In this episode Join Us in France, Annie and Elyse embark on a remarkable journey through the Gers region in France, uncovering its hidden charms and age-old allure. And how about delicious gastronomy? It’s all here!
Our adventure begins at the serene Abbaye de Flaran, a historic Cistercian abbey now serving as an art museum, where we delve into centuries of history and art. The Gers region, with its seasonal attractions, reveals its best-kept secrets between March and early November. We weave through the picturesque bastide town of Montréal du Gers and the unique circular village of Fourcès. Here, we encounter the friendly local hospitality at a bakery, indulging in the delightful regional specialty, croustade.
Our journey takes us to the impressive Roman site of Séviac, famed for its well-preserved mosaics, a testament to the region’s rich Roman heritage. Time constraints lead us to bypass the museum in Eauze, but the visit to Séviac alone leaves us in awe of the historical depth of Gers.
The day’s exploration culminates in the enchanting village of Larressingle, a miniature version of Carcassonne. This small, circular walled village, complete with medieval ramparts and a church, stands as a symbol of historical preservation, partly restored thanks to international contributions, notably from American donors.
Throughout the episode, we highlight the importance of planning, especially for dining options in these rural settings, and the role of global efforts in historical preservation. The Gers region, not just a stop on the Camino but a destination in its own right, is rich in both history and gastronomy. We delve into the culinary delights of the area, from its famous duck dishes to the renowned wines of Madiran and Jurançon.
Join us on this enchanting journey through Gers, as we uncover the timeless beauty, culinary richness, and historical depth of this lesser-known French treasure.
Table of Contents for this episode
Today on the podcast Services related to the podcast Bootcamp 2024 The magazine part of the podcast: the price of bread Annie and Elyse about The Gers Exploring the Gers Region The Beauty and Simplicity of Gers Le Bonheur est dans le Pré The Serenity of Rural Life in Gers How long to get to The Gers? Visiting the Abbey of Flaran Art Exhibition at the Abbey The Village of Montréal du Gers Electric car charging troubles Fources, small circular village When in the Gers, try a croustade! A visit to Montréal The Roman Site of Séviac The Preservation of Séviac’s Mosaics The Villa of Saviac The Village of Larressingle Restoration work Gastronomy and agriculture in the Gers Le Festival du Gras (aka le Marché du Gras) The Town of Condom and Armagnac Thank you Patrons Itinerary Consult Service Feedback from Lucy Hicks Self-guided tours of Paris The Price of Bread in France Keeping your phone safe while touring Next week on the podcast Copyright
This is join us in France episode 475 I’m Annie sergeant and join us in France is the podcast where we talk about France everyday life in France France great places to visit in France French culture history Gastronomy and news related to travel to France today I bring you a conversation with Elise
Riven of tulo guided walks about our recent Excursion to the heart of the J where we visited ancient abies Roman ruins and medieval Villages the J is a bucolic and authentic place to visit an hour Northwest of tulo so it’s an easy drive for for us I think many of us
Would enjoy a visit to this off the Beaten Track part of France this podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my Tours and Services including my itinerary consult service my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the voic map app or take a day trip with me
Around the Southwest in my beautiful electric car you can browse all of that at my Boutique join usinf france.com Boutique and still you can join me and elas at the boot camp in May 2024 I wasn’t sure there would be any spots left but there quite a few still
Actually I’m surprised because last year it sold out so fast but there’s still plenty of time the idea is that you come to tulus on May 10th 2024 hang out with Elise and I as well as a group of wonderful fellow listeners and Franco files for 10 days you’ll also improve
Your French with language classes in the morning we had such a great time in May 2023 that we want to do it all over again and to find out about the boot camp go to join usinf france.com Boutique and click on boot camp 2024 that’s where you can read all the
Details and reserve your spot and of course ask me any questions that you may have I’m going to have a zoom very soon with the people who’ve already signed up and they’ll get to ask me all of their questions and get their reservations going for hotels and all of that good
Stuff for the magazine part of the podcast after my chat with Elise today I’ll discuss the price of bread in France as you know I just came back from a trip to the US and I was shocked at the price of bread how come bread is so
Cheap in France we’ll talk about that briefly and I’ll also mention two things that you must do to keep your cell phone safe while Traveling bonjour Elise bonjour Annie we’re laughing because we’ve started it this episode so many times already because it’s cursed it’s a cursed episode it’s really not a cursed place we’re going to talk about but looks like we are having a bit of a problem here I I made a few changes I
Changed microphones we’re recording in a different room and it doesn’t take much to throw us off our game apparently anyway Elise the J beautiful beautiful place very bucolic not far from where we live just west of tulus it’s kind of in between tulus and Bordeaux if you want
To think about it in those terms it is in the oitan region of France and it’s a beautiful place to go if you would like to see some very nice Villages eat really well and enjoy the bucolic landscape but there are are also some very nice museums that you can visit so
We’re going to get into it and this time for once we went there on purpose to visit because what happens most of the time when you live close to somewhere is you go past it and you don’t stop well we decided on a few places and we went
