Nous sommes vraiment français

Dear Friends,

Today was a true French day.  As I do most mornings, I walked up to the patisserie but this morning I got 2 pain au chocolat to have with our breakfast.  After breakfast and reading The New York Times, we left to play pétanque with Jean-Paul and several other people who are renting apartments from our landlord, Shelley.  We walked for about 10 minutes past the old citadel (built in the 1500s) and past the fancy Club Pétanque with its wonderful well groomed pétanque field to a public area that is used by the general public to play pétanque.

The game can be described fairly easily.  The area that it is played on is sand and gravel (in our case also some rocks).  You make a circle big enough for a person to fit his/her feet in then one person throws a small wooden ball (le cochonnet as in piglet).  The goal is to get the hollow metal balls that you throw/roll as close as possible to le cochonnet.  In any case Jane, Jean-Paul and I got there first followed quickly by another couple.  We started a game in which Jane was starring and leading.  When others arrived we had teams and started a very serious game.  Jane dropped out after a while, giving her place to another person.  When she did that, her team was ahead in large part because of her playing.  However, at the end of the game my team won.

Here I am coaching our friend, Joan, who is on the other team.

And here are the players with the winners kneeling in the front.

After playing pétanque, we returned to our apartment just in time to do our laundry.  One load was ready to be hung up outside our windows that face the street.  We did a second load as well.  You can see that we are truly French as here is a picture of our laundry hanging out our window.

After doing our laundry we had to leave for lunch with two students that we met last year when we were here for school and a couple that were friends of theirs.  We sat outside by the water in the sun and enjoyed a leisurely French lunch that lasted 3 hours, the antithesis of American fast food.  I had hake that was poached with limes and of course un verre de rosé.  You should know that if you meet someone for "un verre" that means that you are meeting them for a glass of wine but in reality you can have as many glasses of wine as you want and you still say "un" (one) verre.  It is a nice way to avoiding having to say that you had many glasses of wine, but I don't think that anybody would believe me if I said I went for un verre and came back three hours later and said that I had un verre.  Fortunately, in France you are not questioned when you say that.

We got home from lunch at 4:00 pm.  After a short rest, we had to go shopping for dinner.  So we walked to the butcher to get some beautiful looking pork chops, then to the vegetable guy for a leek, some mushrooms and some potatoes, then to the patisserie for a chocolat éclair to finish the meal.  

I cannot imagine a more French day.  

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal