Montaigne and the Market

but not together. on our last French night and day, we spent copious amounts of time getting to intimately love french cuisine. Not that it took that much convincing. This included a jaunt down to the local restaurant that had two choices on its chalkboard menu, both of which infused garlic into the seams of every ounce of sauce, included a delightful potage and three massive courses all for the delightful price of 15 euro.

I learned how to decapitate dead prawns soaked in garlic. Believe me, I was doing them a favour.

And then we sauntered back to Michele de Montaigne's chateaux and vineyard to take a look at one of chuck's personal heroes. He was underwhelmed, but I was pretty overwhelmed--my knowledge of chateaux relate back to the Charlie Brown days where Snoopy gets adopted (stolen?) by a French girl and Charlie Brown has to trek across the world to save his beloved beagle, falling in deep smit with Frenchy along the way. There was eerie music and dark lighting--the movie put me off big french houses for years!



these people are so my height

And then suddenly it was time to go back to England, put the sunny weather and funny speakers behind us to get on with the last six weeks of the school year. But since nothing is quite straightforward when we travel, we actually had to propel ourselves eight hours in the Peugot northwards to catch a mega early morning ferry. This involved the market...
with its purchases of cheese
olives
wine
and one very french hat


and several twirls around the roundabouts of greater Renne, Nantes, et al. and a late night encounter with the French equivalent to the Super 8 Motel. They played Scrubs dubbed in French in the lobby; Le Super 8 gained my instant approval.

With only minor stress and a much more comfortable cabin this time, we hit the high seas and napped our way across them. And we may have fit in one more bottle of St. Emilion and a salad nicoise for good measure. But who can blame us?