A festival

Friday, September 3, 2010 Day 65

I was the one chosen to go out and get breakfast, so I bought a pain au raisin for Roger, a pain au chocolate for me, and a pain au lait for the two of us to split. We made tea and had a delicious breakfast.

I did some laundry this morning, learning the joys of yet another French washing machine. Roger spent much of the morning working on leveling the stove (there is no little screw-down leveling leg) and exploring the contents of various boxes of tools, painting implements, tiling trowels and other miscellany.

We determined that we need not stay all day at the apartment, so we left late in the morning to explore some more. We went down to a market on the main plaza, called the Comedie, and looked around a bit. Since it was lunchtime, we bought a quiche and a croque for lunch and ate them on the steps of the Eglise St. Roch across from our favorite trompe l’oeil.

After lunch we set out to try to find a Carrefour, which is the same brand of supermarket at which we shopped in Paris. We walked for half an hour or so, having to work to skirt the construction mess at the beginning. We passed a Lidl, but soldiered on a while longer. We found a Picard, but weren’t in the market for frozen foods at the time. We needed basics like cereal, cheese, lunch meat, napkins, hangers, and other stuff. We finally got to a fairly large-looking Casino, another brand of grocery store, so we entered there and bought most of what was on our list. Carrefour must be even farther out, in which case we are not interested in shopping there. Partway home, we took a different route which avoided much of the construction. We got home and I finished up some work I needed to do for wrapping up my practice, then left to go to the internet café down the street to print it up.

We went back out around 5:00 or so and wandered back down to the Comedie and then toward Place Charles de Gaulle, which is a modest-sized park with a promenade in the center of it. As we moved down the promenade, we discovered booths setting up, some with food, others with arts and crafts type items. There were signs for “Estival Montpellier,” and we realized that we had hit upon the perfect way to end our day – eating local foods and enjoying a festival! Most of the booths were just setting up and many of them appeared not to be ready to serve food yet, so we decided to go back to the apartment and relax a bit before returning to the festival. On the way out, we picked up some literature on the festival and I read it at the apartment. I noticed a concert at Notre Dame des Tables starting at 9:00, featuring Les Drôlle de Dames (The Funny Ladies) and decided this would close out our night.

When we returned to the festival ground, the crowds had picked up considerably. We checked out all the food booths then made our determination as to what to eat. I chose a Japanese salmon and vegetable patty which was okay, and Roger started with an assortment of five tartlets, flavored variously in beef, three cheeses, and lamb. He skipped the spinach one. Later he got a pork sandwich, and I had some beignet-like balls covered with Nutella. Yum! There was lots of wine available, of course, and the purchase of wine got the buyer a free glass printed or etched with “Estival Montpellier,” but we passed.

We moved on to the various craft booths and I hit upon one I couldn’t pass up. A woman was selling fruit-infused vinegars. She gave me a taste of a couple of them and they were quite good. I could imagine using them to make salads, so I bought a set of five in various flavors.

It was time to move on to the concert by this time. We had little trouble finding the church, and we entered and sat down with an audience which ultimately numbered close to 200. At the appointed hour, a priest rose and made a brief introduction, then three lovely ladies came out. One was a harpist, the other two a soprano and a mezzosoprano. The singers sang various songs, mostly as duets, accompanied by the harpist. The harpist played about three solos, and each of the singers sang two or three solos. Each piece was brief – only a couple or three minutes long. There were five different pieces entitled “Ave Maria,” one of which is quite familiar in the U.S. We were able to be ignorant in four languages in the space of one hour – they sang in Latin, French, Italian and German! Overall it was quite enjoyable. Lately I have been reading Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, and it clearly affected my appreciation of the concert. I remember having a thought that the soprano, who was quite slender and wore a strapless dress, had better not empty her lungs entirely of breath or there would be nothing left to hold the dress up. I had a couple of other irreverent thoughts along the same line, mostly having to do with the church itself. One of the surprises of the concert to this Southern U.S. Protestant-raised woman – although a priest both opened and closed the program, he did not offer up a prayer. We were mystified by the misicians' name - there was nothing remotely droll about these dames!