Christmas get-away to Nimes

Our Christmas was quiet and different.  No excited grandchildren tearing through gifts again this year.  That will have to wait until next December.  And next year, Lyle should have more free time to really enjoy it, hopefully with a few less job responsibilities.  PLUS...more time to enjoy our newest grandchild (number 6 with number 7 in a few weeks!).  We received the excited call that Tyson Patrick Tollefsrud was born on the 22nd to proud parents Patrick and Tanya.  We can't wait to see him when we go home in January!

I searched the internet for a week to find a place to spend Christmas weekend....to do something special and memorable.  Yes, of course spending Christmas in Paris is a huge wish for many.  But we did that last year, and Lyle needed a few days away from the easily-accessible computer.

A train ride was a must.  Who wants to battle lines and security checks at CDG airport?  The problem was, many Parisians had the same idea.  Train tickets were at a premium, especially to ski areas and southern France, both on our list.  After being told at the ticket office that our Nimes destination was "sold out", more tickets miraculously appeared on the internet the morning of the 24th.  I booked them.

We spent a peaceful Christmas Eve with candles and light supper at home, then walked to the candlelight service at the American Church of Paris.  It was a beautiful service, with carol-singing in both French and English.  The streets were nearly empty on our walk home near midnight.....

On Christmas Day we hopped on the fast TGV train to southern France, to the ancient town of Nimes.  Just a three hour drive took us from a drizzly, cold Paris to bright sunshine and 55 degrees, complete with some palm trees!  We pulled our bags through the neighborhoods to our 16th century townhouse-hotel in the oldest part of the city......a delight for me, but Lyle just shaking his head and wondering what is wrong with the big hotel down the street?

Nimes has a lot of history.....from Gaul to the Romans to the Protestant resistance, I was excited!  After an outdoor lunch next to the ancient Amphitheater,  we were able to go inside for a self-guided tour.

 

This arena, one of the best Roman preserved stadiums, was finished around 80 AD and has a bloody history.  It was used for gladiator games then.....and now for bullfights.

That evening we found one of the rare restaurants that were open and enjoyed "confit de canard"...juicy duck leg.  We were joined by a woman and her 6-year-old son, traveling from Canada and wanting some English-speaking companions to dine with.

The day after Christmas was cooler with a north wind, but we dressed warm and walked through the town....now with a lot more people out enjoying the markets and after-Christmas shopping (still no sales to speak of, though).

But we continued our journey through history, seeing a 3-D movie in a 2000-year-old Roman temple, looking nearly brand new....

......to the ruins of the ancient Temple of Diana.....

......whose stones were used in the 16th century to build the "Jardins de la Fontaine......

We climbed the hill above the city to get a look at the Tour Magne, or the Great Tower....another Roman structure that was part of the wall surrounding the city. We climbed a stairway inside, built in 1843, to get a view over the city.

                                    

                                        

 Nimes was full of history, narrow streets, and palm trees.....a good combination for a weekend away.

 

On Sunday, we relaxed on the train ride back to Paris, gazing at the medieval castles and vineyards of the Languedoc....

Finding Christmas

So what do the wives do when their hard-working husbands work 12+ hour days? The work day here goes into the night....and the night comes early up here in the higher latitudes (around 4:30 pm).  So the days are short and the nights are long.  Many of us combat home-sickness  at this special time of year.  The week before Christmas was not filled with office parties, nor  frenzied shopping trips, nor wrapping presents.  It was more of a quiet Christmas time, watching the way the French do it.  No carols to speak of on the radio, no Christmas commercials on TV enticing you to buy what you don't need.  Neighborhood streets are lit up overhead, but rarely do you see apartment buildings and windows with lights.  No, it is a different scene here.....private, I guess.  There are no pre-Christmas sales, either.  Those sales come in January, so it is hard to want to spend precious euros when nothing is on sale.

But I kept busy.  Ordering presents over the internet, baking some cookies, going to the Galeries Lafayette to see the Christmas windows.  Lyle works....I play.  It doesn't seem fair, does it?

The huge tree at the Galeries Lafayette

Our little tree

Enjoying great desserts with my International Club

Singing Christmas carols with the Coffee group from Church

Walking along the Seine to see.....

..."The Sound of Music" (in English even) at the Chatelet Theater with.....

 my friend Amy and our French teacher, Michelle

We learned the ins and outs of getting "cheap seat" tickets from Michelle, getting 20 euro tickets and then moving up to better seats during intermission!

 

Seeing the Russian Christmas exhibit at the Madeleine Church with the Friday Tour Group....

 

Gawking at tacky Christmas trees on the street....

Passing out gift bags at the women's shelter....

Roaming the "Marche de Noel"......

.....and of course, the wonderful Christmas concert at church

This is how I spent the week before Christmas, filling my days so that I am not thinking so much of what I am missing with kids and grandkids.  We have learned to embrace the day, receiving the blessings that we are given, and anticipate the next year with all that we will experience when that comes to us.

Baking time

I have to confess that I have not baked anything "homemade" since coming here (except for one pumpkin pie last year).  I know, it's awful, but with all of the tempting delights at the patisserie, how can I compare?  But when invited to a few Christmas get-togethers, and a call to bring home-baked goodies, I thought I better give it a try.

