A week or so ago, I drug my husband out of bed at 6 AM so I could get photos of the Senaque Abbey in good sunlight before the lavender was all gone. It is one of the most famous places in Provence as fields of lavender run up to the old abbey providing wonderful photos. So we get there and darn if the abbey isn’t in a valley with a big hill blocking the sun. I took photos anyway and we hung around for 45 minutes and still the sun wasn’t on the abbey or the lavender. It was very peaceful and still there and we were the only ones around and got to hear the bell in the tower chime for an early morning mass. I had to photoshop the heck out of the photo to get any color. I will try again next year for a photo and not bother getting up early.

Water
Chapter 10

November is a rainy month in Provence. It rained so much last year in November that the laying of our foundation was delayed for months and, once again this year, November was proving to be wet. Every morning we woke up to gray skies and pouring rain. I understand this is one of the reasons vineyards do so well here with the combination of heavy autumn rains and hot dry summers with the sun baking the roots under the rocky soil, leading to juciy grapes and the famous wine. There was a lot of flooding in the south of France with Montpellier getting more rain in two days than it usually did in two months. Marseille had massive flooding as well with loss of lives.
At least, being situtated on a hill, we didn’t have to worry about water flowing into the house as I had seen on TV. We were elevated enough that most water should just flow under us and around us. We had several worries, however. Our neighbor above us had just installed one of those prefabricated swimming pools and with all of the rain I could picture it sliding down into our yard if the soil and large rocks didn’t hold it. Maybe we wouldn’t have to build our own swimming pool after all-we could just use theirs and landscape around it. But, in the end, it held.
We badly need rain gutters which aren’t allowed in our area. I suppose they ruin that “Luberon look”. When we opened or closed the shutters every morning and evening the water fell from the roof to our heads. Also, water made its way into our garage, even with a newly built water drainage system around our house. A small lake formed in front of our house, but at least we could now get into our garage so we didn’t have to trudge through the mud to enter the front door. We had a river of water running down one side of our house going where the swimming pool would eventually be. I could foresee a lot of work needing to be done to redirect the water flow and I was sure it wouldn’t be cheap.
I started noticing that the toilet wasn’t flushing well. Finally, one morning, it didn’t flush at all, but dumped water on the floor. The plumber came out later in the day, removed the toilet, tinkered around and then said he would have to come back the next day with a roto-rooter type device. It had been pouring all day and he had tracked large amounts of mud and rocks into the house. He had also gone into our bathroom and done some work under the sink. The place was a mess. We did a minimal clean up and had to brush our teeth in the kitchen sink. Luckily, the toilet upstairs seemed to be working fine. Maurice was really upset that this was happening but I told him that, in my experience anyway, there were often some sort of debris in the plumbing pipes dropped there during work on the house. I’d had to have plumbers out to a new house in the States as well. Luckily, we weren’t able to see into our plumbing future at this time or we would have been plunged into a dark depression.
The plumber returned the next day and did his thing with the rotto-rooter, making a huge mess once again. I hadn’t done the acid wash needed on the bathroom floor tiles yet as I had just finished painting the bathroom and was really glad as I think I would have had to have done it all over again. I still needed to one more coat of paint in the water closet and was glad that hadn’t been done either when I saw his black handprints on the wall. He was really a slob. He told my husband that we should have elevated our house more-that that was one of the problems with the toilet. I guess he meant that we needed more gravity for it all to work well. The toilet seems to work alright after he left, but I had a feeling the problem wasn’t really taken care of. He told us that if what he did didn’t work, he would have to pull up some of the tile, maybe the shower and tub, and dig some holes to get to the pipes. Now that’s depressing.
The next morning, after the plumber’s visit, I could see the toilet having the same problem it did before any work was done. At night I can hear a double glurging sound, glurg-glurg, and I imagine some sort of underground, snake-like animal slowly dying, emiting it’s death rales. We called the plumber, as well as the house supervisor, to try and get someone out to solve the problem but were told he was fully booked for the entire week. I wondered if they knew what is going to be involved, knew that it would be expensive and don’t want to bother. I imagined that we would have to get a plumber on our own to take care of the problem.
If I could only flush the toilet without praying it was going to work, I would be one happy woman.

