The Normandy Chronicles: Day Four: La Cour Sainte Catherine & Gushing Fire Hydrants

You know, I really don't want all of you to have a bad impression of the little town of Honfleur. A town with that name just can't be all that bad. So yes, we ate a mediocre dinner while watching a drunk man perform with his pet suitcase. But while we watched this show, we had the pleasure of anonymous camaraderie with the two German ladies at the table next to us.

And yes, we stayed in a B&B where the bed sheets frightened us but not as much as the painting of a car junk yard above our heads. And yes, I had to crawl along the floor and under furniture and finally stick my hand into a black hole in search of an electrical outlet for my Mac. (I felt many strange things while prodding that hole, but nothing at all felt like an electrical outlet.)

But the view of Honfleur from our bathtub in this strange B&B was amazing. I sat there for a while, putting off my descent into the terrors of my impending B&B breakfast-with-strangers. I used all the natural flower-based shampoos and soaps and conditioners and stole them, also too. And breakfast wasn't bad at all. I joined a decrepit little couple at the table and dove for the tea pot each time the sweet little old lady tried to pour her husband more tea, with her gnarled hands shaking from the weight of it all. A black cat cuddled on the couch nearby and the proprietor, in his strange Sherlock Holmes garb (coupled with his dominatrix wife, I had many unwanted images creep into my perverted brain), only looked in on us when we absolutely needed him. (Thank the Holy Unicorn. I just couldn't look him in the eye.)

I'd stay there again, if I didn't know better and if I didn't have Galadriel leading me around by the nose the next morning, to see much better B&Bs in the same town.

As I've said before, I rarely know what Galadriel's agenda is. After all, she's the Elven Queen and only fools would question her intentions. Instead, when she said she was looking for a coffee shop, I figured it was time for a coffee (hopefully served by somebody in a milk maiden's costume because Sherlock and his leather-n-chains wife had scared me), and followed her down a romantic passage, shaded by trees and draped in vines and roses.

La Cour Sainte Catherine is a beautiful B&B, formerly a 17th century convent, then turned into a cider house and now owned by the Giaglis, a friendly couple who spoke English and who showed us their clean and serene rooms. They eventually served us coffee in their cozy breakfast room with stone walls and comfortable leather chairs in front of a giant fireplace. They also own the coffee shop that fronts the street outside their hidden B&B. Check out their website to see more pictures of the building and the rooms.

And as you've probably already gathered, life on the French B&B inspection tour is more about where we will eat lunch and dinner than anything else. And Galadriel had been trying to get to a certain restaurant since we began this tour. She'd heard about it, but had never eaten there. We'd tried to go the first night we arrived in Normandy, calling the friendly hostess and putting off our dinner reservation a few times while trying to find a place to stay. By the time we found a place, it was too late. Now, we'd be eating lunch there and I was dribbling a bit on my chin in anticipation.

We arrived at Le Garde Manger (15 Place Charles de Gaulle 76400 Fécamp, France 02 35 29 36 39) in the town of Fécamp at the very last second, just before they were about to stop serving lunch. Pas grave! The hostess, Julia, greeted us warmly (it was like she was one of the girls since Galadriel had been talking to her on the phone so many times to make, and then break, reservations) and we sat outside on their nice wooden deck, looking out on the town square.

The food was delicious. The wine superb. All organic. I took some food porn pics of our appetizers, but got a bit distracted after that because of the arrival of Men In Boots. With crowbars.

They looked at us, knowingly. We looked back, unknowingly. One guy and his boots sauntered over to a fire hydrant right in front of us and with a big metal ring (crowring?) he cranked the hydrant open. Water gushed out onto the sidewalk and started a small river down the street. The noise was deafening. It was like sitting at a nice little table with crystal glasses and fresh-grilled trout on porcelain plates, candelabras, the whole works - right at the base of Niagara Falls. Good thing that wooden deck was on stilts or our bootless feet would have been six inches under water.

I don't think this was all. I think the trash truck came and parked right in front and ground up the entire town's stinky bits. And somebody with an SUV parked in front and left their engine running so we could have the pleasure of inhaling exhaust with our smoked salmon. Then I think some little kid in combat fatigues wasn't content with using the sidewalk and climbed the railing onto one side of our deck and then climbed the railing on the other side to get back to the sidewalk. His parents looked on, glowingly, as if to say, "Aww. Isn't that just adorable?"

