The Normandy Chronicles: Day Two: Octopussy

Well, that blog post title ought to bring me some traffic.

After our lovely visit to Chateau Miromesnil, I got excited by the prospect of seeing the sea again and maybe eating some fresh fish at a beachside restaurant.

OK, who am I kidding? I had no idea where we were going because I never ask Galadriel. I just wait for her to deliver me unto the next amazing and delicious place, sitting slack-jawed in the passenger seat of our miniature rental car while she drives with eight guide books in her lap and tries to strike a balance balance between doing her job and showing me something that will make me go, "Jumpin' Jehovah's witness! Ah never done seen nothin' lahk that in mah whole doggone lahf." Or something like that.

And that's almost what I said when she took me to Le Tréport and Mers-les-Bains, two seaside villages that are very pretty but the most unfriendly place in France, je pense. Even if they do have very pretty, gingerbready, San Franciscoish, Mexican-colored houses.

We walked along the boardwalk, looking for a nice place to sit and look at the sea and eat some fresh seafood. Good luck with that. Especially when it's after 2pm and all of France refuses to serve you food. Even though Octopussy lured us in with its suggestive sign, all they would serve us were the local gallettes, or savory crepes filled with ham or cheese or both.

I hate to compare America to France, because America generally loses, but in this case, I thought about any coastal town in America, right coast or left coast, and if there are humanoids walking along the beach, restaurants will be serving their full menu. It seemed incredible to me that at 3pm we couldn't sit somewhere, stare out at the sea and have a drink and eat some fish. At least in this case, the score must be Dirty Capitalists 1, Dirty Socialists 0.

At one point, we saw an outdoor seating area, with people having drinks, and walked across the street to the entrance of the restaurant attached to it. Blocking the door, in cop stance (meaty arms folded across ample chest, bulky legs seemingly rooted into the carpet, head tilted up and back, eyes glaring), was the restaurant owner. "Can we get some seafood and drinks and sit outside and eat?" "No." That was it. No. We could have drinks, but no food. We said thanks (God knows why) and that we'd look for another place and continued down to the other end of the boardwalk.

At the very last restaurant, which was directly on the beach, we walked in and asked if we could have drinks and food. The girls behind the counter looked at us in disgust. How ignorant could we be? They didn't say, "Oh we're so sorry, but the chef is gone." They just said no and looked at us like we were very wrong in the head.

Hungry and sad (kind of like these doggies in the posters that were ALL along the boardwalk - rough translation: "Dog Poop: It's not up to them to collect it." - those little signs they're carrying are the total of poops they're guilty of dropping), we started back towards the car. As we passed Monsieur Méchant (translation: Mister Evil - from the title of a French horror movie), he was standing in his beach-side cafe, gloating. "I told you that you wouldn't find any food." I don't know what Galadriel said to him, but I know it was good. Most likely mean, but ever so polite.

As we drove away, we felt like we had been in a horror movie ourselves. Like we had accidentally stepped into The Twilight Zone.

In retrospect, it's apparent that the people of Le Tréport and Mers-les-Bains are much more concerned about the poop scooping, feeding and watering of their dogs (as seen in the photo to the left, where they even have a name for their dog-watering bar), than they are about any outsiders who enter....The Twilight Zone. In your mind's ear, hear the voice of Rod Serling as he says: There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.

Don't worry, though. We escaped back to the real world where we stumbled upon a medieval castle that was closing, so we couldn't visit (and I was disappointed because I was so sure Rapunzel draped her flaxen braids from this very same castle's windows), but whose gatekeeper restored our faith in mankind (with the help of a certain local alcoholic beverage) and Galadriel got her dress all wet. And then, we found what became, at least for this first B&B inspection trip (we're currently on our third), was the best place we stayed. So, stay tuned for the next segment in our continuing series of The Normandy Chronicles.

SOS Help: English Language Crisis Line in France

I received a request this morning from a great organization in France, SOS Help Line. They asked me to post about them on my blog and spread the word that they are available to help English speakers who may be having an emotional crisis while in France and need a friendly voice:

Feel like talking?  SOS Help, an English speaking crisis line in France, is open from 3 pm to 11 pm daily.  Call us up to talk about anything on your mind – from loneliness to stress to concerns about integrating into a new culture.  We are here to listen!  Call us at 01 46 21 46 46 or visit us online at www.soshelpline.org for more information.

