Touring Honfleur: Visiting Normandy's Port that Explorer Jacques Cartier Used to Sail to Canada by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Honfleur:  Visiting Normandy’s Port that Explorer Jacques Cartier Used to Sail to Canada by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband Laurent and I set out on another rainy, damp winter day to visit the port town of Honfleur in Normandy, France.

Honfleur is a Norman town, which is located at the mouth of the Seine River.  This prime location made it a prime destination for marauding Vikings, who used the Seine River to go to Paris and steal treasures from Parisians.

Rollo, the chief of the Normans, became the Duke of Normandy in 911 after signing the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte.  The legacy of the Normans lives on in their blonde descendants.

Honfleur was also the port where Jacques Cartier left for the New World in 1534 as an explorer.  Francis 1^st (House of Valois) was disappointed that what would become Canada held no gold, diamonds, or spices.

It was not until the 17^th century that Samuel de Champlain founded Québec in 1608 that Canada’s wealth became apparent.  Louis XIV knew that he could make money in the fishing industry and fur trade for the fashion industry from his Canadian colony.

My memories of Honfleur are of drizzling cold rain, which obscured the outlines of the buildings.  At 2 o’clock, we ate at the Sainte-Catherine Church Restaurant, which is right in front of the church of the same name.

Laurent and I ordered the same delicious meal:

- moulies marnières – mussels steamed in white wine with chopped shallots and chopped parsley sprinkled on top just before serving

- grilled salmon fillets with sautéed vegetables

- a slice of camembert cheese, a regional cheese from Normandy with a creamy center that you can spread on toasted bread

- chocolate mousse

We drank a Muscadet from the mouth of the Loire River on the Atlantic Ocean with our nice meal.

The Sainte-Catherine Church was built entirely of wood with stone foundations.  It is similar to the wood stave churches of Norway; they were part of the marauding Scandinavians, who came to France.

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

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Touring Trouville: Visiting Normandy's Famous Fish Market Town with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Trouville:  Visiting Normandy’s Famous Fish Market Town with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband Laurent and I broke up a rainy, polluted Parisian winter day by driving out to Normandy to visit the oceanfront town of Trouville on the English Channel.

Trouville sits across from Deauville (home of the American Film Festival).  You have to cross the tiny, River Touques to go from one town to the other.

Deauville and Trouville are neighbors, but are completely different from one another. 

Deauville is a resort with yachting facilities, a casino, a long beach boardwalk, a horserace track, and numerous restaurants with outdoor terraces for showing off expensive sunglasses and signing autographs, if you are in show business. 

People will still eat seafood platters in Deauville when it is 50 degrees outside and be perfectly happy in their cashmere sweaters and scarves.

Trouville, on the other hand, is famous for its fish market.  More people cook at home here despite the very good port restaurants.

The fish market is the most exciting part of town.  The day’s catch is displayed with good wines to go with the fish.  Fish with glistening eyes and crimson red gills are what housewives look for to cook at home.  

Housewives scurry about with their metal, wheeled shopping caddies to buy lots of fish and six bottles of a wine they know at a time.

The travel writer Jan Morris described Trouville as a town of artists in her book Among the Cities.  A statue of Gustave Flaubert greets visitors to the port.  The writer Proust vacationed here as did the Impressionist painter Monet.

I was also ready to call Trouville the City of Artists for all its specialty food shops.

One of Trouville’s local pastry shops was named “Au Succulent.”  Another shop had a cookbook on Norman cuisine with bottles of Normandy’s apple brandy called Calvados next to it. 

Calvados and a little crème fraîche on steamed mussels sounded great I thought.  We ate some mussels prepared that way called Moules à la Normande that made a cold day visit to Trouville seem very warm.

I still love breathing in salty, ocean air and think it makes food taste better.

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

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Touring the Chateau de Chantilly, France - 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Château de Chantilly:  Exploring one of France’s Art Treasure Palaces with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One of the main reasons my husband Laurent and I visited the Château at Chantilly was to view the manuscript called Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry illustrated by the de Limbourg Brothers – Paul, Hermann, and Jean.

This manuscript shows what happens in each month to assure a successful harvest for food and wine.  There are astrological symbols associated with each month, which allows sky watchers to know what month they are in.

This manuscript was created for use by a nobleman.  It is decorated with gold, the blue in it resembles lapis lazuli, and the brilliant yellows might have been the inspiration for the poisonous arsenic pages in library books that Umberto Eco wrote about in his book The Name of the Rose that was later made into a movie by the same name.

The library at the Château de Chantilly houses the Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Barry manuscript.  Our tour guide told us that you had to apply to the Institut de France to see it and would have to wear a surgical mask over your mouth and gloves to handle it.

