France 9

 2025, foodie stuff, France, friends, us  2 Responses »
Nov 132025
 

fresh garlic

Well, we have been home a month this week, and I am well aware that I never produced the final post in the France series, our last week or so back down at Arne & Dominique’s, a fabulous end to a mind blowing time living in France for 2 months!

Our first adventure of the closing days was driving South to Valence, a city we had wanted to visit and just hadnt go there, but finally we made it, had a wander round another lovely French city, bought some noughat from Montélimar, the town famous for its noughat which is about another hour further south – our friend Frank, who lives on his yacht in Gove Harbour, left his homeland, France, 55 years ago. He has never been back! We asked him what he would like from France and after thinking for a while he said, “some soft noughat from my hometown, Montélimar.” So we were finally able to fulfill his wish!

We also managed to get back to our favourite French-Lebanese restaurant, Auberge du Pas-Sage, just down the road, in Serre-Nepol, a couple more times, Sal & I for lunch and we took Arne & Dominique for a last dinner before we left. We enjoyed some very nice Lebanese wines and they gave me a couple of Ricard glasses and a water jug after Sal mentioned I had been trying to buy some to take home – an extremely generous gesture!

Our last trip into the French countryside was a drive to the North East, a direction we had not explored and lunch in a town called La Côte-Saint-Ande, we once again discovered a great little restaurant, a workers style brassiere which was filled with the old machinery from a mill or something.

We discovered a beautiful old hotel that had been converted to the Marie (civic centre) and the most amazing gardens in the courtyard. There were also many interesting buildings using a style of small stone work we had not seen elsewhere.

We then stumbled on the most amazing huge hall which was obviously very old and filled with incredible timber. Its still in use today for the weekly market in La Côte-Saint-Ande. We found a plaque with some information and translated it –

The market hall A “market house” is mentioned as early as 1309 in La Côte-Saint-André. This name designates the market hall of the town, which has come down to us in its 15th century form. The building has five bays, separated by rows of wooden posts supporting a four-sided frame. The stone blocks on which the posts rest replaced the original sideboard walls at the beginning of the 19th century, similar to those of the Crémieu market hall. The house which occupies a corner of the building retains parts of the 16th and 17th centuries (fireplace, staircase and ceilings). In the Middle Ages it housed the seat of the court and the Savoyard and then Delphine count’s administration. Its proximity to the market hall testifies to the central role of this multi-purpose space in the center of the city. With a length of 76 meters and a width of 29 meters, this medieval hall is one of the largest that has come down to us. A document from 1548 specifies that the five bays corresponded to the location of five trades: weavers, mercers, regrattlers (retail merchants), shoemakers and butchers. Classified as a Historic Monument, the hall still hosts a weekly market today.

 

We had a final dinner at Le Sabot, Dominique prepared a French classic, Pot au Feu, and we dined with a few of our new, close friends! It was a lovely night, tinged with sadness at the imminent departure of the “Aussies at Sabot” for their home! Dominique also gave me a lovely old Ricard bottle to go with the glasses and water jug that our friends at Auberge du Pas-Sage had given me, I felt very blessed!

And so our time in France ended, an unbelievably amazing 2 months that exceeded any possible expectations we had. Just wonderful in everyway. The trip home was uneventful, no jetlag for some reason, we spent a few days in Darwin and then finally arrived home on the 10th October. We hope you have all enjoyed the vicarious adventure with us, its not a time of our life we will forget anytime soon!

I will leave you with a little video of us driving home to La Sabot, up the winding narrow road that leads up past Rene Claudes house and up to Dominique & Arnes. Enjoy! (turn up the sound!)

 Posted by at 9:10 pm



France 8

 2025, foodie stuff, France, friends, us  4 Responses »
Sep 302025
 

Semur-en-Auxios

A bit late with the update! Sorry but my roughly weekly schedule for posting has blown out this time, as I write this we enter our last week in France and we are back down at Dominique & Anre’s house. First though, lets go back to the last week or so of our time in Montbard.

First up, some pictures from my walks thru the village, along the canal and the river, something I tried to most days, weather permitting.

We spent more time exploring in various directions, a drive up to Auxerre and a walk thru the old city on a lovely late summer’s day was interesting. We drove back home thru Chablis and Tonnere where we stopped for a very pleasant glass of chardonnay at a bar. The forecast was for a few lovely warm sunny days before the rain returned so we were determined to make the most of it!

Auxerre is notable for the Saint-Etienne Cathedral, originally built about 500AD, it was destroyed by fires between the 9th and 11th century, and rebuilt in the 11th century, then rebuilt in a different style in the 13th century! Its certainly an impressive building!

