Visiting Bordeaux (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Bordeaux (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Laurent and I planned a trip to Bordeaux over a three-hour meal in a Vietnamese restaurant in the Luxembourg neighborhood of Paris (France). 

We toured the gardens and loved Marie de Medici for creating a park in this spot inspired by the Boboli Gardens at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (Italy).

We took a week’s vacation to Bordeaux that included a side trip to visit Laurent’s paternal grandmother.  Mamie had just returned from a trip to Algeria with her seniors’ touring group.

She showed me how to eat with the thumb of my right hand and first two fingers of my right hand.  When you eat mechoui, North African roast lamb, you are supposed to use a flat bread to pick up slices of lamb and side salads.

As we walked by the port on the way to eat a seafood platter of raw oysters, mussels, shrimp, and large boiled snails with a bottle of chilled, white Graves from Bordeaux, mamie sort of preached to the choir when she explained why to eat food from all over the world to me.

“Seafood and fish can be unreliable sources of food, so it is good to be able to eat Moroccan food like mechoui and orange and walnut salads,” she said.

She quizzed me about my Bordeaux wine knowledge over lunch.

“Everyone in France has to know how to sell wine to ward off economic depressions and get money to buy food,” she said.

Both Laurent and I wanted to hone our knowledge of wine in Bordeaux after mamie’s lecture.  There were wine salesmen, caterers, master pastry chefs, and corporate dining room managers in Laurent’s immediate family, so we did know the importance of understanding the food, wine, and restaurant trade and law.

Laurent arrived early on Friday morning from Rouen, where he was finishing up his MBA degree with a rental car for the long trip to Bordeaux.  I had our bags packed, snacks ready, and our lunch sandwiches ready with bottles of water stored in a cooler. 

I put on a floppy, straw hat and sunglasses and felt like a movie star headed to Bordeaux for wine shopping and seafood platter meals.

I wanted to stop at so many places as we sped down the freeway particularly in the Charentes region where I knew there were many Romanesque churches with frenzied façades galore.

We arrived late in Bordeaux and walked from our hotel to the rue Sainte-Catherine and the Porte d’Aquitaine.  We ate dinner in one of the expensive, touristy spots, because we were so tired.

Saturday we started our day with a trip outside Bordeaux to an air base at Merignac.  We went there, because that was where Laurent did his mandatory military service as a teenager.

We then followed National Route 2 along the Gironde Estuary.   We stopped at several châteaux along the way and took pictures of me in front of the vineyards and châteaux.

“Our vacation homes, honey,” I said to Laurent.

We giggled and looked at all the famous châteaux as we drove through the Haut-Médoc.

We then retraced our steps and went to the other side of the Gironde.  We stopped at the resort town of Arcachon to eat a seafood platter.  We sat outside on the terrace and ate.  The salty, sea air made everything taste like we were eating it just caught on a boat.

We ordered an Entre-Deux-Mers, a Bordeaux white, to go with the seafood.  The two seas in the wine’s name refer to the Dordogne River and the Gironde Estuary on either side of the peninsula where the Entre-Deux-Mers winery juts out into the Gironde.

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

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Visiting Montmartre in Paris (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Montmartre in Paris (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I went to the Montmartre neighborhood in Paris one weekend day.  Montmartre used to be a small village outside of Paris that became part of the city as Paris experienced exponential growth in the 19^th century.

I took my baguette sandwich of Laughing Cow cheese and ham with me and a bottle of water to visit the famous Parisian Montmartre butte with a big, white shrine on top of it called Sacre Coeur.

I began my visit by walking along avenue Rochouart with all the throngs of people examining the latest deal offered by the Tati Clothing Empire located on the street.

I turned onto Avenue Steinkerque and followed rue d’Orsel to the rue des Trois Frères and onto Place des Abesses.

Montmartre is the spot where the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church was created on August 15, 1554 by Saint François Xavier along with six other men, who vowed to become apostles of the Catholic Church overseas.

The first time I saw the name François Xavier was in the city of Hirado on the southern island of Kyushu in Japan.

(I lived in Japan as an exchange student with the Youth for Understanding International Exchange program in high school.)

From place des Abesses, I followed rue Ravignac up the side of the “butte” or “hill.”  I marveled just like a tourist at a mecca of modern painting called the Bâteau Lavoir.

Some of this apartment building’s artistic inhabitants included Picasso, Juan Gris, Modigliani, and Braques.  Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at the Bâteau Lavoir.

I climbed up some more charming streets oblivious to the grade.  When I arrived at the Place du Tertre, the artists were doing brisk trade in night scenes at this spot.

I made a quick visit inside Saint Pierre de Montmartre.  The church used to be part of a huge abbey that sat on top of the butte.  Saint Pierre along with Saint Germain des Près and Saint Martin des Champs are the oldest churches in Paris.  The abbey was closed during the French Revolution.

Saint Martin des Champs was begun in 1134 on the site of an earlier Merovingian Church.  The builders recycled a few columns from pre-Christian times in the building of this Church.