Note to self: Eat inside next time. Since inside looks like this:

Inside or out, the food and wine were great. Julia was hilarious, yet appropriately respectful, as you can see here, when she finally discovers that Galadriel is the true Queen of the Elves.

The Normandy Chronicles: Day Two: Me n' Jesus

Back when we were at Chateau D'Aument, I told you that there was a trampoline in the garden. After we met the owners of the chateau and settled in our room, we made our way outside before the sun set. I couldn't resist this trampoline. Well, Galadriel just sent me this picture that she took of me, reaffirming my jumping prowess.

Then, I just noticed this other picture she took when we were staying at Jean-Luc Barral's home, a natural winemaker friend of Galadriel's, in Lenthéric, France. (I'll tell that story lay-ter. It's a goodun.)

This is when I realized that I must have a Jesus complex. I don't know. What do you think?

The Normandy Chronicles: Day Three: Honfleur and Run-On Sentences

I had great expectations for Honfleur, our next stop on the B&B inspection trail. My friend Lisa had rented a car last year and driven from Paris to Normandy and stumbled upon Honfleur. When she came back to Paris she gushed about the pretty port and the little town.

And it's true. Honfleur is a beautiful little Medieval town with its 11th century port, surrounded by picturesque buildings and waterside outdoor restaurants.

But Galadriel and I are different kinds of tourists. We have this pesky little habit of wanting natural wine and organic food, served in quiet little restaurants owned by locals who will spend millions of minutes discussing the pros and cons of different wines for each course.

"Oh, this wine is best with the bread made from ancient wheat and the butter that's churned by the gnarled hands of a bewhiskered farm wife, seated on a three-legged stool (hand carved by her cow-herding husband) with the wooden churn (passed down from her great-great-great grandmother) wedged between her shriveled thighs and her rubber-booted feet planted firmly in fragrant hay in between sun-warmed recently-milked benign cows fed only with wild flowers. Now... what shall we drink with the snails - picked by hand at dawn, just after a full moon, from dew-moistened lettuce by vestal virgins and placed carefully in a mouth-blown glass container full of stone-ground corn meal for two weeks until they excrete only fragrant corn poop, then sent to their deaths, bathed in garden-fresh parsley and garlic and the butter that's hand churned by the gnarled...?"

You can see why it can take some time to select wine in France.

Anyhoo! Galadriel had just that kind of restaurant in mind, as we parked the car and walked with our noses high in the air, feeling like vestal virgins ourselves (well, that's a stretch), past the tourist-infested port-side restaurants, saying "Non, non!" to the waiters as they tried to lure us in with promises of the freshest oysters and crabs. It was getting late. Too late, even for French dinner. In my mind, I'm always thinking, "But, if we keep walking and trying to find this place, won't they be closed and we'll be left, bereft, on the cobblestone streets, as hungry as little beggars?" But I rarely voice these concerns, as they tend to reveal the fact that I'm a big worrier of the never-occurring evil.

"Oh, non!" Galadriel gasped as we turned down a side street and discovered that Alexandre Bourdas' restaurant Sa.Qua.Na was closed. Like corporate travelers, shocked by the fact that first class is full and their gold-card status lacks the power to eject undeserving cretins from the depths of their Corinthian leather seats and the effervescence of pre-takeoff champagne, we were indignant. This restaurant had the audacity to only be opened on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and every other leap year? "The Fooding guide said it was open on Tuesdays, Sundays and every other fêtes de Saint-Eustache!" Galadriel said, exasperated. Reluctantly, we turned our backs on Alexandre Bourdas' quirky opening hours to face the dreaded tourist restaurants across the street and resigned ourselves (well, I resigned myself; Galadriel wasn't going down without a fight) to prefabricated food and waitresses.

It was not pretty. We walked, staring at menus, then walked back, staring at them all again. A dark cloud gathered above Galadriel's elven head.

Me: (feigned cheerfulness) "What are you in the mood for?"
Galadriel: "I don't know." (pouty mouth)
Me: "Pasta? They can't fuck up pasta." (always the delicate speaker)
Galadriel: "Phlegh" (I took that for a no)
Me: "They all have seafood. I'm sure it's local and fresh."
Galadriel: (searing stare that said, "You have GOT to be kidding.")
Me: (my fake smile beginning to crack) "Okaaay. Erm. We could sit outside here and it won't be as noisy as inside and it would be cool and breezy and I'm sure there's something on the menu that's borderline fresh and ...?"

