de Gaulle married Yvonne Vendroux. South of the Place and opposite the Parc St Pierre is the Hôtel-de-ville (the town hall), and the belfry from the early 20th century. Today, Calais is visited by more than 10 million annually. Aside from being a key transport hub, Calais is also a notable fishing port and a centre for fish marketing, and some 3,000 people are still employed in the lace industry for which the town is also famed.}
All pictured below, including The Burghers of Calais (sculpture by Rodin by the Hôtel-de-Ville), the Grand Théâtre de Calais and a monument in the Parc Richelieu of De Gualle and Churchill.
As odd as our ‘garden access’ was, we actually enjoyed the cool evening, sitting outside listening to the song birds and relaxing. The next day, a Tuesday, we discovered on our walks that the lace museum we wanted to see was closed, as was the cathedral and shops. We had no clue as to why and even after returning to Lille, could not determine the reason. The only guess we had was because it was after August 1st, when countrywide many businesses close for the month. Before leaving, we tried the cathedral again but they were only to be open from 2 to 5, well after our departure, so sadly we didn’t get to see it.
Back to regular life at home, we continued to struggle with the mobile phones and Apple software which we mentioned last month. It was affecting not only the phones but the IPads as well. They never failed to do a decent job for us until these latest upgrades and frankly now they just suck.
We received, with relief, our new couch which we replaced the previous sofa bed couch. It is also a leather one, much more comfortable and a bit longer in length than the last. Hopefully it’ll stay comfortable for longer than the previous one. When it was delivered, they found they couldn’t fit it in the elevator, nor could they turn it up the stairwell. They brought it back the next day with a truck lift and lifted it up to the balcony. This prompted us to take advantage of the availability of the lift and we asked them on a whim to take our coffee table down on the lift return, to the street level, which they happily did for us. After they left, we rolled the table down the street to Flo’s (our friend and furniture store owner) who agreed to sell it during the Braderie the first weekend of September. He just laughed when we recounted the domino progression which led us to jettison it.
The coffee table, like the couch we replaced, was our first purchased apartment furnishings. We’d lived in a warehouse loft before arriving in France and our choices had reflected that influence. Unfortunately the couch, despite being quite handsome, turned out to be poorly made and became very uncomfortable. The coffee table, however, had a very different problem. It was incredibly heavy, with huge metal wheels and squawked like angry 18-wheeler truck brakes, when we rolled it. Enough to arouse the dead, as they say. We had in fact picked it so it could roll out of the way for the sofa bed pull out. This new couch is not a sofa bed, so now the coffee table does not need to roll. Add to that, we’ve developed a taste for sleeker furnishing pieces that fit this smaller art deco apartment. Its net result was a ‘do over’. We’re much more comfortable and now are left with a hunt for a new coffee table. That will take some time as we’ve become specific about what will now fit with the new couch and the chairs. But not to worry because with the couch, we bought some wonderful little arm tables that work well until we get the table.
After a few jaunts, in search for a table replacement, we stopped at a cafe in old Lille which we hadn’t tried. We ended up having a great conversation with three people – a pair of sister’s (Rose and Ruby) who had come to Lille to meet, on vacation. Rose works with the wine vineyard’s fair activities with her husband (Gutier), traveling in a van like an old VW Westfailia that we had owned in the US. Ruby, living in the UK, had just quit a highly stressful job and was chilling out. They were very funny and highly entertaining. We shared pictures – of their traveling van and our old one – we answered questions about where we got the van screens and I gave them the company name (have THAT one memorized after many purchases). They had two little cats with them, in their laps, who were quite unfazed for being in the open (equipped with harness and leashes). That amazed us and we talked about cats too, since we have owned quite a few in past years. Anyway, great fun.
To celebrate my actual birthday, we went to one of the only two decent Mexican dinner restaurants here. We started off with two appetizers with chips, salsa, queso, beans and followed it up with fajitas, enchilada and taco, managing to killed a pitcher of Sangria along the way. I totally paid for it the next day with a Sangria headache but boy oh boy, it was so goooood.
G shocked me by giving me a present of a painting, that I had fallen in love but which had actually been sold before we saw it. He had contacted the artist, who agreed to paint a copy for me !! How incredible is that ? He’s a well known artist, a very nice fellow. Alfred Lombart (Jean Claude Alfred Lombart) and the painting of a young girl in a red beret was my favorite of the ones we saw in his stall one day, in front of the Lille Maurice Cathedral. He should be done with it by the end of October. You can see his art at: https://www.artquid.com/seller/jclombart/alfred-lombart.html
Because, as I mentioned, all of France closes down during August, it was subdued here with the warm weather. G found a wonderful craftsman online who custom made a balcony table for us. We had bought one on the internet a few years ago and although it was the smallest we could find, it was still too large to sit at comfortably.