Our next day of discovery was a drive to Semur-en-Auxois, we drove into the town centre, parked and wandered around the very pretty town. Sal found some good second hand shops to browse thru and when we had finished exploring we decided to drive to the river on the edge of the town as we had packed a picnic lunch of wine, baguette, cheese and pate so we thought the river would be the spot for that. We nearly didnt find the spot because it was very difficult to drive to due to the extremely steep and narrow streets and at one point 2 other cars were backing out because they had decided there was no pathway forward, but we persisted and were rewarded with a view that realised as the most beautiful town we have yet visited in France, what had not been obvious from the town centre above, was just how steep the hill was that rose out of the river side and how beautiful the buildings lining the hill. Again, another piece of our luck that comes from how we travel and our exploratory mindset!

I have split the galleries in two as we took so many photos here!

I made a little video of bits of footage we have shot driving thru the French countryside, some in Semur-en-Auxois, some on the open road and some in other villages.

The amazing weather continued so the next day we packed another picnic and went back to Vezelay to see it in bright sunlight and then had a picnic in the village below, Saint-Père, again on the banks of a river.

The next day was to be the last of the warm, sunny, clear days before the cold and wet set in, so we packed our 3rd picnic in a row and headed off, we got no more than about 7kms and as we were driving thru Fain-Lès-Montbard we saw a sign that there was a boot sale on and then saw the carpark full of people selling their unwanted goods. This is Sal’s idea of heaven so of course we stopped and went on the hunt for bargains! Sal got some nice clothes and we found a beautiful set of a bigger bowl we will use for salads and 8 small dishes we can use for condiments, they are in amazing condition, local porcelain and only cost 10 euro for all of them! I also got a lovely resting spoon for 1 euro!

We then headed for a little tiny village called Foissy-Sasoge, we had found there was an Emmaus site there, part of the RRUSE network, basically these stores are huge second hand stores run to collect donated materials, sort and resell while providing income, jobs, housing and other support to the disadvantaged,

“Emmaüs Dijon, established in 1972, continues the mission initiated by Abbé Pierre, grounded in its four core values: hospitality and support, sustainable development, employment, and housing. As a social enterprise, it is dedicated to promoting social inclusion and solidarity. To employ disadvantaged people and reduce waste, the organisation runs a number of second-hand stores in the region.”

Being a Saturday afternoon, and as we were making our way to the city of Beaune in the heart of Burgundy, we thought we would stop and see if it was worth coming back for a look when it was open. When we arrived we were surprised to see there were some people standing around the building as if it might be open, but there were plastic chains cordoning off the entries, after some discussion in Franglish we discovered they were shut for lunch and opening in 10 minutes, at 2pm!

So we waited around with a quickly growing crowd of people, by 2pm there were about 50 people waiting at the plastic chains, at exactly 2pm an old guy opened the chains, and the whole crowd aged from about 18 to 80, ran furiously across the grounds to jostle for entry to the huge building and sort thru the tons of second hand goods to hunt for a bargain! It was truly comical and unexpected! It was not just the huge building but also a massive outside area filled with second hand stuff.

Sal was once again in her element! Frankly I found it a bit overwhelming, so much stuff, and most of it junk really (although there was still a lot of really nice stuff too)

After lunch we drove up to Beaune and thru some of the other primary Burgundy villages. It was nice to see all the vineyards on the hills surrounding the towns, but we were pretty underwhelmed by Beaune, very touristy and busy. As we drove home we returned thru the same little village where the boot sale was, they had finished up the boot sale but were still selling a sausage in a baguette and a glass of wine or beer so we pulled up for a quick feed!

Monday night saw us back at La Mirabelle for another amazing meal! It was sweet-sad because we knew it would be our last, we were booked into Le Chez Soi for the next night which would be our last in Montbard.

And so it was off to Le Chez Soi for a last meal with Chef Raphael, at first there was only one other table, a couple, another couple came to the door to try and get a table but Raphael told them he was full and not taking any walk ins. You could see the confusion on their faces – they could see there were only 4 people in the restaurant!!

As we suspected another group came in to sit at the 3rd table, they were a group of 6 and as we discovered when we all sang happy birthday,  it was Nathalie’s birthday. This lead to some chat between the 3 tables and when they discovered we were Australian they became very friendly, Bernard & Claire have a niece working in WA and Jean & Nelly have a daughter in Brisbane, from there the conversation in ‘Franglish’ continued! Towards the end of our meal they told us they wanted to sing a song for us and asked us to join them and Raphael was given the job of camera man!

This lead to Bernard asking us to join them all back at his house “for a few drinks”, they live about 75m from the restaurant in a beautiful house at the top of the old village. Who could resist an offer like that!? So we walked up the stairs, round the corner & into their house.