The French have lived by the “waste not, want not, but avoid rotten food” motto for centuries.

I avoided the tourists at Place du Tertre and took rue Rustique down the hill.  I passed the Montmartre Vineyards on my way down.  The wine is not supposed to be good, but the citizens of the quarter could just be saying that and squirreling it away for themselves.

I passed number 54 on rue Lépic where Vincent van Gogh lived with his brother Theo for a time.  Little country homes abound in Montmartre, because it used to be a village.  I thought it would be fun to work in La Défense and come home to my country house by Place du Tertre at night when I walked there.

I spent an hour touring the Montmartre Cemetery.  I saw the tombs of Stendahl, Zola, Berlioz, Fragonard, Alexandre Dumas (the son), and Degas.  I felt as if I had rendered homage to the greatest French artists of all time in this cemetery.

My favorite French writer is still Stendahl, who wrote The Red and the Black.

After my tour, I took the Métro over to the Latin Quarter and had my hair fixed to look cute in Paris.

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

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Visiting Pere Lachaise Cemetery (Paris) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery (Paris) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I first moved to Paris (France), I did walking tours around the City while Laurent worked late hours.  One of the most interesting places in Paris to learn history is Père Lachaise Cemetery.

I took my green Michelin touring guide with me and found my way among the paths and avenues of the Cemetery.

I easily found the singer Jim Morrison’s grave.  You cannot but help find it, because his fans have written and/or inscribed “Jim” on other tombs to guide tourists to his grave.

When I arrived at Jim Morrison’s grave, teenagers and college students from around the world were smoking marijuana at his tomb. (Mary Jane in Detroit-speak and the subject of a Rick James dance song).

I thought Père Lachaise outside of Jim Morrison’s tomb was very pretty with flowers and avenues and said to myself, “Well, the dead in Chicago do not have cemeteries as fancy as this, but they retain their right to vote.” 

The voter rolls still need to be checked for people with death notices and homes that are holes in the ground as well there.  

In Atlanta last year, I learned that not all candidates have been vetted to run in their district - you need to check recent land surveyor records for residency.  Also, you have to be sure what the status is on on out-of-state campaign contributions.

Along the way, I found two pieces of funerary sculpture that must have been jokes.  The first one had a coffin sculpture with skulls as feet holding it up.

Below the coffin, there was a space where a skeleton angel was squeezing out to get to the living.

Another tomb showed a man opening his casket to offer the viewer a rosebud.  For 1890, the deceased or his family had a great sense of humor.

Inside a domed mausoleum for the Bibesco Family was a photograph of Anna de Noailles.  She had written on her photograph, “I was not made for death.”

I had no idea whom she was, but I liked her defiant spirit.  I wanted to write a biography about her one day.  Cemeteries are always full of writing ideas.

I felt like Edgar Allen Poe wandering among the cats, who always seem to live in cemeteries.  Was there a cask of amontillado somewhere for the living?

I visited the graves of Collette and the composer Rossini before leaveing.  I was sure that this would be the first of many visits to Père Lachaise.

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

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Visiting the Parisian History Museum at Hotel Carnavalet with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Parisian History Museum at Hôtel Carnavalet in the Marais District with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I set out to visit the Hôtel Carnavalet in the Marais District to learn about the history of Paris in this museum.

The Hôtel Carnavalet was built in 1548.  In 1660, the architect François Mansart gave the building its Renaissance aspect with ornamental gardens and rectangular courtyards.

The sculptor Jean Goujon worked on the graceful Four Seasons bas-relief sculptures that emerged from the walls around the courtyard.

Literature lovers would adore the Hôtel Carnavalet no matter who worked on it, because this was the home of Marie de Rabutin, Marquise de Sévigné.  She lived in the Hôtel Carnavalet from 1677 to 1696 and wrote many letters to her daughter here.

The Carnavalet Museum itself houses a collection of items devoted to the history of Paris.  We took a guided tour and then went back to visit the museum ourselves. 

I was interested to learn that most families could not trace their Parisian lineage back more than three or four generations.

Paris grew rapidly in the 19^th century, drawing many people to the Capital.  Surrounding villages like Montmartre were surrounded intact by Paris expansion.  However, Parisian dwellers tend to retire elsewhere or move if they can to a country home that was often a vacation home when they had children.

Paris is a city for the young on the move or for people with merchandise to move like artwork.

One person who managed to live through the Revolution with his head intact and then serve under the Napoleonic Empire was Talleyrand, the diplomat.  He showed up in all of the official paintings for diametrically opposed governments.

“There’s a survivor and thriver,” I thought.  He would have coined a phrase like “What’s the word today?” to get Champagne and truffles at a very reasonable price to hold cocktail parties under all governments. 

At these cocktail parties he would probably wheedle information out of tipsy foreign businessmen and women while giving them the addresses on where to find great, designer clothing at a low price in return for rights to build the Suez Canal.

(For more information on Talleyrand, read Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV by Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie.)

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

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