Long Live French Cuisine!

It’s 7 am, and I’ve just tasted the best croissant of my life. 

The ferry from Cork, Ireland, to Roscoff, France arrived two hours ago; with a long, deep draw of a bow across a cello, its intercom system woke me from the deep sleep that only the swaying dark of a single bunk on a ship can. Another morning, another country. 

While most people filed into their cars to disembark, we put on our packs and walked out into the stillness of a foggy seaside Sunday morning—having left our bicycles behind for sad, practical reasons. Fields of cabbages were still slumbering under their misty blankets tucked into headboards of medieval stone walls. The sea looked to be swallowed by a great nothingness—like a master painter had decided to wipe away what had been put on the canvas and try again another day. In all this surround washed cool, grey, and white, a glowing ember of amber light shone. La boulangerie! (The bakery!)

Our time in France was basically a parade of baked goods and exclamations that there is a reason the French are famous for their cuisine (and the Irish are not). We traveled to visit our friend Elise in Granville (having met her on a train platform in Uzbekistan nearly two years ago), where we took morning dips in the sea and tried our first homemade au gratin greens. We stayed in an apartment in Paris where we could see the steeple of the cathedral, Sacre Couer, from our window and take a morning jog to pick up crusty baguettes still warm enough to melt soft goat cheese. My favorite, though, was a city I’d never heard of, despite its prominence in French history: Rouen, where Vanora (who we met more than a year ago on the bus in Cambodia) had us over for an exquisite quiche and garden salad with mustard seed dressing.

My mother met us in Rouen! 

And while that may very well be part of the reason I think of this medieval city so fondly, I would like to tell you why it’s worth expanding your French tour of “pain au chocolat” to include it. Many of the buildings are original timber-framed construction, tilting and twisting over narrow cobblestone lanes to better hear the church bells. It’s like a fairy tale! 

Rouen’s Notre Dame cathedral is impressive, of course; it’s where Richard the Lionheart is buried, by the way! And in Rouen’s free fine art museum, you can see Monet’s famous impression of its towering spires and Gothic windows. But such stunning churches are also the hosts to contemporary art exhibits and sacred choral music concerts-my first concert since lockdown was Faure’s Requiem (melt my heart!).

Our wanderings along the Seine led us to paintings of a different kind, city-endorsed graffiti that blooms organically, layer upon layer, along the generous cycle and walking paths there. Other modern creations include the Jean d’Arc Church, which breaks from the ground like the curved back of a sea creature guarding where she was burned at the stake. Odd and beautiful. And we delighted in the new-age sculptures that were showcased in a museum full of locks, banisters, dentistry tools, door knockers, and all other objects ever made from iron.

We also discovered an annual expo of Normandy’s latest and greatest in many areas of interest. The latest whimsical fashion designs caught our fancy. I laughed as my mom tried on virtual reality glasses to soar over Mont Saint Michel and go kite surfing at Omaha beach. We ate an embarrassing number of livarot and camembert samples from the champion cheese table, presided over by grey-haired men and women wearing officious tasseled robes. The boys stared as men reenacted medieval hand-to-hand combat, whacking each other’s steel helmets with their un-edged, steel swords. And they divided the rest of their time between exploring modern games made of digital bits and traditional Norman ones made of wooden pieces.

I think that was what made our experience in Rouen so memorable—a modern life superimposed on a city centuries old. Well, come to think of it, I suppose you could say the same for most of Europe! So, I guess it was the superb croissants that made France special, after all. Vive la France!