What ensued was an incredible night of hospitality from Bernard & Claire, Jérôme & Nathalie & Jean & Nelly, singing, talking, drinking various local spirits, chatting to their niece on the phone in Australia, and probably much more that we cant remember due to the alcohol content by this time! It was another reminder that our sort of travelling delivers an experience so different to the Farcebork/IG/TikTok tourism. With tourism enough money can buy you the same experience as any other tourist, but no amount of money can buy the sort of experiences we enjoy as travellers. We may have only really stayed in 2 places for 2 months in France, but experiences like this night will stay with us the rest of our lives and remind us just how wonderful people are the world over!

Mind you, the hangover felt it might last the rest of our lives too!! It lead to the decision the next day NOT to leave for the drive back to Dominique & Arne’s. Instead on a drizzly cold day, about lunchtime, I got out of bed and did the walk of shame down town to where we had left the car the night before to pick it up and return to bed!!

So the following day we arrived back in La Sabot after a long day driving, we stopped at a city called Mâcon for lunch and discovered yet another wonderful French city, on the banks of the Saône. Lovely wide streets, beautiful buildings, and a relaxed, happy feel to it. It was nice to be back in Dominique’s kitchen & I enjoyed cooking for all of us again, Lamb Kleftiko one night and beef ribs the next! They have gone away now for 4 days in Austria, so we have the house to ourselves for a few days, the weather has come good again, although its much cooler now. We have just 2 days together when they return and then drive up to Lyon next Sunday to drop the car off and fly out home to Australia.

Just to finish up what has been a very long post, I have been collecting pictures of some of the beautiful cars I have spotted in France, mainly Citroens!

 

 

 Posted by at 5:24 am



France 7

 2025, foodie stuff, France, friends, us  2 Responses »
Sep 152025
 

Dijon

So Thursday saw us driving Kai over to Dijon to catch his bus to Munich, after dropping him off and saying our goodbyes after a fabulous week with him, we decided to spend some more time checking Dijon out, so we moved the car to a long term carpark and started wandering. Its a very beautiful city, huge wide streets and promenades, feels very slow and relaxed, no one rushing or stressing! Its sort of the perfect size city for us! Big enough for the title of city, but small enough to have a great feel.

We stumbled across the Jean Jacques precinct which was full of bars and restaurants and on the spur of the moment booked dinner for that night at a lovely looking French-Japanese fusion restaurant, L’Aspérule. So we decided we better find a cheap hotel so we could stay the night, but first we went to visit the Cité de la Gastronomie et du Vin – basically the French Gastronomy Center, and specifically the Cave de la Cité, a wine shop with 3 floors form a sort of ‘wine library’, 3000 bottles of wine, 250 of them sold by the glass. They range from a few Euros to a lot more when you descend to the Cave des Grand Crus. Here they have some of the most expensive wines in the world. The wines sold by the glass are mounted in special cabinets, you load a card with cash and then insert the card above the rows of bottles, and select the wine you want and how much, 30ml, 75ml or 150ml and then it pours the glass from the bottle. The small 30ml glass means you can afford to taste very expensive wines that would be otherwise outside your budget.

We did a series of blind tastings with 2 glasses, one with a cheap Burgundy and the second with an expensive one, eg a grand or premium cru. (cheap one was €2.50 for 30ml, expensive up to €35 for 30ml) It confirmed our existing opinion that we are not the greatest fans of the reds of Burgundy. They are a little light and thin tasting for our palates, something I would put down to the singular use of Pinot Noir grapes. We also were consistently able to pick the €20 bottle from the €400 bottles – but the difference in taste in no way justified the difference in price in our opinion. Give us a $25 bottle of good Australian Shiraz or Cab Sauv any day!! We finished with trying a few Côtes du Rhône, including some very old Grand Crus, as these have a flavour profile more to our palate.

We followed the tasting with a quick bite of lunch at one of the brasseries in the city of gastronomy and then found a room at the Hotel de Paris and had an afternoon nap before heading out to find a bar for an aperitif before dinner.

It was in the Jean Jacque precinct again that we found an amazing underground bar, in a back street with no other shops, restaurants or bars, was a sign on the footpath and stairs leading straight down underground to a beautiful space. Apparently most of the old hotels in Dijon had a cellar like this that was the restaurant for the hotel, this had been such a space and long after the hotel was gone, repurposed as an underground bar, Le Caveau de Saulx. The staff were very knowledgeable and helpful, again a great range of wines, many very old ones. They had a simple system, you could get a glass of a range of newer wines for €10 or a glass of a range of old wines for €15 a glass.