To visit them specifically so let’s talk about them yes in fact what happened was that this is a department especially for everybody but even for us who live here in too it’s kind kind of like oh you’re going to the J basically why would you
Go to the J well in fact it is very very very Agricultural and has just tiny little Villages but it also has some absolutely Exquisite old monasteries the beautiful architecture of the monasteries it has chat it has all these things it’s just that it’s not blingy like a lot of the other departments
That’s true it’s far from blingy it’s far from blingy you know I mean it doesn’t hold a candle to the lot which everybody goes to and which is dead drop dead gorgeous really but it’s one of those places that can grow on you if you
Spend some time there it it has only one city and that’s the city of O which is not very big it’s 23,000 people and the rest of it is just little Villages and this time when we say little we mean little yeah yeah so they have like to go
To high school almost everybody has to get on a school bus and go to high school it’s just not I mean they have elementary schools everywhere even in the very small places usually not everywhere obviously but Junior High in high school you have to go somewhere it’s just not everywhere it’s a really
Rural place and the places we visited I would think have perhaps between a 100 people and a thousand people perhaps most of them have it seems about a thousand people but then we did go uh we had our little lunch Adventure in a place that according to one of the local
Residents has only 25 people in the winter time so that is really what you could call Tiny you know but what are the things about the ja there’s a movie I have to remember I have to find the name of it because I can imagine I can see in my mind a
Couple of the actors one of them is a French singer named Eddie Mitchell a movie was made about 25 30 years ago that is a kind of Comedy that’s very Charming it’s about a group of people who go to the J and the basic idea of
The story is that there’s one of their friends either buys or rents this house in the J it’s a farm that has ducks and everything and the other people are going the J why would you go to the J who would go to the J it’s so boring in
The J and what happens is all these people wind up showing up and having the greatest time of their life you know was it called it’s fun it’s just a wonderful and it’s really about being in the G yes so means happiness is in the fields yeah
Happiness is in the fields watching the duckies go into their little Pond you know and there is a rhyme that goes ah the so yes so happiness is in the field run to it run to it happiness is in the fields run to it or it will
Run away oh yes indeed yes yes so if you’re looking for high-end drama this is not the place to go if you’re looking for a place that has beautiful scenery lots of very small historical things that have largely been left untouched it’s a lovely lovely place it’s actually
The kind of place it’s a big department it’s a good place to imagine spending two or three nights in one of the larger Villages and then just going out and doing some day trips and because it’s actually fairly big we just kind of decided we were going to pick pick a
Bunch of things that were in the same part of it and that was what we did we had a very lovely day and saw a bunch of things that we want to talk about right and it’s also a really good place for biking because there’s a lot of little
Roads and not that much traffic really it’s pretty quiet yeah it’s pretty quiet it is actually that’s that was the thing that struck me the most I don’t live on a noisy street but still the quiet it’s really the countryside yes yes and there are some very nice chat we’re not going
To talk about a chateau today but there’s some of that as well in the so let’s get into the towns we visited okay so the first place we went to and by the way we’re talking about a drive that how long would did it take us together an
Hour and a half right so from to lose an hour and 20 an hour and 30 minutes or so yes so it’s a fairly big department but because most of the roads are not big wide roads you you don’t go that fast on the roads right and you can count on
Being stuck behind a tractor at some point at some point yeah this is breathe deep and relax kind of day definitely so we went to a place that I had been to before and it was actually lovely and charming and it’s called the AB de flon
The AB de flan is a monastery that still has most of its buildings that are actually that date from believe it or not the 12th century it is what is called a San Abbey for those out there who don’t understand there are what they call different orders in the monks and
The monasteries and this is through the long history of of all of these monasteries in France and there is a a group called The cians that developed just about the when this place was built which is 8900 years ago and the idea was to live far away in the countryside if
You can imagine it still feels isolated today you can imagine what it was like 800 years ago you know oh yeah I didn’t I hadn’t thought of that but yes it was really really isolated isolated they were probably much more forest and with all the bad things that you get in the
Forest and everything and but that was the whole point that you what do you mean bad things in the for wolves and things like that I thought you meant squ squirrels squirrels come on give me a break you know oh my God all right but actually the point of these monasteries was
Really to have a big chunk of land where they could grow their own produce and have their own animals if they did eat animals cuz some of these orders actually were vegetarian and in this case it was the cians who believed in a very sober really sober a very unadorned
Life including an unadorned kind of architecture and so Through the Ages this Monastery has been preserved we visited a good chunk of it including the church if there was some work being done in the church wasn’t there I think they were replacing something in the roof for but what’s surprising is that the