The Château has facsimiles for reference.  I bought a miniature Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry as a souvenir.

Another artwork housed in the museum at Chantilly that I like is the Renaissance portrait of Simonetta Vespucci by Piero de Cosimo (1462 – 1521), who is portrayed with a snake necklace.

Italians still know that beautiful jewelry is wonderful and like to collect it.  However, if they need food, clothing, and shelter for their families, jewelry sometimes will be sold or pawned, if they have run out of vases to sell.

We went on a guided tour on this visit to see the private rooms and galleries.

We began our tour in the library, which shows the monogram of Henri d’Orléans on the ceiling.  His coat of arms shows that he is from the younger branch of the Bourbon family (Left top to right bottom red slash). Our guide told us that the Institut de France owned the Chantilly Château.

One of the Institut de France’s key provisions is that a member of the Bourbon family must always be in charge of Chantilly.  Basically, the Château collects, restores, cleans, and guards antique furniture, books, decorative arts, and paintings that were owned by various members of the Bourbon family and left to the Institut in wills.

The books displayed in the library always change our guide told us.  On the day that we visited, there were several books on display with Apocalyptic Beasts and Christ on the covers.  A medieval “Roman de la Rose” by Jean de Meung was on display as well.

My favorite room after the library was the “singerie” or “monkey room” decorated with monkeys in Chinese pavilions.  This was the Bourbon family’s classroom.

The Bourbon children began their studies at age four or five.  Children studied mythology, Latin, Greek, the Bible, and mathematics as preschool students.

The children studied for twelve hours a day with one hour for recreation.  Children married in their teen years.

After that, the boys went off to war at the age of sixteen or seventeen.  The young men often died at the age of 25.

Our guide explained the language of equestrian sculptures to us.  The best way to do was to die fighting in battle, which meant the horse was portrayed with the right leg lifted.

The visit to the Château’s chapel was interesting.  The hearts of the Bourbons are kept there in jars similar to Egyptian canopic jars.  The hearts are examined for poisoning.

After the tour, we went outside to take photographs of the Château, using the views of it that appeared in the James Bond movie A View to a Kill.

Laurent and I both had fun exploring Chantilly and walking around this very photogenic town.

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

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Touring Chartres Cathedral: Walking the Labyrinth with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Chartres Cathedral:  Walking the Labyrinth in Chartres, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

  

On a prior visit to Chartres Cathedral, I purchased a French-language academic journal that discussed the uses for the labyrinth in this spot.

The journal entitled simply Nôtre Dame de Chartres was devoted to the large labyrinth at Chartres that is placed in the floor of the nave area of the Cathedral.

In the past, worshipers stood during mass and could easily see the labyrinth.  Today, chairs cover the floor most of the time, so scholars have to look at drawings to know what the labyrinth at Chartres looks like.

Several cathedrals had labyrinths in the Middle Ages that have not made it to the modern period due to neglect and/or purposeful destruction.

The academic journal I read said that in the rare cases where scholars know the names of the master masons (engineer-architects), it is because their names were inscribed in the labyrinths.

The article went on to describe how the labyrinth almost equaled the Western Rose Window in diameter.

Master masons may have used the labyrinth as a blueprint and measuring device to build other parts of the Cathedral.  The author of the article said that even rope could be used to measure off lengths for use elsewhere in the church.

The center of the labyrinth at the Cathedral at Chartres held a copper disc that showed the combat of Theseus and the Minotaur from ancient Greek mythology. 

Theseus was able to kill the Minotaur and escape the labyrinth with the help of a woman in much the same way that Christ helped save men in difficulty in the Christian world.  (Life is constant struggle, so we all need help.)

The Theseus story from Greek mythology is called pagan in most church booklets you read in France.  However, people still know and refer to mythology today.  This was even truer in the Middle Ages when Christianity was a relatively young religion with rival religions and heretical sects in its own ranks.

Peasants and nobility alike could understand from the Theseus story the metaphor of Christ being like Ariadne, who gave Theseus the thread to escape the labyrinth once he had killed the Minotaur in Knossos, Crete.

Another way in which the labyrinth was used was to replicate the Road to Jerusalem as a pilgrimage.  Parishoners, who could afford, it were encouraged to go on pilgrimages in much the way that Muslims are encouraged to go on the hajj to Mecca today, if they have paid all their debts and can afford it.

Some labyrinths appear on church walls as well.  In that location, they remind me of the Stations of the Cross that surround pews in Catholic Churches.  Each Sabbath, the Catholic faithful can replicate Christ’s walk to Calvary, if they choose to do so.

People who would like to know more about the labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral can consult the Loyola University of Chicago website devoted to Medieval Studies with pages set aside just for the Labyrinth of Chartres.

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

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