Visiting the Home of Rabelais in Chinon (Loire Valley France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Home of Rabelais in Chinon (Loire Valley France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I had to go to the family church outside Tours from Nantes to go over wedding homily details and give the priest a copy of our pre-Cana workshop papers from Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.

On the way to Tours, we stopped for a picnic lunch at the site of Rabelais’s home called La Devinière.  Rabelais was a 16^th century writer from the Touraine region, who was most famous for writing the books Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Rabelais is noted for being a transitional writer between the Medieval and Renaissance eras.  His books describe obsolete and new tools that make his works difficult to read in the original French.

A white château with a white wall all around it rose in the vast green plain.  The 15^th century château called the Château du Coudry – Montpensier had treetops peeking out over the surrounding wall.

When we tried to visit it, we found out that it was a private residence.  The home of Rabelais was also closed.

No matter.  We set out our picnic lunch out on the plain where only our car was visible and ate our lunch.  You could hear birds singing in the trees behind us.

I wanted to stay all day and sleep by a haystack with no worries about “industrial time.”  I learned that in Medieval Society peasants and royalty alike measured time by sun up and sun down and the seasons in my social sciences course entitled Self, Culture, and Society at the University of Chicago.

(See the historical sociology book Montaillou by Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie about the Albigensien Crusade in France that was tried in Carcassonne in the French Languedoc region for more information.)

From La Devinière, we drove past cave homes along the right bank of the Loire River.  Red geranium-filled flower boxes decorated the windows.

“We call those cave homes ‘troglodyte homes,’” Laurent said.

“They must be great for wine storage,” I remarked.

“You can also rent them for vacations,” Laurent said.

Chinon has a lovely, light-bodied red wine that goes well with vegetable or langoustine (crayfish) terrines (that you can slice and put on toast) or patés (that you can spread on toast).

I wanted to visit every flower-filled town that we passed by on the way to celebrating our church wedding in “The Garden of France” as the Touraine region is referred to in France.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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