Architect piure of the Sans was very austere in the sense that you have the beautiful arches and all the things that you may be used to seeing in some of these old monasteries but there’s no color and there’s no adornment there’s no sculpture however the sersan monks were famous for singing Acappella in
Their churches and so the Acoustics are great and it’s Annie that sings in churches when we go together it’s not me I mean otherwise even the Birds up in the ceiling would just leave you know and they would go somewhere else you know but it was really neat and I knew
That this Abbey which of course now is a cultural center interestingly enough it’s no longer a monastery is a place that also has art exhibits so maybe you want to talk about your reaction to the art show that was there I thought it was absolutely fabulous I was not expecting
Something like this they had a lot of I for after a while you know you think oh perhaps this is like a mini orsay Museum cuz it had a lot of the sort of thing you’d expect to see in the ORS Museum it had well first when you what well just
The way we entered there was a Picasso by a very young Picasso and if you look at the detail like he was like 13 or 14 when he drew this and if you look at the detail on the face it looks so striking it’s just gorgeous and then there was
Some analon there was some Rodan there was some K there was some di much much more recent I mean what wasn’t there I was just shocked how much beautiful stuff was in there in fact what the ab Defan has become an important and major Cultural Center in the southwest of
France and so what this was what we saw was actually the entire private collection of some very wealthy family that accumulated all of this in the 20th century and they left it they gave it as a Heritage to The Abbey I don’t know if there’s anybody left in the family but
It is part of the gift they gave to The Abbey so what you have is we had walk in this gorgeous medieval Garden you see the beautiful architecture that dates back to 8 900 years ago and then you go upstairs and you have the opportunity to see this absolutely Exquisite Art
Exhibit and I don’t know how long I think in the summertime they sometimes do a change and they put in some photography exhibits the one time I was there before I believe there was a photography exhibit but it’s really a magnet that attracts people and there were quite a few people there were
Several people there for Boonies you know you’re like oh there’s like 20 people here yeah and if I remember correctly because it was true in in another place as well it was indeed the last weekend because places like this do indeed close for some of the months in
The winter time yes most of the places we went to they close after the end of the Fall vacation for French kids so that’s typically early November and then they don’t reopen until Easter vacation for French school kids which is typically middle of April sometimes Easter is much sooner so it’s pegged to
That but you have to look at French school vacations to be able to time this right but in general it’s has to go between April and October right some of these places I’m not sure about the AB de flon I don’t remember if we it open
Year round that one it or just at Christmas and maybe some weekends you have to really check yes do check this a sort of place that has a complicated schedule so we can’t discuss it on the podcast you can’t don’t trust us on this
One no no no don’t trust us on this one however these are places that obviously from the springtime until the end of October these are wonderful places to include in a visit to this area they really are you know and then from there abies historically were built in very
Remote places and then very often little Villages built up next to the Abbey you might think it would be the opposite but actually the village came after the Abbey because a whole bunch of people were brought in to help do work that was connected to the Abbey and that was the
Case of the village that was connected to the ab of Fon and we discovered that there were two Villages not very far away we’re talking about somewhere between 6 and 14 km which is really not very far away right yeah and they were interesting as well they were really
Interesting and all of these little villages in the J have a very nice historic Center some of them are better kept up than others and some of them are more touristy than others it’s an area that has a certain amount of I mean to use a word that can be considered a
Cliche but authenticity because these Villages really seem to be exactly the way they were for the last few hundred years yeah authentic is a good term for it I think it’s just you know a little place in France that is Sleepy most of the year but then gets a fair bit of
Visitors in the summer although it’s hardly provance or place like that you know exactly so then we went to the Village of mreal which is Montreal it’s moral and we were thinking because it is a based now we did years and years ago we did an episode about what a basted is
In the southwest of France the best seeds were Villages that were built from scratch starting in the pretty much the 13th century and the Jax has a whole lot of them and most of these Villages have a at least the dead center of it are on a grid system although there were a
Couple and one of them we did go to because it was just just fun to see is actually built in concentric circles and so we had both heard about and never been to this Village called MRE and it was listed in various things as very beautiful and everything so we went
There and then we were going to do our little walk and our lunch there but there was a complication due to my brain not working as you know I drive an electric car and when you drive an hour and a half away from home it was I mean
I could have gotten home on one charge but it was kind of eh not sure so I would rather charge along the way right some of these Villages have a 22k charger which is miraculous if you ask me because there’s hardly anybody there and they have a car charger anyway I
Plug in but this these are car chargers that are very very simple there’s no screen on the charger there’s just little stickers that show how you’re supposed to do it and I suppose I wasn’t doing it right and I called the helpline which talk to a lady who was super
