Flaubert: The Normandy Resort Town Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Gustave Flaubert: The Normandy Resort Town Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Introduction

I named this touring game Gustave Flaubert, because he, Proust, and Monet all loved the town of Trouville on the other side of the River Touques from Deauville as a place to relax, write, eat iodine-rich seafood, and walk in windy sea air full of salt.  

Flaubert’s books have been made into films, especially Madame Bovary, who might have been the example for the modern date-and-ditch ploy of “ghosting.”  I told my daughter when she was growing up that if this happened to her to write a screenplay and take her sorrow to the bank.

There is much to see in Normandy.  Most hotel concierges can arrange for bus tours to Giverny, Rouen, Mont St. Michel and World War II sites, but there are many more places to visit in Normandy that are important to French and New World history that are not on all tour bus routes.

Normandy is named after the Norsemen or Vikings, who sailed down the mouth of the Seine River in longboats like those described in Nancy Farmer’s young adult book series The Sea of Trolls to pillage Paris and the British Isles alike.

The Vikings finally settled in fertile Normandy and intermarried with the “Gaulois.”  Their modern-day descendants still have blonde hair and blue eyes like the Swedish, the Norwegians, the Finns, and the Danish.

You can go to the Norman towns I describe in this touring game by car on the Autoroute de Normandie, which is well-paved with pruned trees on either side of the highway to look like rectangles – which is reminiscent of the Loire Valley châteaux (Valois Royalty) not Versailles (Bourbon Royalty).

On our drives out to Deauville for lunches, when we lived in Paris I liked to listen to Jean-Michel Jarre’s albums Revolutions, Equinoxe, and Oxygène.  I also liked Daniel Balavoine, Vanessa Paradis, and the Greek singer Nana Mouskouri, who also sang in French.

Norman Resort Towns

The 3 towns that I have suggested for a week’s vacation in this game, which includes time for shopping, include:

-Deauville – famous for its American Film Festival, yacht club, beach boardwalk, and casino

-Trouville – famous for its villas in the hills, covered fish market, and restaurants

-Honfleur – famous for its port, wood-stave Saint-Catherine Church, and port where French New World explorers such as de Champlain and settlers of Québec departed from

Norman Souvenirs

If you reserve-and-pick-up souvenirs, you have more time to frequent restaurants and visit museums.

-Calvados – apple brandy – the best one is from the Pays d’Auge.  The Calvados carries an AOC designation, which means it is made with high standards of sanitation and quality control.

-Poire Wlliam Eau-de-Vie – their bottles have a pear in them, which means you have to replenish the Poire William frequently, but it is a nice after-dinner drink.

-Apple Cider – almost all French ciders have alcohol in them and are mild laxatives.  French cider goes well with crêpes and some mussel dishes are made with it.

Any liquid you buy in France, especially alcoholic ones, will probably have to be shipped home.  You might want to buy in stores that know about customs, shipping, and insurance.  These stores are more expensive usually, but you get what you pay for in most instances.

-Copper cooking vessels

-restaurant-quality cooking pots and pans for poaching fish and grilling fish and seafood platter trays with 3-tiered shelves

-French porcelain, crystal, silverware, and household linens – these items are not made in Normandy, but are shipped to England through Rouen.  You can find outlets for most of these items in Deauville.

Level 1 – Deauville

Americans going to Deauville are often delighted to find out that there is an American film festival there like the one in Cannes, but devoted to American films. 

Deauville is a hidden resort town for Parisians that is not too far away from the Capital.  There is a yacht club in town and a casino.  The beach rents parasols, lounging chairs, and changing cabins. 

The beachfront restaurants have clear windbreaks, so you can eat seafood platters with raw oysters, shrimp, langoustines, mussels, and snails or roast pheasant with cabbage if you prefer.

