Traveling North

Our time in Paris ended.  I bailed the rental car out of the underground garage, paying almost as many francs to the attendant at the exit as I’d given to Madame to settle our hotel bill.  Well, the garage was new and well-lighted, which can’t be said of the place on the Rue de Gay-Lusac. 

David and I headed north.  We drove through beautiful countryside.  I marveled at the farms with lush, fertile fields that have yielded bountiful crops for 2,000 years.  No dust bowl in France.  How do they do it?  I have no idea. 

At lunch time the highway passed the town of Senlis.   Tourists do not usually go to Senlis.  It is a very old town with a 12th Century Gothic cathedral.  France has lots of towns with old cathedrals.  The map is dotted with them like raisins in a loaf of Sara Lee raisin bread.  The most famous is Chartres.  The one in Senlis is listed in the Michelin Guide as “undistinguished.”  David and I did not stop to look.

Instead, I turned into the gravel parking lot of a wayside place which looked like a Swiss chalet.  This was strictly serendipity.  It was lunchtime, and here was a restaurant.  That’s where David and I had our finest meal of the entire trip. 

I vividly remember the waiter bringing the appetizers.  I think I had a pate.  David faced a bowl of “fruits de mer” (fruits of the sea).  Using a little fork he dug little sea creatures out of their shells.  David ate clams and winkles and even snails.  He ate it all with enthusiasm.

Throughout the trip I was delighted when my teenager cheerfully went for new experiences, whether it was climbing up the crumbling walls of an old castle or selecting his dinner from a menu written entirely in German.  In Germany he discovered jagger schnitzel (thin veal cutlets smothered with mushrooms) but learned never to order spaghetti Bolognese in Germany.  It was spaghetti topped with catsup. 

I don’t remember what else we ate in Senlis.  It was an elegant four-course meal which began with the appetizer and ended up with fruit (I chose a juicy comishe pear) and a tray with a choice of about 10 varieties of cheese.

We traveled without advance reservations, relying whenever we could on local tourist bureaus to find rooms for the night.  Green Michelin Guides were invaluable for sightseeing – those stars mean something: Three stars (***) are a must see; one star (*) is “if you have time.”   For meals it was hit or miss.  A good meal was a base hit.  Senlis was a home run. 

I loved traveling that way.  The most fun were the unexpected, the things that happened that were not planned: A German woman in Paris telling me that “Texas is gross.”.  Or stopping for lunch expecting to get a sandwich and eating a four-course gourmet meal.