Commentosis

Being a geek, I played with the new Blogger templates and lost my Disqus comment capability. I tried to just allow comments via Blogger, but that doesn't seem to work on my older posts. We'll see if this new post has the ability for comments. If not, I'll try and fix it soon so that you can all participate again in my adventure.

(Image stolen from here, which is one of my favorite websites called Language Log at University of Pennsylvania. I looked around for threatening copyright verbiage and found none. If the U o' P police find me and threaten torture by bad grammar, I will immediately give in and delete the picture. Until then, enjoy.)

The Normandy Chronicles: Day Two

In my last post, we had finished a long day and no matter how much my traveling companion Galadriel dialed while driving, she couldn't find a place for us to sleep. We had one more B&B to inspect that she had never seen before, so it was a bit risky to think that we might stay there. But it turned out to be the lovely Jardin en Douce, where we slept peacefully and awoke to a foggy view outside our window and the best breakfast we received on our entire trip.

I went downstairs first, a little nervous about having breakfast with the other guests. That's one of the decisions that everyone has to make about B&Bs. Do you absolutely adore meeting new people, trying to speak to them in their native language or hoping they'll speak to you in yours and do you want the curious B&B owners to ask you all kinds of questions about your personal life that you don't want to answer?

B&B Owner: So, Lisa, what do you do for a living?
Lisa: Rocket scientist.
B&B Owner: Oh, er, wow! How nice.
Lisa: But, I'm on sabbatical. I figured I'd caused enough deaths in the world and deserve a little break.
B&B Owner: Um. Coffee or tea?

or...

B&B Owner: So Lisa, do you have children of your own?
Lisa: Well, I could have had two, but I aborted them.
B&B Owner: Uh. Oh! Try the lemon-almond confiture. It's delicious!

I'm not big on meeting new people. You would not know that about me if you met me. Because I can pretend to like anyone. It's a well-honed survival skill I learned in corporate America when I was managing customer service. I can gaze at people wide-eyed with wonderment about everything they are saying. I nod and make the right approval noises, all the while busily plotting my escape. Admitting this means that if you ever come to France and want to meet me, you'll wonder the whole time if I hate you. But Heather over at The Wishful Writer came to Paris a few years ago with her lovely partner April and I loved them. So, just be like them and you won't have any problems.

Meanwhile, back at the jardin, I sat at the breakfast table overlooking the garden and saw the bad kitty napping on the forbidden green and white striped sofa. There was a 40ish-year-old couple sitting with me. We all nodded politely and immediately looked down. Françoise floated in, tan and refreshed, and pointed out all the wonderful things on the table. She really knows what she's doing, since she had two pots of coffee - one strong and one "less strong" - possibly a nod to me being American. But I'm not typical in that I prefer strong coffee, so the first thing I did was pour myself some coffee. Next, I spied a basket full of fresh croissants within my reach, a tiny white butter dish just for me, a tray with four types of confiture (three of which were made by Françoise) and on my placemat was an adorable, tiny heart-shaped brioche, a tiny bowl of fruit compote and another bowl of yogurt topped with prune paste. I ate everything in front of me and pondered death-by-croissant, but decided against it.

Françoise told us the night before that she thought it was "orrible" when B&B owners sit down and eat with their guests. That made me like her right away. True to her word, she stayed in the kitchen but had an innate sense of when she was needed. At one point, she stuck her head in to the silent dining room (me and the couple had not said one word to each other - awkward!) and said in french to the couple, "Please pass the bread." Françoise is a former advertising exec and she knows how to deliver a directive. The bread basket was immediately passed in my direction.

It was at this point that I felt the need to say something to the couple as they passed the bread. So I said in french, "Excuse me but my french is not very good. Sorry." They said, "Quoi?" Er. This is always something that annoys me. I know I whine about how bad my french is, but I actually have a good accent and when I deliver a sentence full of words that I actually know, there's no reason why they should be unable to understand me. I repeated myself and they suddenly, miraculously understood and said, no problem. Then we all looked down at our yogurt again. I hate B&Bs.

