Hurray for Cassoulet
October 24, 2008
Once inside the old city of Carcassonne we were hungry for more than medieval history. Like invaders of times long past, we wanted to take the city for all its bounty.
After a quick scouting mission of the many restaurants, cafés and brasseries we decided on a quiet spot with a promising upper outdoor terrace. Restaurant La Tour Davejean 
had an extensive menu, but we wanted to try the regional specialty: cassoulet.
We started with a local bubble, a brut Blanquette de Limoux from Salasar (€22) to celebrate our first day in the South of France.
“Le menu,” is always a great way to order in France. You pay a set fee and get to choose a first course, a main and a dessert. Sometimes coffee is even included. Our €16 menu started with a choice of salads. There was a mixed garden salad, a salad topped with smoked herring and a salad with baked brie. They were all fresh and lightly dressed.
Cassoulet is an edible medieval experience. I have been reading The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel, a story of people who lived in caves after the ice age. They rendered fat from large animals, including mammoths, to use in cooking to make it through the winter. I was reminded of this story as I ate the cassoulet. It was full of fat and protein and was a meal of mammoth proportion that would definitely stick to your ribs in cold weather.
The dish is mainly large pale beans. They are cooked with sausage, a duck leg, and a generous amount of duck fat. The French version of baked pork and beans — it’s tasty, but very heavy. It is almost necessary to wash this down with some red wine, which we did.
My father, who can’t eat pork, decided instead to order the breast of 
duck served with orange sauce and accompanied with zucchini and roasted potatoes.
There was quite a list of desserts to choose from, the only problem was finding a place to fit the dessert after stuffing ourselves full of cassoulet. There was a chocolate cake, like a rich brownie served with whipped cream and crème anglais. There was also an apple tart. Or for those who have difficulty with decisions, there was a mixed dessert plate with a taste of everything and a café espresso to wash it all down.
The total for five to have a full lunch, including two bottles of wine, dessert, coffee, gratuity and tax was €124 (C$200-ish or about $40 each).
Details
Restaurant La Tour Davejean
Tel: 04-68-71-60-63
32 Rue du Plo.
La Cite, Carcassonne
Going Medieval in Carcassonne
October 24, 2008
I awake in the morning nestled into my comfy, flowered bedding and pull the curtains open to enjoy the view of the yellow hills with their patchwork of green trees. A waft of lavender enters the room from the patch below that is drying.
Soon there’s a tap on my door and it’s time to go down for petit dejeuner. Our hostess Jacqueline has laid the table with bread, croissants, yoghurt, fruit and preserves. She greets us with a sunny ‘bonjour.’ 
Jacqueline told us that it’s been really dry this year, which explains the yellowed hills and the dry lavender. The temperature is around 12 or 14°C today, but Jacqueline says it has only recently dropped so low. Apparently last week is was warm, sunny and beautiful.
Soon she brings coffee with hot milk and we sip our café crème while browsing through brochures of the area’s many attractions. La Cité, the medieval city of Carcassonne is the first order of business for us today.
On our approach to the 2,500-year-old, walled city we had to pull over and appreciate the grandeur of the site. It’s Europe’s largest fortress and inspired Walt Disney as the model for the castle in Sleeping Beauty.
It’s a clear day and we are able to look south to the Pyrenees mountains. Today the Spanish border is about 120 kilometres south, but before the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 it was just outside Carcassonne, which might explain the care they took to fortify the city. Carcassonne protected the French border.
In the Roman Era (give-or-take a few decades 100 BC to the mid-400s AD) Carcassonne made some good bank thanks to a handy location on the Toulouse-Narbonne trade route. It had pretty good defenses back then, but they were beefed up in 1226 when the king of France took over.
For an invader in 1226, the specs of Carcassonne must have seemed like Danny Ocean going over the plan to rob the casinos in Ocean’s 11. Carcassonne has a great lookout from its location high above the Aude valley — sneaking up undetected would have been a challenge.
Visigoth, Saracen, Frankish or other assailants first faced curved walls that were fitted with defensive battlements. If they found a way to pass the outer walls, there was an open space to cross. Not so bad, right? Wrong. The castle’s crossbowmen had an easy shot to pick off footmen.