Baking cookies is not the easiest thing here.  Honestly. There is the hunt for specific ingredients not so available in France, as well as the right cooking utensils.   And when you live in a furnished apartment, you have to take what is there or go out on a hunt for it.

For example, I wanted to make my mother's delicate sugar cookies, the thin kind that melt in your mouth.  I have so many good memories of making them with her when I was young, and even did it a few years ago with my mom and  Ava, our first granddaughter.  I was actually surprised I had brought the recipe here from home, but also disappointed when I remembered I had to roll out the dough.....THIN....that is the secret to these cookies.  We don't have a rolling pin and when I looked at the Monoprix yesterday, there were none to be found there.  I suppose I could have gone on a hunt, but I decided to make my  mom's molasses-ginger cookies instead. But that was a recipe I didn't have, so after searching on the internet, I settled for one that sounded similar (and was rated 5 stars!)

  Of course, that meant hunting for molasses.  That is not something sold in the neighborhood grocery store, nor the market.  After asking some friends, I was directed to the giant epicerie (grocery goods) at the downtown department store, Galleries Lafayette.  After searching the aisles, I did find it, although it was the British version called "Lyle's Black Treacle".  How would anyone know that is molasses? When I opened the can, it was very thick and rich, a bit different from American molasses. But it would work, I hoped.

The flour is another crazy thing here.  It is numbered, certain flours for certain things.  I happened to have #55, which is for bread, cakes, and pie crust.  You are supposed to use #45 for cookies.  Oh well, I was not going to buy another sack and drag it home, so #55 would have to do.

And then there is baking soda.  That is something you get at the Pharmacie.  I thought I needed baking powder, which is single acting here and not double-acting, but was glad that this recipe didn't call for it.. 

My three questionable ingredients.....

But, for all the trouble to get it all assembled, I have to say the cookies turned out great....just like I remembered them.  Of course, why wouldn't they, with the freshest ingredients (real butter and had to grind my cloves).

So those are for tomorrow.  Today I am bringing my grandmother's rice pudding.  That is another story, but briefly.....I had to research about rice because the recipe calls for short grain rice.  They mostly sell long-grain rice here, so I thought I would have to settle for that.  However, I discovered that I had bought some "round grain rice" which I had not used for a long time because it was always goopy.  Ha...that is the kind you are supposed to use for pudding!

After boiling the rice in whole milk in a make-shift double boiler,  the rest of it was easy.  I even had a pot that I could put it in to brown the meringue, which I had brought back from Strasbourg.  It is now cooling in the fridge, and the next challenge I have is how to bring it without spilling when I walk to my friends' get-together this afternoon, about 10 blocks away. 

A visit from Steve and Christa

We both looked forward to having family here for Thanksgiving; Christa and Steve left their little ones, Anna and Emmett, in the willing hands of their other grandparents.....and came to spend a week with us!  November isn't an ideal time to visit Paris, as the weather can be questionable,  but none of us could complain.  They got plenty of walking in, as we were able to share this beautiful city with them.  We spent the first few days visiting the Eiffel, of course, along with Notre Dame, cafes, and markets.

 

Many of our visitors have also wanted to visit the Normandy beaches....and so did Steve and Christa.  So we headed north in a rental car, stopped for lunch at the famous resort area of Deauville, and headed to the American Cemetery and Omaha Beaches.  By then, the weather was turning a bit sour with horizontal rain, so we headed to our favorite B&B, an old mill turned into a beautiful "gite".  It was my third time there, but I love the countryside! The rain cut our visit a little short, so we headed back to Paris the next afternoon.

 

One of the highlights when we returned to Paris was going to see an opera!  We all headed to the modern Opera Bastille to see "La Boheme", which was a first for all of us.  Sung in Italian, it did have French subtitles electronically above the stage.  I was surprised that I could actually understand most of it (yes, I can read French much better than speak it!).  We all prepped beforehand and read the words in English, downloaded from the internet.

 

 

The night before Thanksgiving, we went to the Champs-Elysee to see the Christmas lights and visit the annual 

Christmas markets, the Marche de Noel.  These markets are all over Europe and sell handcrafted items from around the world.  They couldn't resist taking a ride on the huge ferris wheel on the Place de la Concorde, something that we did last year and loved the views!

 

 

Having a map in hand, Steve and Christa visited the Louvre, the Orsay,  and Montmarte on their own, while I started putting together a Thanksgiving dinner.  That can be quite the ordeal here, as finding turkeys before Christmas can be quite a challenge (the French traditionally eat lots of turkey at Christmas).  My friend, Amy, did order one from her favorite butcher at the market, picked it up the day before, and brought it over in her little cart, via the bus!  This was a BIG dinde, about 16 pounds.  But it DID fit in my oven.  Turkeys are not cheap here....and even with a "sale", it was over $5.00 a pound! But it was FRESH, free-range of course, and delicious!

Besides the four of us, we were joined by our friends Amy and Ken, and Steven and Francis, plus our cute and very Parisien French teacher Michelle who loves American Thanksgivings!  We enjoyed all the traditional American dishes, including stuffing and pumpkin pie!  It ALMOST felt like home, although we missed the little grandchildren.   NEXT YEAR!

 

 

Thank you, Steve and Christa, for coming and making our holiday special!