2024 Post-Holiday Postcard From France
It was the best of times. It was the strangest of times. It was the wettest of times.
A belated welcome to 2024. It’s not unusual that holiday high jinks derail this newsletter. Yet our holiday season seemed to reach heights (depths?) of weirdness that tested our best efforts to be festive.
It didn’t help that the first half of December saw a continuation of the incessant rain and grey skies that had seized the nation for almost 2 months. Between mid-October and mid-December, France set a 60-day record for rainfall. The 341 mm that fell crushed the 200 mm average.
We had planned a drive into the French countryside for my birthday, December 9, for a hike and to cut down a Christmas tree. But torrential rain scuttled those plans. So we instead drove north to the town of Beauvais where the pouring rain and gusts of wind rendered the use of umbrellas impossible.
Fortunately, we discovered a nice little brunch spot called Doya where I ordered pancakes. We made a brief attempt to shop and then visited the Saint-Pierre Cathedral, which boasts of being one of the tallest Gothic churches ever built. Saint Pete’s was indeed lofty — and drafty. And, in parts, seems to be buckling and needing some serious work.
We had better luck the next weekend, going for a stroll around the town of Évreux where we had lunch and drove south to a Christmas tree farm called La Ferme de Jumelles run by a lovely couple. Being Americans, we went in search of the tallest possible tree because that’s what it means to be American.
Having cut the tree down and paid for it, we now faced the matter of getting it home, which meant strapping it to the roof of the car. Again, this is a perfectly normal thing one does in the U.S., but a spectacle that left the farm owners both amused and perplexed. Though we had brought some straps, we also borrowed additional twine to secure it.
The ensuing scene, I believe, has now made us legends in this neck of France, as commemorated by the farm’s Facebook page. I’m sure the owners were telling the story of the crazy Americans at all their holiday dinner parties.
We got the tree into the apartment without any drama. However, the month remained so chaotic that we never got around to decorating it beyond the lights. 2023 became Our Year of the Naked Christmas Tree.
Still, it seemed that with the approach of Noël, things had begun to calm down a bit. Of course, it was just at this moment when I began to feel ill and tested positive for Covid.
This meant I spent a week isolating in a bedroom with minimal contact with the family. Basically, an inmate at a sanitorium but with good wifi. Christmas morning was a particularly sad affair as I sat on our balcony watching everyone opening presents before ducking back into isolation.
Fortunately, my case was mild and within a week I had tested negative, making me fit for human contact.
Lest this missive seem overly grim, it should be noted for the record that there were also many moments of holiday cheer, most of which involved food. We had our traditional winter fondue. And there was the making of cookies, including Peanut Butter Blossoms, which for me remain the peak of human culinary achievement. And then, of course, the Galette des Rois.
As we pass the mid-point of January, the rain has been replaced by record-low temperatures lasting several days at a stretch. Last week, temperatures ranged from 0 Celsius to -14 Celsius, plus snow and ice which has remained on the ground in our suburban enclave for several days because it simply hasn’t gotten warm enough to melt and local municipal officials seem wholly unprepared for such freak climactic occurrences.
We braved the arctic winter for a family dinner at one of our favorite Paris restaurants, the Relais de l’Entrecôte. It is at once both very French and very not French. The waitresses — and yes it’s only waitresses — wear simple black dresses with white collars and aprons.
The restaurant doesn’t take reservations. Which means one has to get in line before it opens. In the summer months, the lines can be quite long, stretching for a couple of blocks. Being determined, we arrived 45 minutes before opening and were first in line. Our reward for standing outside in sub-zero temperatures was a choice table by the window where we could watch the other people stand in line as temperatures tumbled while we ate.
As soon as you sit, the waitress comes. There is no real ordering here. The restaurant only serves one thing: walnut salad, sirloin steak with its famous sauce, and frites. We told her how we wanted the steak cooked and what we wanted to drink, and two minutes later, the salad and bread were in front of us. This is a land speed record in terms of getting served at a restaurant in France.
The steak comes out 10 minutes later. The waitress brings out a large platter of sliced stake and places it on a nearby table above candles to keep it warm. She then places steak on each plate along with a generous pile of frites and puts it in front of us. She does this twice for each of us. So, yeah: Fast service. Seconds. Very not French. But also, super French throwback ambiance.
After a tumultuous several weeks battling illness and Mother Nature’s wrath, this felt like a well-deserved reward and the perfect capstone to the strangest of holiday seasons.
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq