Deauville, by air

31 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Normandy, Travel

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It’s a truism to state that there’s little glamour in flying. All those transatlantic flights, lodged in the back of the plane with a screaming toddler and a broken TV screen. Or the low-cost landlocked journeys east, as far as you can go and still be in Europe, knees in your face, costs a fortune for a coffee. So what a joy to start a flight from Deauville Airport!

It’s a two-gate terminal with a couple of weekly flights to City Airport, London, and charter flights during holiday seasons. There’s a flying school, and many private planes coming in and out. In the parking lot (a mere few metres from the airport terminal) a child of around 7 announces “My Dad has his own private plane.” Most people here do, I think. There’s a smart bar upstairs, and a restaurant with crisp white tablecloths and 3-course meals. No rushing for ferries and trains, or driving hours south from the ports. What better way to pop into your holiday home in Deauville or Honfleur?

The CityJet plane is luxurious: leather seats and good leg room. Drinks are free, staff are courteous. There is fresh coffee and a Leonidas chocolate before landing. The plane stays low on a cloudless day and offers excellent views of Deauville with its sandy beach, marina, casino and racecourse. Later, there’s a birds eye view of London from Battersea Power Station over Parliament and along to the Olympic Park with its gleaming arenas. “A Peter Pan view” comments the briefcase-wielding gentleman in front of me who the staff know by name, perhaps he has something to do with the races or the film festival. Anyway, he’s right: if this were a Disney ride, you’d get back in the queue for another go. How’s that for a great flight.

A Weekend for Tree Decorating

08 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Travel

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Christmas, Christmas tree, Romania, Travel

The Christmas tree sellers are out in force this weekend, and doing a brisk business. Here’s what I wrote about Christmas tree decorating last year. Not much has changed in the intervening months: it wasn’t a year for far-flung travel for our family. The only new tree decoration is a traditional Romanian straw hat bought with spare change on the way out of Cluj. And still, there are no French decorations.

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When traveling for pleasure we like to find local decorations for the Christmas tree. It’s a way to remember some of the interesting places we have visited. It’s also a great excuse to buy tourist tat without making seriously expensive mistakes. My parents did the same, and their tree is heavy with adventures. My favourite is the wooden cosmonaut they picked up at Moscow airport in 1971. He hangs on the tree, a reminder of a vanished era of aspiration and confrontation.

Here are some of the decorations on our tree this year.

This glamorous shopping lady is from Colorado. She has always struck me as overly stylish for the Rockies–perhaps she is taking in the après ski scene inAspen. We found the hand-made lace angel next to her in Tallinn, Eastonia. Tallinn’s old town is beautiful and perfectly sized for a weekend visit if you can just manage to avoid the stag party crowds. The tango dancers are from Buenos Aires, where we watched equally craggy dancers dipping and spinning around the streets of La Boca.

I wonder if the Bengal tiger is wearing lipstick, or is that the remains of dinner around his mouth? He roars fiercly at the snowmen and santa decorations. We found the sweet-faced Pinnochio in Orvieto, a hilltown in Umbria, Italy. When I lived in Italy as a child I worried through Christmas that the old witch Befana who visits on the Ephiphany would bring me the coal that naughty children get instead of gifts.

The little ladies are from Guatemala, where we marveled at the Mayan ruins in Tikal. In Iceland we stayed at the isolated Hotel Budir on the Snaefellsnes peninsula. No vikings in sight there, but it was easy to imagine elves emerging from the mysteriously shaped lava rocks all around.

This crown above and the chandelier below are English, from the Victoria & Albert Museum shop which sells unusual and unique Christmas decorations. The cowgirl is from Texas and I love her sparkling belt buckle. I’m not sure she does much cow herding in this outfit: maybe Daddy owns an oil well.

My brother clerked for a time at the Supreme Court, and he arranged for us to take a tour and hear the justices hand down a decision. It was amazing to be there and watch history in motion. The blue Matisse blue bulb is from MOMA, New York and the green bulb is from Hawaii’s National Tropical Botanical Garden.