This table was fashioned to sit on the balcony railing and flip down when not in use, which removes much of the size issues. When we first got it, it wouldn’t grip the ancient rail that is cement, curved and eroded over time. We were certainly not going to screw anything into the rail and had hoped that this would work. We contacted the artisan, who agreed to work with us on a modification. After we sent some ideas, he was able to adapt it into a new design and we received one much better suited set up for this aged balcony. We still need to adjust it, as the frame does not break down easily, so we’ll be looking for some hardware which will allow us to unhook and disengage the table at the end of the season.
In the meantime, we do enjoy sitting on the balcony with morning coffee and in the evening, when it’s cool. We chat about the people we watch walking below. The things that are very flattering and which fashions appear to be very cool in this heat. But then we are amused at ourselves that just LOOKING at some outfits makes us hotter – because they’re bright orange or fire red. We’ve no idea but our eyes tell us that they must be way too hot!
It was quiet in town on the Ascension Day weekend as many had gone on holiday to the beaches or wherever. We enjoyed our coffee on the balcony noting that the foot traffic was negligible. Tourists and students in dribs and drabs and an occasional local – all easily identifiable. The tourists walk slow, take pictures or gaze at buildings, the students are loaded down with suitcases and dorm room pillows/bedding and the locals walk quickly with purpose and packages or cloth shopping bags.
We wonder where the packages they’re carrying, are from and the destination of those who are in a hurry – if they’re not headed to the train station. We saw some guy once in a suit and tie – a really rare occurrence – so we surmised he must have a job or special occasion which requires it because (clearly) no sane person in this heat would wear such an outfit. All small amusements. I often say our lives are so good, but I never pretend that it’s fascinating.
Good friends of ours have invited us to Porto, Portugal for their 38th wedding anniversary next month. They have retired there and have quite an enclave of expats there, which they’ve become friends with and they were really kind enough to invite us to join in. Unfortunately they both came down with Covid and the window of quarantine will end right before the date of the party. After much discussion and consideration, we decided that we were going to have to forgo the party, even though they’ve ordered testing kits for everyone attending. The virus has made us very leery and we were eyeing not only a plane trip (hello small container filled with a multitude of breathing germy people and poor air circulation) but a dinner party with thirty strangers. We haven’t seen them in 20 years and it was very hard to turn them down. Both France and Portugal have had an increase in virus numbers since the first of the year; France at 51% and Portugal at 53%. Our compromise was to make the trip well after the party – no meeting the thirty strangers and after the tourist season ends – netting less traffic.
Despite the warm days, we still manage to get to the farmers market before it gets hot so we are back by noon. One of our trips turned out to contain both an adventure and an education. We ordered two whole fish, haltingly in French – which ours is still limited and asked for filets but the communication was difficult. We did get two whole fish, gutted and scaled but not filleted and still with head/tails intact. The fish monger was so busy wrapping it (plus we had a line behind us) that it didn’t make sense to make him unwrap it and try again to get across what we’d asked for.
As an aside, we picked up the Cantal cheese from the fromagier which had ID’d it as the closest the French had to Monterey Jack. He remembered us and told us that the cheese maker is having problems. The drought is affecting the animals and what they eat so they can’t get enough milk to make it. It all comes from one farm operation. As a result, we bought a very BIG chunk.
Production of Salars – a type of cows’ milk cheese from the central French département of Cantal – has been halted for an indefinite period, as France suffers its worst drought on record. Across the country rivers have run dry and water restrictions have been imposed – and now the cheese-makers are affected too.The Salars cheese is an AOP (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), meaning the rules for its production are carefully defined – to be authentic, the cows’ diet must be at least 75 percent grass from pastures within the Auvergne region.But as the drought continues, the normally fertile volcanic earth in Auvergne has gone hard and dry, and the grass has died – for the 78 AOP cheese producers in the region, their cows have not been able to graze for weeks. “There is nothing left to eat at my place,” said Laurent Roux, a farmer at Gaec de la Calsade in Cantal, to Francetvinfo.“In some places, the ground looks like ashes. It’s dust,” he added. Roux’ cows have not been able to graze since June 25th. While this is the first time a full production stop for Salers has occurred, it is not the first time the AOP has had to contend with challenging climate conditions.Some farmers had to temporarily suspend production in 2017, and in 2019, the AOP requested a waiver to decrease cows’ share of grass in their diets to 50 percent rather than the usual 75 percent.However, farmer and head of the AOP, Laurent Lours, said this option was not on the table this year. “It is not worth it because we do not even have 50 percent of the grass,”
But moving along in the market, we saw huge sunflowers everywhere and we couldn’t resist. This is where an education begins. First off, once home, we didn’t have anything big enough to put the sunflowers in and had to use the bathroom trash bucket. It was akin to wrestling Moby Dick – not that I can claim to ever having done that. But they were beautiful sitting on the table. That was until the next morning when they looked so droopy we thought they’d died overnight.