Next there was a moat with a drawbridge that could be lifted as another line of defense. If invaders braved the waters they faced a narrow entrance flanked by twin towers that housed numerous holes for firing. There were more “murder holes” that allowed defenders to shoot down from a wooden gallery at the top. Also, there was an iron grid that would drop down to close off the passage and keep the castle safe.
Like Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13, invaders still managed to break through the defenses every now and then. Over the years the city has been a Moorish conquest, a feudal stronghold, a Cathar citadel and a frontier fort. These days, the site is a tourist attraction. Entry through the outer walls and over the moat is free. Visitors today are welcomed with shops and restaurants. It’s a great place to get a taste of cassoulet or to buy some local artisan handiwork.
There is a museum to visit. It’s located in the heart of the old castle and it’s worth the €7.50 (C$12-ish) entry fee. Many of the castle’s foundations date back to the Roman era, most of the walls and towers are original but the upper sections are courtesy of architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th century rebuilding project.
The old city fell into ruin after the Roussillon region became part of France in 1659. In 1844 Viollet-le-Duc came to the rescue. The restorations of the city and its medieval look went on for about 50 years, with architect Paul Boeswillwald completing the work after Viollet-le-Duc’s death in 1879. It has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 1997.
Sundown at Calvayrac
October 17, 2008
(Sunday Oct. 5, 2008)
Shortly after 7:00 I look out the window of my bedroom at Calvayrac and notice that the hillside is ablaze. The sun is setting and casting a beautiful glow. I decide to take a walk to the west to get the full effect. The wind of the last few days is gone and it’s still a very comfortable temperature of nearly 20°C.
As I set out, Belle, the golden retriever of the house gives me a bark to let me know she’ll accompany me down the dirt road. Like moths to the light, Belle and I are drawn towards the ball of fire dropping behind the rolling hills in the distance.
The first line of hills blocks the full view to the left, so I climb up through the field to the top of a small mount. From this vantage point there is a panorama of all the many different ranges. The sharper hills to the south are so far off in the distance that the jagged line they leave on the horizon looks like a pattern a child might cut into a paper snowflake with a dull pair of scissors in a primary art class, although they are black instead of white.
The thin, swirling cloud cover is just enough to bring out a different palate of colours each minute the sun sinks lower in the sky. At first, the sky is still quite blue and the clouds near the sun turn buttery yellow and warm peach, while the clouds further away are a cooler pink and periwinkle.
As it lowers, the sky heats up to blazing shades of hot yellow gold, orange, and a fleshy salmon. Jade, the granddaughter of our hostess calls out to Belle from the house in the distance.
Belle obediently heads home and I take her cue. The insects serenade me as I stop to take a few last photos from the dirt path of the cool, dark sky now beautiful shades of purple and blue.
A Warm Welcome Dinner
October 17, 2008
A few hours after our arrival to Calvayrac B&B, we went downstairs to the dining room and were greeted outside by our host Gérard. He walked us into the dining room and we found the interior of the home to be quite grand, considering the exterior is true to its origins as a farm house. It was originally built in the times of the Spanish inquisition in the 13th or 14th century.
Gérard stood at the head of our table while we drank our aperitif, chardonnay with a generous splash of crème cassis. The wine was dry and the cassis made it sweet and slightly tart which was a suitably refreshing start to our meal.
Gérard explained (through my sister’s translation) that the house was originally a small farm cottage with many little rooms. Every family that moved in over the centuries made some changes and modernizations. When he and his wife Jacqueline bought it 20 years ago, they did many, many renovations in the first two or three years. The aging style of the decorating leaves one to believe that they have not made many changes in the décor since the original overhaul in the 80′s.
A great choice that they did made was to open up the entertaining area by taking out the many small dividing walls. The result is a spacious dining room with portraits, paintings, pottery, tapestries and all sorts of artsy treasures. Their decorating style borders between eclectic and cluttered.
Gérard is originally from Burgundy and Jacqueline from the Loire Valley. Before buying Calvayrac they were living in Paris, he as a musician/composer (piano and guitar) and she as a thespian. She has kept that dramatic flame alive and entertains us all by acting out her stories with wild gesticulations.
