Visiting the French Limousin Region and the Limoges Porcelain Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the French Limousin Region and the Limoges Porcelain Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On a long holiday weekend for the Catholic holiday of Ascension, my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I set out for the French Limousin region in the South of France.

The French Limousin is full of forests and has soil that is rich in kaolin, used to make porcelain dishes such as those from Bernardaud and Haviland.

We passed by oversized, reddish brown Limousin cows lounging by the Vienne River.  These cows are called Limousin cows.  I wondered if Limousin cows were at the origin for the name “Limousine.” 

Golden Limousin oak trees lined our way.  The wood from these trees is used to make barrels for aging cognac.

The houses in the Limousin had rose- to clay-colored stone topped off with the orange, half-moon tiles you see on the Mediterranean Seaboard.

At a small village along a country highway, we turned in to a cluster of houses where several members of Laurent’s extended family lived.

We ate lunch at Laurent’s great-aunt’s home, who brought out champagne and flutes before we ate a lunch of several vegetable appetizers, a salad with smoked salmon and eggs, and a selection of cheese served with butter and baguettes.

After lunch, we set out along the Vienne River again and went to St. Junien where we would be staying at a local hotel called Le Boeuf Rouge, the Red Cow.

The name must have inspired us to go to McDonalds for dinner.  There was a crowd at McDonalds, pronounced “McDough” in French slang.  In Detroit, we called McDonalds “MickyD’s.”

Next morning, we went to the Leclerc grocery store to buy our breakfast.  French grocery stores bake a lot of their own croissants and baguettes, so this is not really a second-class dining option.

The aroma of baked bread made the supermarket smell wonderful.  We bought cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and baguettes and made hot chocolate in our hotel room.

I gussied Florence up for lunch at the great-aunt’s.  We had the same lunch as the day before minus the champagne.  It was a delicious menu the second day as well.

After lunch, Laurent, toddler Florence, and I went to the Adrien Dubouché Museum.

This Museum holds large porcelain, faience, and earthenware collections.  The basic differences between these kinds of tableware follow:

-porcelain – ceramic made by heating clay with kaolin at high temperatures

-faience – tin-glazed earthenware pottery like Faenza ware from Northern Italy

-earthenware – pottery made of fired clay and glazed, making it waterproof

The discovery of kaolin in 1768 in France made it possible to make hard porcelain like that found in the Far East.

Originally, Sèvres outside Paris was the main location for making porcelain, but after the First Empire, Limoges was chosen as the principal manufacturing site, because it had kaolin as well as wood for furnaces.

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

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Reuil-Malmaison Chateau outside Paris (France) - 1 : Napoleon and Josephine's Country Estate by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Reuil-Malmaison Château outside Paris (France): Napoleon and Josephine’s Country Estate by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Reuil-Malmaison Château belonged to Josephine Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress of France.

Napoleon liked going to Reuil-Malmaison, because Josephine had more relaxed etiquette at this château than in the Parisian salons.

Josephine was from the West Indies in the Caribbean, which is much hotter than France.  The fashion in this region tended to be lighter – in fabric and in color to deal with the heat.  Light colors reflect the sun rather than absorb it like black clothing. 

Light black garments might have been worn over clothing to do marketing and protect clothing, but generally clothes were not as constricting and hair was kept off the shoulders and neck to keep perspiration down in the West Indies (Caribbean).

Before visiting the Château, my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I visited the Parc de Bois-Préau nearby to just see what was in the park.  There was an aristocratic event going on:  a fox hunting dog show.

Five musicians in red waistcoats wandered around and played their circular hunting horns among the crowd.  Florence enjoyed running around the lawns.

We eventually made our way back to the Château and took a guided tour.  Josephine’s home was decorated in First Empire Style – lots of Egyptian motifs bathed in gold.

Florence squirmed during the visit, but I held her hand and stayed in back of the group in case Florence started chattering.  She liked looking at the gold Egyptian busts of the Sphinx on the chairs.

My favorite room was Napoleon’s recreation room, because it looks like the inside of a tent albeit an imperial one with lots of gold tassels.

Josephine’s red velvet bedroom had an octagonal mirror above the bed.  The general color scheme at Reuil-Malmaison is gold and black.  (The color scheme at Versailles is silver and white as a point of contrast.)

After visiting Reuil-Malmaison, we went to Versailles and let Florence splash her hands in the Neptune Fountain.

Then, we walked a kilometer to see Marie-Antoinette’s hamlet where she pretended to be a peasant with her ladies-in-waiting.

Marie-Antoinette’s hamlet is made up of a village of thatched roof farmhouses that gave us many cute photo opportunities for Florence.  Florence especially liked petting the sheep in the children’s zoo.

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

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Visiting the Bagatelle Gardens and the Puteaux Island Pool in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Bagatelle Gardens and the Pûteaux Island Pool in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

To go to the Bagatelle Gardens, my husband Laurent and I drove down the Avenue Charles de Gaulle to reach the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, known as Etoile on the Métro line Number 1.

