Touring Saumur - 1 - with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Saumur:  Visiting the Loire Valley’s Home of the  Cadre Noir Equestrian School with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The château at Saumur is lovely.  There are two sparkling wine houses in town that do informative tours with wine tastings: Gratien et Meyer and Ackermann.

The world-famous Cadre Noir Equestrian School has its headquarters in Saumur and the Decorative Arts Museum at the château has an extensive collection of objects from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

But, Saumur was also a stronghold of Protestantism, so it is still somewhat downplayed as a tourism venue despite having nice hotels, recreational areas, and high-quality merchandise to buy.

The Protestants of Saumur vied with Louis XIII (1601 – 1643) for power.  Louis XIII had Saumur’s protective walls razed in retaliation in 1623.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by Louis XIV (1638 – 1715) caused many French Protestants (Huguenots) to emigrate to England, Berlin, and even the southern United States (Charleston, South Carolina was the main port of entry.)

Today tourists visit Saumur for the Crémant de Loire tours and tastings as well as for the exhibitions of the Cadre Noir Equestrian School.

We did not have a lot of time to visit on this outing to Saumur.  We had to make a choice between the Calvary Museum, Armour Museum, and the Decorative Arts Museum.

We chose to visit the château first and climbed to the very top for a view of the sinuous Loire River, the gardens around the château, the forests, the off-white houses with slate roofs, and people going in and out of shops with packages of wine, charcuterie, bread, and pastries.

I thought of Honoré de Balzac’s heroine Eugénie Gramdet, who lived in Saumur, and imagined her stocking up her provincial townhouse with jams and jellies along with rillettes for winter while she saved money to send to her cousin in Paris.  In the end, I think both she and her cousin got a pretty good deal.

We visited the Decorative Arts Museum, which has a ton of great items, if you like dishes and dining room centerpieces.

As I walked through the museum, I thought to myself, “How much stuff does France have squirreled away in the provinces?”

Each little town in France seems to have its own collection of decorative arts in a townhouse museum or château it seems. 

Perhaps this is because decorative arts are easier to move than paintings and sculptures in times of war, domestic revolutions, rioting, and foreign occupations.

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

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Touring Azay-le-Rideau: Visiting a Loire Valley Financier's Renaissance Chateau with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Azay-le-Rideau:  Visiting a Loire Valley Financier’s Renaissance Château with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

Buttery, warm croissants with tea for me, and hot chocolate with croissants for my husband Laurent braced us for the cool yet sunny weather the next day as we set out for a darling Loire Valley château named Azay-le-Rideau.

We missed it a few times, because there were very few country highway numbers listed, just directions to the next small town around traffic circles in the center of small towns on the way there.  We finally did arrive after turning down a few roads and then turning back several times.

I arrived frazzled at the Azay-le-Rideau Château, but the sweet perfection of Azay reflecting in the lake in front of it made me feel better.  The lake was made by diverting the Indre River, a tributary of the Loire River.

The Azay-le-Rideau Château was built for leisure not defense.  The château had little “tourettes” not towers, a drawbridge for show, and too many windows to protect against wind.  Many châteaux still have large tapestries on their walls to form a type of insulation in these cold and drafty castles.

Azay-le-Rideau is an example of what the French call the First Renaissance, which began in the middle of the 15^th century.  The French Renaissance was the result of what was called “The Italian Wars,” which were fought to protect French territories in Italy created by marriage alliances.

The French brought home Italian artists and portable decorative art objects from the Italian Wars.

The man who built Azay-le-Rideau was Gilles Berthelot.  All of his family served kings as financial advisors.  The financiers raised money to pay for wars as well as for infrastructure projects like bridges, roads, and tunnels.

Berthelot was associated with the finance minister Samblançy, who had trouble raising the ransom money to free Francis 1^st, who was captive in Pavia, Italy.  Once Francis 1^st was released, he had Samblançy executed.

Berthelot’s guilt by association with Samblançy made Berthelot flee the region.  The mural of this story is “Pay a King’s Ransom Quickly.”

Berthelot was never able to live in his château at Azay-le-Rideau.

Integrating a château with water and foliage is an Italian gardening principle that is used at Azay-le-Rideau.  The “L” shape of the château shows that it is not set up for ambush.

The interior of the château at Azay-le-Rideau follows medieval interior design with rooms opening up into other rooms through doors and not hallways.

The exterior stairway is impressive with its sculptural bas-reliefs, notably the salamander representing Francis 1^st.

Successive owners took good care of Azay-le-Rideau  for the enjoyment of visitors today.

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

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Touring Poitiers Baptistery: Visiting a 4th Century Historical Site in France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

Touring Poitiers Baptistery:  Visiting a 4^th Century Historical Site in France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After we visited the Saint-Pierre Cathedral, we went to the Saint John the Baptist Baptistery that was built in the 4^th century in Poitiers.

I thought that there was nothing older than Jouarre Abbaye outside Paris in France with its Mérovingian art, especially its wall of stratified geometric shapes.

The Baptistery at Poitiers packs a lot of history into a small space.