Sit, we did. There were two women sitting next to the only table left empty on the tiny sidewalk, a mother and daughter, with the daughter's baby sleeping soundly in a stroller. The daughter rose, seeing our distress, and moved the stroller carefully so that we could sit down next to them. They were smiley and nice.

The waitress...not so much. Perhaps she could smell our discontent. Or maybe it was the rather pointed questions Galadriel was asking, as she held the menu like it was recently fished out of the dumpster. Of course they had no natural wine. And the sardines had not just been fished out of pristine waters, placed in a hand-twisted twine basket, carried carefully by a fleet runner, barefoot and hair flying behind him in the salt-sprayed wind, directly to the back door of the kitchen and tossed, still alive, into a frying pan. (I'm making most of this up, since it was all in French and you can't trust my translations since I've been known to say to the waiter when he bends down to take my empty plate, "Oui, Je suis fini" which kind of means, "I'm dead, done-for.") The waitress became a bit, well, defensive.

So, the wine was terrible and the food was mediocre. But fortunately, the street entertainment provided a much-needed distraction. Galadriel's longing eyes were torn away from the shuttered Sa.Qua.Na across the street, by the appearance of a drunk man with a blue, rolling suitcase. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, the cheap suitcase rolled along the cobblestones but would suddenly stop, as it's owner staggered a bit and tried desperately to make his head stop moving long enough to focus his eyes on the narrow street ahead. He was heading somewhere important, but I'm not sure he knew exactly where that might be.

We exchanged glances and smiles with the two ladies next to us. Four sets of wise women's eyes followed the one drunken man. I would give anything to see tiny thought and picture bubbles above all of our heads at that very moment.

"Poor thing."
"What's in that suitcase? Cockles? His clown outfit?"
"Who's the lucky girl?"
"He is going to try and kill us."

Guess who was thinking about impending death? Well, actually, those are all my thoughts. I have no idea what the rest of the girls were thinking.

He managed to make it halfway down the street, where a certain amount of foggy determination and a leftward tilt initiated with his shoulder as the rudder, impelled him into a bar. He left his suitcase, its telescoping handle still extended, looking forlorn outside the door in the middle of the tiny sidewalk. A moment later, as a drunken afterthought, he peered out the door, nodded his head at the suitcase as if to say, "Good dog. Stay." and fell back inside.

Content to know that the clown murderer was temporarily busy in the bar, we paid the bill, wished the nice ladies next to us a good evening and walked back up the hill to our B&B. I wish I could write more about this place, but I can't get Galadriel in trouble. And somebody, definitely not my mother, once said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

So, I'll just say that the bed was comfortable (but I couldn't help thinking that the red and black and purple flowered sheets covered up a multitude of sin stains), the decorations artistic (but the painting of a junk yard above the bed inspired several nightmares), the conversation with the little old couple at breakfast was sweet (even as I kept wanting to dive in and help her trembling hands as she tried to pass the tea pot to her husband), the bathtub had a magnificent view down the hill to the village and beyond to the green hills, the terrace outside our room was magnificent and the B&B owners were kind of well, kinky. I don't know why I would think that, other than the fact that there were many erotic photos, circa 1972, of the wife along the corridor to our room and the husband had a strange look in his eye and always, day and night, sported a fedora.

Instead, I'll tell you in the next post about the gorgeous B&B we visited the following day in Honfleur, where we hung out and chatted with the super-nice owners, drinking coffee, petting their cat and taking lots of pretty pictures. À Bientôt!

The Normandy Chronicles: Day Three: The Smell of Horses and The Noise of Water

Contrast is an amazing thing. During this trip through France, our experiences have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. But without the ridiculous, the sublime would not be as deeply appreciated. We left our lunch at l'Abbaye de Valloires with the taste of good food in our mouths, but tainted by an atmosphere of commercialism. But a drive through the French countryside restored our equilibrium, as Galadriel pointed out the beautiful caramel-colored horses - Henson ponies - that are raised in the Baie de Somme (Wiki).

