Chantilly

Dear Mother,

My reward for one photograph was staying near Chantilly at Dolce Chantilly, a resort with a golf course attached.  It was a bit too much like being in the States, but the price was right (I had to pay 3 Euros tax).  Since Janice will not drive in Europe, I decided to forgo golfing.  I also felt that it would give me more satisfaction to see and photograph more places that it would to golf poorly, because I have not swung a club for five weeks.

This was the scene outside our room.  You can see the white tee box for No. 1, heading to the left, over two ditches filled with water (trouble).  The clouds were threatening and it was very windy.

 
We got to Chantilly too late in the day to get into the castle, but we had visited it in some detail in 1988, and the opulence of the decedent French royalty can finally get to one.  We stopped to look from the gate, 30 minutes before closing.  They were preparing for a very large event to go with horses.  Chantilly is about horses.  Our hotel room had a very large silhouette of a racing horse, hardly our style.  The castle is beautifully restored and houses the second finest art exhibit in France.  The Condé Library is exquisite, and I have lectured on a number of works in its collection, but I had seen that material earlier.

The roofs are fascinating with their decorated chimneys, steep slopes and ornamental touches.  This was one of the the king's favourite refuges away from Paris, with extensive forests for hunting grounds (an important form of exercise for royalty once they were administrators rather than soldiers.

I had to wonder what the large fish were.  There were plenty of them and they were exploring the surface in the evening light.

Now separate from the castle but once part of its lands, the enormous grass horse race track was being readied for yet another race.  France had been very dry, but the course was as well-watered as any golf course, and used far less often.  The white rail is both a visual boundary for the horses/riders and a symbolic protection for the observers who will be there by the tens of thousands, lined up all the way around and also inside the centre.

There was a peaceful road leading to the part of the track opposite the main bleacher seating.  I liked the way the trees line and shade the road . . . typical of France.

 We also walked a bit in Chantilly, which is basically a very long road leading directly to the castle.  There were few crossroads, which was unusual.  This is an Anglican Church, St Peters, with services in English.  David and Julie were married here several years ago.

There is a canal that runs parallel to the town of Chantilly, so we walked along it in the waning hours, working up an appetite for dinner.

 

In Gerberoy, we learned the hard way that you do not postpone a meal unduly (like one can do in Paris).  By the time we started looking for a place to eat lunch (1.45), nobody would serve us.  So in Chantilly we moved our schedule ahead a bit and sat down to dinner before 8:00.  At first, we despaired of finding anything interesting (and open) but then we looked through an open carriage doorway and realized that people were eating on the carriage way itself as it came off the main street and circled into the former stables.  The food was just fine, the temperature just right, and the weather held.

Back at our hotel, we were scared off breakfast by a notice which indicated that one could have breakfast brought to your room for 40 Euros ($65).  We decided to forgo breakfast in bed (yet again) and headed for a bar in town for coffee and some bread.  I have learned that you get the best coffee at bars, not restaurants.  We had great coffee but they were out of bread.  A local French lady heard us ask and be denied, so to our utter amazement, she came over to our table and insisted that we let her go to the local bakery and get us a croissant, pain au chocolate, or whatever we desired!  We had fun talking with her, but tried to assure her that we were fine, that we in fact wanted to go to the bakery to see what they had, and that we really really appreciated her kindness.  She then told us that one of her children had married someone from the UK and she assumed we too were from England, but she also took kindly to Canadians.

Anyway, we then went to this bakery to get some danish pastry with raisins, which was just perfect.

 Two blogs in a day is not my usual style, but we enjoyed our duck confit, as well as the zucchini done in duck fat, potatoes done in duck fat, and salad (Not done in duck fat).   The duck legs had been stored in salt for a day (in SW France to pull out the moisture and help preserve them) and then cooked submerged in fat for an hour before being canned.  I simply poured everything into a pan and boiled the legs in the fat for perhaps 15 minutes to get them golden brown before draining them.  Then I fried the potatoes and zukes in some fat.  It was a treat; a bit salty, but a treat!

With love from us both,
Evan