We think of the tree a work in progress, with many gaps to be filled. There is one gaping hole that I’d like to fill quickly. We spend so much of our time in France and yet have nothing to put on the Christmas tree. So please help me – where is the best place in Paris or Normandy to find Christmas decorations? And what are the most typical French Christmas tree decorations?

Spring in Upper Normandy

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Les Iris, Normandy, Travel

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chaumiere, Easter, Flowers, Le Havre, Normandy, photography, restaurant, Scarecrows, Spring, Travel, Vieux-Port

Normandy is just about my favourite place in the spring. Get there at the right moment, and the countryside is trimmed with white apple blossom, like lace on a Victorian bride. The sky is big and the light changeable and nuanced. No wonder the impressionists discovered light here.

I was lucky enough to spend last week in Upper Normandy. Here are some of my pictures.

Arboretum in bloom, Château d’Harcourt

Evening, Auberge du Vieux Logis, Conteville

Spring garden overlooking the Seine at Les Iris

Easter bells, bunnies, chickens, at the central market in Le Havre

Scarecrows, near Harcourt

Le Havre from the pier

Sunset, Vieux-Port

Spring flowers and herb garden, Les Iris

Vieux-Port and the Seine

Yellow field near Sainte-Opportune-la-Mare

From Vieux-Port to Aizier

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Aizier, national park, Normandy, Romanesque, Seine, Travel, Walking

Walking is one of our great joys in Normandy. In London, the city buzzes around us all the time. Cars speed up and down our street of terraced Victorian houses, while overhead planes cruise towards Heathrow from dawn into the night. We walk in the city too, but mainly to get somewhere, and in a hurry. It’s a luxury to set off on foot without any particular agenda.

A national park footpath starts just beyond the end of the garden and runs east for a few kilometers along the Seine to Aizier. It’s a great walk for the children, flat, and lined with blackberry bushes, and with neat stepping stones across a vigorous stream. The path ends at a large picnic ground, from where you can turn right into the attractive village of Aizier.

Aizier’s Romanesque church dates from the 11th century. Even older is a mysterious stone with a large round hole in it. Discovered in the 1870s, it is thought to be 4000 years old, and marked the position of a neolithic burial ground.

Around the church there is a short historical walk with archived photographs of the village.

Look at all those people – the policeman, the deliveryman, the baker, the schoolchildren – squinting smartly into the sun in front of the general store. You’d be hard pressed to round up anyone in sleepy Aizier today.

What was once the petrol station is now smartened up and reborn as the swanky La Bonne Auberge

From here, return to Vieux-Port either back along the river or along the road. Better, extend the walk by taking the small road up the hill towards the recently excavated Chapelle Saint-Thomas.

From Normandy to Isère and Chalet Chic

18 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Les Iris, Property in France

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Chalet, Decoration, France, Home, House in France, Reims, Skiing, thatched cottage, Travel

Over the years we’ve opted for the two-day drive from London to the Alps for our annual ski holiday. It’s probably easier to fly or take the ski train, but with young children and the amount of stuff we like to take, it feels easier and cheaper to drive. Driving necessitates an overnight stay and in the past we stopped in Reims where there’s a surprisingly stylish Best Western with family rooms, excellent champagne to be sampled, and, should you fancy a bit of sightseeing, a magnificent cathedral.

This year we took a new route, staying overnight at Les Iris. This raised a few questions. Driving from Normandy to the Alps was a new route; would it take much longer? And with snow and record-breaking low temperatures in France, would our village, in the Seine Valley, be accessible?

Last year, in the heavy snow around Christmas, the villagers were snowed in for five days. The owner of the one 4×4 that made it up the hill out of the village found himself buying in bulk from the bakery and delivering bread each day to the village’s 60 or so residents. This year, in the event, the local famers had cleared the roads of snow and ice, and the driving was straightforward. Despite -15 degree temperatures outside, the cottage was warm: thatch is a natural insulator, and does a wonderful job of keeping the cottage cosy inside. The drive to the Alps was marginally longer overall, but it was worth the extra miles to avoid staying in a hotel. The drive from Normandy to the Alps took 9 hours, including a long lunch break and several service station stops.