Even though I lived in Arizona for many years, I didn't know anything about horses until I had the pleasure of meeting Todd Masden of Cave Creek Outfitters. After losing my job and being ejected from my family, I was pretty much a lost soul. But my friend Sharon gave me a job in her art gallery and Todd gave me a job driving his van to Scottsdale resorts to pick up tourists for trail rides out in the desert. I may have been scraping together chicken feed for a living, but I had two of the calmest jobs on the planet. Sitting in Sharon's art gallery in Biltmore Fashion Park (Phoenix shopping center), I was surrounded by peace and quiet and could gaze at the eclectic collection of artists that said so much about who Sharon is and who her friends are: Zarco Guerrero, Robert Miley, Dennis Numkena (RIP), John Boomer, John Soderberg and many others.

Meanwhile, when not working at the gallery, I would show up at Todd's ranch early in the morning and "help" him while he readied his horses for the day and loaded them in the trailer to take them out to the desert drop-off point. Then I'd drive his big van to the first resort, pick up a load of 8-10 tourists and drive them out to meet Todd. They'd take off for their one-hour ride and I'd drive to the second resort and pick up a new load of tourists. By the time I got back, the first group was returning from their ride, so I dropped off the new people and took the first group back to their hotel. This went on all day.

At dusk, after I dropped off the last load of tourists to their shiny resorts, I would "help" Todd return the horses to his ranch and he'd let me brush them. It was awesome to be so close to those sweaty, heaving beasts. I had great respect, a little fear, but much pleasure stroking and talking to them. And Todd was and is the coolest guy on the planet (and not a bad guitar picker, either). He had a lot of patience with me. I'd be yapping about all my ideas for expanding his business, and he'd just smile and tighten some saddle straps. He knew exactly how to run his business - with integrity and great care. That's why he's still in business today.

These were some of the thoughts that ran through my mind as I looked at the French Henson ponies, so far away from the Arizona desert. But in my mind's eye, I could feel their bristly fur, the silkiness of their cheeks, the warmth of their haunches. We lowered our windows and I could smell them, too. It was lovely. Just driving by them, seeing them grazing, remembering my times with Todd and his horses, reconnected me to life's beautiful energy...and erased the sound of tourists in a museum-gift-shop-buying frenzy, trying to reconnect to life by buying more stuff. It's OK. I've done it and still do it (yes, I do lust for an iPad). I just don't want to be around it any more. I'd rather be with the horses.

Or, at le Bruit de l'Eau. I know I got a little sidetracked here, but oh well. Reconnecting to the earth and to my own senses is really important to me now. This trip has given me so many blissful moments where I climbed out of my head and out of my fears and experienced the many pleasures of food, drink, people and nature. Writing about it and sharing it with you gives it the power it deserves and puts all of the worries of supposed "real" life into perspective. The horses were just a visual preparation for the surprise of senses that I experienced in the authentic Japanese garden of Le Bruit de l'Eau, surrounding an ecological B&B which might not be for everybody, but which swept me away into another world, right in the middle of French horse country.

Le bruit de l'eau means "the noise of water" in English. When we entered the grounds and parked, we walked along pathways and heard just that, the noise of water. It's an interesting contrast - associating water with noise - usually a negative connotation. But if you go to the Le Bruit de l'Eau website and scroll down to the bottom of the home page, there's a little audio gadget that you can click on to listen to the sound of this place. You might expect to hear water, but what you'll hear are the animals that live near the water - birds, frogs, lizards I guess... You might never turn it off.

There wasn't a soul anywhere in the place. We peeked into the exhibition kitchen where the owner prepares organic meals while his guests sit at the bar and watch.

We peeked into the main office. It was empty, except for some simple furniture and a tea pot. It was as if the whole place was taking an afternoon siesta or had softly ascended into deep meditation.

We whispered. And tip-toe'd. Galadriel told me that the last time she visited, they were building a Dôjô d'Été (summer dojo) along the water. A dojo is traditionally a place for training, but this room can be rented as a place to sleep. Galadriel wanted to see it, so we wandered the wild paths, into the potager (kitchen garden) and along the spring on a wooden walkway. Beautiful grass, moss and flowering plants filled the wandering streams.

When we found the Dôjô, we became even more silent, in order to hear the cacophony of silence along the water in front of the Dôjô: water sounds, birds flying and tweeting and frog mating sounds.

Here is the inside of the Dôjô, where you can see the sleeping mats rolled up and hints of the mosquito netting that I imagine is a necessity if you want to get any sleep at night (as I said, this isn't for everyone).

