Our Bois-le-Roi Digs

4 Jun 2023

We’ve been in our Bois-le-Roi digs for two-plus weeks now, and we’re pretty well settled. The past few trips here we’ve done some house-sitting and/or rented a cottage, but the cottage option went away when our friends Penny and Pierre moved to Pau. Fortunately, Mary met a couple who have a house here and live in Cambridge, England and who wanted someone to stay in their house while they were in England. A deal was struck and here we are.

Whoops - wait a minute. Small mistake there. Below is our house for this summer:

*Looking at the house from the back yard. We've got a large backyard here. The pennants are left over from David and Sally's coronation celebration.*

We became immediately comfortable in the house. Built in 1903, it has been much updated and improved by its current owner. It’s got large bedrooms, a huge bathroom, lots of storage and a very comfortable living room. What’s not to like? The only real challenge is that Laurie is cooking in an unfamilar kitchen, with unfamilar utensils and all the food just different, too. But I can tell you, she’s doing great at it; not a bad meal yet and I don’t expect that will change.

After a big trip to the local supermarket, we have gone several times to our favorite store, Fraich. What can we get there? The best produce and fruit imaginable (pictures to follow Real Soon Now, after our next foray there), a huge selection of inexpensive wines, a well-stocked cheese shop (my favorite - I buy the cheese and almost always get the one I ask for. I think.) and a butcherie (which has a fig paté - mmmmmm!). I mean really, fruit, produce, wine, cheese and paté; we don’t need anything else, do we?

Some Sights Around Bois-le-Roi

Just a couple things…

Affolantes

These are huge and ostentatious houses, built in the last half of the 19th century, after the railroad from Paris reached Bois-le-Roi and the upper-classes could build a weekend/summer house along the banks of the Seine. Affolante means “crazy” and though it seems odd to describe these houses with that word, whenever I see a MacMansion in the States, I say, “That is crazy.” That’s exactly the reaction people had to these huge houses in a village of small houses and businesses when they were built 150 years ago.

The first picture of this post, at the top, is of one affolante. Here are some more.

*This house has a bit of history. For some years in the late 1800s it was owned by the director of the *Comédie Française* in Paris.* For a while he was in a "relationship" with Sarah Bernhardt, by far the most famous actress in French history. She spent quite a bit of time in this house over a year or so until the relationship cooled.

*I would like to have a fence like this: lasts forever, no sealing or repainting, and if a car hits it, the car loses, not the fence.*

You will undoubedly see more pictures of affolantes. They fascinate me and they are all unique and beautiful. Most of them are on the banks of the Seine in Bois-le-Roi and a couple neighboring villages, and most are easily seen from walks along the river.

Hmmmmm...

I realize that the same word may have a different meaning in different languages, but somehow I think the owner of this boat must have an inkling that this isn’t the best name for a boat.

We have also seen a barge named “Titanic.” Really?

That’s a quick intro to our home-away-from-home here in Bois-le-Roi. We have been here enough that we’re really comfortable (except for driving sometimes; I’m going to post about driving here. It can be, um, interesting).