France 2023 - Hypermarkets, Wine Tastings, and Unsupported Breasts

We wake up at the ungodly, but somehow appropriate hour of 9am. I think I have given up on my regular early morning routine for this trip as it's simply not working out. It's a fine trade off for these late night, magical evenings.

I start the day with a morning swim and the pool water has been chilled by last night's downpour. It is refreshing beyond belief.

After a leisurely breakfast, we meet Mark the property manager, who lives in a separate apartment within the house. He is a cool guy and speaks perfect English. He's there to let the cleaners in and they appear to be a local couple, and attack the cleaning job with vigour, moving rapidly from room to room with rags, vacuums, mops, and spray bottles. We do our best to keep out of their way.

Michael warms up the leftover veal from the first day and we have lunch before leaving for today's day trip to Ales, a nearby town north of here less than ten kilometres. There, we are welcomed by a canopy of braziers that have been hung on wires above the bridge for breast cancer awareness. I expect there are a lot of unsupported breasts in this town.

The two An(n)as head to the pharmacy, renowned for its English speaking pharmacist and vast selection of herbal remedies for things like menopause and skin glitches and other afflictions that men don't understand. Michael and I just wander around the centre shopping area looking at fancy hats.

We swing by a hypermarket to pick up a few supplies. Ana and I always enjoy going to supermarkets in other countries as we always see items that would be huge hit in Canada, but are not available. Here, we find several examples - containers of chopped up cubes of back bacon (perfect for adding as flavouring to meals), small packages of preserved mini sausages (meat snack to go with your bag of chips), boxes of 25 cl mini-beers (good for Tuesday evenings), and a half dozen varieties of pate (delicious anytime).

Once back at the chateau, Ana and I head out for a walk into town and climb up and down some new streets. The town is again eerily quiet and we feel like we are the only ones here. We find a lovely forest path on the way down and walk through a section of woods then pop out near the bakery. We go in, have a chat with the lovely lady working the counter, and pick up tonight's baguette. I notice a small menu that lists hot dog so I try to order one but we are told they are only available from 7am to 1pm, so instead we share a piece of pizza and an orange Fanta. We feel so French.

When we return home we have a rousing game of poolside ping pong and Ana wins, but it was close. She's also been beating me at foosball. I am challenging her to a game before bed every night, but she only agrees to play up to one goal. So far, every time I've dropped the ball in, it just rolls slowly into my goal without any contact, but she is a good winner and doesn't rub it in.

Anna and Michael have prepared an amazing roast chicken and vegetables for dinner so we sit down at the table for our meal, after the mandatory apero snacking session of course. Meals at Chateau Olson are always accompanied by wine, and not just one bottle. They carefully select the best wines to accompany each dish and we have tastings so we can compare them and learn a bit more about wine. The variety of wine here is staggering and you can buy it anywhere. Ana and I are the furthest thing from wine connoisseurs and I compare our evening wine tastings to television shopping. TVs viewed on their own all look fantastic. But when you go TV shopping and see all these TVs lined up beside each other, you can spot small differences, and the smart assed TV salesperson will talk you into the most expensive one, but you probably would have been pretty happy with a cheaper basic model. For me, every glass of wine I've had here has been amazing, from the 5 euro bottles to the undoubtedly scary expensive ones Michael or Anna have been pulling out. Maybe I'm just easy to please.

France 2023 - Perfect Hygge

My plan to get up early and go for a walk and swim is scuttled by a cozy duvet and inviting bed and we don't even wake up until 8:30. The weather forecast looks unstable for the next few days with plenty of rain and wind expected. But we didn't come at this time of the year for the weather; any sunshine we get will be a bonus.

After a leisurely breakfast and coffee we pile into the VW and drive to Uzes, a town about 20 kilometres east of here. It is a gorgeous little medieval town and today is market day so there are dozens of vendors in the main square selling food items.

Anna picks up a round of croissants from one of their favourite bakeries and we have a mid-morning snack in the shadow of architectural wonders. We learn about one of France's many interesting food laws - croissants made with pure butter (croissant au beurre) are always straight, while the lower quality ones made with margarine have the stereotypical curved shape. Care to guess which ones we eat?

We arrive at Comptoir Numero 7 just in time for our lunch reservation. Our server is a very young guy and what a pro he is. Perfectly groomed, clearly spoken, impeccable movements - it's impossible to think we could be anywhere else in the world right now besides France.

