Zou bisou bisou
Zou bisou bisou
Zou bisou bisou
Mon Dieu qu’ils sont doux
France is a song you hear all day long. It begins in the morning with the cheerful bonjour from the beautiful young woman behind the counter at the boulangerie. It’s a playful, melodious greeting that bounces with happiness – as if just the idea of procuring a warm croissant wasn’t happiness enough.
I had the good fortune of spending three weeks in France last month and I may never get over it. Honestly, I don’t want to get over it, but re-entry has been challenging. My first morning back home, I was in the drive-through at Starbucks and heard myself saying “bonjour” to the barista when he greeted me through the speaker. I fear I have developed a rare form of French Tourette’s, and I can’t stop finding ways to use the twelve words of French that I know.
To be fair, I did work on my French this summer using the Pimsleur app. It was challenging but surprisingly fun to shake off the thick cobwebs of two years of high school French. And to be completely honest, all I really cared about was not sounding like a hayseed from the USA when ordering in a French restaurant. I’m pleased to report that I did pretty darn well. I even made a dinner reservation by phone with a French woman who spoke no English. That was probably the highlight of my adventures in speaking French. I was usually okay until someone would ask me a question in real speed French. That’s when I would look like what the French would describe as un lapin pris dans les phares – a rabbit caught in the headlights. The other person would always smile sweetly and rescue me with their annoyingly efficient English.
I know it’s easy to fall in love with a place on holiday when you’re away from the boring chores of your everyday life. Be honest – if you’ve been lucky enough to travel abroad, how many times have you been somewhere and wondered if you could live there? And then we go home and make our Shutterfly books and go on with our lives and get over it. Well, I’m not over France yet – I catch myself fantasizing about cheese and chateaus – and then at night, I have gauzy dreams where I’m zipping around the beautiful French countryside like I’m Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road. Hey, my dreams, my casting, and these nocturnal flights of fancy are so much more enjoyable than the apocalyptic end of democracy nightmares I often have.
I blame my lovely friends and travel companions Lori and Sue for my current status as a Francophile. Stay with me – I’ll connect those dots in a bit. My dear wife and I have traveled quite a bit over the past several years – usually with a tour company and we’ve had some marvelous adventures in five continents and over 25 countries. Tours are great – you get a lot of bang for your buck, and you don’t have to sort any of the details. And best of all, someone else schleps your luggage to the next stop. The downside is that you often wish you could have more time in a location.
Lori and Sue have traveled the world together for 45 years and have navigated most journeys on their own. They’ve been to more places than J. Peterman – Elaine’s eccentric globetrotting boss on Seinfeld. I mean, who goes to Bhutan or Mongolia? They do – and they are an unflappable duo who would slay on The Amazing Race. One early morning in the Bordeaux countryside, a wild boar leapt across the narrow road right in front of us. Sue – affectionately known as Baby Driver – never flinched – well, maybe a wee bit at the girly screams from my wife and me from the back seat – as she avoided une catastrophe. Lori was her steady co-pilot – monitoring the GPS – if we had internet connection – while looking at an old school map. And to make matters more challenging, Siri – for no apparent reason – would sometimes speak to us in French – charming but not that helpful.
Lori and Sue’s extensive plans for this trip rivaled the D-Day invasion. We began with two days in Paris – a short stay since we had all been there before. From there, we (they) rented a car and spent the next 18 days and 1500 miles exploring the French countryside – no interstates. You can really get to know a place this way. I can report that every little village in France has at least a dozen roundabouts and a cathedral or two. Oh, and they all look like a fairytale. Time travel is easy in France – and we traveled back centuries every day. We stayed in Airbnbs – with the signature never-ending European staircases that would have challenged Sir Edmund Hillary. They all had televisions and we never even turned one on which only added to the enchanting atmosphere. And I was never certain what day it was because it only mattered if it was a market day wherever we were.
Which leads me to the food in France. Food is truly art to the French, and we enjoyed several masterpieces during our stay. It’s no secret that French cuisine is famous for its elegant technique-driven methods – think boeuf bourguigon and coq au vin – and classic sauces – butter is its own food group there. We had some gorgeous meals, but I think our favorites were the ones we had at home – with a fresh baguette and an embarrassment of cheeses. So many cheeses – even former French president Charles de Gaulle famously asked, “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” We even named our personal bistro Chez Fromage. The French do not fear carbs and bread is as essential as air – or wine – to them. There is no such thing as bad bread in France – the breadmaking is highly regulated – and you can even buy a fresh baguette at a petrol station. We never did, but it was much more tempting than a bag of Cheetos.
