To Begin with a Friend

Saturday, 2 June 2012

"Hello Didier, so great to see you."

"Welcome my Friend. Your girls, they are so big now."

And so began our first day of adventure in Paris, with a friend and his family we last saw at our home in Colorado seven years ago. We met Didier and his son Louis at Maison Fournaise at Ile des Impressionistes in Chatou, a short ride from Paris along the Siene River.

In 1857, Alphonse Fournaise bought land in Chatou to open a boat rental, restaurant, and small hotel for the tourist trade. What Maison Fournaise became was the epicenter of Impressionist painting as it found itself during the 1870s. Pierre-Auguste Renoir made it famous and immediately recognizable with his paining Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise, 1875 (known in French by the names Déjeuner chez Fournaise, Déjeuner au Restaurant Fournaise, Le Déjeuner au bord de la rivière, or Déjeuner des Rameurs). Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881 (Le déjeuner des canotiers) and many landscapes of the surrounding area and the Fourniase family were painted here. The map of the park denotes each location where a painting was made. Renoir added a canopy to the porch overlooking the Siene in Lunch at Restaurant Fournaise to give the painting more context. When restored in 1990, the re-modelers added an identical canopy making it immediately recognizable as the scene.

Monet also frequented what is now called Ile des Impressionistes (Isand of the Impressionists) often painting from the same spot as Renoir enabling you to put their work side by side. Monet better captured subtle light in paint while Renior was better with people.

After a cafe and reminiscing over days Didier and I worked together at Abacus, he joined the company to launch our business in France, we tour a special collection of restored boats from the period. Our guide is the craftsman. His pride for the delicate skiffs, sailboats, and a 21' single seat competition rower pours forth in broken English. The perfectly restored mahogany glistens under layers of lacquer, the nail heads beaming, as if new, about to hit the Siene for the first time.

A 45 minute ride down the Siene on a replica passenger boat from the period is more fascinating for the electric motors that power the boat than anything else. If you consider Nuclear clean, the vast majority of the power for France, the country leads the world on clean energy policy. Plugging the battery powered boat in at night no doubt means it is derivatively powered by Nuclear energy. The motor captures your attention immediately because of what it is missing - noise. It purrs along like a golf cart not a motor boat. The guide explains many things, all of which we miss. Our French is on par with a two year old and maybe not that good.

Didier translates, explaining how Louis XIV had built a system of "hydralique" pumps to pull water from the Siene and move it uphill to then flow to Versailles to water the abundant grounds and fill the elaborate fountains.

Chateau de st Germain  is a very old village and Castle several kilometers further from Paris. It is a hilltop village dating at least to the 8th Century that overlooks the Siene three times. We park at Henry IV Palace Hotel famous, among other things, as the place where Bernaisse (sauce) was invented and for its room where Louis XIV was born. From an overlook adjacent Henry IV you see the river fold over on itself three times in wide arching loops from the Eiffel tower 15 kilometers away as the crow flies yet over 45 kilometers away if following the river's winding course. Below us rows of grapes grow marked by a sign proudly stating these grapes have been continuously grown on the spot since the year 704. Considering the ground adjacent Henry IV is vacant where a Castle used to stand and the Germans both bombed and occupied the hilltop with 100,000 Nazi Soldiers, I'm not 100% sure those grapes survived as the originals for over 1,200 years. I would like to think they did. Consider how much more hearty that makes grapes than humans. Grapes stood while monarchs, governments, and armies rose and fell on the very land they have occupied for over a century. It puts quickly in perspective the perpetual human shenanigans of this world.

Chatueau de St Germain, a classical medieval hilltop village, consists of the kind of narrow streets you would expect to see between centuries old buildings. All roads lead to a series of castle and palace buildings before spilling out onto acre after acre of manicured grounds and gardens and eventually running into miles and miles of forest land.

On weekends, Didier rides his mountain bike down the Siene and up onto the Chatueau de St Germain grounds and then into the miles of adjacent forest trails. For three hours he rides on Sunday mornings, his exercise and primary means of staying trim and fit. Didier and his wife Martine live in a beautiful part of Chatou, under the hilltop castles of Chatueau de St Germain and before Maison Fournaise as you ride back toward Paris.

Dinner at their home is fantastic. Daughters Eleonore 15 and Eugenie 13, teenagers, are out for the evening by the time we arrive. Martine has a simple but brilliant dinner and wine spread waiting when we arrive. Didier and Martine recount how we were the only family to welcome them into their home for dinner when they visited Colorado seven years ago. They remember this fondly and more than reciprocate with a fantastic first day experience for our family. The kind you would never find as an American on your first day in Paris. We would have stumbled around the Eiffel Tower for hours and hours with hoards of tourists, great to see, but not the special experience you get spending an afternoon and evening with friends.

At 11:30 pm the taxi arrives. The girls have held up brilliantly following a short night of sleep on the overnight flight from Chicago. They managed to connect with Louis (Lo Lo) playing the universal game, futbol (soccer), in the courtyard behind Didier and Martine's home. Sweaty and tired the girls heads nod constantly in the back of the taxi, jumping to attention only when Laura tickles them to stay awake for the 15 minute journey.

We are asleep before our heads hit the pillow and so comes to an end day one of our Eurpoean Adventure.