So, time for dinner, and round the corner to L’Aspérule, they were only offering their degustation menu tonite, either 5 or 7 courses and the option of the Sommelier choosing the wines, we went for the 7 course and the Sommelier’s choices. Most courses he gave us a glass each, from different bottles, we then shared the glasses so we got to try both wines and compare them and discuss how they matched the food, so in the next gallery are the courses and the wines he presented,

Ok, lets take a breath before reloading! As you can see, the food was beautifully presented and I can tell you the flavours were just incredible, a real journey of discovery over a few hours, the wines too were amazing, obviously very high end French wines. By this stage we are starting to feel rather fat and full, but there was plenty more to come!

 

As you can imagine, it was a bit of a waddle back to the hotel, although despite us having put on what felt like a couple of kilos, this was offset by my wallet being much lighter – to the tune of €400! We checked out mid morning and drove back home to Montbard, ducked into the markets to pick up a couple of things, including the most amazing roast chook with potato slices cooked in the chook fat below the roasting bird! (lunch for a few days!) and did very little over the next couple of days! Simple dinners at home and NO wine!

Of course resistance was short lived and Sunday night saw us driving 10 minutes over to neighbouring village, Saint-Remy, to La Mirabelle, a cosy little restaurant we had been trying to get a table at since we arrived. It was another surprise with a very unusual menu for this region, none of the typical dishes. It was another incredible meal, the food was thoughtful, clever, beautifully presented and the setting was intimate, almost like being in the dining room of someones house. We chose a few of the seafood dishes because we have come to appreciate that the distribution networks in France mean the seafood freshly caught in the Med or Atlantic coast, is in the restaurant here the same day. I am glad we did because they were stunning, and talking to the chef afterwards he told me he was born and trained in Brittany so seafood is his passion!

We treated ourselves to a very nice Chardonnay from Burgundy, we have learnt we much prefer the whites from Burgundy to the reds and in fact I think they are the equal of the Chablis chardonnays, often at a much lower price point.

Somehow I have missed that the afternoon before this dinner we had a drizzly drive thru the countyside to visit a hill top town called Vézelay which has a huge 11th century basilica. Its certainly very pretty and we will likely come back one day when the weather is better. You can see the scale of the basilica if you zoom in to the person standing in front of it!

Well that is quite enough for what was meant to be a quick and short update of a week that it felt like we really didnt do much!! Maybe because for the first time we had a few days where it was just Sal and I on our own? Anyway, luckily its been a dreary drizzly morning so lying in bed and updating the blog has been a perfect activity!

 

 

 Posted by at 9:11 pm



France 6

 2025, foodie stuff, France, friends, us  8 Responses »
Sep 102025
 

Week 6 in France saw us leave La Sabot & our friends Dominique & Arne, we were very sad to leave, we had such a wonderful time with them and would have happily stayed the rest of our time in France there. The opportunity to drive north to Montbard & spend some time in our friend’s house there was too good to miss. Rob & Denise are good friends from Gove who have owned the house in Montbard for about 15 years, Montbard is near Dijon, right next to the Bourgogne (Burgundy) wine district, just south of Chablis and Champagne so its a pretty compelling area for wine and food!

We wanted to get to Montbard before Rob & Denise left so that set the timing somewhat and we drove up, past Lyon and then across to a beautiful town, Cluny, that René-Claude had recommended we stop in. We had a wander around, found a great wine shop to buy some wine to take with us and then a lovely little restaurant for lunch. We just had the Plat de Jour (dish of the day.) A delicious entree of grains & fruits presented like a tartare, pork escalope with green pepper cream sauce, red potato mash & green salad. Dessert was a pear and almond tart.

We jumped back in the car and passed thru some more pretty towns and villages before arriving late afternoon in Montbard. We quickly settled in with Rob & Denise and they took us to some of their favourite restaurants and gave us lots of tips about what to do, where to go, and how to live in a French town! Friday became quite a tricky day as we had planned to go to the Montbard market early in the morning and then drive over to Dijon for the market there and to have some lunch and a bit of a quick look around with Rob & Denise again giving us tips. The problem was that Kai was due in on the train just after lunch, he had long planned a surprise visit to see his mum, and so I needed to get back in time to sneak out and pick him up from the train station.

It was quite funny as we spent all morning & most of our time in Dijon hurrying around, telling Sal that Rob had to get back before 1:30 to pick a parcel up from the post office before it shut, then Kai let me know he had been delayed and wouldnt be in until after 4pm so we went from hurrying madly to then telling Sal we had found out the post office didnt shut after all so we could now have a leisurely lunch in Dijon before making our way home! Everyone was in on the surprise visit, Dominique & Arne, Rob & Denise, me, Danni…everyone except Sal! I think we did pretty well to keep her completely in the dark, especially as she kept pushing me to drive over to Germany to see Kai & Danni!!