We skied this year in Vaujany, a lovely village with excellent access to the Alpe d’Huez ski area. While there, we had a chance to explore some beautiful French properties. We stayed in Chez Nous, a self-catering mini-chalet, that’s part of Chalet La Maitreya. From our floor to ceiling windows there were fantastic views along the valley.

And we enjoyed many entertaining evenings with friends at their beautiful home in Vaujany, La Boite Qui Brille. I just love how they have decorated this modern chalet, proving that you can use contemporary colours and materials to build a cosy and welcoming space.

The World on our Christmas Tree

17 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Travel

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Christmas, Christmas tree, decorations, Travel

Here are some of the decorations on our tree this year.

This glamorous shopping lady is from Colorado. She has always struck me as overly stylish for the Rockies–perhaps she is taking in the après ski scene in Aspen. We found the hand-made lace angel next to her in Tallinn, Eastonia. Tallinn’s old town is beautiful and perfectly sized for a weekend visit if you can just manage to avoid the stag party crowds. The tango dancers are from Buenos Aires, where we watched equally craggy dancers dipping and spinning around the streets of La Boca.

Off-Season Honfleur

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

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Art, Carousel, Honfleur, Normandy, Quebec, restaurant, Travel

A few miles west along the Seine from our chaumiere is Honfleur, one of Normandy’s most picturesque fishing villages. Honfleur has long been important to Normandy, as a safe harbour during the Hundred Years’ War, then as a centre of maritime trade. French explorer and diplomat Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec City, left for Canada from Honfleur in 1608.

Today Honfleur attracts many tourists in the summer months. We have visited only in spring and fall, when it buzzes gently with weekending couples, and there’s enough watery sun shining for the restauranteurs around the rectangular harbour to keep a few tables outside.

This restaurant, right on the harbour, looks perfect for colder days: they provide a blanket on each chair to pull around your shoulders. We had a wonderful meal at the tiny Bistro des Artistes, which is on an upper floor of one of those tall buildings by the harbour. The menu is short but all freshly made. You access the restaurant from the street behind, and get a table by the window for a fabulous and unobstructed view out over the harbour.

Honfleur is a lovely place to wander through. In the spring and summer there is an old-fashioned carousel by the harbour. (We are becoming aficionados of carousels in Normandy: there is another in Le Touquet which I have written about here.) There are many interesting shops to explore – gourmet food; incredible chocolate shops with elaborate seasonal creations in their windows; and a host of art galleries.

We haven’t needed to stay overnight in Honfleur, but at this B&B, the proprietors were very kind when we needed to find a toilet for a toddler, quickly. It is set off the street around a charming courtyard, filled with flowers.

There are many museums and historical sites in Honfleur. We haven’t visited most of them yet: we have been having too much fun eating and walking around. There are markers in the harbour recording the departure of Samuel de Champlain’s fleet. Quite striking and worth a look is the Eglise Sainte Catherine which, unusually for a large ecclesiastical building, is made entirely of wood. It was built by shipwrights in the 15th century, and the interior does have a nautical feel.

We were fascinated by this public lavoir or wash house, fed by natural streams, up on the hill behind the harbour. It was closed on the day we visited, but is apparently still in use for much of the year.

Update: Here is a useful guide to Honfleur from The Telegraph: Honfleur, France: a cultural guide, 15 November 2011

Market Day in Pont-Audemer

30 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, France, Normandy, Travel

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autumn, Food, France, Hermes, Market, Pont-Audemer, Travel, wild mushrooms

Is there any better shopping experience than a Norman market in October? The apples and pears are ripe; the wild mushrooms have been collected; the ducks are plump; la chasse is in full swing, and the seafood from the Atlantic coast is bountiful.

Our local market is in Pont-Audemer, a country commercial centre that, while charming, doesn’t have the tourist appeal of its neighbours Honfleur and Deauville. Some have called Pont-Audemer the Venice of Normandy, for its canal system that once served its famous tanning trade (the Hermès family hailed from here). I think the comparison’s a stretch. No palazzos in sight: but plenty of half-timbered Norman houses, narrow cobbled streets, a gothic church noted for its stained glass, and a bustling, bountiful market on Mondays and Fridays.