There are 12 large avenues that radiate from the Arc de Triomphe that lead to almost all points in France it seems. 

Merging into the traffic circle is hard at the Arc de Triomphe.  Parisians seem to want everyone to take a tourist bus or the Métro to get to downtown Paris.  And, once you are in the circle, Parisian drivers make it difficult to get to your exit, so you have to keep driving around the Arc de Triomphe.  Of course, there is a lot of beeping and swearing in French done, too.

Once we got to our exit, we drove through the Bois de Boulogne (Boulogne Forest) to reach the Bagatelle Gardens, famous for its roses.

The Maréchal d’Estrées built the Bagatelle Gardens and its pavillon in 1720.  The Bagatelle Gardens were famous for romantic trysts – perhaps after a day’s worth of hunting in the Bois de Boulogne.

The French Revolutionaries spared the Bois de Boulogne while it was razing other buildings and parks.  They probably recognized its therapeutic value after a day of denunciations.

Parisians from the chic Western suburbs and inhabitants from Paris’s 16^th arrondisement treat the Bagatelle Gardens like their own private garden.

You had to pay a small fee to enter the Garden, but air fragrant with roses made you forget that you lived in a big city.

I walked to the Bagatelle Gardens about three times a week when Florence was a baby.  I got my exercise, and Florence got her outing.  The warm sun always made the flowers smell great there. 

You can buy ice cream, sodas, and casseroles in the Garden’s cafés and restaurants.

I used to sometimes eat lunch in the Bagatelle Gardens after going to the pool on the Ile-de-Pûteaux (Pûteaux Island Pool). I went back to the Bagatelle Gardens for lunch to regain my strength and stamina after childbirth. 

Many cities could put together similar “green and recreation” spaces with a little effort in the US, too. 

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

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Touring Downtown Metz (France): Visiting the Showplace of the Lorraine by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Downtown Metz (France):  Visiting the Showplace of the Lorraine by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

A tour of Metz, the showplace of the Lorraine in Eastern France, awaited us the next day.  How do you do justice to a town like this in a few paragraphs?

Metz is 3,000 years old according to one of the guidebooks I bought (Metz: Découverte) and merits just as much of a visit as the towns in Provence I thought.  Metz is famous for its merchants, bankers, and warriors.

The guide went on to say that Metz tried to profit from its proximity to Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany in the modern era with its university and hi-tech companies.

I felt that the town was more Europe-oriented than Paris, because of the willingness of its inhabitants to speak foreign languages. 

The people of Metz do remember that the European Union was formed by European steel manufacturers, who needed to sell cars, trains, buses, planes, ships, submarines, and weather satellites.  All of these items needed to be sold to decision-makers, who preferred to speak in their own language.

We began our tour at the Place de la Comédie and walked to Saint Etienne Cathedral.  The Cathedral was being restored to its lovely ochre color again.  The construction began in the 13^th century on this Cathedral.

The vaulting inspires vertigo.  The city had not begun restoring the interior, so it had black soot and mold everywhere.  Archaeology involved a lot of sooty scraping I decided.  Mass was in session, so I did not tour the Cathedral.

Outside everyone was selling Lilies of the Valley for May 1^st.  We walked to the Place Saint Louis, which was originally the Place de la Change.  It was built in the 13^th and 14^th centuries.

The Place St. Louis is a series of connected buildings with arcades on the ground floor.  The supporting pillar between each arch ballooned out a bit.  During the Middle Ages, this was the fief of Jewish and Lombard bankers.  The Milanese bankers of Northern Italy were called “Lombards.”

The day we visited, old paintings were being displayed along the arcades.  We walked around town enjoying the sights until noon when we went back to the apartment to meet Laurent’s cousins.  We set out for a little restaurant outside town called Chez Yvette.

We started with Kir – a sweet, white wine made with blackberry liqueur.  We ate white asparagus from Hoerdt in Alsace.  Laurent’s cousin told us that Hoerdt is a small village near Strasbourg, which is the asparagus capital of Eastern France.

The asparagus were served with homemade mayonnaise or vinaigrette.  White asparagus has a milder taste than its green cousin, but I like them both.  We drank a dry Alsatian Pinot Noir (Gaston Lorentz 1992) with the asparagus.

Then, we ate magret de canard, which is the fat line from the breast that comes from ducks and geese.  We drank a Côtes de Beaune from Burgundy with this dish.

As the cheese course, we ate Alsace’s only cheese that is also superlative – Muenster.  It has a stinky aroma, but I like it on pumpernickel bread with caraway seeds.  It actually tastes better with beer than wine I think.

We drank our coffee on the restaurant terrace and watched the children play on the swing set that the restaurant had for children outside.  I went out and pushed the kids in my heels and dress and did a few “underdog” pushes much to the delight of the children, who wanted to swing higher and higher.

I could have stayed there all night, but we had to go back to Paris.

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

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