 

A couple of days after Kai arrived we put Rob & Denise on the train to Paris for their flight back to Australia and now we are just enjoying the local area and spending time with Kai before he heads off to Germany to do Oktoberfest again. We did a day trip up to Les Riceys which is the Southern most Champagne appellation, we visited the Marquis de Pomereuil Champagne Co-op, a co-op of the smaller vineyards in Les Riceys. We had a delicious lunch in Châtillon-sur-Seine at Restaurant L’ Evidence.

In Châtillon-sur-Seine we also visited the museum which features an incredible array of relics mainly from the ancient Roman site at the village of Vix a few kilometres away. Vix was settled by the Romans about 500BC and the most famous find was the grave of what is known as the Vix Princess, she was a young woman buried in a huge burial chamber with many artefacts, her body rested in a coffin on a cart with the wheels removed, lots of jewellery and also the Vix Kraten, a massive bronze wine container, the largest metal artefact found in western antiquity.

Here are some more images of Montbard, food, beer and Kai’s visit!

…and more of the same!!

Last night we had one of our culinary highlights of the trip, maybe one of the culinary highlights of our life! We booked into a tiny restaurant in the heart of Montbard, Le Petit Chez Soi, which we were told is a tapas and wine bar. It is literally tiny, has only a few tables, as an example it already had the “Complet” sign on the door when it opened at 7pm – us and another table of 6 was all he would serve! He runs it totally on his own, all the waiting and all the cooking! Its not so much a tapas bar as a set menu of 3 tapas, one main, fromage & a dessert. It also has a small a la carte menu. He selects all the wines and they were amazing wines! We started with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Spain which was perfect for the 3 tapas dishes, then he opened a 2004 Tempranillo from Spain, another incredible wine! For the desserts he opened a Brachetto D’Acqui from Italy, a bubbly red.

The food was next level, a charcuterie of superb meats on baguette with a dob of some delicious fruit preserve, mussels done 2 ways and a potato, cheese dish that was exquisite. Kai & Sal had the steak for mains, with a delicious sauce, perfectly dressed salad and a little potato gratin with a bit of fried courgette, I had the prawns, grilled with salade and courgette. The dessert was a plate with some sort of rich chocolate and nut slice, soft meringue, sorbet and crème fraîche.

It was truly a memorable and intimate meal, surrounded by dozens of amazing wines, art work and beautiful music from his curated playlist. It was also insanely cheap, the whole meal for 3 including the 3 bottles of wine, came to €75! As you might imagine, we tipped him generously and booked again for next Wednesday!!

So, Kai is off tomorrow, he has a bus from Dijon to Munich so we will take him over in the morning and spend the day exploring Dijon some more. The weather is still amazing really, its definitely got a bit cooler, but most days are sunny and mid 20’s so we cant complain!

 Posted by at 8:44 pm



France 4

 2025, foodie stuff, France, friends, us  6 Responses »
Aug 252025
 

baked tomatoes

So we come to the end of 3 weeks here, life has continued at a leisurely pace – while packing in plenty of great experiences!

Sal & I started the week with a drive out to the NW of our village, a direction we had not headed previously, Arne gave us a recommendation for a lunch spot at one of the villages we intended driving thru, but we had got no more than 5 minutes from home, and driving thru the neighbouring village of Serre-Nerpol I spotted a small bar and restaurant, and so I screeched to a halt, threw a U turn and we went to check it out. Ordered a drink at the bar and noticed a few people arriving to eat, so we asked for the menu.

The owner came out, a lovely woman, she explained that the menu included French & Lebanese dishes as her mother is Lebanese, we asked what she suggested we select for lunch and she recommended the trio of meze, frog’s legs in garlic butter, then mains of a lamb kebab dish and a duck breast with risotto. After finishing our drinks we moved into the restaurant and worked our way thru a huge and delicious lunch!

The food was amazing, obviously created with love and passion, the mezes were simple but delicious, the frog’s legs amazing and so full of flavour, the kebabs came with a strongly seasoned salad and freshly made aioli, they were marinated in spices and char grilled. The combination of flavours were amazing and the parts of the dish complimented each other perfectly. The duck breast was perfectly cooked and the risotto was as good as I have had in Italy! So all in all, another example of what we love doing, discovering hidden gems while driving through the countryside with no particular plan!

Of course there were lots of yummy meals at home as well, I also popped over to Voiron to source some freshly roasted coffee as my stock I had brought with us had finally run out.

The confit duck with quince mash was a flavour bomb! The next highlight was a drive over to Saint Marcellin for some shopping, I had offered to cook for a group of friends coming over on Saturday, they were coming to collect a couple of trailer loads of fire wood from Dominique and Arne, and amongst them was the guitarist, Jean-Luc, so I suggested I would cook for everyone, and after dinner Jean-Luc could play for us!! Anyway, whilst in Saint Marcellin we decided to try out a restaurant Sal & I had spotted the first time we visited, it looked very nice and had an interesting menu so we stopped for lunch.

