Visiting Amboise Chateau (Loire Valley, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Amboise Château (Loire Valley, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The British always reserve ahead for tour buses of at least 30 to go around visiting châteaux along the Loire River in summer.  If you do not have a reservation in July for a tour bus, it is almost impossible to buy tickets for a small group. 

With no tour buses available, Laurent and my American family drove to Amboise in stick-shift cars as a bachelor-bachelorette party.  It was stop-and-go all the way there, but we finally made it.

Amboise dominates a rock outcropping on the right bank of the Loire.  It has high walls that tower over the Loire River; during one of many religious wars, Protestants hung from the walls of Amboise as trophies.

The round towers are large enough for horses to trot up four abreast to the garden esplanade.  A king could ride in his covered carriage up to safety from trouble in town below easily this way.

We took a tour in French that our bilingual wedding attendees had to translate for the rest of us.  Defenders of Amboise have been fighting off intruders at this spot since the 11^th century during the 100 Years’ War with England.

Charles VIII defended the Loire Valley less and invaded Italy more during the Italian Wars in the 15^th century.

Charles VIII discovered the luxurious Italian lifestyle and brought back Italian furniture for his castles as well as Italian architects, sculptors, and gardeners.

The flame-styled Gothic windows line up in one wing against the rectangular Renaissance windows in another.

“That would be a great photograph to show the difference between those two styles,” I said in my nascent reviewer’s eyes.

Leonardo da Vinci is buried at Amboise.  The Valois King Francis the First brought him to Amboise to paint, put on parties, and build war machines as da Vinci did for Ludovico Sforza of Milan. 

At one time, there was a restaurant in a half-timbered home in Old Town Tours called the Leonardo da Vinci that had models of his war machines dangling from the ceiling.  The restaurant was Italian with the Milanese specialty of risotto on the menu.

Leonardo da Vinci’s home, the Clos Lucé, is located at the foot of Amboise with its own museum containing the artist’s notebooks that he wrote in reverse script that he could read in a mirror.  (Industrial espionage prevention tactic in the Renaissance?)

I studied art history in high school and at the University of Chicago, which enabled me to identify and compare styles without textbooks at Amboise. 

I thanked all my dignified professors at the University of Chicago, whom I thought were a little stodgy in their suits, ties, and pocket hankies for their hideously grueling essay exams, so I could be my own tour guide in France, if needed.

Essay questions like “Discuss the Development of Plurifacial Sculpture in Renaissance Italy using at least 10 Sculptures as Examples with Complete Identification” and “Compare and Contrast 15^th Century Italian Renaissance Painting in Florence, Sienna, Venice, and Rome using at least 5 Works from each City” explain why I spent hours memorizing art works in the art library and described all my professors as sort of “evil in a good way” over pizza.  They wanted to keep little undergraduates like me in their graduate courses occupied in wholesome pursuits.

Those art history tests had three essay questions and usually 30 identification questions, which required identification slides, design and composition analysis, and significance of the work of art in its social and historical context.  You had to do this in about three or four paragraphs.

Fast writing and thinking were a by-product of this testing.

I was having fun at my wedding, and it had not even started yet.

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


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Visiting the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Tours (France - Loire Valley) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Musée des Beaux Arts in Tours (France - Loire Valley) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Despite a late night out watching Bastille Day fireworks on the banks of the Loire River in downtown Tours (France), Laurent and I woke up early to see the Musée des Beaux Arts.

I loved art history and wanted to understand French better.  The small Musée des Beaux Arts did not disappoint with its art work that covered all the major events in the Bible and with representative works from all periods that were important to the history of Tours.

The Museum itself is housed in the 17^th and 18^th century archbishop’s palace.  It was full of Mille Fleur (1000 Flowers) tapestries, which were woven in the Touraine at one time.  You need very clean water to weave tapestries like this.

There was furniture from what I loosely term the “First Renaissance” when Charles VIII saw what kinds of furniture the Italians had.  Some Italian furniture was brought back to France and then copied.  It is a little heavier than what the French produced on their own.

The most famous painting in the museum is by Rembrandt and entitled The Flight into Egypt by the Holy Family.

Our visit to the Musée des Beaux Arts was short, but merited a detour as the Michelin Green Touring Guide said.  The Musée des Beaux Arts is located by a park and bakery, so you can mix croissants, culture, and coffee before you visit.

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

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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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Reviewing the Republican Guard from Fouquet's Glassed-In Terrace (Paris) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Reviewing the Republican Guard from Fouquet’s Glassed-in Terrace (Paris) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I first moved to France, I lived outside of Nantes, the capital of Brittany, with my husband’s family.  After my honeymoon, I began looking for a job and learned how to do French-language cover letters (handwritten) and resumes.

I was finally invited in to do skills testing and do interviews in Paris after six months of looking for a job.  After discovering that the French keyboard is different from the English one for skills testing, I walked down Avenue George V to assuage my wounds. 

I knew I was going to have to practice typing for a few hours a day to get my French typing speed increased to the same speed as my English one.

I sat in the glassed-in terrace at Fouquet’s and ordered a French grilled cheese sandwich, which comes with ham called a croque monsieur – “die mister” sandwich.  They are delicious, but you cannot eat too many.

If you add an over-easy egg to a croque monsieur sandwich and béchamel sauce, you get a “croque madame” sandwich – “die lady” sandwich.  These are delicious, too, but you cannot eat too many either.