If you're sitting on the mats in the Dôjô and the Japanese sliding screens are open, this is what you can see past the deck.

Here is the front "deck." The outside toilet and shower area is on the left, behind the bamboo curtains. You probably have the idea now that this feels like an isolated place, even though it's just a few pathways from the main buildings.

Toilet en plein air, anyone?

Don't worry. They have very comfortable rooms in the main building like the room called Kio-ko, with its private terrace and direct access to the spa. Wifi is available too.

So...this was turning out to be a wonderful day. We almost left this quiet place without seeing anyone. But on our way out, we met the owner's girlfriend and she greeted us warmly, remembered Galadriel from the last time she came, and then told us to enjoy ourselves as she had some work to do. I expected her to be wearing Japanese wooden flip flops and those little white one-toe socks and a kimono. But actually, she was kind of glamorous. Snazzy jeans, hipster haircut, designer sunglasses.

Ahh...the contrasts.

Stick around. Day three isn't over yet. On our way to the sea and our final resting place for the evening, Galadriel and I will visit another Gaycoco B&B which we loved and end up sleeping in an Ohsoso B&B, which we didn't love. Sayonara!

The Normandy Chronicles: Day Three: L'Abbaye de Valloires

After reluctantly leaving Chateau d'Aumont, we really, really tried to be good girls and visit more than one or two B&Bs in one day, but Galadriel is now addicted to hearing me say "Wow!" (pronounced in French as wauwuh) every ten minutes as we pass adorable little villages and gorgeous old churches and seas of wheat and coffee-with-cream-colored cows and and and.

So, she stopped at the l'Abbaye de Valloires, (Wiki page) where they have beautiful gardens. There is a rumor that they also have a restaurant where all the food is made from flowers and vegetables from the garden and they have...drum roll...natural wine. (I took this picture at the main entrance of l'Abbaye, but we had to get into the car and drive a little bit down the road to get to the restaurant.)

Besides, it was lunch time. This is our classic MO for the trip. Sleep until 9ish. Have breakfast while we look at the map and decide which natural food and wine restaurants we can hit for lunch and dinner, while still visiting the obligatory B&Bs on the map. We climb into the car at lunch time and go have lunch. Sometimes, we have a 4-hour lunch. After all, we have to talk to the chef about each course and discuss which wine is best for each course and then take food porn pictures of everything and then the chef and his wife have to sit down with us at the table to have a glass or two with us and then they have to tell us about the best local places for wine and food and advise us on where to go for dinner. This is very, very important. And then, we have to cram in the B&B inspection visits in time to hit our natural food and wine restaurant for dinner. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

We didn't take the time to visit the gardens at l'Abbaye, because we had our priorities and, um, work to do. We made a beeline to The Gardener's Table for our lunch. Oh boy. It was kind of a disaster. In order to get to the restaurant, you're forced to go through the gift shop, which was full of busloads of tourists, clamoring to buy flower-scented soaps, gardening books, post cards and whatever. It was terrible. Me and Galadriel hated this. Worse yet, the restaurant is in the back of this Altar of Needless Consumption, with just a little portable screen for separation. The noise was deafening.

Galadriel spied an outside terrace, where we ran for cover. There was a table available and a waitress brought us the plastic-coated menus. Galadriel asked her about natural wine and about the menu and the waitress had no idea if they had natural wine and had only a basic knowledge of the menu. Ugh. This did not bode well. You would think that she would be full of information and proud of what the restaurant had to offer, but non. So, we reluctantly ordered.

This is when we had a nice surprise. When the food and wine came, it was all an incredible work of art. And the food was amazing. It was such a shame that it was presented in this environment and we couldn't quite get past our original experience to really love the food. But you can see from the pictures how beautiful it was.

Here is the bread basket, with flowers embedded in the bread.

Here is the appetizer, with a shot for each of us of a nice sweet wine. There were spicy chapatis to dip in hummus and three types of herb or vegetable-stuffed breads to dip in a cool herbed cream sauce.

Here is the vegetable soup.

Here is the main course - roasted tomato, beet salad, fresh asparagus, hummus, grapes. I can't remember what was in the little red pot.

Here is the cheese.

You can see how beautifully presented it was and it was really delicious. We just couldn't stand the atmosphere.

