The Beckwiths in France, July 2007

These are essentially Cori's notes from the trip and I've just interspersed random pictures throughout...

Our journey began on a beautiful summer afternoon in Massachusetts, as we walked from our door in Arlington, wheeling our bags behind us through the sunny suburb and had visions of crepes and croissants in our heads.

The airport was in order. We found Anthony’s parents, Barbara and Jon at the Iberia checkin counter and got snacks in the international terminal after getting our shoes and toothpaste inspected.

I must have gotten a piece of gravel stuck in my suitcase wheel, because by the time I got to the airport, it was making a loud, thunk, thunk, noise. The entire rest of the trip, I was thunking everywhere we went. You couldn’t lose me in the crowds.

I had been starting to think in French to warm myself up, but our flight attendants and the announcements on the flight were in Spanish. "Mas pan?" It was a little confusing. The flight to Madrid was a long one. They served dinner, then a movie, then another movie, then served us breakfast over the 6 hour flight. We slept a little, but not much. The boys were very excited and only slept at the very end of the flight. Barbara and Jon, the seasoned travelers, had their little neck pillows and seemed to sleep quite well on the flight. By the time, we were in Madrid and negotiating that huge airport, I was comatose. We had to get from one terminal to another to make our connection, go through customs and go through security again. I was so asleep that I couldn’t understand the instructions that they were trying to tell me through security in Spanish. I was in tears as we came out the other side.

When we got to the gate to wait for our connection, we sat next to a French family. It was fun to listen to the 3 and 5 year old speaking with their mother. That I could understand. I felt much better. The next flight over the Pyrenees was short and I did sleep for most of it. Then we took the train into Paris. I was so thrilled. I was having fun just seeing the Art Nouveau entry to the metro. Brigitte’s apartment was right off of the Place de Denfert Rochereau, just up a winding little stair on the second floor overlooking the foot-traffic only section with fruit stands, fish markets, cafes, a honey shop, a post-card store, a charcuterie, a fromagerie with cows on the top of the signs. It was wonderful.

And we all promptly ate and went to sleep for the next 4-5 hours.

We rose luckily in time for a lovely dinner with Brigitte and Gerard at a local Morrocan restaurant. Brigitte gave us directions and instructions for the cottage and nearby stores.

The next morning, we caught a train to St. Brieuc from Gare Montparnasse. I took a brief walk up on the roof garden. During the ride we mostly saw farm fields and new state-of-the-art windmills that looked like airplanes. At St. Brieuc we had lunch at a little creperie that served the large galettes made from buckwheat. There was a couple who spoke to us in English, so we asked back "where are you from" and they responded "here". They moved to the area 30 years earlier. This is actually quite common all over Normandy and Brittany.

We picked our rental car, which was a large mini-van, to fit all six of us large persons. We were very comfortable in it. I could sit in the middle of the back seat and still see the road and therefore didn’t get car sick (and that was nice for everyone). After a little roundabout excursion in St. Brieuc we got on the right exit from town and found our way through the countryside to Jarnay, a little village of six houses. It was beautiful. The cottage is made of granite blocks, some larger than a person. There was an old well and a stone sink in the front yard and an old (now broken) stone bowl. This bowl might have been used in the past to grind grain. The cottage had a large fireplace to warm up the cool stones. Upstairs was warm and toasty, with newer wood beadboard. We settled in to our rooms and contemplated where to get dinner.

We had instructions for the nearest supermarche and went to get some supplies. The stores don’t provide you with bags so we bought one and just piled the rest of the stuff in to the car.

We made pasta and salad and veggies and had wine and Little Schoolboys. With a roaring fire and the BBC news, we all settled in to our first night in Brittany. That’s when the mice came out to play in the roof rafters. Some of these adventurous creatures invented a game of rolling what sounded like a marble to the top peak of the rafter, and letting it fall down to the bottom. They liked to play this game for quite a while.

Also we found that they don’t use window screens in France. Which just means that when you get fresh air, you get bugs in the house. So, I would get up, have my morning coffee and go on bug swatting patrol. I got quite adept by the time we left the country.