Helpful it still wouldn’t work and after five five or six tries or whatever it was I eventually figured out that it’s because I had told my car to wait until 10:30 p.m. to charge because that’s when we get the cheap rates for electricity but of course I should have turned that
Off and I forgot and I got frustrated and I said okay at least we’re moving on to the next Village the next Charger because I was thinking perhaps I can figure that one out and I started to cry because I was so hungry but we move on we move on we
Moved on we go to the next Village which was fores fores which also has a charger but it’s the exact same charger and I was like oh no am I going to not manage it here either but having had the help from this nice lady at the helpline and
Now having figured out that it was me that was the problem I plugged in and it started immediately so just yeah human error it was so of course what happened was we didn’t Det stop in foress and foress is is actually known for being one of these very strange little
Circular Villages really really ancient we have a few photos I think Annie took some very nice photos all of this beautiful half timbering of the houses it’s medieval it’s tiny but it’s in a total concentric circle with another circle around it it’s a very very small village there we got there and the
Restaurant there is this one very nice restaurant it was packed and I said two more and they said no and I went what do you mean no and they said well we’re closing we’ve just used up all the food in the kitchen I said you’ve got to be
Kidding you know it was one of those days I was not having a good food day but then alls well that ends well yes we found a little you know a little corner store that had is was a bakery grocery store whatever but she was also serving
Some food to some people outside who had also been turned away probably by the same restaurant across the across the village and across the Village I mean like you can see it from where you are it’s not that far and the lady at the bakery SLG grocery store served she made
Us a sandwich and it was good it was fine it was fine we had a sandwich and then we had a piece of this wonderful dessert that comes from the the region uh and it’s called the cad now there are CAD in other places as well but you have
To know that if you go to the J in this area that the cad is made with a very flaky pastry and apples and a little bit of armanac and boy is it good right so when we she came to bring us something and she says would you like
Dessert today and I said yeah we want dessert and she say well have Cad and I said oh perfect we like crad would you like some aranak on your Kad and I said sure why not so when it came time to service our crad she comes back with a
Spray bottle a green spray bottle I kid you not and she sprays some am manak on the crad I mean like oh okay it was very good but it was a little Sur surprising that’s all it was very good the fact is foress is famous for being one of these
Very strange little circular Villages it really dates back 800 years there are now very few people who live in the in this dead center part of the village but it’s beautiful in the High season which of course we was not we were really coming to the very end of the when
Anything was open it turns out to be a place that has lots of artist Studios lots of little boutiques that have uh crafts so these are places that really come to life in the main season and they’re very very beautiful and they’re very interesting to see right I I think
That she said so the lady with a green spray bottle she said that in the summer months in the touristy months there’s three of them that run the the restaurant SLG grocery store and that there’s quite a few people that come visit it is very Scenic it’s very small
That’s the one we mentioned that had 25 inhabitants in the winter but it’s really cute definitely worth a stop for half an hour for a meal or whatever yeah I mean it has a real full restaurant it has a bar Pub that has a wine tasting in
It it has this little cafe grocery store and it has other stores around it these are places that are really lovely going to this area you kind of have to give a bit of thought to you’re planning out your day to know where you’re going to stop and everything but places like this
Really always had wonderful little surprises and so what after we had our little lunch we did a walk around the other outer concentric Circle it’s really lovely there’s a tiny little stream that runs with a little bridge over it right behind it and all the houses are very well kept up in these
Beautiful Medieval houses so this is an area like that it has charm it really does and then what we did was having charged the car we went back to monreal so that we could take a look at it and it turns out that Montreal has a a
Lodging because it is a major stop on the road to compostelle right and it’s it was a much bigger Town it felt like a bigger town it’s much bigger yeah yeah and it had more people it had more restaurants it had more open so yes probably having lunch in moral would
Have been a better choice but it it was fine in there it was fine and moad is typical of the The Villages that are really quite beautiful in this part of France the old houses Are All Made of Stone some of them are half timbered very well kept up monreal is a class
Example of the basted on a grid system with very you know straight lines and it has in the center of it this very beautiful covered market so these These are places that really are to be discovered really and then after our stop again in monreal we went to what
Was the kind of big event of the day for both of us and that was the wonderful incredible Roman site of CIVC yes that was quite spectacular we’ve seen I mean we see a lot of Roman sites in France a lot of them not that exciting but CIVC
Was really good savak is famous it it’s a huge uh site many of these sites by the way are run by the local community they’re not National or anything like that it it varies it varies from from region to region in the case of CIVC it is considered to be relatively important
So there’s a lot of regional money that was invested into making sure that it’s a site that’s very easy to visit and well protected and everything like that and it is famous because it was a Roman villa and a Roman villa it was in fact a huge house the equivalent literally