Wine suggestions for the seafood platter and pheasant with cabbage:

-Chablis (from Burgundy – varietal: Chardonnay)

-Pouilly-Fuissé (from Burgundy – varietal: Chardonnay)

-Pouilly-Fumé (from Nivernais – varietal: Sauvignon Blanc.  Note: a town in the Nivernais is the setting for the French flashbacks in the film Hiroshima Mon Amour.)

Level 2 – Trouville

After visiting Deauville, you can drive over the River Touques Bridge to Trouville.

Deauville is a very wealthy resort whereas Trouville-sur-Mer is a less expensive one for locals, who cook.

Trouville is famous for the literary artists who have lived and “summered” there – Flaubert and Proust.  The Impressionist painter Monet also created Trouville scenes for his clients, who built the villas that line the hills above the sea.

The villas of yesteryear’s landed-elite are now owned by corporations, who use them for conferences and vacation homes for employees.  Some of the villas may even be foundations now and do sabbatical training for executives.

There is a casino in Trouville (great-food-at-cheap prices destination), but it is most famous for its covered fish market.

The fishmongers at the fish market do very good placement marketing.  Next to the day’s catch they place bottles of white wine of varying price levels and recipe cards.  I learned how to match and pair fish dishes with wine by shopping here on the weekend.

I have a cookbook listed at the end of this game for the dishes suggested here, but the following are some of the fish dishes you might want to try in a hotel with cooking facilities.  The wines I listed for the Deauville restaurant foods go with these dishes, too,  with the exception of champagne to go with the stuffed turbot:

-Stuffed turbot with champagne sauce

-Hake with forest mushrooms

-Oysters cooked with brut cider

Level 3 – Honfleur

If you turn right at the ocean, you can drive along the seacoast to reach Honfleur.  Honfleur is located where the Seine River meets the English Channel.  Monet and Courbet both painted scenes of Honfleur.

The town is a shipping port with no beach.  Ships from Honfleur took French settlers to Québec (Canada – Samuel de Champlain was the explorer).

Nice dinners for Honfleur include:

-Sole Meunière – sole dredged in a thin coating of flour and sautéed in butter with lemon squeezed on top of it.  This dish is served with steamed potatoes with chopped parsley.  The British like this dish, too.

-Mussels steamed with white wine, shallots, and a tablespoon or two of crème fraîche to make moules poulardes

I would drink a slightly sweet white wine with both of the dishes above such as:

-Vouvray (from the Loire Valley – varietal: Chenin Blanc)

-Montlouis (from the Loire Valley – varietal: Chenin Blanc)

Trip Preparation Reference Books

-The Cuisine of Normandy: French Regional Cooking with Princess Marie-Blanche de Broglie

(The recipes I have mentioned are listed in this book’s index.  She writes her cookbook using menus by season.)

-Calvados: The Spirit of Normandy by Charles Neal

-Gustave Flaubert’s novels

-Marguerite Duras’s novels – she spent vacations in the region as well

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

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Visiting the National French Renaissance Museum at Ecouen with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the National French Renaissance Museum at Ecouen with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget – Ruth Pennington Paget

On a cold wintry weekend, Laurent and I drove out to the French National Renaissance Museum at Ecouen, which is located by the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy.  There might be a bus that goes there now, but when we went you had to drive.

In the courtyard of the château are marble copies of Michelangelo’s torso-turning Dying Slave statues.  The statues remind you that a lot of backbreaking, work went into creating these beautiful French castles.

Ecouen is the National Renaissance Museum, because it was the home of its celebrated Seigneur, Anne de Montmorency.  Anne was a  “prince du sang” (prince sharing royal blood with the king), who could hold the throne, if the king became incapacitated or if he so desired to take it; Anne was a general and well-liked by the troops.

Anne worked as the name for a man or woman during the Renaissance in France.  If you look at the story of Anne in the Bible, you can still see that as the mother of Mary, Anne still holds an aura of dignity and ethics for being the grandmother of the founder of the Christian religion – Jesus Christ.  Anne de Montmorency played this role in France, too, as an advisor to kings and protector of the realm as a general.