We love these unusually shaped squashes that you can find in Norman markets. They decorate our table from October until the Christmas decorations come out in December.

I wish I had taken a picture of the neatly stuffed ducks lined up and glistening in their rows. There were all shapes and sizes of box balls, smartly manicured in their pots. A hundred varieties of goats cheese – some brand new and dewily mild, others aged and pungent.

And, should you have a rush chair that needs to be fixed, there is man here who will do that for you. Wonderful.

Our Daily Bread

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Food, France, Normandy, Things to do

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boulanger, bread, brioche, Food, France, la four a pain, Normandy, St Fiacre, Travel

Bread is given three definitions in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

a usually baked and leavened food made of a mixture whose basic constituent is flour or meal
livelihood <earns his bread as a laborer>
food, sustenance <our daily bread>

It is in search of bread under its first definition, a baked food made from flour, that we go as soon as we set foot on French soil. A truism, still true: bread never tastes quite like it does in France. For baguettes and croissants, an early morning run up the hill to our local artisanal bakery, Le Fournil de la Roselière in Sainte Opportune La Mare, does the trick. Although it stands alone in a quiet village, I’ve never seen it empty. Cars and trucks are constantly pulling in and owners whisking out with their daily bread in hand.

In a nearby village, La-Haye-de-Routot, is Normandy’s Bread Oven Museum. Every Sunday afternoon during the year, and every day in the summer, there are bread-making demonstrations.

The bread oven cottage is small and dark, and the bread oven is enormous, filling half of the cottage. It’s the kind of oven Grimm’s witch might have tried to push Hansel and Gretel into. Our children are sceptical, and they keep their distance. The boulanger is large and muscular and has a booming kind of voice. He starts us from the beginning, showing how he heats the oven and removes the coal and ash. It’s hard and hot work, requiring patience.

While he works Monsieur le Boulanger keeps up a comic patter with the audience, telling jokes about the clueless Parisians who take his bread-making courses. He only bakes in the traditional way, he tells us. Baking and keeping alive the art of traditional bread making is quite literally his livelihood.

He shows us how he shapes and decorates the bread, using a special tool for the detail. A pinch here, a prod there, a few seconds of extra work and people will pay three times more for a loaf, he chuckles.

While the bread is baking we go for a walk and return to the smell the baking bread. Now the children are keen, gathering close to the boulanger. Each has a go at helping to remove the bread. The paddle is carefully inserted under a few loaves and then the bread is pulled out with a fast, powerful tug.

Afterwards the fresh bread is sold. We leave with the warm loaves nestled in their white bags, ready for the evening meal.

With most meals in France we eat bread, freshly made and often hot: daily sustenance. One Saturday evening there is a mass in the village chapel, to honour the feast day of the village’s patron saint, St Fiacre. He probably started off as Fiachra, an Irishman, who travelled to France and built a hospice for travelers. Legend has it that St Fiacre furrowed a great garden with his staff. He is the patron saint of gardeners and taxi drivers. This seems fitting for our village with its beautiful cottage gardens, and I like the anomalous conflagration of rural and urban. It’s the story of our lives.

We arrive at the chapel just as mass is starting and are invited to sit in the only free seats, uncomfortable and ancient wooden pews at the front. Next to us is an unexplained heap of warm brioches. Brioche is made in a similar way to bread, but is enriched with egg and butter. It was often used as blessed bread in French churches, and was sold at market in the butter centres of northern France.

The mass is long and the chapel is full. We are hungry and the brioches smell so good. Finally as mass is ending, the priest and the mayor come forwards. The priest blesses the special St Fiacre brioches, sprinkling them with holy water: bread of life. The mayor invites the congregation for a glass of sparkling wine in the mairie, and the brioches are distributed. In the morning for breakfast, is the glistening golden brioche all the more delicious for having been blessed?

