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

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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

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Touring Chantilly, France - 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Chantilly: Visiting an Art Treasure House outside Paris with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After a great visit to the Equestrian Museum in Saumur (Anjou Region), my husband Laurent and I went to the Château at Chantilly (outside Paris and famous for horse races) to visit the gardens, art museum, and fancy stables across the street from the Château.

I like Chantilly and foremost for its connections with my favorite historical Renaissance man after Leonardo da Vinci, Anne de Montmorency.  He lived in Chantilly, but not in the most recent Château that occupies the spot.  Anne de Montmorency served six French kings from Louis XII to Charles IX.

Anne de Montmorency died at age 75 while fighting Protestants outside Paris in Saint Denis, a northern suburb of Paris now.  His opponents needed five sword wounds to finally topple him.

The current Château at Chantilly is the fifth one to occupy this spot and is built in a Renaissance style.  The Institut de France now manages the Château, the art collection, and the invaluable books treasures such as Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, which shows seasonal work for maintaining the fields and vineyards.

The 18^th century stables across the street were built by one of Anne de Montmorency’s descendants, who believed in reincarnation.

Louis-Henri de Bourbon believed he would come back to Earth as a horse and wanted to build stables that were worthy of his rank.  They were more beautiful than the actual Château I thought.

We walked back across the street to visit the gardens.   I thought I would like to own one of the homes that looked out over the Grand Canal towards the Château that we could see from the gardens.

I loved the painting collection, especially paintings such as Raphael’s Three Graces and Piero de Cosimo’s Simonetta Vespucci.  Simonetta wore jewels in her hair and had a snake coiled around her neck.

We visited the stables and discovered that you could book dinner parties there for your business.  I laughed, thinking that might be a statement on the current affairs in France for booking a party here.

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

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Touring Fontainebleau: Visiting the "Family Home" Chateau of the French Royals and Napoleon by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Fontainebleau: Visiting the “Family Home” Château of the French Royals and Napoleon by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On another one of our weekend jaunts around the French countryside, Laurent and I drove out to the Château de Fontainebleau south of Paris.

We drove through the famous Fontainebleau Forest listening to Jean-Michel Jarre and Mylène Farmer music and songs on the radio.  The sunny weather with a crisp breeze made it a perfect day for visiting.

The forest around Fontainebleau teems with game and made it a favorite spot for hunting with the French royalty.  The French Kings lavished art on the château here to embellish what they called “the family home.”

The family home for Francis the First featured art by the 16^th century Mannerist artists from Italy named Il Rosso and Primaticcio.  These artists decorated the château at Fontainebleau with mythological art and stucco sculpture of human figures arching to the point of contortion almost.

The most dramatic part of Fontainebleau is the two-armed “Staircase of Farewells.”  A defeated Napoleon thanked his supporters on this staircase and went off to imprisonment on the Island of Elba.

We watched people feed the carp in the fish pond and enjoyed a walk in the garden.

Peacocks wandered around the grounds; reincarnated monarchs perhaps?

We went to an air-conditioned mall with bathrooms and ate at Flunch – they make homemade traditional French meals everyday.  We went shopping at the anchor hypermarket, bought candy, bought herbal shampoos at the pharmacy, and sandwiches for dinner.

Fontainebleau is fun.  I recommend it as an outing.

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

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Touring Saumur (France) - 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Saumur (France): Visiting the Cadre Noir Equestrian Museum by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband Laurent and I ran home from work to go on a long weekend trip to the Loire Valley town of Saumur.  I cannot think of any drive that qualifies as so much landscape eye candy as this drive through the Loire Valley.

The cave homes along the Loire Valley charmed me as usual.  I wanted to own one of those “troglodyte” homes with their window boxes full of red geraniums cascading down in front of them.

“You can rent one for a vacation.  I do not want to own one.  They have spiders and centipedes in them,” Laurent said.

The romance of permanent air-conditioning and perfect temperature for storing wine wore off with the centipede remark.

The cave housing led us into downtown Saumur where we met Laurent’s friend from the air force when they had to do mandatory military duty in France.  (This mandatory military service has been disbanded now.)   We ate dinner that night in a restaurant called La Serre (The Green House) at the Hôtel Roi René.

Roi René was the King of Anjou from 1409 to 1480.  He was beloved by his subjects.  We drank an excellent, sparkling wine with our meal that gave us a touring idea for the next day.

We went to bed full and happy.  The next day we went on a tour at Gratien and Meyer, which produces a champagne-like wine that tastes like Asti Spumante from the Piedmont region in northern Italy that produces the red wine Barolo.

After the tour, we drank excellent Angevin wines with our meal.  Our cocktail was the sweet wine from Anjou called Quarts-de-Chaume.  The wine tastes similar to Sauternes, but it is much more difficult to find in the US than Sauternes.

For our starter dish, Laurent and I ate a seafood platter with Savennières wine.

Our main dish was roast leg of lamb that we drank with a Saumur Rouge.  For dessert, we had the French upside-down cake called Tarte Tatin followed by a strong espresso coffee.

After this meal, we visited the Angers château and the equestrian museum.  Saumur is famous for its Cadre Noir equestrian team. 

Saumur was once a Protestant stronghold, but the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 caused mass migration to regions with more religious tolerance: England, the Netherlands, Berlin, and South Carolina in the United States.

The Decorative Arts Museum interested me the most with its collection of enamelware from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  There was also a luminous French porcelain collection from the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

The Equestrian Museum has displays about equestrian culture from all periods and cultures.  Horses have never interested me too much, so I probably missed much of the significance of the items on display.

I did understand that horses were like the tanks of their day.  The only people who could ride the horses were aristocrats and royalty.

Suggested Reading:

- National Velvet by Enid Bagnold

-- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

- Le Cadre Noir de Saumur by Guillaume Henry and Alain Laurious

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

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