Month: January 2019

Exploring festivals abroad

Not the musical variety, in fact I don’t  think I’ve ever been to one of those home or away. There were Glasgow’s Big Day concerts in 1990, somehow I got into the then Copthorne hotel to watch the George Square gig and then went down to Glasgow Green in the evening (that was the time Sheena Easton got booed* for her Mid Atlantic twang); and I was at the Nelson Mandela Tribute concert at Wembley the same year,  but the full mud and music experience?  No.   The festivals I mean are the holiday ones, Christmas, New Year, Twelfth Night, Thanksgiving. The latter one first, but far from traditionally when two of MrS’s American colleagues invited us to celebrate it with them in Curacao, instead of turkey we ate curry.

curacao beach

the beach in Curacao

Then in 2016 while we were in the throes of building works we sought out some Christmas sunshine in Lanzarote

cactus tree

Festive cactus in Arrecife

And last year we welcomed the arrival of the Kings in Tenerife

three kings

waiting for The Kings

This year we spent New Year or Saint Sylvestre in France.

Of course there were still signs of Christmas

 

 

and portents of L’Epiphanie

But the main event was New Year.

Restaurants offered festival menus

st sylvestr menu

This is ours from Augusto Chez Laurent

Here are those puds

augusto pudding

and yes they all contained lobster butter!

But it seemed lots of people would be enjoying seafood platters at home

preparing seafood platters

hard at work at the fishmarket

Midnight and the arrival of 2019 was a low key affair. We headed to the Mairie

mairei

to watch the clock.

midnight

But missed the crowds you’d see in Scotland

It was a little livelier at the casino

where we could hear a party. But we just enjoyed the lights and headed back to our hotel.

Where we might* have had a kiss under the mistletoe**

mistletoe

of course we couldn’t fit under it here

Best wishes for 2019 and Happy New Year to anyone celebrating it tonight.

Marina xx

*and worse

**we did

***”gui” in French it appeared in the shops on New Year’s Eve

PS Almost back home I became “King” of the day when I found the bean in our pie

 

Keeping track…..

What will I write in my diary tonight?

Last Thursday in Deauville was mostly about food!

later breakfast

Breakfast at Eric Kayser*, Deauville

It might have been a tad chilly outdoors but this was our favourite cafe and we didn’t want to leave @southfieldchat   (aka B) behind. That would have added insult to injury. Thursday was “le vet” day, she had to go for her mandatory examination and worm treatment before travelling back to the UK.

place morny

Place Morny from the cafe (not as cold as it looks, that’s fake snow on the trees)

After breakfast we had a little urban walk,

 

made a note to buy our Gallette du Roi,  and stopped  for another coffee.

looking out from cafe

View from Le Cyrano**

After that it was time for “le vet”.  Now we’ve been to France twice before with B and had two very different experiences at the vets. First time in Ile de Re was great with a nice young vet who did a very thorough examination and was kind and gentle; second time around in Bergerac, mmm a little less so, the vet had a  blood spattered tunic and did a strange “flip” manoeuvre to check B’s bones. She was very much less than impressed. Happily Mme le Vet. in Deauville was lovely and certainly came top in B’s book. She hid the tablet in cheese! B would have stayed there all day.

 

“What?  That was medicine?!?!?”

Wormed, passed fit and with all her papers signed (in all the right places ****) B was legal for re-entry to the UK  and we were all free to enjoy the afternoon.  So we a took little drive along the coast to Villerville where we popped into a Brocante and took B for a walk on the beach. Because that’s her favourite thing,  home or away.

“C’mon you chaps”

 

And well, we might have had a spot of lunch……

Villerville was the location for the 1960s movie un Singe en Hiver  (in English “A Monkey in Winter” or  “It’s Hot in Hell”) and the Cabaret Normand is a restaurant still, but we ate galletes in the creperie across the road.

 

Now you might think that after all that we’d be done with food for the day, and you could be justified in thinking that. But you’d also be wrong. Very, very wrong.

This was our last evening after all!

We’d booked at one of Deauville’s Michelin starred restaurants***:  Maximin Hellio.

I don’t have many photos of the food, we were too busy enjoying it.

 

We’d chosen our menu when we booked but hadn’t realised it would be at the “chef’s table”,  actually a very comfortable banquette looking into the kitchen. Normally that wouldn’t be my choice but this was interesting, and as things got less busy M. Hellio chatted to us, well mostly to MrS.  I’m fairly proficient at reading menus and know more food vocab. than any other type but struggle with anything more than basic conversation. But even with my poor language skills I could appreciate the care and pleasure he put into his craft.

We left clutching our loot, boxed up petit fours we were too full to eat and an autographed Michelin guide. Stopping off in the Place for one last look at the Christmas lights and then back to the hotel and our beds.

 

 

A Bientôt

 

Marina xx

 

 

 

 

*Eric Kayser, Place de Morny, Deauville

**Le Cyrano

***the other is L’Essentiel (more about that later)

****VERY IMPORTANT, we’ve seen dogs turned away at Calais even though they’d been to a vet but their passports had been stamped or signed in the wrong place.