Galadriel wandered down to the breakfast room after convening with her elves back at the office and she made all the polite conversation so that I didn't have to. I will never go to breakfast again without her. I took my camera and went outside for one more photo shoot before departure. I can't help but share two photos, the first being huge and gorgeous poppies. They looked like they were made from expensive dress fabric, studded with jewels of dew.

Then I stood under the enormous cherry tree and picked cherries up off the ground to eat. Françoise told us that the tree is a gift for the birds. It's so tall that she can't possibly harvest all the cherries or stop the birds from eating everything.

So, after saying our goodbyes, off we drove towards I had no idea where, because I didn't care. I liked the ability to just drift along and let Galadriel set the agenda.

But sometimes, a deviation is required.

I don't remember how we stumbled upon Chateau de Miromesnil, but stumble we did. It wasn't represented by a dot on Galadriel's map, but it may end up in her guide after all.

As we drove down the tree-lined drive, we saw boy scouts walking on the grounds. There were signs that said Privé here and there, but Galadriel shrugged and drove right into the side courtyard, where the outer buildings of the chateau - probably former stables, barn and gardener's or maid's quarters - were located. There was obviously a workshop or weekend event going on.

We parked and a very friendly owner, Jean-Christophe Romatet, came out to greet us. Galadriel apologized for just showing up unannounced. She explained who she was and he told us that his wife would be happy to give us a tour of the chateau. Yessss.

It was amazing. I have too many photos to show you, so I'll try and restrain myself, but here is the left, front side of the chateau, with the wall that protects the beautiful kitchen garden. Our guide, Madame Nathalie Romatet, whose grand parents bought the chateau in 1938, told us that it was her grandmother, the Comtesse de Vogüé, who installed the kitchen garden. Her grand parents bought the chateau with the idea of having a large place to raise their family for generations, but before they could spend much time living there after they finished updating it (with electricity, heat and running water), it was occupied by Germans, then British and then Americans during WWII.

Sometime in the last few years, Jean-Christophe had a serious car accident and it was then that he and Nathalie decided to move into the chateau and make it into a hotel and event venue. But it's not an easy or inexpensive thing to do.

In the driveway, I spied a stack of black slate, all covered with different white lettering and drawings. I asked Nathalie about them and she told me that in order to renovate the roof, they are selling the chance to own a piece of the roof. So, for 5 Euros, I signed my name and dated it and now I can say that I own a piece of the roof at Chateau de Miromesnil. Guy de Maupassant was born there, so maybe his literary success will rub off on me.

There were several rooms, but this one inspired me the most. I imagined myself sitting at that desk and writing and each time I would get stuck on a word or phrase, I could look out the window on the chateau's back gardens and ponder the history of that place. Since Nathalie and her husband can't afford to restore the back gardens to their original splendor, they cut the grass in different lengths, to outline the diamond-shaped flower beds of yore.

We finally left the chateau and continued on our journey. Check in soon when I continue with tales of the unfriendliest town in France and other adventures of me, myself and Galadriel.

The Normandy Chronicles: Day One Ends Well

To continue my story of a couple of bad girls traveling through Normandy, we had just escaped hovering helicopter photographers and Rouenistas carrying impressionist painting segments and death by car park, when we began to ascend the hills of Rouen to find the B&B Le Jardin en Douce.

The hills rise above Rouen with tiny streets at precarious angles. Which makes Mr. GPS (I don't know why we think it's a man, but we do) very confused. But we finally climbed a perpendicular hill to turn right on a tiny alleyway that led to the B&B. I got out to ring the bell at a white gate when it was opened by a smiling gray-haired man with glasses. Behind him lay one of the most beautiful gardens I've seen in a long time and from the upstairs window, his lovely wife smiled and waved.

I looked at Galadriel (as in Queen of the Elves - that's my travel companion's new fake name - we'll see how long it lasts), to see if she was thinking the same thing I was - that we had found our hotel for the night. She said, "If they have a room available..."

Marc Lafont guided us into the driveway and as we parked, I saw a pretty table ahead of us, in front of the house and under a climbing vine of pink roses, with a carafe of rosé wine, wet with condensation, and two little glasses. (The picture to the left was taken the next morning, so the wine is gone. Because we drank it all.)

Françoise, his wife, was tanned and elegant in a long gray gauze and lace top and gray and yellow floral slacks. I looked at her and wished I could age just as gracefully.