Five Great Books About Normandy

10 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Normandy

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Books, Flaubert, Gemma Bovery, Julia Child, Madame Bovary, Michelin, Normandy, Rouen, Travel

Here are five books about Normandy I’ve read and loved. Some are reference books which were helpful to us as we initially explored the region. Others are fiction and memoir. These too have served as reference of course: what, after all, is fiction if not a guide to the possible ways of being?

When we started thinking about buying a house in France, I read everything I could get my hands on: the chic lit novels, the earnest guides to property purchases, A Year in Provence. This last didn’t help much. We are a two-career family, without Mayle’s luxury of time, nor his means.

A couple of caveats. There are significant gaps in this list. First and most glaringly there are not enough books in French. There is also a lack of historical writing, both recent and ancient. I am working to fill these gaps. Please let me know your favourite books about Normandy and France. I’d like to read them, and maybe add them in over time. Finally, there is no particular order to this list.

Madame Bovarytakes place in and around Rouen where Gustave Flaubert was born and raised. Charles and Emma Bovary’s first home is in Tôtes, and they later move to Yonville which is based on Ry. Emma famously meets her lover in Rouen Cathedral I have an edition of Madame Bovary designed by Manolo Blahnik, and it has always seemed a perfect partnership between the cobbler to the Sex in the City girls and Emma, the original desperate housewife.

We have poured over this gorgeous coffee table picture bookby photographer Hugh Palmer, considering the merits of one village over another. Palmer beautifully captures the diversity of Normandy, from the cliffs of Étretat to the lush Pays de Caux farmland dotted with grazing cattle and cider orchards.

There is nothing that comes close to the Michelin Green Guide for its authority and knowledge of the region. You know that if the men at Michelin give an attraction three stars, it will be worth the trip. The alphabetical organization by place name, rather than by region, can be annoying. Normandy is large, and it would be convenient to see what’s near you now. But maybe it’s just reflective of life in France: deal with the weird structure to get to the good stuff.

My mother cooked from Julia Child when I was growing up: not for the children, but when there were dinner parties. Oh the dinner parties. Silver and crystal and cigars and port. Fricadelles de Veau a la Creme. La Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin. I’ve never hosted such a dinner party and it makes me wonder: have I grown up? In My Life in France Julia Child tells how she arrived as a diplomatic wife in her late thirties. The boat docked in Le Havre, and she motored with her husband to Rouen, where she tasted sole meuniere and fine wine and described it as “an opening up of the soul and spirit for me.”

Tell me that Posy Simmond’s graphic novel Gemma Bovery isn’t a great book at your own risk. Great about the English and the English in France, how we talk to each other, how we dress, and how (we imagine) the French observe us. Haircuts, handbags, home decor: Simmonds doesn’t miss a beat in this sharp comic parody of Flaubert’s novel.

I want to give a shout out to three writers whose words about Normandy and France today have resonated with me. It’s not about Normandy specifically, but New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik’s essays in Paris to the Moon opened my eyes to the pleasures of living with children in France, indeed the pleasures of living with children at all. Humourist David Sedaris dissects the reality of life as a gay American writer in rural Normandy (take that, Emma Bovary!) in Me Talk Pretty One Day. And Judith Warner, who I find perpetually wise, has written beautifully in the New York Times about rural Normandy as antidote to our wired lives.

…in the early evening there is a misty kind of light – a particularly French, grayish, bluish, blackish kind of light – that fills you with a joy so profound that it’s painful. It reminds me of why I live most of my life running around in a snit and obsessing about noisome details, petty insults and minutiae: because to experience happiness – of the most powerful and soul-intimate kind – is also to know that some day it all will end.

–Judith Warner, We’ll Always Have Normandy

chaumierelesiris

~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

Tag Archives: Travel

Deauville, by air

A Weekend for Tree Decorating

Spring in Upper Normandy

From Vieux-Port to Aizier

From Normandy to Isère and Chalet Chic

The World on our Christmas Tree

Off-Season Honfleur

Market Day in Pont-Audemer

Our Daily Bread

Five Great Books About Normandy

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