A little market shop in Gordes

Favorite French Recipes

I’ve developed a complex in France. It has to do with cooking and the fact that I am an American. Many French assume that Americans can’t cook, or at least cook anything that they would want to eat. On a walk in our neighborhood we stopped to talk to a nice man about the progress of his swimming pool. I should say, Maurice stopped to talk to him while I stood there, mostly mute, trying to catch all they were saying. I had put some osso bucco in the oven before we left and I looked at my watch and realized that we needed to get back so it didn’t overcook. Maurice told our French neighbor this and this nice man expressed surprise that I knew how to cook this dish, even though it is Italian and not one of the famous French dishes. Too bad I didn’t have him over to taste how good it was.
This isn’t the only time something like this has happened. We had some French friends over for a quick meal before we went to our village to see a little musical entertainment. I made a salad and a quiche. They took a bite of the quiche and the lady actual had the nerve to ask me if I had help making it, like I wasn’t capable of making a quiche by myself since I was an American. I was glad I was able to surprise them.
Somehow, the French are under the impression that Americans are bad cooks. I wonder where this comes from? Maybe from years before when we used to scandalize the French in restaurants by asking for ketchup or drinking coke with our meal?
I’ve become a little paranoid when cooking for French visitors, even my husband. I never know when he is going to get that look on his face that makes me feel like I am a culinary failure. I am being weighed in those French scales of hundreds of years of tradition and famous food.
Anyway, I have been trying French dishes since coming to France and while I am far from being at the professional level, I thought I would periodically share some of my favorites. I have found that some of the best dishes I have made are the most simple and that fresh ingredients is usually the reason why. The French don’t use processed foods in their cooking. You won’t find any canned cream of mushroom or chicken soup in the recipes, nor that dried onion soup mixed on top, all of which I used to use regularly.
We’ve had a surplus of zucchini from our garden and found this recipe so we could use some of it. We like it better than the ratatouille that we usually make.

Zucchini and Tomato Bake (Tian Provencal)

1 Tbsp olive oil (plus more for drizzling)
1 large onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 pound tomatoes, cut in slices
1 pound zucchini, cut in slices, diagonally
1 tsp dried herbs de Provence
1 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat oil in a heavy saucepan over low heat and cook the onion and garlic for about 20 munutes until soft and golden. Spread over the base of a shallow baking dish. Use a pretty one, if you;ve got one.
Cut the tomatoes and zucchini into slices.
Arrnage alternating rows of zucchini and tomatoes over the onion mixture and sprinkle with herbs, cheese and salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil then bake for about 25 mintues until the vegetable are tender. (Arrange the tomatoes in the center of the dish and surround them with the zucchini for a really pretty dish. We use more Parmesan cheese and olive oil than is called for.)

St Remy is a very pretty little town near Avignon. It advertised a festival with a bull run. I really wanted to see how it was done. It involves horses and just a few bulls running down the street at a time, from what I’ve read. I guess there is a chance the bulls can run into the crowds lining the street and we saw big fences that were to be put up for the occasion but we never did get to see any bulls. I wan’t willing to hang around for four hours until it started. We did see a parade involving huge horses all linked together with a giant rope.

Some of the horses.

Nostradamus was born in St Remy. This statue of him is on top of a fountain. I don’t like to read of possible future happenings, so am not familiar with much of what he wrote.

I liked this tile on the outside of a shop by the same name.

A few minutes outside of St Remy, are these old Roman structures which fascinate me. Across the road is an excavation of an old Roman settlement that had been built on top of a Greek town. This is also the area where Van Gogh was in a hospital recovering from the ear cutting incident. He did many painting while here.

I don’t have these steps in my yard, but I wish I did. These were in a Provence village named Joucas.

I am now back in Provence enjoying the warmth and blue skies.

