Friday, June 20, 2008

Longest Day of The Year


Well I can't complain about the weather these last few days, warm and sunny, broken clouds, beautiful actually. Work has slowed on the entry as it nears completion, I need to make a 3/4 round moulding for the corner of the pillar the door is mounted on but that's about it. It looks good now and the dining room and reading room are nearly completed as well. Nothing seems to ever get completely finished as a myriad of details crop up, paint chips from the ladder, loose seams here and there in the cloth, sand/dirt on the floor...it goes on and on. Like any DIY project the satisfaction is sometimes greatest when you START rather than when you FINISH.
We're BAD at finishing.
___
Add Image

We are selling the little house across town, we loved the place for the last 6 years that we've had it but with this house needing a roof that will cost us nearly $35,000 USD to get done, I can't do it myself, it's too high and I'm totally unfamiliar with the materials and how they are used.
The little house is a charmer though, I wish we could keep it but someone will love it and realize what a great value the place is. It's a walled compound, walls on both sides and the back with a
lockable doored 30 sq/mt garage as well as a big barn (80 sq/mt + 30 sq/mt loft) to store things in. The house (88 sq/mt) is in wonderful condition as we repainted it and did a fancy paint job on both sides of all the doors, really French looking! The 120 sq/mt English garden was designed by a California landscape designer Marsha Pouget. It all works and we are including the refrigerator, dish washer, washer drier combo, and new oven/stove. It has city supplied water and sewer as well.
___
The other wonderful thing about it is that it is HERE! This is The Berry, The Valle Noir, the REAL France! The big cities are certainly interesting and sophisticated and full of museums and sights galore BUT this place functions and IS the heart of the country. The people are extremely friendly and welcoming almost to a fault. The Tourist Board that we talk about so often has the most wonderful freindly and USEFUL staff, who translate documents, make phone calls, intercede on your behalf with officialdom, buying tickets etc. etc. They are most helpful to say the very least. We love our big city Bourges! It is but 45 minutes away across the valley and has a wonderful medieval core that exudes charm and sense of place. Small shops and a village-like atmosphere pervade the downtown area. It's outskirts contain the large mall-like stores we have all become used too everywhere in the world with easy parking and great buys. (http://www.bourges.fr/) . Our other large city Chateuroux (http://www.chateauroux.fr/) has many of the same services and is somewhat closer at about 25 minutes away. Lignieres (http://www.lignieres.free.fr/) is a market village, the confluence of 5 major roadways through the Berry region of Centre. We have an open-air market twice a week, Monday and Thursday in the 14th Century Hall downtown. Fresh local produce of all kinds, chickens, beef, and yes, horsemeat are readily available cut to your order. We LOVE the marche, it is a social event attended by most residents every week, people stop to chat and watch the scene. We have 3 boulangeries, two meat markets, two hardware stores, two florist shops, a shoe store, 2 real estate offices, a big Champion supermarket w/ service station, a car wash, 8 resturants, 4 bars/taverns and on and on. It seems impossible to our Californian sensibilities that this is all available in a village of some 2000 people, hardly a wide spot in the road in the US but it is so. The culture supports it and the society values such diversity of choice.
Here's the Listing on eBay:
If the link gives you trouble just paint, copy and paste it to your browser. Thanks!