Would be the equivalent of a plantation in modern thinking of a really rich important Roman family who probably had their City home and this was in fact considered to be their country home because even back then they had things like that and it is famous because it
Has some of the best preserved mosaics of any Roman site in France right the mosaics are really really spectacular in cak and very well preserved so a local lady I can’t remember her name right now but a local lady I don’t know if she found it or if she just knew about it
And wanted to learn more but she started digging up things and finding more and more and then she gathered the funds to be able to cover all these mosaics because if they’re exposed to the sun and the elements they will get just ruined you know they had been
Covered by dirt they are now uncovered there’s a beautiful roof over them and you get to walk around and discover all of these things I I thought it was just gorgeous I had been there once when I Was preparing for my guide exam so we’re talking about 25 years ago and the it
Was certainly not as well set up as as it was when we saw it the other day which is lovely because it means that now there’s been a recognition of how important it is as a site and so there’s a pathway there’s a lot of very good documentation there are some
Explanations there are little booklets and brochures you can get in just about every language and it allows you to really walk through the different parts of what was a huge huge huge house of a very wealthy family and understand how the mosaics were part of the basic structure and decoration of course
Because very often the mosaics indicate what room it was I mean if it had food it’s probably where they ate if it had Poseidon it was probably the huge bath area and it’s just absolutely gorgeous and it’s extremely well protected overhead so you don’t have to worry
About it it’s really become a major site and thank goodness because it’s very hard to keep these things up it means that there was a certain inv investment of money both locally and regionally for something like this now this site is definitely closed through the winter
Months I I wasn’t sure about the ABI but civia is closed I think she was closing the day after we visited or something I think she told us that it was the last weekend and then they were closing for the winter time you know they were just
Shut down there is a museum in a town we did not go to that’s not very far away called AO uh which is apparently a small Museum that has some of the small objects that were found at the Villa of seak because here you really just see the structure
Of the villa and the mosaics on the ground and where the baths were because of course part of what they always had you know we now have our nice fancy swimming pools well they didn’t have one they had three they had a warm one a cold one and then in between one you
Know I mean this is they lived the good life the rich Romans they really did they lived the it’s fascinating it’s really beautiful and it’s set up on a little bit of a hill just a little bit of what I’d call a hilock actually but you can see that they purposely set it
Up there so they have a very good view and they probably had some of the land cultivated for their own use yeah and it probably had rows of sculptures and columns and gorgeous you don’t really go to civia for the sculptures and the columns there’s a few but it’s mostly
For the mosaics it’s for the mosaics and just have an idea of of really H it’s very nice to see a place that’s been taken care of and well presented and it doesn’t matter what language you can find out whatever you need to know yeah
And the lady who was who sold us the tickets she seemed well informed about it so I think we could have had a long conversation with her about it we both got a book about the mosaics I definitely recommend it I wish we had
Had time to go to AOS as well because I mean you can get a group ticket for the two you know and I think it’s worth going to that as well but time was of the essence yeah we had one more little place that I wanted to take Annie
Because I’d been there before actually a couple of times and I wanted this to be the last little surprise of the day you know so we left seak and again we’re talking about not going very far and anyone Direction you know and this is really pretty much staying in the local
Area in relation to the whole department but we went to what is an absolutely amazing little thing called The Village of laang right I had never seen anything like it really it’s teeny but it’s so cute it’s a mini carcasson it is a tiny tiny tiny little village that is
Entirely within its walls it’s beautiful beautiful medieval stone walls with a moat around it there’s a gorgeous Romanesque Chapel that is in actually relatively good condition on the inside and the remains of what was the Chateau of the Lord of lisanga and when you drive up it’s really rather surprising
Because you’re in the middle of all these fields that are are just agricultural fields and all of a sudden there it is it’s just absolutely really it’s like if you imagine shrinking carcass Sun you know yeah so it’s it’s like a walled City but it’s the size of
I don’t know a football field yeah probably you know it’s really not that big it’s not that big and you go through these the beautiful portal you know the enormous entranceway that of course at the time would have had these huge wooden doors that would close of course
At sundown every day and when you get inside it is in a circle this is absolutely a total Perfect Circle and lo and behold you have a few very beautiful little houses everything’s attached to one another it’s just in the circle there was even a little shop that was a
Combination tourist shop coffee shop and grocery store that was open there were two or three people sitting there having something to drink there are a couple of houses there were a few restaurants that are open in the High season that were closed there’s a tourist office there