They are not the only artsy types that have been attracted to the area. Gérard told us they are neighboured by a British painter. The ancient Cathar ruins in the area also attract history buffs and archeologists live across another field.
When Jacqueline discovered my sister is able to speak French she was all chatter. She told us about the friendly wild boar who will be digging up the fields while we sleep. We had passed a party of hunters in the afternoon en route to Calvayrac and she confirmed they were after the wild boar.
However, many of the neighbours are against hunting (as artsy types the world over are). Our hosts prefer to remain neutral since they have a dog, cats and horses. It seems that if you interfere with the hunters, you may find yourself without so many animals after a hunting “accident.”
Politics aside, wild boar is a specialty of the area. It was not on the menu at Calvayrac. We ate braised pork which must have been very slow cooked because it was so tender. It was finished with a delicious dark, savoury sauce. Jacqueline also made fresh pasta with zucchini and a light, simple sauce of butter and garlic.
The wine was a merlot from a local, small producer called Domaine le Fort. It took a while for the palate to adjust to red wine after drinking the aperitif, but after a couple sips it became quite a descent table wine that 
suited the pork dish well. They provided us the brochure and we were excited to see that the bottles cost about €5 (C$8-ish) and you could get 10 litres of the stuff for about €13 (C$20.70).
The cheese course is a French tradition of which I am fond. We had a local chevre (a soft goats cheese), Camembert (which is stinkier, perhaps more ripe, than what I’m used to from the groceries in Canada) and a mild blue cheese with a fairly firm texture called Fourme d’Ambert after the town in which it is made.
For dessert, our hostess made a simple but delicious apple cake, as apples are in season making them easy to come by. I don’t know where French restaurants the world over got the idea that French cooking should be served in small portions. Everything we were served in this French home was plentiful and always encouraged to eat more.
Details:
Domaine de Calvayrac
Carcassonne Bed and Breakfast Accommodation
11290 Arzens, France
http://www.calvayrac.org/
Calvayrac First Impressions
October 16, 2008
When we first flew from Paris to Toulouse we were not quite sure what to expect from the southern area of France we’d decided to visit.
I thought I would share some of our first impressions to give you an idea about what it looked like in the area we stayed.
My sister booked a B&B in the countryside about an hour-long drive from Toulouse. We were very happy to have GPS guidance when we started curving around the country roads.
Enjoy the photos!
French Mythology 101
October 16, 2008
Myths busted:
1. All French people wear berets. So far we have seen a few berets around – mostly in Paris, worn by tourists who were having their pictures taken in front of the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame.
2. French people are snobs. Many people think that the French are not friendly and they don’t like it when you speak to them – even in French. We have not found this to be the case at all. People have been very receptive to us speaking in French or English. They have been forgiving of us when we forget vocabulary or use the wrong verb tense or when we can’t pronounce something properly. Some have even coached us along with support while we try to complete a sentence.
Often servers in restaurants spoke to my sister and me in French and address the others in English – they’re cool with your language of choice. And they have been very helpful with making recommendations, answering questions, and explaining dishes.
3. “Bon matin” is a greeting used to say “good morning.” This may translate from English well, but French people actually greet you in the morning with “bonjour.” However, in the evening “bon soir” is used.
4. French food is small portions. We have been fed so well while we’ve been here that we still have yet to eat a full lunch and dinner. Either we have a small snack for lunch and a full dinner, or we’ve eaten so much at lunch that we can’t eat more than a small dinner. The portions are huge, the courses are multiple and the food is hearty.
Myths Verified:
1. The French love bread and you often see them carrying it around in the streets. Many people also have long loaves in the baskets of their bicycles. We even saw two children who were about as tall as the French stick carrying it home (well, the little girl had a kitten and the boy had the bread). Bread is served for breakfast. Bread is always on your table for lunch or dinner. If you need more, it arrives quickly.
2. The French love wine. It is not very often that we observed a table of French-speakers in a restaurant who did not have a glass of wine on the table. Rosé was pretty common to see on lunch tables, so we picked up the habit too.