Our meal is incredible and we enjoy a slow, deliberate lunch. None of the other customers here are in a rush either. This is a real treat for Ana and I as we rarely go out for meals at home, and when we do it's simply nothing like this, as we can't get this quality of food and experience without spending a mortgage payment's worth of dinero at a fancy restaurant in Toronto.

After stopping to pick up six bottles of carefully chosen wine at the local wine shop, two platters of charcuterie from the butcher, and some groceries at the hypermarket, we return home and Ana and I embark on a solo walking tour of Vezenobres. We muscle ourselves up the steep streets, winding back and forth, through narrow passageways and shadowed paths until we reach the viewpoint at the top of the village, guarded jealously by a free range cat, part of a gang of felines who patrol the town and keep the villagers in check.

We take the long way down and pass by the bakery to pick up a fresh baguette then return to Chateau Olson where I take a lovely dip in the pool while Ana chills out in our room for a bit.

It is dark by the time we are into apero, this time around the coffee table in the primary living room, which is expansive and filled with custom furniture crafted from airplane aluminum. Anna's favourite spot is a curved desk which makes her appear either as a hotel concierge or as if she is sitting in a hot tub, depending on one's vantage point. There is also a Dr. Evil/Mork from Ork egg shaped chair with acoustics perfect for singing or humming to oneself. Michael's day perch is at the large aluminum table, on which is splayed out a rat's nest of video equipment, cameras, cords, converters, adapters, drones, and, strangely, tourist brochures.

But in this moment, we gather round the expansive wooden coffee table with our platters of charcuterie and drinks, while the weather outside gets progressively nastier, and soon the dark sky is alive with lightening flashes and strikes. The further into the night we delve, the stronger the light storm becomes. But what also strengthens is the perfect hygge - the now trendy Danish concept of coziness, something I learned about while living with my friends Martin and Marianne in Odense, Denmark nearly thirty years ago - and have never forgotten it.

Chill electronic music spills from the Sonos system and a hardwood fire rages in the fireplace, the heat circulating through the living room by the quiet fan. Nine votive candles flicker and burn on the table, creating shadows on charcuterie snacks and wine glasses. Indirect lighting casts a perfect orange yellow hue and backdrop to the intense bolts that erupt in the sky, visible to us from the deep windows cut into the stone. Our conversation flows easily and dances from topic to topic as we laugh and tell stories. Time passes gently. There is no rush and there is nowhere else we need to be right now. We are living in the present, our best lives, in the company of people we love. And the moment is not captured by photographs, because it simply couldn't be. It will live only in our memories.

France 2023 - Arrival in Vezenobres, it's Olson Time!

You know what I've never done before? Bought a package of four eggs. In America Norte, eggs come in quantities of 12, 18, 24, and 48 so we can buy several week's worth of eggs at a time and hope that perhaps one or two of them will hatch and produce roaster chickens. In big European cities, refrigerators are small and shops are plentiful so there's no need to stockpile food - you just buy what you need for the day and you're good to go.

Ana and I have a slow morning as we eat our four eggs, mini croissants, and apple then I do some writing and Ana packs up our things. By 10:30 we are walking out the door for the final time, headed for Gare du Lyon train station. It is a beautiful morning and the thirty minute walk gives us a chance to admire this dense urban wonder where curiosities exists around every corner and at the end of passageways, and whether you look up, down, or across.

We walk into the huge station and I feel like Jason Bourne as I navigate through the crowd, eyeing the CCTV cameras everywhere. Unlike Jason Bourne, the only mystery I'm trying to solve is what platform we need to get to for the train to Nimes, in the south of France. As I'm pondering that, Ana sees a Starbucks sign and leaves to get a coffee, then comes back with a bottle of fancy hand cream.

"What happened to the coffee?" I ask.

"It was like 7 euro. The hand cream was half of that. So I went with the hand cream," she replies, overjoyed. My wife's brain works much differently than mine. I just can't see myself going out for a delicious hot dog and coming home with a bag of well priced grass seed and being very happy about it.

The TGV, France's high speed train system, rockets us across the countryside at a speed that makes the cars traveling on the highway look like they are standing still. These trains can reach speeds of over 300 kph, but it's hard to say exactly how fast we are going. One may think that you'd need to be buckled in and hanging onto a rail for dear life, like on a theme park rollercoaster, but the ride is completely smooth and there're people in the dining car drinking espresso and standing casually as they visit.

We arrive at Nimes Pont-du-Gard and my uncle Michael and aunt Anna are standing at the bottom of the ramp waiting for us. This is going to be fun.