She led us on a tour, starting with the garden. The picture to the left is the view while standing in the driveway and looking down along the right side of the house into the back garden. It was bursting in blooms of all kinds. She told us that she and Marc do all of the work and that she's "a slave" to the garden, but it's obvious that it's a labor of love.






Next we toured the house, with its comfortable breakfast room, tasteful furniture and art and a cat who sleeps on the couch where he's not allowed (I guess other people are managed by their cats just like I used to be). Our room was upstairs, with a big window looking out at the garden below (I took the picture on the left from the window the next morning, when it was a little foggy and so was I) and a large private bathroom across the hall with a window overlooking the front garden. The cool air flowed through those windows, bringing the smell of roses and greenery with it.


After the tour, we sat with Françoise and Marc at the table I spied earlier and drank chilled rosé and nibbled on nuts and pretzel sticks as we discussed the probability of making the one-hour drive for our 9pm dinner reservation. Galadriel and I were both tired, but after our long day, we really wanted to taste the natural wines and organic foods at Le Garde Manger. But as we relaxed our muscles and our minds, listened to the birds getting ready for bed in the trees above us and enjoyed the conversation with Françoise and Marc, we knew we wouldn't make the drive. There would still be the possibility of going in the next few days, if we were good girls (meaning we would not get distracted by castles and gardens along the way) and visited all the dots on Galadriel's map, we could reward ourselves with a dinner at this delicious place.

So Marc and Françoise recommended a restaurant in Rouen called L'Espiguette, with a simple but tasty menu, where we could sit outside and enjoy the night air. We found our way back to town and parked without incident and walked through the narrow streets of the old town to a small square. On our way, we came across a few tables outside of a restaurant, situated across from the restaurant entrance and against Medieval walls. Just at that moment, a mournful sax player stepped out of the restaurant to serenade the guests.

At the next small square we found our restaurant with busy waiters running in and out to service at least 30 guests, but we were lucky to find a table just outside the entrance and next to lovely, scented trees. Here's a nice picture of Galadriel, contemplating the menu. I just wanted you to see how pretty it was in this old-town courtyard, on a cool summer night in Rouen. So, I had to disguise Galadriel (you can still see the tip of her iPhone which is actually what she was contemplating) to maintain her anonymity because as we all know, now that the press has terrorized us with the audacious communism of Facebook, is a lost cause. Since I already told everybody I used to be a hooker, I don't care. But Galadriel may not want everyone to know that she, er, knows me.

Anyhoo! The menu was simple - only 3-4 starters and 3-4 main courses, so I ordered the salmon tartare and Galadriel, after much Elvin deliberation, ordered steak tartare, which is pictured here, in all its lovely raw-meatiness. The salad was roquette with shaved parmesan and a really wonderful vinaigrette with pine nuts and tarragon.


My salmon tartare was fabulous, with chunks of creamy feta cheese and an accompaniment of what I think was red pepper coulis. Mmmmm.

Of course, we drank a lovely natural wine so that we could tackle the next day's hard work with gusto.

Stay tuned for the next installment, where I will reveal Normandy's most unfriendly town, a castle keeper who healed our wounds, a chateau where I left my mark, a chance to revive my title of Third Place Tramp and my most favorite place to stay of the whole trip.


(The Normandy Chronicles name was inspired by my friend Brian who wrote The Paris Chronicles - a hilarious and touching, day-by-day - or should I say blow by blow - tale of his family's trip to Paris - a must read.)

The Normandy Chronicles: Day One continued...

So, where was I? Oh yeah, Bad river-front seafood and Gaycoco. You would think that at this point, we'd reached the bottom and the only way is up, correct? Well, sure. If you'd already reached the bottom.

We left Gaycoco behind, after admiring our last whimsical Alice-In-Wonderland turret-topper. Next stop? The famed city of Rouen, where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. If you've been reading my dribblings for a while, you know my history (real or imagined) of religious persecution. I didn't want to be, so to speak, caught dead in Rouen, but there was a certain tiny hotel that had a big red dot in the center of Poca's map, demanding our visit. So, heavily armored with rice crackers and nut mix, we continued on our very own hundred year war.