That of in High season is of course open and you can go into the chapel and you can walk around and it it’s a a little Jewel it’s just absolutely Charming it’s just so surprising you know and there was a sign that explained that it’s a
Group of people from Boston that kind of saved the village because you know we have so many of these beautiful sites in France that it takes an awful lot of money just to keep up the roof just to keep the elements away from the roof is
What you know from the walls and so this group of people from Boston invested a lot of donations and stuff to to make it to keep it nice and they really did a good job I thought yes it this is a perfect example of a group of probably a
Group of people who came to be tourists and live in that area discovered this little fortified Village and decided that it was worth saving yeah and this has happened a lot in France there especially Americans sometimes British people but there are a lot of places in
France where you show up and there’s a plaque thanking donors who all happen to be you know wealthy Americans it’s nothing to scoff at because without it I mean the current government in France is trying to incentivize French people to donate there’s a new tax incentive in
France for wealthy people to donate for the renovation of buildings and it’s really necessary it’s very needed because so far you know as a French person if you donated well that’s thank you for your donation but you don’t get a tax break and it’s good that now we do
Because hopefully a lot more wealthy French people will donate to these sorts of things that would actually be great so basically what happened was it was nighttime the sun was setting and over the beautiful Hills of the J and we started to head home it was a very
Lovely full very very lovely day in the show notes you’ll see I put down the names of a few other things that are places that are really interesting to see because as I said the department is really quite big so you can’t do all of that in a day it’s absolutely not
Possible but the ja is a place even with children you can go and there are lots of these little museums there are lots of you can go biking you can go and visit these little towns that everything every village has a nice at least one nice restaurant it’s absolutely amazing
You eat really well in the J you know right that’s what we should talk about in the J is is the food a little bit because it’s really spectacular so they do a lot of duck production they also have local wines especially when you get
To the western side of the J the red wine is the madon which is very good it’s a very good very kind of flavorful red you know it has a a very distinct personality madon is often served with couscous as a matter of fact that’s how
I have seen it served is with a couscous so if you have a spicy food madon is good because it has you know it has some punch to it as well and there’s also the jur which is from the southern area of J it’s a very local wine it’s so it’s a
Relatively sweet white wine yeah it can be it’s muu very often we usually started with fagra I think yes yes of course the J produces a lot of they ran into some problems this year well in the last few years because of bird flu and this year they did something that
They try they’re trying this thing they’re trying to vaccinate the flocks against bird flu it’s a bit of a controversial thing but they’ve had to call so many ducks in the last few years that you know it’s worth trying let’s see where that leads them yeah I mean
The the Jax is a place there’s a there’s a very small village that’s much closer to Tulu called jimon that is considered to be the capital of fuagra and uh there are two times a year when they have what they call the Festival of the Graal and I’ve been there and you have
This huge hanger kind of market and all of the local producers bring their duck and the fagra and all of the products you mean duck you know literally everything but the quack is used in a duck you know I mean I go to one of the
Markets in Tulu at the height of duck season you can really just get about every part of the duck that you can imagine even if you don’t want to eat unless you’re not a meat eater duck is really delicious to eat you know yeah poor Ducks I’m sorry poor Ducks they’re
Cute animals I love them but they also like to eat them unfortunately you know the festival du is a great time it’s usually September right I think it’s the beginning of October okay and it’s a great time to go and buy some unprocessed duck livers so if you want
To make your own preserves my sister did this for years I don’t know why she hasn’t been doing it the last few years I’m going to have to complain because it’s really good but yes it’s a really nice place to go buy these sorts of things and there’s
Thousands of people who go when that’s on because we like to we like to eat yeah yeah and there’s a very famous place for jazz a jazz festival that’s in the southwest of the Jazz called marak which is a huge bested it’s still also a
Best deed but it’s a big one and uh in the last 30 35 years this has become a world famous jazz festival from the end of July till the middle of August and every major headliner has passed through there yeah yeah it’s a big one and
There’s many many more like the Jess is full of Little Gems and you could so if you wanted to visit it I think OS is probably one of the least interesting towns in France you know it’s all right I mean it has this spectacular staircase it has a beautiful cathedral
Which is famous for its uh stained glass windows yes but besides that it’s not really all that interesting so in the J I would recommend if you’re going to visit I would recommend you pick a a few remarkable based or towns and just spend
A night or two in each one and move on to the next one but there’s probably enough to visit for a week or 10 days absolutely and if I’m not mistaken you can also find what they call a Jeet there are lots of places lots of farms
That have turned part of their farm buildings into jeets which means you basically can rent an apartment or a small little part of a house and then you can just go out and do your day trips and it’s really lovely and in the J you will find a lot of restaurants