Michael is my dad's youngest sibling and is only 8 years older than Ana and I. Anna and us are even closer in age. They live in Welland, Ontario and we see them frequently, but not as much as we'd like to.  Michael's first career was as an aspiring hockey star and went to a special high school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan to work on his wrist shots and face punches. But then he realized he wasn't very good compared to the rest of his teammates so instead traveled to Japan where he could be the best hockey player in the country since nobody there knows how to play hockey.  Along the way he got a side job in a small restaurant gutting fish and taking out the garbage and realized his true passion was in food services. He returned to Canada and went to cheffery college in Toronto then easily found work gutting fish and taking out garbage in a series of fly-by-night restaurants across the province. Once he learned his chops he started stepping over all over the dishwashers, kitchen porters, chefs de partie, sauciers, sous-chefs, and clawed his way to the top chef job which entitled him to work even more hours, under more stress, making crappy money, but at least being surrounded by a bunch of other fun people that had all lost their regular friends because the only day they got off was Monday when all the normal people are at work.

He eventually came to his senses and got a day job as a chef professor at Niagara College where he develops curriculum, creates programming, and teaches first year aspiring chefs how to not slice their fingers off or blow up the kitchen, all between the cozy hours of 9am and 3pm. But in his spare time he rebuilds meat slicers, pickles vegetables, collects knives, buys wine, ties fishing flies, produces amazing Instagram reels, writes cookbooks, creates recipes, and is a cameraman/video/audio expert for his favourite television personality - Anna.

Anna started out in the financial services industry but quickly realized her colleagues were all lame and she much preferred baking treats for herself and all her friends. So she went down the food services path as a pastry chef, ensuring herself a life of poverty and financial distress, lost weekends, burnt skin, relentless servitude, and an empty future. But then, she discovered the television industry and the television industry discovered her and she soon took over the Food Network and became the most famous baker and chef in the world and didn't have to wake up at 3 in the morning anymore to make doughnuts for ungrateful food nuffies.

At some point along the way Michael and Anna met, worked together, fell in love, got two Beagle dogs, bought a house, started a bakery, and built a pretty good life, or at least what they thought was good. Their life now is way better. They have moved on from regular burger flipping and to much more varied,  interesting, and profitable careers, so much that they no longer knead much dough (get it?). The variety of things they do makes your head spin - Anna's many television shows, writing cookbooks, food festival appearances, European culinary tours, sponsorships, charitable work, specialty catering, writing articles, a Youtube cooking channel, and that's just the stuff I know about. They are simply amazing.

We pile into their chubby brown VW cargo van and drive back to their fabulous fractional-ownership 350-year-old French mansion in the medieval town of Vezenobres. I know I like to call big houses "mansions" but this really is a mansion. There's an east wing and west wing. Eight bedrooms. Two kitchens. More couches than a vintage furniture store. There's a billiards table, two foosball tables, wine cellar, massive fireplace, outdoor pool, and a fig tree plantation. After touring us around the place and assigning us a room (which has its own foosbal table, of course), I realize that if I need to walk from the main lounging area back up to our room, I will need to pack a lunch, take some road pops, and would probably be wise to leave a trail of bread crumbs or empty beer bottles. As part of the visitor indoctrination session, we learn that this structure was built originally as a silkworm factory, and has probably been through many reincarnations since then.

Anna and Michael take us for a walking tour around Vezenobres, which perches precariously on the edge of a hill. We walk through the eerily quiet narrow cobblestones streets, passing by stone buildings hundreds of years old. We stop to pick up baguettes from the local bakery and are instructed that two trips per day are required to the bakery - fresh croissants in the morning and fresh baguettes in the evening. I like this routine.

We return to Chateau Olson for apero, which is a mandatory daily pre-dinner ritual where you snack and drink. On the table are anchovy-stuffed olives, camembert-flavoured chips, multi-grain baguette slices, radishes with butter and salt, smoked salmon blinis, five varieties of cheese, and even a bowl of modest French-style bits and bites. Michael has a case of 30 Kronenburg beers, but the bottles are tiny and obviously designed for consumption by infants, so we just drink them fast to make it feel like a real beer.

Dinner itself is amazing - Veal Blanquette ladled onto gnocchi grilled with onions, garlic, butter, and fresh wild mushrooms with a beautiful plum and prune tart for dessert. And there're several bottles of fantabulous wine rapidly uncorked. We eat slow, talk fast, lurch from topic to topic, laugh, share stories and settle into the unfathomable fact that we have five entire days of this yet to come.