Saturday, February 20, 2016

Bonjour!  Have I mentioned how happy we are to be here???  Today is Saturday and as most of you know, it is market day here in Saint Aignan.  This morning we woke up to the sounds of raindrops and people setting up their market stalls.  We got up and had coffee and iced tea and were about to go shopping at the market.  Just when we were leaving there was a knock at the door and it was Christina!  She is part of Rachael's team here at La Boulangerie and she is a delight.  We became friends with her and her husband, Claude, last time we were here. She doesn't speak English but we manage to communicate somehow. She told us Claude is out of town playing in a billiard tournament.  Apparently he is a champion billiard player.  She asked us to meet them at the wine bar on Monday so we will do that so we can visit with Claude too.  

There were only about half as many vendors at the market as the last time we were here -- Claire said it is a school holiday so that explains why some aren't here plus it is winter and the weather was drizzly.  But, no matter!  We saw lots of vendors we remembered.  We bought some beautiful mushrooms.  We bought most of the produce we wanted at the organic market yesterday so we didn't buy anything else.  Below are pictures of the cheese cart, the meat cart and the vegetable stands. 

The bakery cart wasn't there and that was disappointing because the woman who worked there was very nice. Claire told us she retired or the baker retired . . . I'm not clear on that. We were going to walk over to the bakery we always went to, but Claire told us they were closed because of the holiday.  A note about that: when we were here last time we loved the bakery that Marie owned.  We went there every day and ate many pastries and baguettes from her patisserie.  Since then, however, she sold the bakery and opened a restaurant on the bridge named "Sur le Pont."  

We are told it is excellent but we haven't eaten there yet.  We will, for sure, and I will report on it.  But I digress.  We still plan to go to the same bakery when it opens on Tuesday and we hope we will like it!  

We knew there was another bakery up the main street past the local grocery store so David went there to buy us a pastry for breakfast and a baguette for dinner.  It was late morning so most of the pastries were gone, however, he did bring home these cream tarts with burnt sugar tops.

David decided that if he ate a banana with his tart, it would be a healthy breakfast! 

Claire was at the market and we visited a few minutes.  She said she "couldn't take care of us today" because she was getting her house ready for a meeting on Monday.  I laughed and told her she didn't need to worry about taking care of us and that she and Douglas had been too kind and generous already!!!  But she invited us for Sunday lunch and insisted we had to come.  She is very persistent in a nice way so I accepted her invitation.  

Around 12:30 or 1:00 Nathalie stopped by to get us to go for an aperitif.  

We walked over to Aux Cepages and joined Nathalie's husband, Yves, and her friend, Veronique.  We had met both of them on our previous visit.  

Veronique speaks very good English so it was fun to have her to help our conversation along.  Nathalie speaks some English too and Yves just a little bit, but he and David shared David's dictionary.  We had a glass of wine and we were having such a good time we decided to stay for lunch.  Aux Cepages now serves food and they have quite a good selection and it was all very, very good!

  
And then Nathalie insisted we all have dessert.  Well, if we must!

We spent about three hours lingering over lunch and conversation and it was VERY enjoyable.      

Now we are back at "home" relaxing and reading and blogging. 

Around 8:00 pm we each opened a bottle of wine (David drinks white and I drink red) and had a few glasses of wine.  Dinner, again was baguette, butter and cheese.  It's nice eating your big meal at lunch and then eating light at dinner.  

Note:  wine is so good here and so inexpensive.  At the wine bar last night, David paid for 8 glasses of wine and the bill was 16 euro or about $17.81.  Amazing, isn't it?

It's 10:50 pm and time for bed.  Bonne nuit!