Both of these sandwiches feature bread that has been fried on both sides with butter giving the sandwich a crunchy bite despite béchamel sauce on the croque madame, for example.

As I was eating, I heard a rhythmic “clip, clop” outside and turned my head around to see the mounted Garde Républicaine with horses and soldiers dressed in black and red uniforms go by. 

The mounted horsemen surrounded the Socialist President of France François Mitterand and Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who rode in a gold and black carriage down Avenue George V to the Champs-Elysées.

From my privileged seat on Fouquet’s glassed-in terrace, I felt as if I were being personally welcomed to France by President Mitterand as I ate a “croque monsieur” sandwich and drank an Orangina, a lightly carbonated French orange soda.

I liked Fouquet’s and ordered a café crème, not a cappuccino, but a coffee with about 1/3 cup of warm cream added to it. The French do not really want to admit that they make this item, because it is so fattening. 

I ate food like this in Paris during the winter at bistros, when it rains and is generally crappy weather to warm me up for Métro rides home to the 10^th arrondisement when I finally found a job.  (The French have great umbrellas due to their winter rainstorms; most will not bend in the wind.)

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

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Living in the 10th Arrondisement in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Living in the 10^th Arrondisement in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My Parisian studio apartment required walking up five flights of stairs (excluding the ground floor).  I lived on the sixth floor of an apartment building built by Baron Haussman in the 10^th arrondisment by the Gare du Nord when I first moved to Paris.

If I forgot to take the garbage out, I had to do a tiring second walk up and down the stairs.  Carrying groceries upstairs rated as a mini Stairmaster workout with weights.  In addition, the humid heat made sleep impossible.

My neighborhood fascinated me, though, so I lived with the inconveniences.  I lived in a 19^th century townhouse apartment building similar to the one made famous in the Impressionist painting entitled Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte that is exhibited in the Chicago Institute of the Arts.

Many descendants of Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans from France’s former colonies in North Africa lived in my neighborhood by the Gare du Nord train station.  I could also easily walk to the Gare de l’Est train station from my apartment building, too.

On my way to work, I picked up just as many Arabic words as French ones like “hamman” for public baths and “halal” designating a Muslim butcher or Muslim delicatessen.

Only men shopped at the open-air halal butcher shops with strips of opaque, yellow plastic dangling fly tape in front of the stores to keep pests away.  Fridays were Mosque days, and Muslim men flooded the streets with butcher shop purchases.

I witnessed Muslim culture first-hand as I sat by my window, studying French and hoping for a breeze.

My neighbors directly across from my apartment over the courtyard followed the “sharia” and “sunna” or Muslim living practices set forth as law in the Koran and “hadith”.  (Sheer curtains, for example, separated the men’s living room from the women’s dining room and kitchen.  The couple read the Koran together in morning and at night sitting at the dining room table.)

(I studied Islam and Muslim culture as part of my studies of francophone children’s culture when I studied French children’s literature and francophone children’s culture at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.)

Delightful aromas wafted throughout the courtyard over the car repair garage as women cooked what I guessed to be lemon-chicken, roast lamb with mint, and grilled chicken with cumin spice rubs.  These glimpses into Muslim life encouraged me to visit the market at the Barbès-Rocheouart Métro stop.

The Métro stop at Barbès-Rocheouart is the epicenter of North African Paris.  I noticed that there was a weekly market under this Métro station and decided to go there.

Maybe I would even buy some of the ingredients for couscous, North Africa’s signature dish featuring couscous, a small pasta, that was topped off with a stew made of spicy chicken or lamb (never pork, which was forbidden by the Koran).

The market at Barbès-Rocheouart qualifies more as an Arab market, called a souk, than a Parisian market.  The sounds of Arabic filled the air there with women wearing flowered headscarves looking at merchandise.

The merchants sold mysterious things like glazed, clay pots with conical lids called tagines as well.

Then, there were bulbous, metal couscousiers featuring a big, round bottom for cooking a tagine, or stew, that would flavor the couscous pasta sitting in a perforated tray above the stew.

Dried figs, dates, almonds, and fruit showed up at several stands.  I worked my way to a spice merchant representing the ultimate Arab legacy to North African cuisine.

The pungent, freshly ground spices like cayenne used to make fiery, Algerian harissa sauce tickled my nose.  I asked the merchant what spices I needed to make couscous.

The spice seller motioned to the small, plastic containers holding golden, ground ginger; rust-colored turmeric; cinnamon sticks; and garnet-colored threads of saffron.

“Isn’t saffron a powder?” I asked.

The merchant shook his head in dismay.

“Saffron is collected by hand from a flower,” he said.

He looked me in the eye and rubbed his fingers together and said, “With saffron you have to remember to pinch the threads between your fingers to release their perfume as you drop them into a liquid to boil,” he said.

I chickened out on making couscous. 

I told the spice merchant, “My culinary skills at the moment are limited to pasta, frying breaded fish sticks, making instant mashed potatoes, and making salad.”

I did buy some pepper, which I knew how to use.  The merchant made a little paper cone for the pepper and gave it to me to take home on the Métro like a real power shopper.

(A much shorter version of this story appeared in the Side Dish column in the Monterey County Weekly around 2000 – Circulation: 200,000)

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

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