Amis
- anciens et nouveaux
Lish has arrived!!!!!!! They did spectacularly with a whole bunch of unfamiliar challenges - solo international travel for the first time, thirty-six hours of it in total; navigating cross-Paris transport; the absolute shitfight that is Montparnasse Station; and not the least, getting off at the correct station with all their luggage!
I'm so proud! And so happy to have them here.
Half a day before Lish turned up, my hostess's parents also arrived from England. They are staying here at the house for a week. The kids are delighted to have Mouse (grandmother) and Gordo (step-grandpa) here.
There was frantic house-prepping in advance of everyone's arrival.
I enjoyed dusting off my flower arranging skills!
We served tea and cake mid-afternoon: Caroline's Victoria sponge, and my Nagi chocolate cake.
I had prepped over the previous couple of days, to make lasagnes - one with beef and one mushroom+puy lentil. Caroline's mother graciously said that it was the best lasagna she had ever had! - which I can't quite believe, but I'm grateful for the compliment!
For dessert, Caroline made a lemon-and-Greek-yoghurt cheesecake, topped with warmed honey and fresh thyme. It was fantastic.
Previous to the weekend, I made a spectacular Friday morning brunch for one (me) - Sausage & Egg on toasted baguette buttered with home-made aioli, with a side of pan-fried leftover mashed potato. Add that divine view and a cup of tea, and it doesn't get much better.
... followed by lunch, also on the terrasse, of Jambon de Bayonne and saucisson, chèvre and Comte cheeses, vinaigrette of tomato and cucumber, red cabbage coleslaw with aioli dressing and cornichons, hard-boiled eggs, and fresh bread.
... followed by the usual Friday night Pizza, Icecream and movie party!
Saturday night was a nice simple collation of veggies roasted in pesto, with haloumi, and a side of couscous.
We drove down to Lasseube - the village where Lish has booked accommodation - and checked out the lay of the land.
Their AirBnB is SO CUTE.
Lish has the upstairs of this little building. It's a studio apartment - bedroom and living room in one room; tiny but sufficient galley kitchen and small but adequate bathroom. Sun-filled front courtyard. Four cats on the premises (who to date won't have a bar of Lish, but the month is young!)
This is the property next door.
Hopelessly picturesque!
So, Lish and the grandies are the old friends mentioned above. I have been busily making new friends!
We were walking up the main (the only) street in Lasseube, talking away. I had been impressing on Lish how particuarly in this tiny village, everyone that passes you in the street, you have to say 'Bonjour'. So a guy goes past us, I say 'Bonjour', he says 'Bonjour' back.
He's not French!
I stiff-arm point at him, and say AMERICAN.
He says guilty as charged!
And we had a lovely exchange! He's married to a French national, and they are now living here. He's worked out how to get a year-long visa, which he is able to renew year by year. They are living their best lives!
He was absolutely delightful and now he's friends with me on WhatsApp!
Unfortunately I don't have a picture to share with you, yet. But I will!
So we continue up the street, checking out the salon de thé (must partake of that, some time soon!), the cool bar, a bunch more very cool door-knockers
(I need to find the door-knocker shop; I most desperately want a French door-knocker as a trip souvenir!),
some cute shops
Finally headed home, to a dinner of roasted capsicum and ninja zucchini tart with eschallot and cherry tomato garnish.
I am trying not to repeat any recipes, the entire time I'm here! This was the same taste.com recipe I did a week or so prior; but I changed the veggies up, so it doesn't count :)
Artistic decoration by Lish!
Alex had been in London over the weekend, and came home bearing gifts of crumpets (which you can't get here) and golden syrup (which you also can't get here). It occurred to me that I could MAKE crumpets, if I had egg rings! So I asked Lish to bring me metal egg rings from home. There was a minor mix-up in the communication and Lish brought my silicon poffertje rings, which are way smaller, but hey, they're rings! So on Tuesday morning, I mixed up a batch of crumpet batter and made crumpets! Mini crumpets!
We had these for late breakfast on Wednesday morning, and for a prototype, they do not suck! I think I've ironed out the kinks in the process now. Will give them another go.
Credit: RecipeTin Eats - Crumpets
On Tuesday Lish and I went up to Pau for the day.