That are you know Cuisine SW is what it’s called where they really try to take full advantage of the local products and make them really tasty and it’s a sort of place where you really should Reserve like a few days in advance because they do fill up they are
Not open year round they are not open every day every night you know so this is the sort of restaurant where they’ll probably open four or five days a week perhaps only for lunch or perhaps only for dinner so you have to check out their times and stuff but if you happen
To be there at the right time you will have a fabulous meal for a great price I mean these places you spend I don’t know 35 to 50 per person and you eat like a king yep and definitely much less onerous than in other parts of France
And it’s very easy to find because most Villages have one so if you look them up if you even on trip advisor it will tell you which one is cuine SW so like you know if you say you want intermediate kind of level or fine dining which are
Choices you can make in Trip Advisor it will show you those restaurants and then you can figure out the time that open I’ve never been disappointed by one of those there’s a small restaurant in tulo that is listed now in the Micheline guides it is not a star restaurant yet I
I think the chef owner would love to be one but it’s a tiny little restaurant and I know that he goes to the J to get all of his products yeah it’s a great place to to do that and they have a pretty long growing season so it’s not
Just Ducks it’s also a lot of other agricultural Specialties and they do armanac of course which I don’t happen to like but when you spray a little bit of it on austad it’s pretty good don’t use that spray bottle for your windows but if you do like armanac yeah I do I
Actually like armanac then if you do you can go to the Village of it’s a large Village it’s really a town called condom yes the same word condom yeah which is the home of armanac that’s where the negotiators go that’s where the big cavist are that have the shy the
Producers of armanac all have an outlet in the town and there are tastings you can do there as well yeah and that’s also where they have this nice statue of the Three Musketeers yay so condone is a good town to visit I mean it’s good for a stop right A lot of
These places are not like you’re not going to spend a week there unless your grandma lives there so you just go and you spend half a day and enjoy the place have a meal there move on to the next one and there’s a lot of them like really the
Jess is full of these you know covered beautiful covered markets beautiful little areas that are just Pleasant to spend some time in and I I think with a bike it would be a lot of fun it would certainly be all right Elise should we go back there’s a lot of places where we
Haven’t been and there’s also a lot of stops on the San jaac de compostelle route so the Camino yes so you know a lot of these Villages that have that are on the Camino they have a beautiful gorgeous old church usually it’s an Abbey and they have lots of little
Restaurants and things so you’ll see a lot of Walkers as well in the thank you Elise you’re welcome Annie Bye again I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting this show patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that you can see them at patreon.com jooin us p a t r e o n join us no spaces or dashes thank you all for your support some of you have been
Supporting the show for many years you are fantastic and a shout out this week to new patrons Nancy hand Margaret Burns Fest Jessica weeks and thank you Bruce Chapman for increasing your pledge it is wonderful to have you on board this community of Franco files who keep this
Podcast going to join this community of Franco files go to patreon.com for/ jooin us and to support Elise Go to patreon.com elart e l Ys a t patrons I’m back from my vacation I’ll start sharing patreon rewards very soon it was good to be away without a computer for a couple of weeks
Over Christmas so even if I wanted to do things I couldn’t because I can’t do stuff I can’t do anything important from my phone I’m not that young and I must say that in Utah it was wonderful to meet listeners in person out a family and friends get together Mark April and
Amber wonderful to see you I know many more wanted to come but they were away for the holidays or whatever next time you guys I’m surely going to go back to Utah in the next few years probably sooner than that if you’re planning a trip to friends and have questions that
Did not get answered in an episode of the podcast you can hire me to be your itinerary consultant I offer two levels of itinerary service the bonjour service gives you an hourlong conversation on Zoom to ask questions and get tailored recommendations for those who want a more detailed guide the VIP service
Offers the same 1-hour consultation it’s usually plenty I mean we can talk longer if we need to but it also includes a follow-up document that outlines everything we discussed plus a Roundup of all the best advice featured on this podcast to begin visit join usinf france.com Boutique and follow all the uh
Instructions one of the itinerary sessions I did this week was with Lucy Hicks and she sent me this audio feedback thank you very much Lucy it was lovely talking to you Lucy Minnesota all La tuni there that’s your extent on my French this morning I just wanted to
Send a big fat thank you to you Mercy Mercy Mercy you sent me after our Zoom call yesterday probably 10 documents that is just chocked full of information for me on my six week trip to the south of France and it is so much information
It’s going to take me quite a while to go through it but I feel that more information is always better than less and you really helped me with not in my head I wanted to stay in one place for the entire 6 weeks you suggested that I hit three different areas because it
Would make my spoke trips better and shorter on the train brilliant idea thank you I cannot thank you enough for all your time and attention to my trip for next year mer now if you don’t need an you know one hour one-on-one consultation you can still take me in
Your pocket with my self-guided GPS tours of Paris on The Voice map app I write these tours to lead you to the best of Paris I have tours of the Eiffel Tower lare mon the Latin quarter indula City and s De pre I’ll probably add one
