Today, a long blog, because we finally realized that our car, with its complimentary phone and hotspot wifi, is the best wifi we have. Last night, when the wifi in the house failed us completely, Steve had the bright idea to take my ipad and his camera out to the car to upload the day’s photos and finish the blog. It worked like a charm, faster than any hotel so far. So today, as we head to Spain on the fast toll roads, I can connect and write.
Last night, we were still full of cassoulet (even Steve wanted to skip dinner). We could have relaxed and read books in the lovely salon but Leila had mentioned a little tapas place around the corner for, at least, a glass of wine.
The village, Pennautier, is really small, nothing more than a single one-way street running around maybe five small lanes of a total of 125 houses. There was one tiny market, one butcher/charcuterie and one boulangerie, where on a Satuday night at 9pm we could see the baker already at work on Sunday’s baguettes. As we arrived at the tapas place, it looked more like the neighborhood cement patio. There were outdoor tables a bit helter-skelter. There were children playing, running and laughing, who were clearly attached to a few adults relaxing over aperitifs.
There was another table with a young couple. And lastly an older, local couple for whom it was impossible not to invent a back story. She has long gray hair with bangs, is wearing a black flowery jumpsuit with short capped sleeves falling off her shoulders. She is slim with heeled sandals. She has the look of girls in wartime France in the 40’s, other than the small faded tatoos on her breast, shoulder and ankle.
He is thin and wiry, tanned, buzzcut and wearing narrow gray denim shorts, a tank top and sandals. She is sipping rose, he is having a beer. They are mostly silent but I am somehow so sure that they are local and that every Saturday night she dresses up and they come here for their evening out.
Simple but their weekly pleasure. The one waitress is tall and thin in a short black dress, seems to know everyone there and automatically knows to speak English to us, though we quite admirably order in French.
‘No’ she says, ‘please speak in English so I can practice’ and we do. As I look around at the entire scene, it is hard to tell whether it looks like we are in France or Kensington, the old ungentrified one in Philadelphia. We sit and sip but take no photos because it would be too obvious we are photoing the patrons. All this sets the scene for the real life Seinfeld episode that is about to start.
Pan back to the table for two with the young couple, both of whom are larger people. Next, a young woman in a black and white flowery dress comes bouncing onto the patio. Immediately the young couple bursts into song and it is impossible not to recognize the French version of Happy Birthday, by tune AND words. We all must have learned this just before or after we learned Frere Jacques when we were kids.
The double-cheek kissing begins with the birthday girl and the couple, immediat ely followed by the appearance of the kitchen staff, more kissing, a rendition of Happy Birthday in English with the children now enthusiastically joining in, and the birthday girl making the rounds to the tables (except for the older couple who must be the village outcasts) for more kisses and wishes.
In a few minutes an older woman, evoking the panache of the village beautician with a cigarette hanging from her lips and a voice raspy from decades of smoking, pulls up a chair and joins this small birthday celebration.
Another few minutes bring a family to the patio and we repeat the kisses but this time they need to add another table with four more chairs. Over the next twenty to thirty minutes it feels like literally every in the village has arrived one by one, two by two, until every table in the restaurant is lined up, extra red chairs from inside are brought out and there are maybe 25 or 30 people drinking and celebrating.
By the time the last person arrived (at least while we were there finishing our drinks and an order of crispy frites with mayo), it took them a full five minutes to make the circuit of Bon Soirs and kisses, at least thirty times. Steve and I could just see ourselves replaced with Jerry, Elaine and George and the conversation they would be having while Kramer joined in the action pretending to be one of the locals.
It felt like we were sitting in a scene out of a comic silent movie that transcended language, almost a Marx Brothers film. Since we couldn’t photograph the scene, the next morning before leaving town we rode by to at least take a photo of the patio, just for the blog of course!
By 8:30 the next morning (today) we were down for breakfast and, with big cups of coffee, could enjoy the crepes we smelled cooking upon our arrival yesterday, along with bread and cheese and a wonderful apricot clafouti, as it is apricot season in France. We got some advice from Leila and Pasqual.......on the best places to stop on our way to Spain. They nixed Perignan and touted Couilieres, both on our list. And how could we not take the advice of locals who can cook so well?
Couilleries was about an hour drive, a seaside town with colorful houses, a small harbor, a Sunday art market and AN INSANE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE, all vying for the limited parking spaces, some at least a mile away. We rode around once, then again and again hoping to turn on a street or wind through one of the six parking lots just as someone was pulling out, but no luck.
Up and down, in and out finally found us on a narrow dead end street with no room to turn around.
Somehow, Steve, now my driving hero, managed to back down the lane without hitting a car or pole or tilting into a ditch. I couldn’t have done it but then again, I probably wouldn’t have driven up that street. Alas, we had to give up. Though I could see it was a beautiful harbor with great cafes, I could also see the market had the same polyester faux Provence tablecloths we didn’t want to buy and the same mouthwatering fruits and veggies we couldn’t keep and eat. So off we went in hopes of having better luck in Balyuns a bit up the coast. This was our first not sunny day, so the ocean didn’t look too blue but the parking lot had a spot.
