Sampling Catalan Seafood in Barcelona, Spain with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exploring Barcelona (Spain):  Eating a Typical Catalan Seafood Lunch with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When Laurent began working for the European Union after working for French investment banks, I contented myself with taking Florence on long walks to the Bagatelle Gardens, so I could get back into physical shape after childbirth, reading, cooking, and trying to write roman à clefs like Simone de Beauvoir.

He had to go to Barcelona for work, so I was able to go with him and baby Florence.  The taxi ride into Barcelona took us through a very industrialized part of town.  Barcelona shares with big cities everywhere the schizophrenia of extreme wealth coexisting with extreme poverty.

The hotel where we would be staying was a recent construction built to house guests for the 1992 Olympic Games.  The hotel is in the Eixample Neighborhood, one of Barcelona’s most posh areas.

The Eixample, with its neat city blocks, was built during the turn of the century.  This fact explains the wealth of Spanish art nouveau architecture in the neighborhood with its sloping apartment roofs and undulating façades.

After unpacking, I went out to buy baby food and water.  The search for these items led me around the block.  What a block it was!!!

While I was looking for a drugstore, I passed by Gaudi’s Casa Mila, which looks like an underwater life form; Domenech I Mantenar’s Casa Lleo Morera; Gaudi’s Casa Battlò with bubbles that seem to float up its façade; and the fanciful tangle of wines atop the Tapies Foundation.

Back in the hotel room, I prepared Florence’s lunch while she gnawed away on her crib.  Florence did not eat any of her Spanish baby food.  The ham and vegetable mélange that I bought for her was saltier than her French baby food.  Spain is much hotter than Paris, which explains the saltier food.

I thought Florence might like some bread and went out again on Avenida Diagonal to find a baker.  I found something better than the baker when I was crossing the street.  I ran into Laurent and his Catalan colleagues.  His colleagues insisted that Florence and I join them for lunch.

I forgot the name of the restaurant, but the meal was memorable.  We had two seafood platters.  The first seafood platter had oysters and clams on it along with cooked shrimp and langoustines.  The second platter had grilled razor clams on it.

The grilled seafood was a perfect example of Mediterranean cooking that uses simple ingredients requiring fresh ingredients and proper cooking methods for the dish to succeed.

The grilled shrimp and clams were seasoned with garlic.  Other yummy things on our platter included fried and grilled squid.  We drank a white wine from the Pénédés Wine region south of Barcelona.  We drank espresso for dessert.

I was quite satisfied with this meal considering that I had planned to buy a sandwich for myself.

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

Ruth Paget Selfie

Touring Auvers-sur-Oise: Visiting Vincent van Gogh's Grave outside Paris by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Auvers-sur-Oise: Visiting Vincent Van Gogh’s Grave outside Paris by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Baby Florence’s first outing when we lived in Paris was to visit Auvers-sur-Oise outside Paris where Vincent Van Gogh had his tomb.

We loaded Florence into her car seat and set out with several pit stops to give Florence bottles of water.  It was about 90 degrees out.  I hoped we would not melt in our car.

Auvers-sur-Oise is a French “Main Street USA” type of village with a butcher, baker, and candlestick maker.  The brochure from the local tourism office proclaims Auvers to be the birthplace of Impressionism.

Artists such as Corot (1796 – 1875) and Daubigny (1817 – 1879) lived here and began to research what primary colors blended together to give the impression of a secondary color when seen at a distance.  (For example, red and blue blending to make purple.)

Other luminaries who painted at Auvers-sur-Oise include: Gauguin (1848 – 1903), Cézanne (1835 – 1906), and Pisarro (1830 – 1903).

When Van Gogh came to Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890, no one knew he had seventy days to live or that he would complete seventy paintings in those last days.  These paintings are among his most famous: Portrait of Doctor Gachet, Wheat Field with Crows, and the Church at Auvers.

The Tourism Office Guidebook gave a walking tour all throughout town and the countryside that passed by the vistas of all the famous paintings that had been painted of them.

We gave Florence more water and sprayed some vaporized Evian on us to beat the heat.  We walked from one end of town to the other.  When you look at the silhouette of the church at Auvers, you expect it to quiver like the one in the Van Gogh painting.

Vincent Van Gogh’s grave is next to his brother Theo’s in the Auvers graveyard.  I liked a collection of letters that Vincent sent to his brother Theo called Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh edited by Irving Stone that I read prior to visiting Auvers.

In one of the letters that Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, he said that he was happy with his work even if he had no commercial success.  I was happy Theo supported Vincent, but still resent that he sometimes had to pay for meals with his paintings.

I liked how Van Gogh was able to find beauty in the ordinary objects and people around him. 

Van Gogh’s landscapes are what moved me the most, because I know hard it is to just organize, clean a house, and write let alone plowing, weeding, and harvesting fields to look so neat and tidy.

I was tired after our walk, but happy that I put in the effort to see these places that Van Gogh painted.