Tips for Visiting France
October 16, 2008
1. Rent an apartment in Paris. You end up close to monuments, but still in a residential enough place that you can eat where locals do – not just tourists. You can also save money by eating your breakfast at home before you leave. And if you can’t finish your dinner, you can bring home your leftovers and put them in the fridge (which is also handy for keeping your white wine cool).
2. If you do, indeed, go the apartment route, make sure to bring your own soap, shampoo and conditioner and any other toiletries you might usually leave to a hotel to provide. Towels and bedding should be provided.
3. Buy tickets in advance for any exhibition you want to see, especially the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay. 
The lines are so long and knowing Paris, you’ll be standing in the rain while you wait. If you only have a limited time in Paris, standing in line is no way to spend it. You can buy tickets from your travel agent before you leave home, a day or more in advance from advance ticketing offices at the attraction or you can get a Paris Museum Pass.
- You can buy the Pass online and have the Pass delivered to you before you leave home. It costs €35 (C$55-ish) for a two-day pass that lets you into over 60 museums and monuments in the Paris area. There’s no way you’ll make it to anywhere near that many. But if you’re able to hit d’Orsay (€9.50), Louvre (€9), the tower of the Arc de Triomphe (€9), and the towers of Notre Dame (€7.50) you’ll have broken even on the €35 and saved all the hassle of lines. If you don’t plan to visit that many attractions, many offer advanced ticketing online.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer entrance to the Eiffel Tower. You’ll have to shell out an additional €12 for the elevator to the top, but in my opinion, you can enjoy it more from the park for free. You have a great city view and can see the Eiffel Tower when you’re on top of the Arc de Triomphe.
4. Beware the thieving gypsy children, especially in the metro (subway). They may trick you to open your wallet to see how much money you have, then signal to one up the street whether or not you’ll make a good ‘mark.’ The one up the street will then fleece you (if they decide you have enough on you to make it worthwhile).
We were told by our waitress in a local café that “they’re those poor darlings that you saw on TV five years ago who’d been deserted by their parents in the hospital. And now they’re in France picking our pockets.” We were also warned by the people who rented us the apartment to look out for Romanian gypsies in the metro.
5. Try the Batobus. If you don’t like walking, or you’re tired or you’re with young children or your middle-aged parents, seeing the sights of Paris from the Seine is a great alternative to the Metro, where you’re underground and don’t see much of anything (except, perhaps, thieving gypsy children). One day is €12, for €14 you get a two-day pass. You can hop on and hop off at any of the seven stops:
- Eiffel Tower
- Musée d’Orsay
- St-Germain-des-Prés
- Notre-Dame
- Jardin des Plantes
- Louvre
- Champs-Elysées
6. Know how you like your coffee. Asking for “café” in France is not specific enough.
7. Learn how to use a GPS. Our rental company offered a GPS for an extra €5 per day or you can bring your own and pre-enter your “favourite” locations and be very well prepared once you arrive.
8. Pre-pay underground parking. If you’re driving and you’re using underground parking, you’ll need to pre-pay before you leave. There are no parking attendants to pay on your way out. You find a “Caisse” (it’s not a pop machine) and stick your ticket into the machine. Then you pay what the machine demands and take your ticket back. On the way out, a machine reads your ticket and lets you exit.
9. Service is included in the price of the bill. You don’t need to tip any extra unless you feel the service was above and beyond your expectations.
10. Prepare to picnic. If you’re going to picnic in France, bring some simple implements. It’s not as easy as you might expect to buy plastic cutlery in France. We looked all over and couldn’t find plastic knives and it was a long time before we could find a place to buy a single knife that was not part of a set.
I recommend packing a sharp knife, like a Swiss Army knife (in your checked baggage, of course) and a few plastic knives for spreading cheese or mustard. You may also want to pack a corkscrew (if there is not one on your Swiss Army knife). A little cutting board would have been a great help for a roadside picnic. If you have room, a fully stocked picnic basket would be fantastic … but who has that much room? Paper napkins and plastic cups were no problem to buy. We even found some plastic flutes for our Blanquette de Limoux.
11. Weight your own produce to avoid rejection in the supermarket. When you stock up for your picnic at a supermarket, you will probably need to weigh your own fruit and vegetables. Look for the scales and place your bag on top. Then find the button that has the corresponding picture and name of the fruit you chose.