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Lyon


Well...why haven't I written in the last week and a day? Been sick boopie, sick. How? What? Why? Well in reverse order the FOOD POISONING occured beginning a week ago last Thursday with a delicious sandwich of the usual ham, cheese, eggs, lettuces and mayonaise taken at the cafe adjacent to The Geant in Bourges. This lunch was made necessary as we were waiting to get the new front Michelin tires installed on the Avensis. Home we went afterwards and seemingly were ok and normal for the next 6 - 8 hours, then diarhea and cramping...awful, green nausea. Yes, durn it, it's a common human ailment isn't it? A left out of the fridge too long anything, a cold cut, a mishandled lettuce leaf, an unwashed tomato...doesn't take much and those flora and fauna of our gut take offense at the new intruder. The result is more potty time in the next day or two then the problem slowly goes away. Well this time it stayed and grew worse when we went to the store on Friday and I bought 2 kilos (4.4lbs) of the most beautiful, small moules (mussels), labelled "France Normandy", oh yes, a favorite of ours and cheap too at E2.90 a kilo...about 1.35 a lb. On ice, all shiny and upon close examination most were quite closed, a GOOD lot! Well home we went, Kelly washed and debearded the little suckers and I prepped the sauce, white wine, parsley, shallots, salt and pepper (garlic if you want). I put them in a large pot and poured the sauce over and brought them to steaming and cooked for about three minutes, just enough to insure they were all open, turned them off and pored the whole lot into a large crockery bowl. We ate like Kings of these little devils, wonderfully tender and sweet with the sauce. We ate about half of what we prepared and sopped up the sauce with chunks of baggette smeared with our local butter. Yum! All good, filled to the brim we cleaned up, put the remaining moules coverred into the fridge and retired to a movie in our upstairs office. Movie over, off to bed to read and fall asleep as is our way. 2 am I awake, now green, frog-colored and very, very aware of my less than well condition. Quickly I gather my wits, jump outa bed and run to the WC a few feet away...thank gawd! This over, back to bed to repeat at 2 - 3 hour intervals over the next 12 hrs. Not good. So much for Saturday except we ate the beloved moules for lunch via the microwave approach and repeated to the last little beast at dinner time, burp! Somewhere in all of these little delicious creatures I partook of one to several that were less than ok, either undercooked, a distinct possibility initially, or dead-on-delivery not to be eaten in the first place. No matter...now I was really sick and Kelly was just a bit green. Sunday was a day off of eating at all. Just sick. Then Monday...planning for the trip to Leon I was still planning trips to the WC about every 2 hrs. Not good. Yogurt, blessed yogurt to the rescue. I had now lost between 4 and 5 lbs and was fading fast. No appetite at all, chills and fever and the runs. Great. Here comes Tuesday, ate little, slept a lot and occassionally ran to the WC. Whewwww. Wednesday was a day of near recovery, not as tired, not hungry but the yogurt was good and 7 up helped ease the tummy green-ness that hung on so very well. We left Thursday and I was back to my old self again, hungry and happy. Brother...poisoned myself good that time, not just once either! Enough. Cook 'em longer boopie, maybe 5 minutes would be enough. Here's a link for you re:preparation of mussels.
http://www.helpwithcooking.com/seafood-shellfish/how-to-cook-mussels.html
___
Lyon is a wonderful city to visit though it's approach from the south is industrial as all get out. Oil operations abound featuring long, black trains, the French Modern factory approach to urban planning rules the landscape. Once across the river though it becomes a lush, green garden on visual and gastronomic delights. Parking can/is a hasstle and though advertised as part of our one-star hotel's (Alexandra Hotel http://www.hotelalexandra69002.fr/ ) amenities we decided to walk the short walk, pay the PAYANT machine it's due and be done with it. Bonnie the Tom Tom GPS had gotten us to within a block of the hotel door and l'Viola! there was a space for us on the street! Amazing! So we unloaded our single bag with our 2 changes of clothes apiece and headed for the hotel. Once there 5 minutes later, we walked up one flight of stairs to the reception desk and signed in. Then off to our room on the 4th floor via ancient stone steps, 22 to each flight to account for the tall ceilings. Thank goodness for the single bag and few books. Once UP we openned the door to our suite in the clouds. Clean, newly painted grey and white with a view over the red roofs of Lyon. It was still early afternoon, about 3:30pm so we wanderred off thru Rue Victor Hugo a wonderful wide boulevard turned into shopping mall with stores of every kind and description. We spent the next while wandering the storefronts and sitting to watch the ever changing street scene. We headed generally north along the streets, taking our time headed towards the eventual goal of our dinner place L,Ourson Qui Boit at 7:30 when they were scheduled to open. Once found a lovely worker in the establishment informed us that they were full that night AND the next and since we had not made reservations we were out of luck. Durn it! Kelly had asked me too! So we lost our shot at the 16th most popular restaurant in Lyon by my not making a reservation. That teaches me! So we dejectedly turned about and walked back along the way we came looking for the nights meal along the way. Two miles later we arrived at our hotel once more and facing both the McDonalds (Nooooooooo!) across the street and the now pouring afternoon/early evening rain Kelly took another look at her map. A Chinese restaurant was nearby, in fact around the corner on Rue Franklin well...why not!? A small place, less than 20 seats and packed except for one booth which we occupied shortly. The food looked and smelled wonderful, a fusion of Vietnamese and Chinese then menu wasn't so long as to be intimidating (you know those, we don't go there anymore) but very interesting. We chose a veg, a chicken a beef dish with Cantonese Fried Rice and were soon greeted with the aromas we had been surrounded with coming from beautifully prepared and served dishes. We orderred two Tsing Tao chinese beers, delicious and ice cold too! Wonderful food by any measure, certainly the best Chinese we have had in France to date. It was so good we repeated the meal the next night!
___
Trip Home - See image at top of the blog.
The way back was different. We decided to go north along the river to Macon (Mah_cahn) then over to Lignieres through whatever was there. So after a protracted leaving of Lyon through the back streets and alleyways past several open air marches (markets) we were on our way Saturday morning. The countryside of Burgundy was much as it is here in Lignieres, rolling, green hills and small farms, cattle, sheeps and a few goats. Beautiful verdant landscapes. Along the way we past a beautiful long barn, a half-timbered one from several centuries past with a checkerboard-like brick pattern evident. I wanted a picture so slowed down to find a place I could turn around in. Once about-faced I accelerated back the way we had just come and slowed as we past the barn scene looking for yet another place to turn around and park so I could take the picture I wanted. I slowly pulled first to the right off the roadway then turned toward a small road that presented itself across the main one and there was a spot to stop to get out and take the pictures I wanted. I turned slowly to the left and as I did I saw out of the corner of my eye a motion, a figure, a motorcycle coming over a rise in the road and through the shadow of the adjacent trees...oh my gawd, I cut him off! And I had, he was forced to make the descision to slide into me, steer around at speed or hit me. He chose the steering around but was faced with another car in the lane I had just vacated. He narrowly missed the oncoming car! Narrowly.
I sat there stunned that I had caused this entire scene and that nothing bad had happened. I stared at the rider as he slowed further down the road from where I had come just a minute or so ago. He accelerated back to me and turned around, I lowerred my window to appologize and tell him that I had lost him in the shaddow. "Desole, desole!" I said. This was a very close call for both of us, he just stared at me, then he nodded acceptance and drove away. I breathed a sigh of releif that I hadn't killed him or someone else I didn't even know. That's how it happens with motorcycles. It's the quick and the dead by the hand of someone driving a car unsafely, like myself in those few moments.


___
Digging progress