one month later

And once again I'm blogging during President Obama's speech. I sat listening to it for about 20 minutes but just kept getting more and more jittery and nervous. I've decided to keep listening but relieve some of the tension by remembering there are still great things in life.

Like France in the Winter!



Like a Mobile Haircut Salon!



Like Fixing It Yourself!



Like Cold Stone Apartments!



Like Knitting on New Year's Eve!



Like Family!



All of the above pictures are from a trip Parfait and I took last December to visit my mom in Les Plantiers, France. Les Plantiers is a tiny town in the mountains of southern France.

Here's the bridge into town.



And here's the town.



That street may go in the opposite direction as well but that's about it. Seriously, only 40-50 people live in the entire place and my mom is one of them. That picture above is my mom's younger French boyfriend (ooh la la) fixing his hot water heater. He didn't exactly know what he was doing and ended up with the obligatory extra piece when he finished but when he turned on the hot water in his faucet that thing fired up pretty amazingly.

The view from the bridge.



And another from under the bridge, of the second bridge in town.



Apparently in the summer they dam the river farther down and the water backs up to this point and people go swimming and boating in it. Awesome. If you look on the right you can see someone's laundry hanging out to dry. Even though it was nearly freezing out I saw lots of laundry. It takes more time but saves a lot on running (or buying) a dryer, which is frickin' expensive there.

We barely did anything while we were there but I loved it. It was pretty chilly in my mom's apartment. Most places don't have any insulation, they just have thick stone walls. My mom had only recently put insulation in the attic of her building which helped keep all the heat from escaping out the roof but nevertheless it was still chilly. My mom often used the word "toasty" to describe her apartment while I chose "uncomfortable" and Parfait was heard to exclaim, "it's fucking freezing in here!" I only took off my sweater and scarf combo once (besides going to bed) and that was after I had been sitting in front of a wood stove for like, 2 hours. That was toasty.

Our days mostly consisted of getting up, drinking coffee or hot chocolate while eating lots of good baked products; braving the bathroom (which was not insulated at all); going for short cold walks; beginning the slow process of cooking dinner on the wood stove; then eating dinner, drinking and talking. It was great.

Speaking of drinking, we were introduced to a great liquor called Cartagene. It's 83% first pressed juice from wine grapes and 17% alcohol. It's tasty and sweet but not too. We created a new drink we called New Year's Tradition which consists of 2 parts Champagne to 1 part Cartagene. Many were drunk on New Year's eve. What's particularly great not only about this drink but about lots of wine in this area is that you can buy giant plastic cubes of the stuff then just refill your own bottles. I think this is like a 5 liter cube.



You just take this home, pop on a spout then refill a bottle.



My mom had a empty wine cube the trunk of her car that I think was 10 liters. You take that to the winery and can refill it with a hose. And the wine is pretty good too.

My mom's apartment was awesome and completely French. Every room had a large heavy wood door complete with large metal key. Every door needed to stay shut all the time to help keep in the heat. This is the entrance door into my mom's apartment. I don't know, I was just trying to give a sense of proportion.



So being there was pretty great. It was relaxing and quiet and just what I needed to get away from New York. After about 5 days in Les Plantiers Parfait and I took a train up to Paris. Paris was pretty beautiful too but was totally crowded and super cold as well. Before we left Les Plantiers my mom gave me a giant scarf she knit (and I finished, as seen above) which was lucky because otherwise I would have frozen.

My favorite part of Paris was the Musée d'Orsay. This museum is breathtaking and is housed in an old railway station with a giant glass roof. I saw an amazing painting by Winslow Homer titled Summer Night.



It was stunning. I stood in front of it for at least 7 minutes. Of course an internet jpeg doesn't do it justice. There was just something so amazing about it, I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't that it was so real like a photograph but it was still more than a painting. Parfait had to clarify what I was thinking. The painting was like a dream. Not like a painting of a dream but as if you were directly looking at someone's dream they were having right then. It had a profound effect on me.

My not favorite part of Paris was being vegetarian. French cooking is very meat friendly. There was many a time that Parfait and I ended up walking around for over an hour looking for a place to eat that served something I could eat, other than a green salad. I'll just let you know, I ate a lot of pizzas, a lot of green salads anyway and drank a lot of coffee, because I knew how to order all of that and could be sure I wouldn't find greasy bacon pieces hiding in my food (or so I thought, that's exactly what I did find in a goat cheese salad I ordered). I didn't eat enough crepes or pastries, not nearly enough. The best crepe I ate though had cheese, spinach and honey in it. I wasn't sure what to think but really, it was so good.

I don't have any pictures of Paris because Parfait and I don't own a camera. Lame. The picture of Les Plantiers were all taken with my mom's boyfriend's camera. And that was the end of our trip. I love wood stoves.