For example, if you have Gala apples, there will be a picture of Galas that says “Pommes – Gala.” You just push the button and a sticker is printed out with the price. You stick it on the bag and it’s beeped through at the checkout. If you have skipped this step, you’ll be rejected at the checkout and sent back (with some confusion) to print a sticker while the people behind you wait impatiently.
12. Learn how to order your meat. Perhaps due to a lot of tourists from England, a lot of French servers assume that English-speaking people like their meat well done. If you do not enjoy chewing on a piece of shoe leather that was formerly a delicious steak, you need some specialty vocab.
- Cooked very rare: “Bleu” which means hardly cooked at all.
- Rare: “Saignant”
- Medium: “à point”
- These words will work for beef, lamb and duck. Bon appétit!
Benefits of Renting in Paris
October 16, 2008
Booking a hotel in Paris is an expensive affair. If you’re travelling with a few people and have time in advance to do some research, there are many benefits to booking an apartment. You can find apartments that are close to main attractions, but on smaller, more residential streets.
Hotels over three stars started around €250 to €300 per night for anything that appeared to house anything more than a flea. By comparison, the apartment rental cost €270 total and could sleep six comfortably.
It also had a full kitchen and a fridge to chill our wine and beer and we could prepare our own meals (although we usually just snacked at the apartment). Another bonus was the lovely, deep bathtub. We booked about a month and a half in advance.
But the benefits don’t end at your pocketbook. Once you are in a neighbourhood where real Parisians live, you also are beside the local stores and restaurants. You will find the prices lower, the quality better and the experience more genuine.
Where we rented, we were walking distance to Les Invalides and La Tour Eiffel. At the end of our street was GBertrand, a delicious lunch spot. It took us less than five minutes to walk to the nearest Metro stop.
A good place to start your research is at USAParis.com, an association of Parisian vacation rental owners. We ended up renting from HomeTown, an outfit that specializes in the short term rental of Parisian apartments.
Details
HomeTown
17 rue de Choiseul
75002 Paris
www.hometown.fr
Ludovic Michel C.E.O.
Tel : +33 1 47 42 79 09
Ludovic.michel@hometown.fr
Champs Elysees to the Arc
October 9, 2008
From our Batobus stop “Champs Elysees,” we had a meandering 30-minute walk towards the Arc de Triomphe. We strolled at a snails pace enjoying the atmosphere and popping in and out of shops.
The Champs Elysees is the famous shopping avenue in Paris but it is not as inaccessible as Rodeo Drive. Although there are a lot of high-end shops and few-to-no bargains, you can find the Gap and sports shops and other more plebian shopping venues.
Once you arrive at the Arc de Triomphe, find the underground passage – you definitely don’t want to step out into the traffic. Without any fee, you are able to walk around the base of the Arc and visit the grave of the Unknown Soldier. The grave represents all the fallen soldiers who were not identified during the wars.
If you would like to go to the top of the Arc, you can pay for the elevator. It is an interesting view, as there are 12 avenues that all meet at the round-about that circles the Arc. And you have a clear view to the Eiffel Tower and the Siene river.
Cathedrale de Notre Dame
October 9, 2008
Cathedrale de Notre Dame was constructed between 1163 and 1345. It is known for its flying buttresses and the beautiful stained glass windows. A 23-year restoration began in 1845 by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc who, among his many credits, also restored the ancient city of Carcassonne.
They stained glass windows are best viewed from inside the cathedral where you can enter for free. If you’re lucky enough to be there at the right time of day, you can hear the choir performing.
If your schedule does not allow you to visit at those times, it is still worth going inside regardless of your faith. It is a very hushed atmosphere and no one speaks above a whisper and there’s a recording of Gregorian chanting humming in the background.
The Gregorian chant was composed in Rome to enable people to remember prayers, as it was simpler for people if they could learn the words with music. The Catholic Church sent emissaries to cathedrals all over Europe to teach choirs the chant and people would sing them repetitively to learn them.
As you walk through Notre Dame today the chant is still the sound you’ll hear in the background and it remains soothing and hypnotic — but not enough so to convince me to sit face-to-face with a priest in confession.
