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Potpurri

Over the course of a trip here, we see lots of things that don’t fit any theme and I take a picture of them. They never make the blog because they don’t have a theme. So today’s theme is: miscellaneous things we liked. How’s that for specific?

First: our ride

This is our Renault Captur. We love it. Renault has come a long was since the days of the Renault Dauphine, the only Renault exported to the United States (late 1950s) - a notoriously bad car. This car is comfortable, drives very nicely and gets about 42 miles per gallon (or 5.5 liters per 100 kilometers, which is how Europeans measure fuel efficiency). Our cars here are on a short-term lease - we get a brand-new car, fully-insured car at a way cheaper rate than renting a car from a rental agency. The daily rate declines the longer we lease the car; for 5 weeks, it's about $45/day, for our 3-month stays, it's about $35/day.

Miscellaneous Pictures

I love the colors of these peppers (and eggplant) at the store where we purchase all our produce (and cheese, and paté) (and some wine).

Fresh produce! This stand is in a parking area in one of our favorite towns, St. Mammés (pronounced "san mammay"). There's a weekly market here, but evidently this produce stand didn't get the memo about what day the market operates.

More fresh produce! This produce stand appears in our next-door neighbor's driveway for two hours every Wednesday afternoon. He had lots of customers for those two hours. I suspect that most, if not all, of this produce was in the ground Wednesday morning.

Affolantes

Affolante is a name given to big ostentatious houses that appeared in this area along the Seine in the late 1800s. The railroad from Paris had reached Bois-le-Roi and so the rich folks of Paris built these as summer/week-end homes. We love to walk along the river and eyeball these places. Here are a couple of them:

The word “affolante” has several definitions, but the most appropriate for these houses is “staggering.” For folks who lived in this area before the arrival of these mansions, “staggering” was a perfect description of these huge mansions.

Miscellaneous Photos

We are great fans of the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, so we were pleased to come upon one of his works at Chateau Chaumont, in the Loire Valley. Goldsworthy uses local material —in this case, flat rocks—to construct outdoor works. This hive is one of his themes; he's built similar hives in many places.

Love stained glass. Particularly contemporary stained glass. There seems to have been a renaissance of stained glass over the last few decades, as we've seen quite a few works that are clearly modern.

Nice church in the city of Arras, eh? Wait a minute, this is the town hall? Yep.

If you read the post on the World War I sites we visited in Arras, you'll remember the number of men France lost in that war. Every town, village, and city in France has a monument to them. This is in a tiny town in the Célé Valley outside Figeac. There were a dozen names on this monument.