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

The Chateau at Reuil-Malmaison - 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Château at Reuil-Malmaison: Visiting Empress Josephine’s Château outside Paris (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Empress Josephine’s home at the Château Rueil-Malmaison was twenty minutes away from my apartment in the Hauts-de-Seine outside Paris (France).

My husband Laurent and I put baby Florence in her car seat and set out for Rueil-Malmaison.

We took the guided tour at Rueil-Malmaison.  I was occupied with Florence, but was able to catch the following bit of information:

-Napoleon was one of the first people in France to use art as propaganda.  He opened the Louvre to the public.  It was only open to the aristocrats and royals before.

-The Empress Josephine wore 6 to 7 dresses in one day and would sometimes buy the same dress twice.

The French would say that she was “rolled in flour” for buying the same dress twice.

After the visit to the Château, we spent three hours relaxing in the Château’s park.  I went from rose bush to rose bush, inhaling the delightful perfumes of each bush without knowing that we were in one of the world’s most famous rose gardens.

I held Florence up to the taller rose bushes and let her smell the roses, too, making sure she did not grab the thorny stems.

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Visiting Brussels: 48-Hours in Belgium with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Brussels: 48-Hours in Belgium with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I both wanted to see Brussels (Belgium), which was called the European Economic Community then and the European Union now.  The car ride there was hot and sweat ran down our faces despite our air-conditioned car.

The countryside along the way featured many triangular, red rooftops and brick houses.  Church steeples were shaped like cones.

When we arrived in town, we checked into our hotel and then set out to discover what there was to see downtown.  According to the Michelin Touring Guide, Brussels is and always was a merchant town.

I am a church touring buff, so we zeroed in on the Saint Nicholas Church.  Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of merchants, which explains the dedication of a church to him in Brussels.

We walked around the Grande Place admiring the buildings.  The building with the most gold on its façade was the beernahess hall built by the Beer Brewers’ Guild.

My favorite beers from Belgium would soon become cherry-flavored Kriek and a wheat beer named Geuze.

The architecture in Brussels surprised me.  It was much flashier than Dutch architecture.  The guilds tried to outdo each other and show how rich they were in their decoration, especially with gold decoration.

From the Grande Place, we went to the Manniken Pis Fountain called “The Little Julien” fountain.  Little Julien pees water.  I am glad even supposedly sophisticated Europeans have scatological humor (potty humor).

Laurent and I went to a restaurant across from the Ministry of the Interior that had plush, comfortable booths.  Most customers must come during the day as there were few evening customers.  We almost had the whole restaurant to ourselves.

The waiter loved us for ordering full meals of three courses.  Laurent and I had fish as our main dish and drank a Muscadet from Sèvres et Loir with it.  We returned to the hotel well fed and a little exhausted from our walk around town.

We ate lunch in a pub the next day – steamed mussels, French fries with mayonnaise, and Geuze beer.  One aroma I will always associate with Brussels is that of hot oil for frying French fries.  I like French fries dunked in mayonnaise like the Beligians eat them, too.

The next day we went to the Leonidas chocolate shop and bought 1-kilo boxes of chocolate to store and eat on the hot road trip back to Paris.

By Ruth Paget, Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Touring Arcachon Bay and St. Emilion: Vacationing in the Bordeaux (France) Region with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Arcachon Bay and St. Emilion: Vacationing in the Bordeaux (France) Region with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Hobnobbing with Bordeaux winery owners and their families on vacation encouraged my husband Laurent and me to go on vacation in Arcachon Bay and St. Emilion outside Bordeaux one year when we lived in Paris (France) for seven years.

We reserved a hotel with a kitchen.  When we arrived, we spent an afternoon stocking up on items to eat like prosciutto and lamb shanks.

We got around to tourism the next day after I prepared the lamb shanks.  We visited downtown Bordeaux where I had my photo taken with the rearing horse statues by the Girondin Fountain in the Quiconces Park.

The Girondins were the losing faction from Bordeaux, who mostly lost their heads during the Terror that took place after the French Revolution.  The Girondins were more moderate than the Montagnards, who sat above them at the Convention before the Terror.

The name Girondin comes from the name of the large estuary of ocean that extends into the land at Bordeaux like a Norwegian fjord.

The Quiconces Park with the fountain was also hosting an antiques fair that day.  We spent a good three hours walking among the beautiful wood furniture.

The next day, we visited the adorable town of St. Emilion known around the world for its wine.  St. Emilion had steep streets everywhere and the yellow stone homes all had red geraniums draping down in front of their windows.

Every vantage point in St. Emilion was a postcard photo.  We walked up and down almost every street and visited the surrounding villages in the car.

We even drove through one of the town’s caves going up and down roads.

We bought bottles of St. Emilion in nice, wooden boxes at the Maison du Vin.

Discussing the weather was an acceptable topic in Bordeaux I discovered as I eavesdropped on discussions about the various microclimates in Bordeaux.  “Rain in the Médoc, but not in the Sauternes.”

Our vacation came to an end too quickly.  We had a great time in Arcachon and St. Emilion (France).

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie