Saintoge: The La Rochelle, France Touring Game Created by Ruth Paget
My husband Laurent and I planned a beach vacation the La Rochelle, France region one year when we lived in Germany. We drove to France, but summer Atlantic storms washed up loads of seaweed and crustaceans on a daily basis on the beach at Châtellon Plage where we were staying south of La Rochelle.
Our beach vacation quickly became a cultural and historical walking tour of the region when I picked up a Saintoge touring guide in the hotel lobby. Saintoge is part of the ancient region of Gascony between Bordeaux and the French Basque country that extends inland and upward into the Pyrénées Mountains. This region has created a strong tourism market by making their many historical buildings from all eras multipurpose tourism venues featuring art, music, food, wine, and cultural events like those at Mont de Marsan for the Fête de la Madeleine.
We began our tour of the Saintoge Region with a visit to the Gallo-Roman site at Cassinomagus. This archaeological dig site features tours, concerts, a garden based on those ancient Rome, Olympic games for the young, a café, and a bookshop with general brochures and scholarly works by the University Press of France about Gallo-Roman history.
My blog about this site follows:
My husband Laurent and I ate lunch in the town of Cognac without tasting any on our trek to the coast. We ate outside and noted that the humid air did have a sour tinge to it from the “part des anges” or evaporated cognac that seeps through the top of ageing barrels.
Once in Châtellon Plage, we ate the first of many seafood platters thanks to the summer storms that washed up loads of crab and shellfish. The rule inland is not to eat seafood platters in summer and only in months with an “r” in them. At the seashore, though, this is okay thanks to limited time needed to transport them to restaurants.
Everyone who goes on vacation in France needs to visit at least one château. Our first stop was the Château de la Roche Courbon. The gardener here went to work later at Versailles:
My blog on this site follows:
The second thing you need to do on a summer vacation to France is visit a prehistoric site devoted to female goddess worship. We set out for the Pyrénées Mountains to visit the Dame de Brassempouy Museum. The real Dame de Brassempouy is now housed in the National Prehistory Museum in St.-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris. A replica is on view at Brassempouy along with a recreated site.
My blog on this follows:
On the way back from Brassempouy, we drove through Mont de Marsan during the July Fête de la Madeleine in this town. A bullfight had just let out and people were running through the street decked out in white clothes and kercheifs. The bullfighting here features acrobats who jump over smaller bulls before the larger bulls enter the arena. The GPS in the car was confused by closed medieval streets, but we eventually made it back to the hotel.
The following day, we went to the Abbaye de St.-Jean-d’Angély. This Abbaye houses a reliquary of the head of Saint John the Baptist, which was not on display. We visited the music practice rooms and were allowed to admire the engineering that kept the roof from blowing off in the storm.
My blog on this site follows:
Royal Abbey Saint Jean d’Angely
We made two trips out to visit Fort Boyard, a fort that sits in the middle of the ocean. Fort Boyard is the site of a famous French television show of aristocratic games of strength and knowledge. After our second visit, we ate a huge seafood meal après storm.
My blog on this site follows:
We saw La Rochelle on our boat rides out to Fort Boyard and finally visited it under the rain. This town is important for the Wars of Religion fought here between French Protestants (The Huguenots) and Catholics.
My blog on this site follows:
As our trip came to a close, we visited a chapel of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, which leads to this town in Spain.
My blog on this site follows:
Our final outing on this trip was to the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes. We learned about the life in a medieval nunnery in this abbey founded in 1071. We admired modern art on the abbey’s whitewashed walls and read posters for upcoming concerts. The French attract three audiences to this site by making it a multipurpose cultural venue. We also visited the Gallo-Roman theatre at Saintes that is still used for events.
My blog on this site follows:
The La Rochelle region offers a surprising variety of site to visit on tonic walking tour of France. As a souvenir, we bought bottles of Pineau de Charentes, a cocktail wine drink that is a specialty of the region and merrily drove back to Germany.
(Note: Two great reading projects for a vacation in La Rochelle include the French-langual picaresque novel Gil Blas de Santillane by Alain-René Lesage and Cyrano de Bergerac, a play, by Edmond Rostand.)
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