This building was built in 1896
We went into the Église St Jacques:
beautiful stained glass work; and the organ pipes (I am assuming the choir register) at the front of the church and right at the altar.
There is a surprising amount of Irish presence around and about! Alex told me why but I can't remember.
We had been struggling to work out how to do the 'They/Them' pronouns in French, and Alex did some research and came up with this usage:
Il = he
Elle = she
Iel = they (non-binary)
And we found, in a friperie (thrift) shop, THIS on the wall!
Alex and I are getting quite good at using 'iel' when speaking about Lish.
We had a delicious brasserie lunch - I was craving meat, as we have been eating about 90% vegetarian for the last four weeks! I had an absolutely excellent steak with Maître d'Hôtel butter (divine) and chips
We did not need that many chips 😛
Our waiter was called Gwen, which we learned is a Breton name. He comes from here but his father is a Breton. He was super-sympa! I'm going to count him as another new friend!
Then we went to see about hiring a cello for Lish to use while they're here. They had located a luthier who does rentals. We bowled up at the door to his atelier, and Lish said, in carefully-rehearsed French,
Bonjour, je voudrais louer un violoncelle pour un mois, s'il vous plaît.
The guy looked slightly perturbed and responded that usually he only rents his cellos out by 6-month blocks.
Obviously Lish looked crestfallen, and I'm not sure how many of you can resist a crestfallen Lish - this lovely man certainly could not! - and after a moment's thought he shrugged gallically, and said Pourquoi pas, and got out a rental contract!
The next roadblock was where he needed a security deposit. He asked me if I had traveller's cheques. I sort of stared at him and said, Uh, NO, are they still even a thing? ... I have cash, or I have carte bleue (all credit cards here are called cartes bleues, whether or not they are actually blue). After another moment, he shrugged again and just waived the whole deposit. Lish must have a really trustworthy face!
We came all the way back from Pau to Lasseube (it's about 30 minutes) to meet up with the AirBnb guy and get the keys to the accommodation, and drop the cello into the cool - then back past the house to pick up Lish's passport, and then back up to Pau to the airport to collect the rental car.
... Which, because of all of the to-ing and fro-ing, had been let out to someone else!
Again with the crestfallen look.
The lady at the counter was super nice. She said she'd tried to call when the appointed hour for collection had come and gone. Unfortunately calls aren't going through, because the phone is on an e-Sim for the duration of the trip - we are not using our Australian numbers.
She fiddled around in her system and found a car, slighly bigger, slightly more expensive, then fiddled some more and managed to get the surcharge down some.
Lish is now the proud driver of a spanking new, deep blue, VW Golf five-speed manual.
There was a certain amount of freaking out in the carpark (not me!), not the least when we couldn't even get the thing to turn on!!! I finally worked out that it's a push-button ignition, but it won't ignite UNLESS you have the clutch pushed all the way in. Then freaking out at the gear stick being on the wrong side. Lish kept trying to change gears with the driver's door-handle 😝
Lish drove around the car park a few times, just to get the feel of it, but then eventually it was time to just bite the bullet and actually go out into the traffic. With the roundabouts that go anti-clockwise instead of clockwise. In peak-hour traffic, by this time. Oon the wrong side of the road. With a gear-stick for the wrong hand. What could possibly go wrong???
I drove slowly in front and Lish followed. Actually the peak-hour traffic was probably a good thing, because everything was slower than usual.
Aside from driving too close to the gutter, which I totally also did when I first got my car, Lish did really well, and we made it back without incident.
Grandpa Gordo had opted for dinner duty, and made mushroom risotto! We were not hungry after our big lunch, but I did sample the risotto, and it was very decent.
After the kitchen had been cleaned up, Lish and I headed down in two cars to Lasseube, where we had a cuppa and watched a couple of episodes of our TV programmes. Then I came back to Clos de Gaye - narrowly missing what looked like a weasel, on the road!!! Add that to the list of creatures I have met on this trip!
* * *
I will write another post of the rest of this week, after tomorrow (or more likely after Sunday). For now, I need beauty sleep, before we welcome some more new/old friends (new to me, old to Caroline) for lunch tomorrow. I have an early supermarché and boucher run first thing in the morning, and then a ton of cooking!
Bisous!
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