Palau del Vidre

Palau del VIDRE – (Translation: Glass Palace. Why? Because they blow glass here. The stuff in the galleries was okay, sort of, nothing I wanted.)

Palau del Vidre is a tiny village of 2,000 in the Catalan part of France. (see Google) Very quiet place but a boom town compared to where I’m going next. The latest thing in the village is that the mayor got his wish to pave the town square with pink marble. Taxes have risen but the mayor is very happy.

Sunday: For lunch today Patricia cooked monkfish & little red fish, rougettes, with steamed potatoes & leeks; we’re drinking local wine: Jonqueres d’Oriola, Chateau de Villeclare. After the meal she brought out a platter of exquisite bite-sized pastries: tiny cream puffs, éclairs, lemon tarts, strawberry tarts, chocolate tarts, mille-feuilles... Rather than have us choose she divided each one into thirds so we could enjoy every one. For tomorrow’s breakfast, as a change from the croissants, we’ll eat the local specialty, La Fougasse Catalan, which is a flat brioche topped with pastry cream sprinkled with coarse sugar.

Were you among the 9 million people around the world who watched the French documentary film, HOME, on TV Saturday night? If not, don’t miss it. Sunday afternoon we watched D-Day ceremonies with Obama & Sarkozi at the cemetery at Caen, near Omaha Beach, & at night the Rugby finals between our home-team, Perpignan, & Clermont-Ferrand. We won! What joy in the village! Car horns blasting, singing, shouting, & flag waving in the streets until all hours.

Obama ate dinner at La Fontaine de Mars in Paris: gigot, and crème caramel for dessert.

We take drives around the beautiful countryside, the snow tipped Pyrenees all around, the sea just a stone’s throw from everywhere. The highlight, the tiny beach resort and port called Sollioure, a Catalan style St. Tropez, sort of, where the specialty is anchovies and ginger flavored sausages, which we’ve been enjoying for lunch, among Patricia’s other culinary delights.

I see that my return flight from Geneva to New York is on an Airbus 330. Sure hope they fix them before July 15^th. Packing my heavy bag for another train ride today that will take me along the coast, then up into the heart of Provence.

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