We only wanted a light lunch so we shared 2 entrées, escargot and a tomato salad with buffalo mozzarella. The snails were so good! But the salad was amazing, the mozzarella had some pesto and like a dukkah on top, drizzled with olive oil and of course the tomatoes here taste like nothing we get in Australia! I also loved the little cup and saucer the coffee came in! As we left we spotted the wonderful old Simca Aronde, it was totally unrestored, original condition.

Friday we were lucky to score a special treat, the village we are on the edge of, Notre Dame-de-l’Osier, used to have a very highly regarded pizza restaurant, due to various reasons the owner no longer operates the restaurant, but once every month or so he sends a text to all the locals to tell them he is doing a pizza night, he sends out the menu, you pick the pizzas you want, and then he texts you the time to come and pick your order up. So Thursday night Dominique got the text that it was on this week, so we picked our pizzas and ordered!

They were as yummy as we had been led to expect and we felt very lucky to have been here for one of the village’s famous pizza nights!

So the big day arrived, the pressure was on! Dinner for 9 – and all French gourmets!! Rick’s Bar & Grill (on tour), was under the pump. Sal & I had planned a typical French approach for the meal, we started with a charcuterie, so a selection of local cold meats with some cherry tomatoes, home grown roquette and pickles. We also did a side of rock melon. We then served a main of my famous spiced mini meatballs in tomato red wine sauce with fetta cheese and Sal did a selection of fresh blanched beans and garden vegetables. Then we had a selection of 4 cheeses with fresh figs and the meal was finished with an amazing dessert that GiGi brought with her, a nougat ice cream cake with fresh berries.

By all accounts I think we pulled it off! Everyone seemed to enjoy our contribution to the day and there was very little left over at the end of the night. We also enjoyed a selection of nice wines as well as a delicious champagne with the cheeses as is the French style! Arne lit a log to add to the ambience and add a little warmth as the night air chilled a little.

 

Here is a fairly poor quality video of some of Jean-Luc’s music in the salon, also a bit of footage of the kitchen and dining room!

Finally to close out the week, here are some photos of the view on my walks thru the local villages and forests, I am up to 10km a day now and the scenery is just stunning, sadly the photos never quite capture the steepness and scope of the landscape, but hopefully it gives a sense of what I enjoy most days!

Ok, thats enough for this week! We are off to Lyon for a few days with Dominique, Arne & Rene-Claude so I expect that will be a post of its own next weekend!

 Posted by at 8:52 pm



France 3

 2025, foodie stuff, France, friends  6 Responses »
Aug 202025
 

Renovator’s dream!

So, here we are, 2 weeks into our stay in France, in one way it feels like we live here now, in another it seems like we just arrived! Week 2 has been packed with eating & exploring, as is our want! Dominique had bought a couple of kilos of mussels so I knocked up my take on Moules Marinières, always a bit of a challenge doing a classic French dish when in France, and staying with a very good cook, but there were no complaints!

Sal & I also drove over to Saint Marcellin for some shopping and had an explore of the old centre of the village and found a cute little cafe. It was only 11am but everyone was taking either wine, beer or coffee, so not wanting to stand out from the crowd, we had a sneaky vin blanc each. The glasses were gorgeous! (zoom in for the detail!) We also met a delightful woman who sat at the table next to us, she had good English and was a local resident so we had a very pleasant discussion. She had also visited Sydney so I think that helped.

I did another bbq with the local Scotch Fillet and got the timing better this time, Sal knocked up a yummy veggie salad and we finished with poached pears with cream, the peaches are just sensational here, so much flavour! The girls were also preparing pavlovas for a meal at more friends of Dominique & Arne’s, Guy & Snezhana. They also have a pool, so we headed over in the afternoon for a swim and then dinner.

Their pool is solar heated which made it perfect for us tropical visitors! I enjoyed a new taste, blueberry beer by the pool and then we retired to their beautiful garden for dinner, an entree of fresh local tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella followed by bbq kebabs with an amazing baked potato dish that Snezhana made, then a plate of local cheeses before the amazing pavlovas created by Dominique & Sal. All in all a very pleasant evening!

I picked up a nice looking chook at the local boucherie, (butcher), it didn’t look anything like a chook you would buy in Australia! Obviously totally free range, and as we later saw when driving around, indeed they do raise them free range as the photo of them under the walnut plantations show. Dominque roasted the chook in the traditional French style and it was amazing!

free range chooks!

We also went up to Saint Marcellin to see a friend of Dominque & Arne’s, Jean-luc, play guitar at a cafe, to our surprise it was right next door to the cafe where we had enjoyed a glass of wine a couple of days ago! The music was great, the boutique beers very tasty and our friends Gigi & Jean-Claude were also there.

