Tuesday 28 October 2008

Le retour

It was our first trip to Paris as visitors last weekend. Since giving up our resident status and moving to London back in July, I have often wondered how this first visit would feel. Would we be mauled by melancholy and remembrance of things past? Or would it be too soon for that; would we simply fall back into a humdrum residential experience? Both possibilities made me apprehensive.
As it happens, our time was too rushed to take real stock of any reaction. From the moment we picked up the family wagon hire car, the weekend was a tense blur of motorways, ferry crossings, traffic and packing. Saturday, our only full day in Paris, slid by in unsatisfactory fits, shopping aimlessly while I tried desperately to think what I’d rather be doing. It was of course wonderful to see friends – generously warm and welcoming as ever. That was one of the very best things about our brief return: discovering that, for us, the beauty of Paris will no longer just be in the buildings or the river or the light.
Having said that, I did experience one thrilling, “pinch me I’m in Paris” moment. After battling the grey waves of shoppers on the rue de Rivoli, we turned a corner and there, backlit by sudden sun, were the towers of Notre Dame, capped by the distant dome of the Panthéon. Moved almost to tears by this familiarly ravishing sight, I was then delighted by a new marvel: the delicate white Tour Saint-Jacques, finally unwrapped after years of restoration. We sat at its foot sipping cafés express, gazing on the bleached stone tracery, and I realised with relief that I need not fear this Paris ambivalence. We will take the best of both worlds, sashaying like locals along the boulevards, while gasping like tourists at treats (re)discovered.
Let them have cake, and eat it, too.

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Holiday highlights 2

Dinner in Ajaccio, our cheerfully shambling waiter serving wild boar and bitter dark myrtle liqueur

The harrowing hairpinned Gorges de Spelunca, and the relieved rush getting out of the car unscathed

Square towers squatting on warm rocks reflected in bright gentle blue

Close encounters of the cloven-hoofed kind driving through unhurried trips of mountain goats

High granite picnics and crushed wild mint

Following a liquid jade tumble up and up to its round mountain source

Strong local beer tasting of chestnuts and malt

St. Florent sunsets over Cap Corse, shushed by waves on the pebble beach below

Wednesday 15 October 2008

Holiday highlights 1

Impressions from Bordeaux and the Périgord:

Chatty apéritifs with Mum on the thin hotel terrace, hung over the darkening spires of Bordeaux
The shock of grey gothic stone and hot terracotta looking down over Cathédrale St. André
Witnessing opulence restored leaf by gilt leaf in the jewel-like Grand Théâtre
The overblown tumult and exuberance of the Fontaine des Girondins

Picnics watching fish swim lazily in the Dordogne, fixed in the limpid current
Skirting the twilight vineyards, hands sticky with blackberries and figs
Staying with the sun from first to last through the full high arc of blue, day after day
Feeling slightly voyeuristic at vendange watching the harvester tickling the grapes beneath vineleafy skirts
Distant pops of hunters’ shot and treehouse ladders to canopy lookouts
Dining and laughing amongst the vines, evenings dissolving into parlour game idiocy
The postcard perfection of the Château de Montbazillac