Now, don't think for a moment that I'm whining. I get to tag along on a tour de France on somebody else's expense account. But at this point, wining was what I was wanting to do. We'd been driving for a while, we had only a taste of terrible food and a bit of cardboard to sustain us in the car and it was hot and I was sweaty and we didn't have a reservation for a hotel that night (and I began worrying about that at breakfast - you know how I am) and with all of this, a glass of crisp white wine or a cold beer was on my mind. Poca also continued to placate me with tales of a gourmet restaurant with organic food and natural wine, where we would end our day in gastronomic pleasure. But first, we had to be burned at the stake.

Rouen is a big city, which was a nice contrast to the quaint little villages we had seen in the morning. You'd think that Poca would adapt her driving habits to the big city, but no. In search of an underground car park (which I saw way back in the 5th century of our Lord, but didn't say anything until we'd passed it. "Do parking lots here have a big P above them?" Yes, Poca hated me then.), she even drove down a pedestrian-only street. In fact, it's the most tourist-trampled street in Rouen. Just look at their surprised faces. I felt like a diplomat, driving past the drooling peasants. On my way to being burned at the stake. The gold medallion thingy looked cool, though. (Poca slaps her head at my description. "It's the astronomical clock on Gros Horloge Street!" OK, well. Fine.)



We finally parked and walked just a few cobbly streets to our destination, the lovely, centrally-located and inexpensive Le Vieux Carré. We sat in this wonderful courtyard, just off the pedestrian shopping street of rue Ganterie (with clothing I could not afford, alas) and Poca ordered hot tea (smart girl, but not as much of a wino as me) and I ordered a glass of white wine. Well. The glass was huge and the wine was terrible. Even I couldn't drink it and that's a miracle in itself. I sipped and suffered, quietly. Another miracle.

That's when the helicopters started flying overhead. The last time I'd heard that sound was when I was lying in bed in my ghetto apartment in Phoenix and somebody in the helicopter with a megaphone kept repeating, "Get down on the ground now, or we will shoot. Get down on the ground now." They were circling the library parking lot across the street from me, evidently a hotbed for criminals.

But there were no criminals on this day. It was just the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 festival. You can read about the 2009 festival here, with amazing photos taken at night, of impressionist paintings projected on the front of Rouen buildings.What were the helicopters for, you might ask? Well, all these local people carried little puzzle pieces of famous impressionist paintings and at the stroke of a brush, they held them over their heads in unison, while photographers hanging from the helicopters took pictures. Et voilà. No photographers fell from the helicopters into our peaceful courtyard, if that's what you're expecting. But we couldn't hear ourselves thinking all the bad thoughts that bad girls are usually thinking. The noise was deafening.

Poca noticed that my wine was sitting there, unloved. I shouted to her that it reminded me of the "Chablis" they used to sell to discerning (meaning they wanted something other than a shot of Jamesons) biker chicks in dive bars across America. In other words, it was completely undrinkable. But, incredibly sophisticated... if you are a biker chick. Well, that is, if you were a real biker chick in that long-lost era before bored dentists became "weekend warriors" and along with their marketing executive girlfriends bought $8000 His n' Her Harleys, matching leather biker outfits, logo'd Harley biker boots and descended upon perfectly decent dive bars and started asking for Merlot. It was a sad day in America, let me tell you. I much prefer the real biker chicks to the nouveau biker chicks. I should have thrown down the entire glass in a feeble tribute to them all.

Instead, I ordered a beer. After all, how can they screw up a beer? Um. By serving it warm. On a hot day. With helicopters.

Poca went upstairs with the propriétaire to inspect the rooms and left me to my warm beer. That's when the vacuum cleaner started inside. You know that high-pitched sound that scares the cat? It was a perfect accompaniment to the heavy drone of helicopters. I drank the whole beer in one gulp. Poca returned, saying that the rooms are tiny, but the price is right. I waved a drunken wave and mumbled something unintelligible. She also told me that the propriétaire took the wine off of our bill. Another 50 Positive Points for this lovely little place.

"Remember, we'll be eating at Le Garde Manger in Fécamp tonight." Poca said, dragging me towards the car park. Which was closed. It was past 7pm. People were wandering around with their impressionist puzzle pieces, looking very happy, while our tiny car was abandoned and crying, deep in the dungeon of the car park.