Our next adventure was a trip up into the mountains, Montagne De Lans, these are the chalky cliffed mountains that run to the south of Grenoble and are the backdrop for the garden here where we stay at Le Sabot. The road up through the gorge to the plateau was challenging to say the least! Overhanging rocks, very narrow, winding and huge drops on one side as you might expect for a mountain road!

The village of Villard-de-lans is on the plateau and is a major town supporting the ski runs in the winter. Its very pretty and enjoyable to walk around, it was very busy on the day we visited as it was the Sunday of a long weekend and half of Grenoble had driven up for lunch! We had a wander around and a nice simple lunch at a local restaurant.

Sal & I went for a drive to visit a specific roadside bar & restaurant for lunch, and on the way we visited Chateâu de l’Arthuudière which is a very historic building dating back to the 1300’s!

“The first written testimony of the existence of the strong house dates from 1345. Construction of a round tower in the 13th century, to which was added a rectangular tower at the beginning of the 14th century. Construction of the west wing in the early 16th century. The estate was burned in 1580 by the Huguenots. André II de La Porte undertook the restoration of the castle around 1590, including the first floor of the north wing. The monumental staircase and the rearrangement of the east wing, date from 1680. In 1726, transformations were made to the castle. At the end of the 19th century, the round tower was raised by a polygonal brick volume, covered with a terrace. The eastern wing receives a white limestone base and the corner chains are taken over. In the 1950s, a fire destroyed the east wing.”

“The Arthaudière was originally a strong house founded in the Middle Ages that saw three families succeed each other: the Arthaud, the La Porte and the Marcieu.

The Arthauds being the first owners of the strong house, the castle inherits its name. Period: 13th century until the beginning of the 16th century.

Then came the family of La Porte. Period: 16th century to 19th century.

It took the La Porte family five hundred years to give the castle the appearance we know it today.

Five centuries to transform, as their fortune grew, the modest stronghouse of the Arthaudière into a prestigious castle.

During these five centuries they distinguished themselves in the service of royalty, which repeatedly hailed their actions and courage. They were rewarded by Louis XV who raised their lands to the rank of marquisate in 1729.

Five centuries to become one of the most influential families in Dauphiné, so that their last member, Joseph Nicolas de La Porte, could claim the titles of Marquis, Field Marshal, Knight of the Order of Saint-Louis, Knight of the Legion of Honour, Commander of the Sword of Sweden, Saint-Maurice and Saint-Lazare in Piedmont.

Then came Marcieu’s family. Period: Mid-19th century until the end of the 19th century.Then came Marcieu’s family. Period: Mid-19th century until the end of the 19th century.

In 1893 the castle was sold to Mr. Cote, a Lyon banker, who had the brick rise of the tower built.

The owners then succeeded each other

Since the end of the 19th century, several unfortunate events have distorted the appearance of the Arthaudière: questionable elevation of the round tower, and above all, fire of the eastern wing in 1952.

The Castle was bought by the town hall of Saint-Bonnet in the 1990s and classified as a Historical Monument in 1991. Currently the Château de l’Arthaudière is in full restoration.”

After our historical wander we made our way to Bar des Copains in Saint-Bonnet-de-Chavagne, a quaint little village with a tiny restaurant run by Kristen, its basically patronised by local farmers and workers and has simple food produced out of its own garden with other local ingredients. Dominique recommended it as being the type of place we like to eat, and she was exactly correct!

The food was sublime, the entrée of paté with a simple salade of tomato & lettuce was amazing, the tomatoes so sweet and full of flavour. Loved the extra bread in a plastic bag with a knife stuck in it, true rustic! The main course was a dish of very long, slow cooked beef with an omelette with lots of fresh greens in it and topped with a bit of melted cheese. The beef was incredibly tender and tasty. Next up was a couple of hard, aged goat’s cheeses, very good and to finish a couple of blood orange sorbets. No menu, no ordering, we just sat at a table outside & Kristen brought us the dishes as required. She spoke no English, but brought out photos of her son who is 25 and living in Singapore, so we showed her photos of Kai and made connections without language!

(just a reminder, you can click on an image in the gallery to stop and start the slideshow or go thru it manually.)

 Posted by at 2:04 am



France 2

 2025, France, us  1 Response »
Aug 132025
 

Romans-sur-Isère

 

We are enjoying a continued heat wave in France, with temperatures over 35º most days, luckily a number of Dominique & Arne’s friends have pools so we can enjoy a refreshing swim frequently!