We pulled in, walked down to the sea and cafed (used as a verb on purpose). A stroll around found many shoppes closed but we managed to get a very cute very French very sailorish little jacket for Eli, our grandson, a local rose for our hotel happy hour, and a local bottle of vinegar-another item I don’t know how we will get home. Staying along the coastal road on the lookout for cute towns, we were treated only to fields of vines and scenic lookouts.
We crossed the border into Spain, passing the old, obsolete, grafittied pre-EU border station and headed to our next B and B. Driving along we get our first glimpse of the Pyrenees in the distance, still able to see the lines of white snow left from ski season trails. Passing cornfields just beginning and hay rolls waiting for next winter, we head to our next three night stop. For most trips I do all the hotel bookings, sometimes giving Steve a choice of two or three from my cultivated list, letting him decide on preferred location or cost. I tend to stay in the heart of villages or cities but after our pedestrian-only, medina-centric trip to Morocco last September, Steve was tired of wheeling his bag from the medina gate through cobbled streets (sometimes many cobbled streets) to our riad.
So for the Cadaques portion of our trip, Steve rejected all of my hotels in Cadaques or Roses and instead chose a small hotel a bit inland in Torroella de Fluvia (he also chose our Pennatier B and B outside Carcassone and did well, to his credit). As we neared L’Hort de Sant Cebria B and B, it was all rural and desolate.
The town, well there’s not really a town, just a small collection of villas, which all seemed closed up. Steve questioned why we booked here. I said, you’d have to tell me, at which point he made me prormise to make him write down why he picked a certain hotel for future trips because around this point even he couldn’t figure it out......that is, until we were greeted by the owners, Juan Carlos and Jordi, and shown around. I cannot even describe how beautiful and magical this place is.
The salon, the garden, the pool, our room and bathroom, c’est magnifique....oh, wait we are in Spain so muy, muy, muy bonita. Every nook and cranny is perfection from the flowering climbing vines and potted impatiens to the sun loungers and statuary overlooking the pool. There are organic lotions and potions, an honor bar for cava and olives, an arbor shading the patio where you take breakfast and even mosquito screens on the window for sleeping with a delightful evening breeze. Sitting at pool, the church bell next door rings on the quarter hour, much like, I am guessing, it has done for hundreds of years.
In a real city or a tourist town this would be a five star 400 Euro a night accommodation but in Torroella de Fluvia there is no rating and it is less than 400 Euro for a three night stay.
Tonight we will switch to Spanish time for a 9pm dinner at a place nearby recommended by Jordi. Tomorrow I expext no less than a delicious and impeccably set buffet table for breakfast and a sunny patio to have it on before we set off for ‘Our Day of Dali’. Boy, life is great!
The village, Pennautier, is really small, nothing more than a single one-way street running around maybe five small lanes of a total of 125 houses. There was one tiny market, one butcher/charcuterie and one boulangerie, where on a Satuday night at 9pm we could see the baker already at work on Sunday’s baguettes. As we arrived at the tapas place, it looked more like the neighborhood cement patio. There were outdoor tables a bit helter-skelter. There were children playing, running and laughing, who were clearly attached to a few adults relaxing over aperitifs.
There was another table with a young couple. And lastly an older, local couple for whom it was impossible not to invent a back story. She has long gray hair with bangs, is wearing a black flowery jumpsuit with short capped sleeves falling off her shoulders. She is slim with heeled sandals. She has the look of girls in wartime France in the 40’s, other than the small faded tatoos on her breast, shoulder and ankle.
He is thin and wiry, tanned, buzzcut and wearing narrow gray denim shorts, a tank top and sandals. She is sipping rose, he is having a beer. They are mostly silent but I am somehow so sure that they are local and that every Saturday night she dresses up and they come here for their evening out.
Simple but their weekly pleasure. The one waitress is tall and thin in a short black dress, seems to know everyone there and automatically knows to speak English to us, though we quite admirably order in French.
‘No’ she says, ‘please speak in English so I can practice’ and we do. As I look around at the entire scene, it is hard to tell whether it looks like we are in France or Kensington, the old ungentrified one in Philadelphia. We sit and sip but take no photos because it would be too obvious we are photoing the patrons. All this sets the scene for the real life Seinfeld episode that is about to start.
Pan back to the table for two with the young couple, both of whom are larger people. Next, a young woman in a black and white flowery dress comes bouncing onto the patio. Immediately the young couple bursts into song and it is impossible not to recognize the French version of Happy Birthday, by tune AND words. We all must have learned this just before or after we learned Frere Jacques when we were kids.
The double-cheek kissing begins with the birthday girl and the couple, immediat ely followed by the appearance of the kitchen staff, more kissing, a rendition of Happy Birthday in English with the children now enthusiastically joining in, and the birthday girl making the rounds to the tables (except for the older couple who must be the village outcasts) for more kisses and wishes.