With the help of a friendly waiter at a sidewalk cafe, we found the secret door to the dungeon. If we had just walked 22 steps around the corner, we could have found it ourselves. Like the bees who are losing their bee radar and dieing across America from pesticides and WiFi, we were deafened by helicopters and vacuums and couldn't find our way to our lonely car.

"Do we have a hotel yet?" I foolishly asked, after Poca and I had walked for an hour throughout the car park, looking for our car. (It was in spot 2534, across from spot 2001 - which could explain why we were lost.) "Oh, yeah. I should probably see if we can stay at one of the hotels in the guide book." So, as she drove the wrong way through the parking garage, up and down the circular dungeon towers, she balanced the guide book on her lap with her iPhone and played dial-a-hotel while avoiding concrete pillars.

No rooms at the inn. Sorry. This virgin (I can't vouch for Poca's virginity, though) would be sleeping in a manger tonight. Being the enterprising Poca that she is (by the way, both she and I are getting sick of this pseudonym, so be prepared for a new one soon), she called Le Garde Manger, made a dinner reservation for 9pm and asked the friendly hostess if she knew of any hotels near their restaurant. The very sweet hostess said she would call around and try and find us a room (near the beach on a Saturday night in June, mind you) and call us back.

Meanwhile, with 8pm approaching fast, we had one more B&B to inspect in Rouen before we went to dinner and settled for the night. I promise all of you who might be thinking that you will never go to Normandy, if you tune in to my next post, you'll find that Day One in Normandy ends unexpectedly well.

(The Normandy Chronicles name was inspired by my friend Brian who wrote The Paris Chronicles - a hilarious and touching, day-by-day - or should I say blow by blow - tale of his family's trip to Paris - a must read.)

The Normandy Chronicles: Day One

My friend Pocahontas and I started a week-long road trip through Normandy yesterday. Once a year, she has to visit small B&B's and Maisons d'hôtes all around France in order to evaluate them for inclusion in the following year's travel guide. She invited me to come along and I jumped at the chance. Of course, hilarity ensued.

Poca couldn't find a rental car in Paris, so we took the train to Évreux and picked up the car there. She did all the driving because I'm a chicken shit she knows her way around. Well, kind of. She has a unique way of driving - with two guide books, a huge map with red and green sticker dots on it to indicate each place we had to visit, a green folder with blank review sheets, her computer and her iPhone... in her lap. She used one, two or all of these items, sometimes simultaneously, while driving.

I may have inherited my mother's "OH NOOO! AHHH! WATCH OUT! LOOK AT THAT ASSHOLE! WHAT IS HE DOING?" passenger tendencies (the jury is still out on that one), but somehow, with Poca, I am not gripping the dashboard or slamming on my imaginary set of breaks (very often). It's because I've noticed that seconds before she drifts allll the way into somebody's lane on the autobahn freeway, or runs into a curb or slams into the back of the stopped cars in front of us, or kills the old lady and her dog who just stepped into the crosswalk, she looks up from her iPhone dialing (or texting/map reading/guide-book-flipping/internet-surfing) and avoids each and every impending disaster at the very last second.

And alcohol makes her reactions even more quick-like.

Sooooo, off we went in our miniature car into the wild and woolly Normandy countryside. The first stop was a chateau that was supposedly right on the main street in a tiny town. We drove up and down (and up and down and up and down) the street and couldn't find the place. Poca didn't want to call them, because her visits are supposed to be a surprise. She wants to catch them with their linens down. We finally parked in front of the Mairie, or town hall, and decided to ask around in town. The town was only a few inches long, so we didn't think there'd be a problem. We were also starving to death, and this chateau was supposed to have an amazing restaurant. We needed to find it.

We didn't have any luck. Finally, Poca broke down and called the place. She got a recording. They will be closed until 2011. Hell, we might be dead by then. From hunger. Luckily, we found an organic food store and picked up some "survival supplies" - rice cakes and trail mix. It's a good thing we did that, because we would be called upon to survive a few things.

We asked the girl in the organic store if she knew of any restaurants in town that served organic food or wine. She put on her best "good luck with that" face and shook her head, sadly, saying, "Désolée." So, we decided to go to the quaint little hotel that we saw when we crossed the river into town. It was an old building, painted shiny white, perched right on the river, with an outdoor restaurant. If my sister saw this place, she'd exclaim, "Oh my Goooooooood! It's so cuuuuuuuute!" Well. Things are not always as they seem.