Building A House In Provence
Part 9
The Dining Room Table

We had a really nice kitchen, but no table to eat at. Even when our furniture arrived from Texas we would’t have a table as I sold it before we moved. We don’t live near a big city, or even a large town. The nearest village has 300 people and not one shop. Aix is around 45 minutes away if the traffic is flowing, which it seldom seems to do. I kept hoping we would find a table at some sort of used furniture store somewhere in Provence but we had no luck.
We made a trek down to a huge industrial area right outside of Aix. Almost every store selling anything for homes or home repair can be found there. The traffic can be a nightmare and even the famous round abouts don’t handle the flow well. I always dread going here but we often end up at some store in the complex, such as a huge Castorama, that will usually have what we need being similar to the Home Depot in the States for home improvement projects. We had to have a dining room table as we were really tired of eating off of our coffee table, so gathered up our courage and set off on our search. We found a parking place with difficulty-this place is always packed- and walked around the area going in many stores. We found one table we liked but the price was more that we wanted to pay and the store manager wouldn’t deal with us no matter how we tried. In fact, the table had been several hundred dollars cheaper when Maurice had seen it about 6 weeks earlier. So we left without our table.
We needed book shelves really badly as well and while looking at many in several stores, I couldn’t get Maurice to pick some and buy them. He wanted to see as many as he could, think about it, and then come back and buy his selection. I am not this type of shopper. I want to get in, buy what I need, and get out. I don’t want to return if at all possible. Maurice does the same thing with paint. Instead of buying all that we need at once, he only gets one or two containers at a time. He did the same thing with the shelves and poles we needed for the closets. We need to fix four closets but had only done two because of this, I call it strange, habit. We have to spend the money anyway so why not just bite the bullet and do it? It one of those things in marriage where you look deep into the eyes of your loved one and swear you see another life form there.
When we got home, three hours later, without a table, paint, or bookshelves, Maurice decided to look at the possibility of buying a dining room table on the Internet. This is what we ended up doing. It is a little scary just looking at a photo and picking it out, but it costs a lot less than the store where we were, there is free delivery and they will even put it together for us as a promotional gimick. I’ve never bought a dining room table before that wasn’t assembled which gives me pause. It didn’t arrive for several weeks but, in the meantime, our furniture from Texas arrived, and we had an “elegant” folding card table to eat at. I was really curious to see what would arrive.
Several weeks later two men delievered our table. It wasn’t bad for something picked out via a photo on a computer screen. It has a sort of “farm table” look, can seat eight people, and 6 more or so with extensions. We only bought four chairs to begin with and will have to order some more somewhere down the road. What a pleasure to have a table and matching chairs when eating a meal. It seems like decadent luxury after holding our plates in our laps while sitting on ratty plastic chairs.

We’ve had some beautiful days in Paris this week. Here is the pyramid at the Louvre sparkling in the sun.

This is the spiral staircase inside the lobby of the Louvre. There is an interesting round column in the middle which is the elevator that takes those in wheelchairs or with babies in strollers down to or up to the entrance.