However, Anne used his early retirement by a Valois king who did not like him to direct and complete the work at Ecouen.

When Francis the First died and Henri II became king, Anne de Montmorency was reinstated as a general to support the Catholic Cause against Protestants in France.

Anne de Montmorency died fighting Protestants on November 10, 1567.  Despite being a soldier, he lived to be 75 years old.

I liked Anne de Montmorency, because he could combine the work of being a general with that of reading and the arts as a true Renaissance man.  I always liked working with management consultants for the same reason. 

Anne de Montmorency’s library was my favorite part of the château.  He read books from antiquity as well as those from his era.  He also reminded me of many people in my family, who have home libraries: a ladies’ library for the women with cookbooks and gardening books, and a gentlemen’s library with farming, boat navigation, and irrigation books. 

The Ecouen Château had furniture whereas many other French châteaux do not, because the furniture was sold during the French Revolution.

Ecouen had some interesting pieces of furniture, though, including a Spanish vargueño, which was a Spanish military desk from the Renaissance period.  It folded up and could be transported from battlefield to battlefield.

They were many wooden chests called “coffres” that the military elite and royals used to transport lifestyle goods around the countryside, too.  The royals did progressions around the countryside from one loyal noble’s home to another in the Middle Ages before Louis XIV stayed at Versailles and ran the kingdom and much of Europe from that palace.

I liked the cassoni (wedding chests) and marveled at the luster of the dishes from Iznik (Turkey) that Anne de Montmorency probably bought, but considered to be war booty.

The National Renaissance Museum at Ecouen clearly shows with its items on display that at least French royals and aristocrats knew all about acquiring high-quality, luxury products on the international market long before globalization became a business buzzword.

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

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Becassine: The French Beach Vacation Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Bécassine: The French Beach Vacation Game for French Resorts Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Bécassine is the heroine of a French children’s picture book series that was created during World War I.  Bécassine lives in the Brittany region of northwestern France on a peninsula that juts out into the North Sea.

She is famous for fooling naughty boys from the big cities who try to cheat her when buying food.  (They grossly underestimate a woman, who could be an oyster cultivator.)

I named this summer sales game Bécassine, because many Parisian families spend a month at the seashore during the month of July or August depending on the school schedule in their region. 

The family heads sometimes work during the week, but come to Brittany to spend the weekend with their families using the TGV (High-speed trains).  This way the families can spend time walking by the ocean, eating seafood platters, sunbathing to soak up Vitamin D, and breathing salty, sea air not polluted city air.

There are many beaches in France that you can reach by TGV to rent a wooden, changing cabin, a parasol, and a linen lounge chair before walking around to check out restaurants and look for summer sales.  Some of the beaches that you can reach by TGV or regular train include:

-Deauville – Normandy – home to a film festival like Cannes

-Etretat – Normandy

-Arcachon – Bordeaux Region

-Sables d’Olonne – Vendée region

-La Baule – Brittany

-Quiberon Bay – Brittany

-Pornic – Brittany

-Leucate – Western Riviera

-Le Cannet – Western Rivera

-Biarritz – French Basque Country – mostly surfing

-Hendaye – French Basque Country – famous for water sports

Some of the items you might be able to buy at the end-of-the-summer-vacation season include:

-all 3 kinds of Cassoulet - bean stews - from the Languedoc should be sold in Paris, too, at train and subway stations.  In the South, these items are sold at gas stations.