Here was our first clue that the food would be bad things might go wrong. It was at the bottom of a menu display box, below a way-too-expensive menu. In addition to this lovely advertisement for the pianist Stephane, there were two, count 'em two, big-ass signs in front of the hotel advertising their nightly Soirées piano. Piano evenings. Hmmm.

Here was our second clue. Really bad statuary. I should say something here, but I can't think of anything. Really.

Here was our third clue. Dinner napkins that had to have been made from Liberace's discarded satin bed sheets or maybe Bozo The Clown's smoking jacket. The table cloths were made from the same fabric. We ordered the Fruits de mer dish with several kinds of cold shell fish which we needed to eat with our hands. Then we had to wipe our fishy hands on that shiny, polyester fabric. It was not pleasant. And notice the lovely plastic chairs. I'm not a chair racist, but when you pay $75 for a plate with a few shrimp on it, you expect more than plastic chairs and Liberace's fishy sheets.


Things just went downhill from there. The hostess was pushing fifty and had three inches of pancake makeup on her face, plus she had painted eye liner under and above her eyes in a fashion that I have never, ever encountered. I didn't get a picture because I just could not look at her, so I'll have to try and explain. On her eye lids she had the Amy Winehouse cat-eye look but she didn't paint the line right at the base of her eyelashes. She painted it a quarter of an inch higher. Same thing under her eye, but the line turned south. Way south. Just like when I first saw Tammy Faye Baker's mascara dripping in black streaks down her face, I thought to myself, "My God, what magazines does she read that tell her to do her makeup like that?" If Sarah Palin was answering that question, she'd say, "Most of 'em."

We were seated at a table right at the river and the view was wonderful. But we knew our meal would be terrible. A waitress arrived to ask us for a drink order and when she came back with the drinks, we said we were ready to order food. But she couldn't take that order. Maybe she wasn't old enough. Who knows. Cat-eyes came back to take our food order.

Then some guy delivered a little appetizer plate. There wasn't a thing on there that either of us wanted to eat. I especially liked the hot dogs en croûte. Yum.






I think their prices are so high because nine people have to wait on each table.

Our meal continued to be bad, with the fruits de mer plates left mostly uneaten. The shell fish was tasteless. Instead of being caught and served fresh, it had been rinsed so that any taste of the sea was gone. The bread was Wonder Bread dressed in a beret. Completely devoid of taste or nutrition. We asked for cider, which is a specialty in Normandy. It arrived, as orange as the flip-side of Bozo The Clown's smoking jacket. It also tasted like Apple Jacks cereal - fake apple flavoring and too much added sugar.

We asked for the bill before the cheese course, even though the cheese trolley was the only thing that looked good. Cat eyes hated us. We hated her back.

We got back into the car, regretting that we had not followed our instincts. Please learn from this. When your gut tells you to run... run. No matter how hungry you are.

Next, we drove to a hotel that was atrocious. I'm not kidding. It was horrifying. It was decorated in what we could only call Gayrococo, or maybe Gaycoco. I'd seen this decor before when I was living in Laguna Beach, California and would visit some friends of my artist friend, an elderly pair of Queens. Giant fake statues of David draped with plastic grape vines. An entire cabinet filled with a collection of poodle figurines. A bathroom crammed with giant 1950's bottles of L'Air du Temps. The perfume inside was so old, it was brown. Every inch of every wall was covered with either 1970's garage-sale "modern" art (love that avocado green) or pictures of Marie Antoinette hitching up her crinolines to show a little leg. There was so much furniture in every room that you had to climb over it to get anywhere. I didn't see one, but somewhere, I know, was a giant taxidermy bear specimen. Probably a monkey too, dead or alive, with a tiny hat and tin cup.

But we can't forget the cherub on the ceiling. There are no words for those legs.

This experience could have killed us, but no, we hadn't even begun. Oh, and no, we still hadn't eaten. And we will have many more adventures before we finally do. Come back soon for the continuation of The Normandy Chronicles.

(The Normandy Chronicles name was inspired by my friend Brian who wrote The Paris Chronicles - a hilarious day-by-day - or should I say blow by blow - of his family's trip to Paris - a must read.)