Sal & I went for a drive to explore the area to the south west of our village, we had no destination in mind, just took the minor roads to explore. We ended up in a larger town called Romans-sur-Isère – literally Romans on the river Isère. We parked at the top of the town as it looked like it had some character with a large shady esplanade lined with cafes & restaurants. As we explored it was obvious the old town centre was down on the river front so we wandered through the cobbled lanes and streets, lined with beautiful old buildings and found our way down to the river.

After an hour or so of exploring we settled on what looked like a nice restaurant and had a lovely lunch, we ordered the Tartare de Boeuf and the Salade Romanaise.

Some pics of the local area, Vinay is the nearest shopping sized village, about 10 minutes from us, Vatilieu is the tiny village directly above our house. René-Claude lives just below us on the hill, he has another beautiful house and gardens with a lovely pool. He is a very interesting man, in his late 70’s, has a great cellar from which we enjoyed some fantastic wine and was involved in the textile business before closing his business and retiring.

To finish up we better have some more food pics!

Thats all for this week!

 Posted by at 5:38 pm



France 01

 2025, France, us  4 Responses »
Aug 082025
 

Gove Airport

So, as many of you know, we have headed off to France for a couple of months, we eased into the holiday spirit with a week in Darwin ahead of our departure to France and had a wonderful but busy time there. We stayed with our Putty & Sarah again, in their lovely Nightcliff home and the highlight of the week was the festival of Lance – the celebration of our friend Lance’s 70th birthday. We started with a dinner with Lance & Cheryl and a couple of their friends we have met previously, and then a lunch at Saffron Restrauant which was the official birthday lunch, followed by an informal dinner and evening at their daughter’s house.

A second highlight was a lunch with some of our closest friends, as well as Putty & Sarah, we had Chris & Bid up from Melbourne, Lance and Cheryl again, and Marco & Deb with their kids, Sammy & Amalia. I chefed it up for the day and turned on my dry cured mackerel, fish with potato gratin, a couple of kilos of tiger prawns on the barbie with a mango salsa and grilled kangaroo.

Monday saw us off to the airport and our first flight bound for Singapore, we flew out early afternoon and had a not very full plane so we were able to both get a row of seats and have a snooze on the way. After about 6 hours in Singapore we had a flight on an A380-800 to Dubai, it was nearly empty with only about 100 passengers! Again we, and everyone else, had a full row of seats to themselves!! This flight was thru the night so being able to lie down and sleep was a huge bonus. We got into Dubai before dawn and had a few hours in the Emirates lounge before the plane to Lyon, so we had a nice shower and some yummy breakfast and a couple of drinks before departing for Lyon. This plane was full, but it was a comfortable enough flight and we arrived in Lyon after lunch.

Edit – What a joy it was arriving in France compared to Australia, straight off the plane, show passport at non-euro desk, out to baggage claim to wait for the bags to come off the plane, walk straight out of the airport. No forms to fill in, no questions from immigration, no customs checks, just a friendly welcome. We could learn a lot about how to do this from the Europeans.

Dominique and Arne picked us up from the airport and took us back to their stunning house which is about an hour south of Lyon. I think the timing of the trip was perfect, we were pretty exhausted, but forced ourselves to stay up until after dinner, then went to bed and had a great sleep before waking up with no sign of jetlag the next day!

For those not familiar with the connection, Dominique and Arne have a catamaran that they were sailing from Darwin to Gove on their way to the East Coast when they suffered some damage to the boat. We met them, lent them a mooring and a car and helped them organise repairs. They ended up having to leave their boat, Manuka in Gove and return to France and we looked after it for those months. On their return we spent more time with them and when they left for Queensland they told us that they were empty nesters with a big house in France and told us we were welcome to come and visit sometime, so here we are!

We have also been fortunate to arrive with very pleasant weather, low 30’s and sunny, clear blue days. That definitely helps!! Dominique & Arne’s house is stunning, an old farmhouse, typical of the region, made of pisé mud brick. They have done a marvellous job of renovating and creating stunning gardens. We have already enjoyed many meals on the large patio area.

The property has lots of beautiful walks, through the adjacent forests and villages, one of the walks of about 6km has sculptures by local artists every couple of hundred metres. To the SE are the chalky ranges that run South from Grenoble and to the NE we can see the Alps.

Yesterday we went and visited friends of Dominique & Arne’s, Gigi & Jean Claude, who have had a couple of times sailing on Manuka in Thailand & Australia, they have a lovely home about 15m away and a beautiful swimming pool so we enjoyed an afternoon of pooltime and drinks with them, we then all came back here and I bbq’d some very good scotch fillet we found at the local butcher.

Today Arne and I will drive back up to Lyon and I will pick up the car we have leased, so I think that gets us pretty well up to date on our French adventure!

The Pugly 3008!

(dont forget you can click on the ‘i’ for info on the images in the galleries.)

 Posted by at 7:57 pm