More in 2024 because I love those tours and I think voic map tours are a great way to discover an area so remember if you want to look at any of these products or Services go to join usinf france.com Boutique now let’s talk talk about the
Price of bread in France as part of our trip to the US this Christmas we spent a couple of nights in Las Vegas as we walked through our hotel I saw a bakery of sorts you know I mean in Las Vegas everything does nothing looks real but
There was a bakery thing and it was attached to a restaurant but they sold bread in baskets so I looked and I was shocked to see the prices the cheapest bread you could buy there was $7 and they only sold fairly Lar large breads probably twice the weight of a baguette
But still I pay a20 for my baguette trai in my Village so this is you know four or five times that it’s expensive bread is expensive in the US I mentioned it on the Facebook group and many of you explained that it wasn’t so unusual to pay S8 9 for you
Know artisanal bread in the US so I wondered why why is it that way and I started looking and there are reasons why good bread is cheap in France it seems like a big thing is cultural you know culturally bread is important in France and we eat a lot of bread in
France so volume also helps now we don’t eat as much bread as we used to but the average French person eats twice as much bread as the average American mind you we don’t need any crackers in France so perhaps if we included crackers it would be
Different but we do not eat crackers in any great quantities in France so the typical French person eats 45 kilos of bread per year per person it’s about 100 lbs of bread so high demand means higher scale production which can reduce costs but I think the average American eats about 100 lb of
Triscuits a year so there’s that number two is the the French government has sometimes regulated the price of bread in the past but right now and for a very long time there has been no regulation as to the price of bread my local bong could blow a gasket and charge 50% more
From one day to the next and nothing would happen to him other than all the customers would start getting their bread somewhere else because yeah I love my local bread I love this part particular Bakery I go to all the time but not enough to overpay and we have so
Many choices in France choices equals competition and bonger do not want to stand out for being super expensive bread is not a luxury item in any way it’s an everyday item number three is the number of artisanal baking schools many people in France are trained bong
They went to school to get their C the buery which is it’s a trades diploma but it takes two years to get and if you don’t have it you cannot run a bonger before you open a bonger you have to prove that you are qualified to make
Bread and I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings pandemic Bakers but that keeps quality high in France you need to get your two years of school and have yourerie or you will not be licensed to open a bakery number four is local distribution and lots of small
Businesses we do not eat parisan bread in tulo and they don’t import bread from anywhere else into Paris Bread is made locally that keeps Transportation costs down there is no big bread in France the bread industry is made of thousands of individual owners who emulate one another and they don’t band together to
Help bread get more expensive as a matter of fact the only regulations I could find was to stop edar leair so that’s theair stores he wanted to make bread so cheap 44 cents he wanted to make it in his grocery stores that the government decided no that’s unfair
Competition because you are a big Bakery and local Bakers won’t be able to compete with that so they they told them you cannot you know decide on a low price price like that throughout all your stores so L Clair can still sell inexpensive bread but they can’t set the
Price Countrywide so there you have it it’s actually the opposite of what you might think is happening at any rate all these tiny bong do not band together to figure out ways to make bread more expensive the boys on W Street or LA in Paris have not figured out yet how to
Buy up all the bonger and make make a killing they haven’t it’s all small potatoes kind of business in France having said that my Baker you know he has a pretty good life he has a family has two kids and a dog and two cars and they go on vacation they close the
Bakery every now and then I mean they have a normal average French life they have solar panels all of that like the rest of us you know it’s really not a bad life but they do work long hours that’s for sure so enjoy bread while visiting France because you will not
Come across such good bread at such low prices not even at Costco and then two tidbits about keeping your cell phone safe while touring number one put your phone in a zipped pocket Zip Zip Zip number two never put your phone down there are bags that will make you feel
Like your phone is safe because they have cut resistant straps security Clips thick V that can’t be slashed but if it’s in a bag eventually you’ll put the bag down when you’re jet lagged you are Your Own Worst Enemy put your phone in a zipped pocket preferably under your
Clothes so that you are never tempted to put it down because if you put it down you will forget it I guarantee you I’m the one who forgot a big old bag with a big camera big zoom lens and everything and it got returned but I got lucky okay
Don’t do that with your cell phone they’re so easy to resell you’ll never see it again my thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian cotan who produced the transcripts next week on the podcast and episode full of tips for vegan visitors in Paris with dor Citron
You see things have gotten way better in Paris for vegan visitors thank you so much for listening in and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together the join us in France travel podcast is written hosted and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2024 by
Addicted to France it is released under a creative comments attribution non-commercial no derivatives license I’m One Y The