Just across the street was a chateau which was on Galadriel's list to visit, but there was a sign at the main gate telling us that the owner had died and they were having his funeral that day. So, walking in there and asking to inspect the beds and bathrooms didn't seem like the right thing to do.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I'll show you an incredible Japanese wilderness garden and B&B, right in the French countryside. When you enter the grounds, you completely forget where you are. À tout à l'heure!

The Normandy Chronicles: Day Two: First Place Tramp

After our strange day in The Twilight Zone and cider redemption at Rapunzel's castle, we headed, with a few apple burps, towards Chateau D'Aumont, where we would spend the night. Here is a view of the back of the chateau from the garden.

I don't remember whether it is in Galadriel's guide and needed inspection or if it is new and she needed to decide if it would go into next year's guide. But if I have anything to say about it (and as you know, I will always have something to say about everything), it should be in the guide with a 4-girl rating. (I have no idea if Galadriel's guide has a rating system, so I'll just invent my own: If 4 of my girlfriends would like the place, then it's the bomb.)

We got lost getting there, which isn't unusual on this trip. Out in the country, mobile networks disappear and Mister GPS has a hard time finding his way. (Perhaps we need to find him a Missus GPS...or a guide dog.) But we finally got there and were greeted by the owner - a tall, elegant blond woman, and her two young sons.

First, we toured the guest rooms, which were located in a renovated building off the side of the main chateau. Every room was beautiful. It was modern, calm, quiet and comfortable. Here's a picture of our messy room, which I took the next morning. That bathtub was fab-u-luss. You can see pictures of all the rooms on their website. (The English translation is pretty terrible, but oh well.)

Here's the very cool thing about our stay. We hadn't eaten since breakfast and this Chateau is kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Galadriel asked Stephanie Danzel d’Aumont, as we sat in her chateau kitchen sipping tea, if it was possible that they had any food that they could throw together for us for dinner. We didn't care - cheese, bread, snausages. Whatever. Oh, and they wouldn't happen to have any natural wine, would they? I thought Galadriel was pushing our luck with this request. Madame d'Aumont looked a bit stressed. But she said she would see what she could do.

So, me and Galadriel unloaded our suitcases and then ran out to the back "yard" so we could jump up and down on the trampoline. Now, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I won the prestigious award of Third Place Tramp when I was in Junior High (read it and weep). But I haven't been on a trampoline for 30 years, so this was going to be interesting. I remembered how to "mount" by rolling onto it and within seconds I was jumping as high as a mushroom and then maybe a carrot and soon I graduated to the height of a small dog. et voila. It was damn good fun. Galadriel joined me and we almost jettisoned each other off into the stratosphere, but finally "dismounted" without breaking our teeth.

Then, Galadriel wandered off to speak to the trees and I decided to speak to the big white bathtub in the sky. While I was lounging in a thick white robe, smelling like a daffodil, Galadriel took her bath. I could hear some rustling going on downstairs in the breakfast room and figured the d'Aumonts were setting up our cocktail weenies, Cheez Whiz and Tab. To hell with all of this "natural" stuff. I had ordered real food. I'm an American, damnit.

So, we descended to the breakfast room (which looked like this the next morning) and there, all set up as if by elves, was a really nice dinner. Fresh, cold vegetable soup, a baked dish of ham and cheese-filled crepes rolled up and covered with Béchamel sauce and shredded cheese and baked in the oven - a local specialty. There was bread and cheese and a chilled bottle of local rosé. I don't know if it was natural, but I liked it. Much better for my teeth than Tab, I must admit.

While we were eating, naked under our fluffy robes, the owner's husband came in. Er. Hi! He was very cool, though. He works for Disney, marketing children's food. I'm afraid to ask what that means, but I can imagine that it's awful.

We slept like babies and the next morning the elves delivered a beautiful breakfast. We couldn't leave the place. We sat down in the breakfast room and geeked out on our Macs until Galadriel reluctantly said we had to leave. Onward and downward! Next stop - the 12th century Abbeye de Valloires, an amazing Japanese-style B&B, another gaycoco B&B and restaurant that we really liked and a not-so-amazing B&B where we stayed the night, hoping that the owner's wife wouldn't wander the house late at night, dressed in high boots and a dog collar and carrying a whip.