Chapter Fourteen
Top-Less In France

When most men think of Club Med, that vacation resort found all over the world that the French seem enamored of (”Have you seen their buffet?!”) or the Côte d’Azur, they probably think of beautiful women languishing on the beach, and all of these women are yes, topless. The French are known for this, although I know for a fact not all French women go topless. However, there are enough on the beach to continue what I am sure is a wonderful fantasy for many American men and boys. I was in Tahiti years ago and we stayed next to a Club Med where I kept finding my sons trawling up and down the beach not even trying to hide the fact that they were there to stare at the topless female flesh.
I have seen a few women in France going topless at places other than the beach. On my first boat trip down the Seine, along with other tourists to see the sights, I happened to look towards the houseboats tethered to the side of the river and there, in all her glory, was a rather spectacular woman, not the svelte, model-thin Parisian many think of, but a woman way over 150 pounds basking topless in the sun, with each breast looking like a half-empty sack full of fifty pounds of sand on each side. Did she mind that at least half the boat was looking at her and probably taking photos? “Au contraire.” Was she French? I’ll never know. But she had an air of enjoying being looked at. If we had a problem with her nudity, she certainly didn’t. It was our problem, not hers.
It isn’t unusual to see a topless lady on the roof across the street from me taking the sun and the woman directly across from my apartment never closes her drapes when she dresses or undresses. When I saw a man one story up from her smoking a cigarette in his underwear and looking into my window I made sure from then on that my drapes were always closed, even if I was fully clothed.
I don’t know. It is just different here in France. I know we have topless clubs and nudity in America, but you don’t find many women willing to go topless on a beach. Perhaps that’s why we have to many clubs. Most American advertisements seem fairly mild, too, compared to those I see here. Perfume, deodorants and bath gels seem to be advertised by totally nude women with strategically located shade here and there. Come to think of it, cars, telecom services and ice cream use nudity as well. I think I’ve seen a few bare backs in the States advertising shower gels, but they never turn completely around as they do in France.
On a slightly different note, if you are ever in Paris and strolling down the streets, take notice of how many lingerie stores there are. On a street near the Opéra, I counted six different lingerie stores. What does this tell us? Are the French fixated on sex? Do the women feel seduction is important, that looking sexy - in private - is important? Is this tied in any way with the nudity in advertising? Inquiring minds want to know.
It is quite clear that most movies in France are made by men, for men. You’re barely fifteen minutes into a movie before the pouty-lipped beauty will be happily removing her bra.
Maybe it’s because I’m an American that I even think about all of the toplessness here. Do I have a poor body image? Actually, I felt worse about my body when I lived in the States. In fact, when it came to men, I felt invisible for the most part. Men in France seem to enjoy women more and I often feel attractive in France. One day I was riding my bike in a T-shirt and jeans. I wore a baseball hat and no makeup. And remember, I’m a grandmother. I did not look great. I was slowly rolling along the sidewalk when I saw a little old man hobbling his way towards me, bearing his weight on his cane. I saw him look right at me and then suddenly a twinkle came to his eye, and then he smiled and held out his thumb as if to hitch a ride with me as I passed. It was a charming moment that only would happen in France. Maybe that’s where all the lingerie and beauty products come in: women simply want to look their best for those unexpected moments.
Paris is full of thin women wearing linen sheaths and Channel sunglasses, and a scarf tied creatively around their necks. People are always asking how they do it. How do they eat those three and four-course meals that last two hours (it used to be three) every day and stay so slim? I had one of those thin women over for dinner once and I know how they do it now: They eat less. What a surprise! I out ate and out drank her for every course of our meal.
There is a delightful type of woman I see occasionally on the metro or buses. She is always older, appearing to be around sixty or so. Her hair, never untidy, had recently been coaxed into a fashionable style by her hairdresser. She is always thin and trim. But what I like seeing are her clothes. Just the other day a lady boarded the metro, stepping on carefully and sitting with her legs just so. She had on a red suit that could have been designer, and probably was, and wore a beautiful white blouse underneath. A red and white hat was perched on top of perfect hair, white earrings were clipped to her ears, red and white shoes completed the look, and, my favorite part, she wore red mesh gloves on dainty hands that clasped a red and white purse. She was perfection in every way. I wondered how long it had taken to put her ensemble together and if she dressed that way all the time. A lot of women, myself included, don’t have the time, inclination, or money to pay so much attention to what they wear. But the more of these women I see in Paris, the more I am beginning to understand that looking “chic” is cultural.
I think most of the thin women everyone talks about are found in the wealthier parts of Paris where they can afford things like personal trainers and dietitians, not to mention those Chanel sunglasses. In my part of Paris, I see a lot of overweight women sitting tiredly on the bus across from me, shopping bags at their feet. These are not women who work out every day. Still, who knows; maybe on the weekend they will go to the beach and work on their tans without their swimsuit tops.
One day I was sitting on a beach near the town of Deauville with my husband. Several women there were topless. I said, “Tell me the truth, Maurice. When women are topless, do you, being a Frenchman and having been around it all of your life, notice? Do you notice if a woman is large or small or lopsided?” I must admit I’ve never seen him staring at topless women on a beach, or anywhere else. He admitted to me that, yes, of course he looked and that he did notice. After all, he’s a man. Later, when he suggested that I give toplessness a try I said, “No way!” I may be living in France, but I’m not willing to try that part of it. Not yet anyway.