In a few minutes an older woman, evoking the panache of the village beautician with a cigarette hanging from her lips and a voice raspy from decades of smoking, pulls up a chair and joins this small birthday celebration.
Another few minutes bring a family to the patio and we repeat the kisses but this time they need to add another table with four more chairs. Over the next twenty to thirty minutes it feels like literally every in the village has arrived one by one, two by two, until every table in the restaurant is lined up, extra red chairs from inside are brought out and there are maybe 25 or 30 people drinking and celebrating.
By the time the last person arrived (at least while we were there finishing our drinks and an order of crispy frites with mayo), it took them a full five minutes to make the circuit of Bon Soirs and kisses, at least thirty times. Steve and I could just see ourselves replaced with Jerry, Elaine and George and the conversation they would be having while Kramer joined in the action pretending to be one of the locals.
It felt like we were sitting in a scene out of a comic silent movie that transcended language, almost a Marx Brothers film. Since we couldn’t photograph the scene, the next morning before leaving town we rode by to at least take a photo of the patio, just for the blog of course!
By 8:30 the next morning (today) we were down for breakfast and, with big cups of coffee, could enjoy the crepes we smelled cooking upon our arrival yesterday, along with bread and cheese and a wonderful apricot clafouti, as it is apricot season in France. We got some advice from Leila and Pasqual.......on the best places to stop on our way to Spain. They nixed Perignan and touted Couilieres, both on our list. And how could we not take the advice of locals who can cook so well?
Couilleries was about an hour drive, a seaside town with colorful houses, a small harbor, a Sunday art market and AN INSANE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE, all vying for the limited parking spaces, some at least a mile away. We rode around once, then again and again hoping to turn on a street or wind through one of the six parking lots just as someone was pulling out, but no luck.
Up and down, in and out finally found us on a narrow dead end street with no room to turn around.
Somehow, Steve, now my driving hero, managed to back down the lane without hitting a car or pole or tilting into a ditch. I couldn’t have done it but then again, I probably wouldn’t have driven up that street. Alas, we had to give up. Though I could see it was a beautiful harbor with great cafes, I could also see the market had the same polyester faux Provence tablecloths we didn’t want to buy and the same mouthwatering fruits and veggies we couldn’t keep and eat. So off we went in hopes of having better luck in Balyuns a bit up the coast. This was our first not sunny day, so the ocean didn’t look too blue but the parking lot had a spot.
We pulled in, walked down to the sea and cafed (used as a verb on purpose). A stroll around found many shoppes closed but we managed to get a very cute very French very sailorish little jacket for Eli, our grandson, a local rose for our hotel happy hour, and a local bottle of vinegar-another item I don’t know how we will get home. Staying along the coastal road on the lookout for cute towns, we were treated only to fields of vines and scenic lookouts.
We crossed the border into Spain, passing the old, obsolete, grafittied pre-EU border station and headed to our next B and B. Driving along we get our first glimpse of the Pyrenees in the distance, still able to see the lines of white snow left from ski season trails. Passing cornfields just beginning and hay rolls waiting for next winter, we head to our next three night stop. For most trips I do all the hotel bookings, sometimes giving Steve a choice of two or three from my cultivated list, letting him decide on preferred location or cost. I tend to stay in the heart of villages or cities but after our pedestrian-only, medina-centric trip to Morocco last September, Steve was tired of wheeling his bag from the medina gate through cobbled streets (sometimes many cobbled streets) to our riad.
So for the Cadaques portion of our trip, Steve rejected all of my hotels in Cadaques or Roses and instead chose a small hotel a bit inland in Torroella de Fluvia (he also chose our Pennatier B and B outside Carcassone and did well, to his credit). As we neared L’Hort de Sant Cebria B and B, it was all rural and desolate.
The town, well there’s not really a town, just a small collection of villas, which all seemed closed up. Steve questioned why we booked here. I said, you’d have to tell me, at which point he made me prormise to make him write down why he picked a certain hotel for future trips because around this point even he couldn’t figure it out......that is, until we were greeted by the owners, Juan Carlos and Jordi, and shown around. I cannot even describe how beautiful and magical this place is.
The salon, the garden, the pool, our room and bathroom, c’est magnifique....oh, wait we are in Spain so muy, muy, muy bonita. Every nook and cranny is perfection from the flowering climbing vines and potted impatiens to the sun loungers and statuary overlooking the pool. There are organic lotions and potions, an honor bar for cava and olives, an arbor shading the patio where you take breakfast and even mosquito screens on the window for sleeping with a delightful evening breeze. Sitting at pool, the church bell next door rings on the quarter hour, much like, I am guessing, it has done for hundreds of years.
In a real city or a tourist town this would be a five star 400 Euro a night accommodation but in Torroella de Fluvia there is no rating and it is less than 400 Euro for a three night stay.
Tonight we will switch to Spanish time for a 9pm dinner at a place nearby recommended by Jordi. Tomorrow I expext no less than a delicious and impeccably set buffet table for breakfast and a sunny patio to have it on before we set off for ‘Our Day of Dali’. Boy, life is great!
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