The Normandy Chronicles: Day Two: Wet Wipes n' Cider

As we drove away from the twin psycho towns of Le Tréport and Mers-les-Bains, we took one last look from the cliffs that really are the most magnificent part of the area. And from this vantage point, far above, the towns and their dog crap statistics became insignificant.

The sun was starting its descent as we drove along little country roads on our way to the B&B where we would rest our weary heads for the night. We were still feeling a bit like we were leaving The Twilight Zone until we stumbled upon Yet Another Castle.

"Castle! Towers! Rapunzel!" I screamed. "Screeeeech!" Galadriel, ever so pleased to accommodate my fairytale fantasies, slammed on the brakes and did a back-up to the entrance to the fourteenth century Chateau Fort de Rambures. The gates were closed, but we got out and walked up to the ticket kiosk, where we encountered a handsome young man as he was closing up shop for the evening. I left Galadriel to flirt with him while I checked out the scenery. She told him about The Twilight Zone because we needed to know that we weren't crazy. He affirmed that the people in Le Tréport and Mers-les-Bains are very strange, and have had a rivalry going on between them for many years. I'm glad we left them to fling dog droppings at each other into the next century.

I don't know why I loved this little castle so much. Maybe because of those fat round towers in the front or the moat around it. But it really appealed to me. It's been in the same family for 600 years. I wish I could have seen the rose gardens, but I did get to see all the beautiful shades of green - bright green grass, silver-green and blue-green leaves. Lovely.

The only thing that marred the scenery was a goofy setup of mannequins in dishevelled medieval clothing, standing around ancient farm implements. I was taking a picture of a post card in the kiosk window so I could remember the name of the Chateau later, and I didn't realize until now that one of the mannequins is reflected in the window on the left. You can see my face and hair and blue scarf reflected on the right.

It reminded me of Frontier Town in Arizona, with mannequin cowboys sittin' around the campfire, their wagons circled around them, while pioneer wenches served them pork n' beans in tin pie plates. I expected a reenactment of the shoot-out at the OK corral at any moment. Except with armor and chain maille and lances, and stuff.

I also noticed (because my last name isn't Wines for nuthin') the bottle of special cider from the castle which was for sale in the kiosk. I don't know if it's made at the castle or if it's of any quality worth writing home about, but it looked awfully good after our unsuccessful attempt at getting fed and watered with the dogs of Le Treport. So, when I pointed it out to Galadriel, she asked the friendly ticket man if there was any cider available...cold? (Recipe for success: Soften voice. Blink eyelashes, twice). He said sure, and left the kiosk for the castle.

While we waited, I was busy taking pictures and didn't notice that Galadriel had dissappeared. This always bothers me because every time she dissappears, I'm certain that something bad will happen to me. Like the ticket guy on the train will come and demand to punch my ticket. Which is in Galadriel's purse. Which she took with her. Or that the castle man will come back with our cider and I'll have to TALK to him in FRENCH. Or, the scariest thing of all, she will find a great photo opportunity before I do. We (I should say "I") have a small competition in this area.

So, I went looking for her in the parking lot across from the castle. I saw her, flitting in and out of the bushes. Like a bird.

"What are you doing?" I asked, suspiciously, wondering if she'd found a rare Phainopepla and had gotten the million-Euro shot.
"Trying to find a place to pee." She glanced at me sideways, guilty.
"Oh. Uh. Sorry! Do you need my wet wipes?"
"Um. No. Thanks."

Nobody let us pee in The Twilight Zone, either. I probably had to go too, but forgot about my "special" needs when confronted with the awesomeness of a new castle.

Mister Castle Keeper returned with a dripping, cold bottle of cider and two plastic cups. What a guy. Luckily, Galadriel had finished her ablutions and could talk to him, pay him and say goodbye to him while I stood there mute, but eager. It's my new MO in France, when surrounded by French people. Mute, but eager. I do have a brain, and I'm sure everything you are saying is brilliant, and I'm so very eager to know everything you know, I just can't speak. Really. Bonjour. Au revoir.

We paid him and thanked him and went and stood by the car and Galadriel opened the bottle. It exploded all over her dress. Of course, NOW she was glad to have my wet wipes. Even though she secretly wonders about this strange American wet wipe affliction of mine. Just one more reason for us to laugh hysterically while she changed her clothes in the car.

After all, she had to look respectable (and drunk from cider) because we were soon to arrive at this impeccable, elegant place. Ooh lah laaah.