For entertainment, we went for walks on the farm roads and found the local calvaire and chapel of St. Gildas. The chapel had a bell with the wire hanging down and accessible to anyone. We thought of ringing it, but thought we better not, as it might raise the local fire brigade or something. As we got back to Jarnay, a neighbor said that we should have rung the "cloche" but we were still suspicious that he was pulling our leg. It turned out that it was fine to ring it. Oh well, next time. Then we drove south to an old chateau in a village called Pontivy. It was owned by the Rohans who were the local dukes in the area and was partly destroyed during the war, but now has art displayed in it as well a lovely museum on the local life. We saw some movies on the masons, the stone houses, and farm life. The local village had a lovely street with small shops all jam-packed together, the lace shop, the charcuterie, a pizza place. We had lunch at the pizza place that was decorated with French records and music stars from the 50’s and 60’s. The pizzas were made with very flat dough and yummy toppings. I had anchovy and Barbara had seafood. They had a street market going one day there and there were lots of t-shirts, clothes, jewelry, and merchants hawking their items.

We lunched on salmon turine and taboulie down by the canal bank that runs from Nantes to Brest. It had lovely flowers, water lillies and ducks.

Then we drove further on south to Carnac to see the alignments of megaliths. They control access to these monoliths because they are falling over as the soil is compacted by too many pedestrians. Some are closed off completely and the surrounding plants, heather, heath and verge are allowed to recover. They allow sheep to graze this area to keep the shrubs from obcuring the stones. Instead of taking the guided tour, we decided to walk through the local woods to find a tumulus (of St. Michel), a burial mound, but thought we missed it. We did find a church on top of a large hill (which could have been a tumulus, since there was a doorway at the base) but we weren’t certain. There was also a little stone structure at the nearby spring. It was a lovely hike through the woods.

Along the ride home, maybe in Baud, we stopped off at a "cave" and bought some wines, a Muscadet, a Saumur, and another white and red. We made quite a few dinners of pasta with sauted vegetables (they had lovely small round zuccinis), baguette and beurre de Bretagne, with a salad. Jon would bike over to St. Gilles-Pligeaux in the mornings for new baguettes and croissants. The white peaches and small canteloupe melons were wonderful.

Adam got a pain au chocolat almost every morning in France. And I don’t think he got sick of them. I loved spreading strawberry preserves on my croissants. Brigitte had a lovely bowl-like coffee cup of the local pottery. It is made usually near Quimper, south and west of where we stayed. I kept my eye out of local lace makers but didn’t find hand made things. One shop in Quintin had some nice lace (a window panel with a dancing Briton couple), but not local hand made things.

We made a trip up to the coast north of St. Brieuc to go to the beach and try to find the pink granite coast. Jon had a postcard showing carved faces and animals on the shoreline. We missed the granite, but found a lovely half-rocky half-sandy beach with an off-shore island for the boys to hike out to. I spent most of my time beach combing for lovely shells. There were scallops, clams, oysters and a shell I called potato chips. There were also lots of little hermit crabs. Anthony and the boys went exploring in caves and spent lots of time digging and making sand castles or trenches while I sorted shells and Barbara and Jon relaxed on the beach. Jon checked out the small restaurant at the beach and it had shellfish and he saw that the Tour de France was showing on their tv.

The cottage was entertaining in a quiet way. The boys played lots of lego, trains, chess and read (alot). Adam is going through books like kleenex. We all read lots of books.

One afternoon, we tried to find the menhirs closest to the cottage. We hiked off down the road (east towards le Vieux Bourg) and cut off on a small farm road thinking it would save us time due to a switch back on the road and bring us to the spot we wanted sooner. Well, eventually, we were in thicker and thicker brush. I only had capri length pants on and short running socks. My ankles got the brunt of the blackberries and nettles. We cut off the corner of a cow field, luckily, the cows were at the other end, looking at us like "who are these tourists". We had to scale the 4 foot high berms topped by ferns and wire (at least it wasn’t barbed) and then jump across the roadside ditch.

We tried to get closer to the menhir on another farm road, but it was too overgrown. So we went on a more direct route. Anthony and the boys went ahead of me and entered the field to the menhir. They were a ways ahead and I didn’t enter the field in the same place that they did. I crossed the roadside ditch, up over the berm (4 feet high), through the ferns, and then down, whoosh, dropping 6 to 8 feet straight down, into a deep ditch full of nettles. At least I landed on my feet and could still see my way out or I would have been upset. I clambered my way out of the hole into the patch of buckwheat and followed the little path previously trampled through to the menhir. It was a lovely one about 15 feet tall with a large patch of lichen like a big eyeball staring southward.

A few days later I found the perfect spot for photographing this menhir was from the field across the street and as I was adjusting the perspective discovered that it also lined up with the next menhir off in this distance that had a stone cross placed on top of it. I just had to wait for the light and voila both stones were illuminated by the sun. Spectacular! I found a little butterfly with browns, orange and purple on this walk as well and thought the colors would make a good inspiration for a beaded necklace.

There were two friendly horses, a large grey gelding and a small brown mare, who were pastured sometimes right behind the cottage and sometimes up the road. Whenever they saw me, they came right over for some affection or maybe a carrot (that I didn’t have). I tried to speak French with them, but I don’t know if they understood my poor grammar or my Californian accent.

The neighbor, immediately next to Brigitte’s cottage, was a woman with a couple of older kids. The word from Brigitte was that they didn’t get on well with these neighbors. The driveway to the cottage was right by her front door, so we had to negotiate the exit of our large van every single time. I would stand behind and guide Jon out. The first day we were there, I did get a smile out of the woman, after going past her about 5 times taking the bikes for test rides. But I wasn’t going to get into a chat, that I couldn’t keep up my end of. I assumed that she probably didn’t speak English.

There were two other neighbors across the road, a couple, who invited us all over for an aparitif but just Barbara and Jon made it over. I had just gotten a bee sting at the beach and was trying to keep the swelling down. The neighbors sent Barbara back with a cup of vinegar to help bring down the swelling.

I enjoyed picking wildflowers for the dinner table. I picked foxgloves, margarites, bladder campion, cow parsnip, money plant, ferns, and a few I couldn’t figure out.

We drove north and east to St. Cast Guildo to visit a friend of Jon’s, Francois, who used to be a quail farmer and is now mayor of his small town in Normandy. He, his wife, Domy, and grandson, Yune, were staying in their mobile home at a nice campground with a pool, waterslides, ping pong, minigolf, arcade, moonbounce, zipline and also near to the beach. This is where I met the bee, in the surf. I thought I had stepped on a jelly fish when I felt the stabbing sting. I looked down to see the fat bee on my ankle. I swatted him off and he left his stinger in me. I pulled the stinger out immediately after and washed the hole in my leg in the salt water. That felt good, but I still had a soft ball for an ankle by the end of the day.

This beach had lovely small shell with holes already worn through on the end, perfect for stringing into jewelry.

Francois and Domy (short for Dominique) served us mussels for lunch, which were superb and even my boys had some and we drank Cote de Rhone. Yummy. I had fun speaking in French with Yune, the 5 year old grandson, since I could keep up, but soon got lost when he started telling me about his older brother.

Chateau Josselin – a castle that everyone, but me, went to. They took a tour and saw the place where the people lived on the bottom floor. The library had 3000 books in a small room, bookshelves were double layered, bookshelves behind the front rows, deep shelves, stacked double deep in books. The art work on the ceiling floor, letters shaped in different ways, "we do what we want", "A-plus".

On Saturday night, we went to Bourbriac to a Fest Noz, a Briton festival. They had a marching band to start with the local instruments when we arrived. Most of the locals were sitting under tents still enjoying their dinner. Barbara bought us a chocolate crepe for dessert. Lots of the locals were also drinking the local hard cider. Then the headline band got started on the ministage (in a truck container) and the residents began their Briton circle dancing. They held pinkies for some dances, hands or linked arms for others. Then stepped and hopped to the left for the music, which was similar to Irish folk, but very different too. The dances reminded me most of Greek folk dancing.

We took the TGV train back to Paris on the 19^th. We settled into Brigitte’s apartment on Rue DeGuerre (for the old photographs). The first day we just wanted to stroll so we went to the Jardin de Luxembourg, and saw the lovely flowers and the remote control boats on the pond. We saw posters of an exhibit of Rene Lalique jewelry so made plans to see that.