I’m not sure if this is grafitti or not, but I discovered it on the side of a restaurant in the Marais. It’s rather oriental looking to me.

Chapter Thirteen
Frost-Less In France

The only time I have been cold in Paris is in the winter out on the streets.
The rest of the time, I roast. I had never been hot-blooded before. I spent most of my youth cold, always sneaking around and turning down the air-conditioner or turning up the heat. As I got older I noticed that I wasn’t as cold as often - except when I lived in Dallas. I learned to never go to the grocery store or a movie in shorts when living there. I also learned to never forget to take a sweater for the movies. We are talking glacial. I would be in front of a screen sitting on my hands to warm them up or putting my hand over my nose to prevent frost bite.
In the States, I worked in the operating room for many years as a nurse. Because the doctors and scrub nurses are wearing double gowns, masks and caps and standing under the hot operating room lights, they often request that the temperature in the room be turned down to Arctic levels. I had to wear a special jacket as I was outside in the periphery of the room and special efforts had to be made to keep the patient warm as well.
Then I moved to Paris. We went to a movie and the temperature outside was in the thirties. I had on boots, jeans, a sweater over my shirt, a coat, hat and gloves. On the metro I started sweating but we were soon sitting in front of the screen where I slowly began removing layers. I even eventually removed my boots to cool my hot feet on the cooler floor. The place was like an oven. When I went outside I was immediately chilled in the cold air. I came to find that this was the norm for Paris. You may be dressed up for winter outside, but enter a store and you feel like you are in Arizona and spend the time in the store carrying your coat.
The French are very big at wearing scarves. I once saw a jaunty little dog one cold winter day wearing not only a leopard skin jacket, but a small scarf tied around his scrawny neck. Yes, even the dogs are stylish here. Of course, the women look fabulous in scarves and have all sorts of intricate ways to tie them that are works of art. I don’t see as many in the summer as even a Parisian can get a little hot. In winter, everyone wears one, usually a wool scarf. My husband won’t leave the apartment without one if it is cold outside. I think he feels he will become deathly ill if his neck should become exposed to the cold. The scarves do look very nifty tied and tucked into a coat. I bought one to fit in with the crowd and tried to get used to tying it around my neck but got horribly uncomfortable with it on when I got on a bus or subway and it wasn’t long before I untied it and lost it. I do have a beret that I will pull down over my ears for warmth. The wind can really make your ears feel cold.
Then there are the summers. Ask any Frenchman if it gets hot in Paris in the summer and he or she will say no, it is only uncomfortable at the most for ten days in the entire season. In addition, you will be assured, all of the old buildings in Paris are built with very thick walls that keeps the heat out and the rooms cool. Shutters can be closed when the temperatures rise and opened when the sun goes down, keeping the room at a comfortable level. At the most, all that is needed is a fan that won’t ever really be used.
What a load of bull. I am here to tell you that it is hot a lot more than ten days in the summer. I have staggered home with a heavy load of groceries, stumbled into our apartment and plopped myself directly in front of our electric fan waiting to start feeling cool. The windows are wide open on either side of the apartment and I wait with anticipation for a crossbreeze that never occurs. I think in any large city with all of the asphalt and cement it feels even hotter than the temperature actually is. And the nights can be agony with the little fan working its heart out to cool down the temperature of the room, and sheets pushed down to the foot of the bed. Only around 3 or 4 a.m. does the room finally start cooling down. You also pray you don’t have to close the window because a party is going on across the courtyard leading to an extremely difficult night.
We were over for dinner at a relative’s of Maurice one summer night. It was in the 90’s and that is really hot in Paris. The room where we were eating dinner was was extremely hot. The windows were open and it helped some, but not a lot. The husband couldn’t stand the noise from the streets and closed the windows. I couldn’t believe it. My hair started frizzing, my neck became hot. I surreptitiously dipped my napkin in my water to try and cool my neck and forehead. Finally, the wife insisted he open the windows. I couldn’t wait to get home and take a cold shower.