I tied them up towards the flower head junction, for the drooping issue and put them back in the bucket, although I noted they were top heavy now. Then we started reading online how to take care of them. It turns out that they dehydrate easily with air bubbles when they’re cut, plus breezes and sun being issues to avoid. You need to cut them when you get them home at an angle on the stem, remove all leaves below the water line (these two things we did). But AS you do this, the stems must always be submerged in water so that air bubbles don’t get into the stems. You need to feed them a tablespoon of vinegar and one of sugar (melted in warm water and let the water cool) for energy, per 4 cups of water (those two things we didn’t do). Next you should not put them in a breezy, sunny spot (that we’d avoided too). So .. Geez, high maintenance. While we were busy reading this, the now top heavy bucket, tipped over on the table and the water gushed everywhere. Stopped to cleaned that up, then in the kitchen sink, together we untied everything, submerging the stems in a bigger bucket of water. G held the bundle, I cut the stems, again at an angle. We refilled the trash bucket with fresh water, with the mixture of sugar and vinegar, transferring them from the larger bucket into the smaller one. There was NO way to keep the stems from air exposure in the transfer but we hoped that would help reverse the droopy issue. Treated right, they can last two weeks. But we’d probably killed them and were hoping for them to last at least a week. Lo and behold, the next day they perked back up but changing the water without exposing the stem ends is a pain in the pattootie. In the end, they did last one week. From now on we’ll admire and respect them at the markets – from a distance.
OK, second education is regarding the fish. Before starting dinner, I looked online on how to filet the fish and watched a couple of videos. I had noted the fish label at the vendor – something or other ‘Sauvage.’ OK, got home for translation and sauvage means wild. It was wild caught but the something or other that I didn’t memorize turned out to be the actual fish name. I never claimed to be brilliant. Still, after watching a few video’s, I was ready – then it was out with the big plastic cutting board that has the drain track and all of our knives. Since we don’t have fish knives and I wasn’t sure what would work, I tried them all. Well, absolutely none of our knives were up to the task. The end result was a truly smelly, messy, butcher job. The chainsaw murderer would have done a better job. Yep, I should have taken a picture of THAT. After mangling the ‘something or other sauvage’ fish (poor thing), G fried the fish and it turned out tasty. However, after all that work, I took time to look up the terms I will use next time I pick whole fish at the market, to make sure the damn fish gets filleted. On a brighter note, I froze the heads, tails and carcass, to make a fish stock in the future – probably for an autumn dish. AND, just to be safe, we made a point to take out the trash right after dinner to ensure all smell was gone by the morning. I went through several hand washing’s before G suggested hand sanitizer, which did the job. It was all good. If that had failed, I’d have tried an approach a friend of ours recently took – she used a gin she’d purchase and didn’t like, for hand sanitizer. Rather it smell like gin than fish.
Still got to say, life is fun. But the take aways?
- Don’t buy flowers bigger than any vase you own. It will end badly.
- Know in advance how much work it is to maintain the cut flowers you purchase or be prepared for a premature demise.
- When ordering anything in a language foreign to you, have a list of appropriate terms in front of you to refer to. Politely but firmly, speak slowly and enunciate carefully.
- Know for a fact that you can’t fillet a fish without the correct tools. Seriously. It’s a fact.
- Usually washing hands and rubbing stainless steel will eliminate lingering odors on hands. Not with fish guts. You need hand sanitizer to be able to climb into bed at night, especially if you aren’t sleeping alone. And if there is a gin you don’t care for in your pantry…..
So, moving along….
We were asked by a US friend about wildfires and drought conditions. Yes, we are experiencing drought and fires. In fact, firefighters from Portugal and Spain have joined the French firefighters to battle the fires in southern France because they’re so big. In regards to the drought, they’ve been unable to make some cheeses, as the animals are being moved, since the grasses they eat are dried up. The Cantal cheese that we worked so hard to find, the one most similar to Monterey Jack, is having to stop production, as we mentioned above. Cheeses are specific to regions because of the diet of the animals. The drought conditions are such that the grasses have dried up – so animals aren’t getting the same grasses or enough to eat – which means they’re producing milk which is different or even producing less milk . Shifting the cows and goats to another area, which they are doing, means that the cheese is fundamentally changed by their diet, therefore Cantal cheese can’t continue to be produced. Dijon mustard seeds, that are primarily harvested in Canada, have been affected by their weather issues, so therefore, the mustard production has stopped. There isn’t any on the grocery shelves now and none is being made. They have said that they hope to have some on the shelves by November.
And of course we’re experiencing heat waves like everyone else. We in Lille, are faring better than the southern parts of France but still we are not escaping the high 90° and 100° days. As we are able to get good air circulation in our apartment, we are more fortunate than those who don’t. For all of the heat waves we’ve experienced last month and this month, we’ve only resorted to using the air conditioning just a couple of days.
The rest of the month was relatively quiet. We’re making plans to visit Limoges in October – they are one of very few French towns which celebrate Halloween, our favorite US holiday. We are also eyeing temporarily finding an apartment in Italy next spring. There is so much to see and their extensive train system makes that possible but it will take time. Per the EU treaty, we can visit outside of France for up to 90 day in a stretch within a six month range.
Fun things to plan and after this heat, like everyone else, we are looking forward to cooler weather. Oh and on a last note, let us show you some of those fantastic, spectacular sunsets from our balcony we’ve seen while sitting outside.
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