Wednesday, August 10th – Wednesday, August 17th:
The Duquesne's house would become our house for much of August.
Lounging with Dakota one cool morning in Bordeaux before we head to Cap Ferret.
It doesn’t get any better really than a beach house ON the beach in Cap Ferret, especially at the location we had. Wednesday, August 10th, drove 50 minutes west to Juliette’s beach house in Cap Ferret on the Bassin d’Arcachon on the Atlantic Coast. THIS is a vacation (have I said that before?) Juliette is a friend of Gregory and Christine who we me in Bordeaux last year. We were lucky enough to get her beach house for 8 nights this August. We don’t want to leave. Ever. Ok, maybe it will suck in the winter.
You may recall, we stayed in Cap Ferret for a week last September (not ON the beach; different house), and also we lived in Arcachon for 6 weeks beginning first week October last year. So it was super to be back to this area the girls and we so enjoyed. Bassin d’Arcachon is a bay on the Atlantic Ocean, and the bay opens where the Arcachon peninsula meets the Cap Ferret peninsula. The water is blue, clear, cold, salty and wonderful. With all the rain this summer France has had the water is definitely cold, but refreshing, even for me. I swam every day.
Cap Ferret is known for its oysters – oyster fishermen harvesting lots and lots of oysters. You can buy them cheap right from the fishermen, and eat them right there with a bottle of wine if you’d like. But what we found most enjoyable to do this trip was to collect “moules,” or mussles, during low tide. The evening we arrived Charley began collecting a bucket of mussels to surprise me with "dinner," knowing how much I like eating moules (I ordered them in most restaurants this summer). Dakota assisted, and soon they had loads of moules.
But since we just arrived in Cap Ferret today, we thought we would make our first night stay a breeze and head down to the pier for dinner. And, of course, I ordered moules. The girls played on the beach upon finishing dinner.
The next day for lunch I decided to take on the challenge of preparing the mussels Charley and Dakota collected. I scraped, trimmed and cleaned them, dowsed them with white wine, added butter, shallots and garlic, and steamed them for a few minutes. And voila! DELICIOUS moules. Brad, Dakota and I ate them right up with a baguette. Charley was happy watching. We enjoyed moules 3 or 4 more times, right out of the sea. Doesn’t get any fresher than that!
We also kayaked out to the giant sand island that appears in the middle of the bay during low tide. That was fun, with the sand in dune formations and little sea creatures scattering about, including hermit crabs, sea stars, crabs, shrimps and beautiful shellfish we’ve never seen before (which they call "couteau", meaning knife, because they're long and narrow).
The girls liked to retreat to our bed on occasion to cool off, relax, and read (in French!).
We had a day and a half of rain also. It slowed us down a bit, but not much. We still swam and walked, including into Cap Ferret for pizzas followed by a canele (pastry specialty of Bordeaux). We painted (thanks Kendal!) and enjoyed chocolate chaud.
One evening we walked across our narrow peninsula through the petit foret toward the ocean when we were distracted with all the blackberry bushes. We filled 2 bags of berries, and we made a delicious blackberry pastry for dessert with them the next night.
My favorite was just hanging together, on the porch, on the beach, in the shack, wherever. Life was slow and marvelous.
When the tide was high, we walked off our porch and straight into the water (naked even). Or fished right off the patio (though the only thing "caught" was sea grass)! The oyster beds were covered during high tide.
When the tide was low we walked off our porch and straight onto the beach. The beach was super, like the magic of the tide pools with all the little sea creatures to find meeting a soft, clean, sandy beach. The girls had the absolute best of both worlds. Charley spent most of her time harvesting shell fish and searching for sea creatures -- funny to see her working up against the oyster fishermen. Notice, during low tide, the oyster beds are completely visible.
One happy day was, as the girls were searching for sea creatures (including moules to cook) during low tide, they discovered big fat sea snails -- lots of them.
Beautiful night views from our patio:
And in the bay there were no strong currents, just some waves, we we weren’t worried about the girls heading out on their own at all. They just went on down to the beach whenever they so desired. And we had our own private little strip of quiet beach, with neighbors who weren’t in any way disturbing and who weren’t right next door. But we were close enough to the public beach and the pier just down the way such that we could walk to any of it, including the town and restaurants, via the beach during low tide. We could live this life all summer, for sure.
Charley's cool find just before we (sadly) left Cap Ferret:
The girls didn’t have a lot of opportunity to speak French while we were in Cap Ferret, mainly because we all just hung out together on the beach and in the water. It was our time to be together. There were 3 occasions in which Margot, a 19 year old French drama student who Christine connected me with, drove over to play in French with the girls, but only for a few hours. It allowed Brad and I to have mini dates, and the girls enjoy playing with these energetic teenage sitters. Actually, I’ve come to see that Charley and Dakota really enjoy speaking French. And sadly, they can’t really do it with me. They are far more advanced than I.
The day Margot taught the girls this song in French, and Dakota sang it for us that evening :-)
Thursday, August 18th – Thursday, August 25th:
We returned to the Duquesne’s house in Bordeaux on Thursday, August 18th. I will need this week to mentally adjust myself for our return to the U.S. Also, Jacques and Francoise’s oldest daughter – Elise – will work in tutoring the girls and playing with them in French.
Margot also continued to work with the girls.
Otherwise, the most we did during this last week in Bordeaux was visit centre ville, go to the market on the quai we so enjoyed, make dinner for Jacques and Francoise, enjoy a lovely lunch at Gregory's parents' home just outside of Bordeaux, and swim at the (impressive) indoor public pool. And, we cooked! Four of those days were sweltering hot!! HUGE temperature changes while we were here, from 60s to 90s in a week. Now, our last day here, and it's in the 70s.
Tomorrow, on August 25th we will take a train to Paris to then fly back to SFO on August 26th. That ends our French immersion experience for 2010-2011. It went fast, and it sure was fun and adventurous while it lasted. We came here nearly 1 year ago, on September 2, 2010, for our 5 months stay, returned to the U.S. with our French tutor who lived with us for 3 months, then spent 2 months here this summer. We went to amazing places and met special people along the way. We feel so lucky to have had this year. We look forward to our next learning-while-traveling adventure. I’m angling for…. Martinique!! Or New Caledonia (thanks Bruno :-) )!!
A bientot!
ABCD