Steps led down into the baptismal pool that has an octagonal shape.  When you are baptized, you become a child of God where men, women, children, and slaves are equally loved.  (“Slaves” is the wording used in the Bible of all Christian sects.)

Several times the Baptistery was faced with destruction, including during the French Revolution when the Baptistery was taken over by the government as a national good.

The town’s librarian Mazet saved it as storage space probably.  Storage space is always in short supply in France in all periods even with garde manger on châteaux grounds to store food.

The interior column capitals still had acanthus leaves, dolphin sculptures, beads, and olives carved on them.  The Baptistery paintings included those of the hand of God, the lamb of God, and the twelve apostles.

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

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Touring Poitiers: Visiting a Medieval French Town in the Aquitaine with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Poitiers:  Visiting a Medieval French Town in the Aquitaine with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

Poitiers is a medieval French town in the Aquitaine region that was founded in 1432.  About 100,000 inhabitants call Poitiers home.

The trees without leaves and cold breeze coming off the Claia and Birre Rivers reminded me that it was winter.  The cold seem to penetrate my thick jacket due to the humidity from the water.  I put extra blankets on Florence as we set out to explore town.

Our first stop was to the tourist office where I picked up a map and tourism guide.  Citizens of Poitiers have roots that go back to Gaul and ancient Rome.

Three significant events happened in Poitiers that are important for French history:

-Christianity became France’s religion when Clovis, King of the Franks, defeated Aleric II, King of the Visigoths, in 507 AD.

-In 732, Charles Martel repelled Muslims from modern-day Spain here to keep the French kingdom sovereign and Christian

-In 1429, a committee of doctors recognized that Joan of Arc was carrying out a mission from God in Poitiers

The biting cold stung our faces and legs, so we went as fast as we could to visit the Saint-Pierre Cathedral built mostly in the 12^th century.

The contorted Romanesque statues around the church portray the urgency of listening to the word of God.  Poitiers is surrounded by the Marais Poitevin or “Poitou Swamp.”

People were fearful of death in Poitou, because the harvest is precarious there.  It is hard to grow crops in swampy land due to the ease with which mold can grow on plants due to dampness. 

If agricultural practices are not maintained to keep the crops dry, rot might set in.  If harvests were small, the aristocrats took it all.

The church visually helped keep order in the agricultural year with their medallions of astrological signs and “travaux” or work associated with that sign.   Sculptures of the astrological sign and the “travaux” that goes with them are usually carved under them on the tympana (half-moons) over church entryway doors.

Weekly markets were held in front of many churches in France where people could view the outside of the church, even if they do not go in.  Illiterate peasants could understand the agricultural work associated with seasonal time by looking at the tympana while aristocrats might look at books like Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Barry (Preserved in the Château de Chantilly Library.)

This church also has a maze or labyrinth painted on the wall as well.  Pilgrimages were encouraged in the Middle Ages to Santiago de Compostella, Rome, and Jerusalem. 

Not everyone could afford to go on a pilgrimage or was physically able to do so.  These labyrinths in churches allowed everyone to visit the Holy Land and visit Christ’s birthplace.

I read that there was a 4^th century baptistery close by as well, which we left the church to visit.

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

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Dancing at a Home Party with an English Family by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

Dancing at a Home Party with an English Family by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After our hostess made the trifle, the wife of another one of my husband’s colleague’s arrived with her little boys. 

The boys played with Florence and called her “baby doll.”  The women drank cuppas of tea, and  I supervised; Florence was small and real and not a doll despite running around and pushing the boys on the floor.

I was discovering that baking was an English woman’s great asset.  We ate a beautiful apple-spice cake that the other woman guest made at home before visiting.  I knew that walnuts in banana muffins were what vegetarians considered to be a hidden protein and thought baking was a tremendous skill to acquire one day.

After tea, our hostess began to chop vegetables as we talked.  I volunteered to help, but our hostess would hear none of it.

At 4 pm, another set of sons arrived home from school, they changed out of their uniforms and played a little with Florence before going at each other to play mock-rugby.

Florence rejoined the ladies where we could feed her biscuits and juice.  The men arrived around 6 pm and dinner began.

We ate the crudités with the hummus and taramosalata.  Our hostess ordered Indian “take-away curries, masalas, and saags.”  “Take-away” means “take-out.”  I loved my British English lessons.

The wines I selected at Tesco went well with the spicy Indian food – a Sauvignon Blanc from the Touraine and a Soave from the Veneto.  I also bought a Chianti like everyone did in the 1990s, but it was not right with the food.

We put on some Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Bee Gees, and Elvis Presley music and danced.  I danced with the kids in a circle and Laurent was teaching “The French Rock” moves imitating Travolta to the English women. 

The guys came over to dance with Florence, the boys and me in a circle.  The kids conked out, and the adults kept dancing until the windows steamed up.

We opened up the windows for air at 3 am and finished eating the spicy, Indian saags, masalas, and curries.

Laurent and I went home laughing and wanted to come back and visit Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern England one day.

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

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