Then I took off to walk across the city and find Rue de la Perle. I wound my way, zig zag throught the neighborhoods to the Seine, crossing at the Pont Neuf, where I stayed 29 years earlier with my dad and gramma at the Place Dauphine, in the Hotel Henri IV. There were a few lovely shops of jewelry and antiques right nearby. Then found my way into the Marais. It is a great district full of the jumbled old and twisty streets and buildings all jammed in together. Old jewish temples, trendy boutiques of shoes and clothes, and cafes. I took Rue de Rivoli to Rue de Vieux Temple to Rue de la Perle (on the corner with Rue de Quatre Fils). Fils means thread as well as son in French. I didn’t find a single bead shop on Perle street. I did find my bead shop on Rue de Sevigne and found some lovely shaped moonstones. Then I found my way home on the metro, after taking the wrong turn in the underground tunnels and winding up on another connecting line, but it still went to Denfert Rochereau, so I got home just the same.

We ate a wonderful meal at a bistro called Zango with Brigitte’s daughter, Barbara, who is named after Barbara Beckwith. She was just moving back home with her mother, after living and teaching in Lyon, so we were slightly displacing her at the apartment but she stayed at another friend’s or with Brigitte at Gerard’s apartment near Pere Lachaise cemetary (where they are just dying to get in). Zango had a wall of travel books and we ate teryaki chicken and shrimp with mango. I had broiled banana with lavender chocolate sauce for dessert.

We ate a Japanese dinner with Brigitte, Gerard and Barbara near Gerard’s apartment. We started the evening in Gerard’s apartment with all of his lovely African art. There were some blue ladies staring at me from the next room, and they served an apertif of pate and champagne. Yum. I was having fun trying to follow the French conversation and would lose it and pick it up again (very funny). Our dinner was mostly sushi, tempura and satay, but with a French twist, one was beef and cheese.

We took the boys to the Eiffel Tower and walked up to the second level since the lines were already too long for the elevators, but it was a better experience anyway. I got dizzy on the second level platform, it was high enough for me. When we got back down, the boys ate a very expensive hotdog and french fries. Then we found our way to the Asian museum. There were ancient carved Buddhas and weapons and old old Chinese artifacts.

Lalique- art nouveau, flowing, leaves, vines, plants, flowers, bugs, fusion of forms, women’s bodies melting into the framework, I liked the bats the best, He made many pieces for Sarah Bernhardt, large tiaras, many short Italians stepping in front of me to see the jewelry,

St. Sulpice – Anth and I walked through this, tomb of Newton covered with spheres, planets. Lovely, filled with light, airy.

Village Voice book store, where I bought a book on the anthropology of turquoise.

Science Museum – alien exhibit was really stupid (Adam), Daniel liked it, cool table projection of a world, ecosystem created and interact with it, holographic buttons, geode movie theatre in sphere movie about Dinosaurs Alive,

Notre Dame, dark inside, service going on but they still let the tourists mill through quietly, took photo of gargoyle and woman singing and playing a lyre-type instrument.

marche de pousse – I finally got an eye roll from woman while haggling for light green and light blue seed beads, hand made lace, cafe au lait coffee cups, wooden sabots, one is a tobacco box, the others are painted with Bretons, homme et femme.

Bretannos-cookies, walking in the rain across the Louvre,

Cluny-jewelry buried by Jews during the plague, gold Celtic torque,

carnival

We had our last dinner, at Cafe Daguerre, on the corner of Rue Daguerre and Rue De Laclerc. We sat outside and it was early so we didn’t have any smokers sitting near us. Then later at the end of the meal, someone lit up a cigarette but the maitre-d told them to put it out. I was thankful and very impressed. Paris just passed the law to ban smoking in restaurants, but its taking a while to impliment and people can still smoke outside, so this outdoor cafe is an unclear area for the law. I had chocolate mousse for dessert and Adam got Profiterols, (cream puffs with icecream inside and chocolate sauce).

Adam’s favorite thing about France was the chocolate croissants, very good. They just made them better. They were made fresh each day, and the chocolate had not solidified yet. (I buy day-olds from our coffee shop here in Arlington, Quebrada).

The final day of the trip was rainy, as if France was saying "I held out as long as I could for you, but now I have to water all of those lovely flowers".

I loved the flowers at the Luxembourg gardens. They just seemed to be bursting at the seems with color.