March 2011 - Anywhere But Here

March 25, 2011July 11, 2022

Chateau de La Verrerie. Loire Valley, France.

A truly wonderful way to experience the Loire Valley is to stay in one of the magnificent Chateaux. Fortunately, a number of these take overnight guests, and one of the best is the Chateau de La Verrerie. Located on the easternmost edge of the Loire near the small village of Aubigny-sur-Nere, it’s a gem. You drive deeper into the countryside until you reach a private road with a gatehouse. And there, at the end of a long road, sitting in splendid isolation at the edge of large lake, stands this ancient chateau.

The chateau is quite magnificent and the bedrooms rather grand. The rooms are large and elegant, but also quirky—seeming very much like bedrooms in a grand manor house rather than hotel rooms. Most of the second floor is given over to large high-ceilinged guestrooms with expansive views, while the main floor contains the historic rooms and art treasures. The owners live in a wing connecting the main house with the chapel. The chateau is mainly of a renaissance style, with some bits of leftover gothic—a grand gothic private chapel and fortified front wall with gate. There’s a large lake to one side, and the fortified wall on the lakeside collapsed some time ago and was not rebuilt—affording the courtyard a charming view. Your hosts are the Comte and Comtesse de Vogüé. You may see the count out strolling with his black Lab behind the family wing of the house. He might even host a pre-dinner cocktail.

While at the Chateau you can stroll the grounds, or borrow a bicycle, or even take a rowboat out on the lake. You can drive to Sancerre and sample the famous wines and spectacular views from this hilltop town. There are also charming villages quite nearby, or you can enjoy a game of Cluedo in the one of the comfortable lounges filled with books and board games (TV reception is non-existent and although wifi has been installed, it’s no match for the chateau’s thick stone walls.)

Dinner is at La Maison d’ Hélene, the little restaurant in a cottage on the chateau grounds. They serve quite good, seasonal, regional fare, and dinner gives one an opportunity for a look at the other guests of the chateau, where those with a flair for the imaginative may get the feeling of having been cast as minor characters in a gothic murder mystery!

Nighttime brings total darkness and silence to the Chateau. It is remote enough that there are no lights on the horizon and the stars are incredible–the brightest stars are dazzling and you can even see the bands of the milky way.

Morning brings croissants and homemade jam amid the antiques of the breakfast room while the resident black lab begs for scraps. You can also opt to take the guided tour of the Chateau’s main rooms and treasures.

We’ve stayed at the Chateau de La Verrerie several times over the past decade, and never failed to be enchanted each time.

www.chateaudelaverrerie.com

March 22, 2011July 11, 2022

Notre Dame de Paris. 2005.

As promised in the entry earlier today, here’s a picture of Notre Dame all cleaned up. This was taken by Clay Doyle in 2005 during Paris’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Note the bit of scaffolding in exactly the same location as 1954.

Île de la Cité, Notre Dame de Paris, 2005.

March 22, 2011July 12, 2022

Vintage Slides: Notre Dame de Paris, 1954.

Some things never change and other things change quite a bit!

We’ve found a cache of vintage slides at the Cayucos Antique & Collectibles Street Fair. We plan to bring you some scans of these vivid slides in the months to come.

To start here’s a picture of Notre Dame. Scaffolding: that’s something that belongs in the things never change category.

However, what are all those cute cars doing parked right in front? … and wow, the whole cathedral needs a good scrubbing! (Stay tuned for a “scrubbed up” version.)

Île de la Cité, Notre Dame de Paris, 1954.

Please click on the picture for a larger version.

March 17, 2011July 12, 2022

White Asparagus and Springtime

I’ve been recently reminded that it will soon be white asparagus season in Europe. Living again in Los Angeles, I truly miss not only the changing seasons, but the various foods and flowers and activities that accompany the seasons. White asparagus was something that I truly looked forward to each year. Not only did it mean that springtime was fully upon us after the cold and dreary winter, but it is uniquely delicious. With the first, very expensive, arrivals in the markets I would buy a bunch and have a dinner party with a first course of the steamed stalks doused in clarified butter. Soon the asparagus would be everywhere, on restaurant menus and in all the markets, growing cheaper as it became more abundant. It’s extraordinarily popular in the Netherlands, Germany and France. I’d eat it often, because I knew that, as spring dissolved into summer, the white asparagus would one day disappear. It would vanish completely, as suddenly as it arrived.

I can get white asparagus in Los Angeles, sporadically, all year round. It’s flown in from around the world, from hot houses and South America. The northern European asparagus is grown locally, and there’s a difference, not only in preparation, but in the stalk itself, between the Dutch, the German, and the French sorts.

It’s hard to get excited about our imported white asparagus, partly because it doesn’t taste the same, and partly, yes, because of it’s ubiquity. Like the tulips, which would arrive in Amsterdam even before the asparagus, often when it was still quite wintry, the seasonality was central. For several months, I could buy 50 tulips, enough to fill the apartment, for a pittance. Every week would bring different varieties and colors to the flower market on the Singel. And then one day they’d be gone, replaced by other flowers. I still think of them when I see the expensive bunches of eight or ten here, already tired from their long flight across the ocean and continent. And I long for bunches of tulips and for asparagus season. —Clay