-Cassoulet tastes good with red wines such as Spanish Rioja Reds, Bergerac Red, maybe Cotes du Rhone, and Irouleguy red (a Basque wine)

-seafood platter trays with two or three levels

-"tubes d'ete" CDs or summer hits CDs of French Singers

-espadrille cloth sandals from the Basque country

-sunglasses

-straw hats with wide, floppy rims

-beach balls

-beach pails and shovels

-swimsuits

-volleyballs and nets

-coolers

-beach towels

-plastic pitchers, glasses, plates, and cutlery

-picnic baskets

-serving platters

-tablecloths

-cloth napkins

-hibachi grill

-whole fish roaster for grill

-charcoal

-lighting fluid

-roll-up reed mats for sunbathing

-caps

-visors

-thermal mugs

-metal holders for escargots (snails)

-kebab skewers in wood and metal

-chopsticks in wood and metal

-Lacoste shirts

-shorts

-summer study guides for all grades, all subjects

-Bécassine children’s books and other books

-white, V-neck sweaters

-brown, leather shoes

-sailor hats for all ages

-life jackets

-light sweaters

-light jackets

-mini skirts

-fitbits to lose weight

-Cointrexiville water (mild laxative)

-Evian water spray to rehydrate face after sunbathing

Tati Department Store in Paris might carry these items, too.

Have fun shopping!!!

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

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Visiting Lyon (France) with the Belle Famille by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Lyon (France) with the Belle Famille by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On another weekend trip from Paris (France), Laurent and I took the T.G.V. (Train Grand Vitesse – Very Fast Train) to Lyon where the Rhône and Saône Rivers meet. 

The third river around Lyon is supposed to be the Beaujolais.  Watch out for this quiz joke if you eat in Lyon’s “bouchon” diners.  Bouchon refers to Lyon’s sausages and traffic jams.  Lyon is huge toll area for vacationers coming back from the Mediterranean here to reach Paris.  It is also the headquarters of Interpol to make sure the tolls reach Paris I think.

You are supposed to buy a huge bag of nougat de Montélimar for the family to eat while waiting to go through the toll as you listen to the “tubes d’été” –summer hit songs and talk about the TGV running on World War II tracks and having no room for souvenirs.  (The TGV has air conditioning, but it does not work well. Snark, snark, snark à l’américaine.)

I read Le Figaro newspaper looking through the want ads for work on the way to Lyon.  We arrived around 1 pm at the train station where Laurent’s cousin and uncle picked us up.

Laurent’s uncle went home to cook while his cousin showed us the principal sites in Lyon – the Colline de Fourvière, the Basilique de Nôtre Dame de Fourvière, the Roman ampitheatre, and the Odéon (indoor theatre).  We walked through the streets of Old Lyon, which reminded me of Italy.

Laurent’s cousin made the trip special by giving us a tour of Lyon’s secret passageways that led from courtyard to courtyard around entire city blocks.  We came out somewhere across town.  The tunnel passageways are called “trabouls.”

I remarked that these were better than the “cours de miracles” – criminals’ lairs - that Victor Hugo described in Nôtre Dame de Paris. 

“These could be mapped for tourists,” I added.

“The locals know where they are.  We never know when we might need to use them again,” he said in a sinister voice.  He was a theatre major in college, who wanted to do films, so we all walked around pretending to shoot people.

Laurent said, “You have to eat mint candy to be authentic after killing someone in France.”  I love insider French data.

When we went back to Laurent’s uncle and aunt’s house for lunch, we stopped and inspected the ruins at Champonost from the ancient Roman era.  There are archiducs, menhirs, and dolmens all over France.

Laurent’s uncle was recreating ancient Roman cuisine by roasting a leg of lamb that had been marinated in olive oil and herbes de Provence at an outdoor grill oven when we returned.

We drank a Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine with the lamb.  Châteauneuf-du-Pape is made a little further down the Rhône River around Avignon, where the papacy had its see when the Catholic Church had to leave Rome for several centuries. 

Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a blend of several varietals (grape varieties) with a papal insignia on the bottle.  It is one of my favorite wines, because it tastes good with lamb and has a very distinguished bottle decoration.

After eating we looked through French antique books and talked about the TGV being modern, but running on World War II tracks.  The uncle from “the Mines school” was the one to pooh-pooh to about possible derailments.  I do not think this is the rail situation anymore.

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

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