The French are not careless about food and they value fresh, quality ingredients. Going to the farmers market is akin to the Louvre of Produce – fresh greens that looked like bouquets, finger shaped radishes that were almost sweet, and carrots – don’t get me started on the crispy carrots – my favorites. Every salad we had – even in modest off the beaten track restaurants – was Instagram worthy. And market days have a festive feel – the locals with their bags on wheels in animated conversations with their familiar vendors. I swear I could hear Eartha Kitt singing “C’est si bon” in the background as we stuffed our lone tote to the tippy top.
Our favorite meal out was at a small restaurant in Saillans – in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region near Bordeaux. The owner was our server, and she spoke very little English, but she described each dish to us in exquisite detail – in French. It was like having Catherine Deneuve narrate our dinner and even though we understood very little, she was so passionate and intentional in her descriptions that we were absolutely mesmerized. We all sat there smiling and nodding as she slowly told us about every artfully arranged item on our plates. I joked later that she could have been telling us we were having braised roadkill in a sawdust reduction sauce and we would still be smiling and nodding. It was absolute magic and we were there for almost four hours. There is no grabbing a quick dinner in France and we were all in – even if we had to stay up past our bedtime.
If France is a song, French pastries are poetry – sweet, buttery elegance. The only challenge is choosing which one(s) to try. Every region of France seems to have a distinct pastry that highlights the local ingredients and techniques. We did our best to be fair and sample as many as possible – with one of our favorites being the canelé from Bordeaux. It looks like a mini bundt cake and has a crunchy, browned outer shell and soft custard center flavored with rum and vanilla. Honestly, all of the pastries in France looked almost too good to eat – almost.
But one of my favorite things about France was something that I couldn’t identify until after a few days there. I would find myself a bit distracted sitting in a restaurant – a feeling I couldn’t quite discern. And then I became aware of the sound of my own voice and I finally got it – the noise level in the restaurant was so subdued that you didn’t have to struggle to be heard over the other tables. The background music was merely a suggestion and there were no TVs draped over the bar. Oh, and in three weeks in France, I never once heard someone talking on speaker phone.
It’s not just that the French speak more quietly than Americans, it’s their whole approach to dining out. They aren’t in a hurry and if you are seated at a table, it is yours until you ask your server for the check. Yes, they value fine food, but they also thrive on conversation with their dining companions. Eating out is much more than a meal – it’s a choreographed social ritual – starter, main, cheese course and dessert. Amen. The portions are not supersized and there is a pause between courses – leaving room for your appetite for deliciousness and conversation. Every one of our dinners out felt like a special occasion – beyond just being in France – we were all in the moment. And this is the unique souvenir I wanted to cram into my carry-on bag with all those dirty clothes to take home – presence.
There is a famous French proverb – “La vis est aite de petits benheurs” – that translates into English as “Life is made of little joys.” It perfectly captures my time in France. Yes, I saw some beautiful and deeply moving things – the restoration of Notre Dame, Monet’s Giverny, the magnificent Mont Saint- Michel, the devastating beaches of Normandy – on and on – and they will remain vivid postcards in my memory. But it is those little joys that I have revisited the most since I’ve returned home and they shuffle through my mind like an old school Kodak slideshow – and I see the little French children with their backpacks holding hands as they walked to school with their mother on a bright Paris morning. And I smile when I remember the dog walker at a busy intersection in Paris somehow effortlessly walking eleven dogs at one time – two not even on a leash. I can hear the beautiful French girl singing a sweet song to the mannequin of a WWII soldier at the Museum of the Battle of Normandy – as if she were trying to cheer him up. Oh, and the light – when we were so lucky to catch the pastel sunset over Bayeux from our fourth floor flat – and the divine kaleidoscope the sunlight created through the stained-glass windows in the Basilica of Saint-Sauveur in Dinan – and the pearl full moon illuminating the night sky when we left our fabulous dinner in Saillans – these exquisite images are all on rotation in my carousel.
I want to be more present to these tender treasures of beauty and kindness in a country where the volume of the discord bombards us every freaking hour. I am certainly well aware that the French are experiencing their own turmoil these days, but we’ve been mired in ours for over a decade and the cumulative weariness is palpable. I mostly avoided the news on our trip, but before our flight home I learned that I was returning to a country where an execution was going to be live streamed and the president had encouraged the bombing of the city where my beloved sister lives. My time in France was a balm from the madness, and I want to steep in it for as long as possible.
Ernest Hemingway famously described Paris as a “moveable feast” – an unforgettable experience that you not only carry with you, but you can revisit time and again through indelible memories. Papa was right and I have a feeling I’m going to be feasting on France for a very long time.
Bon appetit!