Before I married Maurice, I half jokingly told him that I would only marry him if he bought an air-conditioner for our apartment. He didn’t do it right away. We went through one summer without one. I survived but I was crabby about it. No metro, trains, or buses were air-conditioned by anything more than opened windows and the French class I was taking at the time was like a furnace. I came home dying for a cool room. Finally, our second summer in Paris we bought a little unit. What a difference! It doesn’t sit half in and half out the window like the units I was used to in Texas. There is a little box, which I assume is a compressor that goes outside. A hose goes through a hole in the window to the unit shaped like R2D2 from Star Wars inside which moves around on wheels. I haven’t kept track of the number of times we have used it but I am going to next summer. I am hoping to prove that the heat here lasts more than ten days, but last summer’s “catastrophe” where thousands of eldery died from oppressive heat has probably proved it for me.
There are no screens on the windows in Paris, or the rest of France, or even Europe, that I can see. It is just not the custom to use screens, or maybe they just don’t believe in them. If it is cool or warm enough you open the windows and let the air circulate. I’ve gotten used to doing that and was surprised that, in Paris anyway, “bug strainers” weren’t needed. Very seldom does a fly or mosquito make it into our apartment. I don’t know if it’s because the streets are kept so clean or if they put some sort of insecticide in the water, as mentioned earlier. I thought that maybe all of the flies went to Sweden for milder temperatures but discovered that, indeed, most of them were waiting for me in Provence when I arrived.
Of course, the summers in Provence where we often go are much worse. When you go out exploring for the day you come back totally wiped out by the heat. All you dream about is floating around on a raft in some swimming pool like a frog on a lily pad. You think that when you return to Paris that the heat won’t seem so bad, but it’s awful.
I am slowly getting used to the heat in Paris. I was amused when the temperature this June “plummeted” to the 70’s and it rained, so all of the cafés with outside terraces fired up their gas heaters. God forbid that we get chilled. I was seated in a nonsmoking area of a restaurant not long ago and the room had an air-conditioner. It felt wonderful. It wasn’t long, however, until the French people in the room were cold and had the owner turn the temperature up - just as I was settling in and feeling comfortable. I don’t turn on our air-conditioner unless it gets above 80 degrees, as I am now okay with just the fan going. Paris may make a Parisian of me yet.
The summer after I wrote the above, Paris, as well as the rest of Europe had the hottest summer on record. Over 10,000 people in France died from the heat which reached as high as 106 several days. I started using our air condtioner in May and didn’t stop until the middle of August, thanking God the entire time that Maurice had indulged me in my wish. Many angry postings were made by people on various Internet boards in the States about their trips to France and how they suffered without air conditioning in any of the hotel rooms they had stayed in. When the owners of these places were questioned about buying units for the rooms, they would just shrug it off and say the heat wasn’t normal this year, which is probably true, but I believe they are just being cheap. I realize, of course, that an air conditioner will raise the electricity bill to high amounts, but this could be paid for by increasing the room rates. Or maybe EDF, France’s state-run electric company, should get their act together enough so electricity doesn’t have to be so costly. I have no doubt that not one B&B or Gite owner bought an air conditioner anywhere in France. Fans yes, but not air conditioners. I heard on the news that none of the French hospitals have them. Can you imagine being ill, having had surgery, and being in a bed in a room which is probably 100 degrees? Or, working in an operating room for that matter.
Many photos were taken of the poor hot tourists whose feet dangled in various fountains all over the city. I imagined what their rooms must have been like at night. I met a couple who were lucky enough to have an air-conditioned room but were awakened at three in the morning when the automatic timer turned it off. They never were able to get the manager to disconnect the timer. People on the Internet boards were posting messages saying France was uncivilized. It needed to follow the example of America and air condition everything, especially places where the tourists were staying, like hotels . Then the blackout came. But this time, it was on the East coast of America, the “civilized” country. It just seemed rather interesting how everything came to a standstill in the States when this happened. No one was able to function. Of course, in France, the metros and trains would stop running, but most of France would continue on just as it does on a day-to-day basis, in their normal way. Maybe the old ways are still the best. I don’t know. I do know that I always pack an electric fan when Maurice and I go out of town. He may be embarrassed to carry it into our room but he sure doesn’t complain at night when it is blowing away, cooling us off.