Bon Appetite – A Walk in Julia Child’s Footsteps

  • March 4, 2010 10:58 AM

In the US, Julia Child is a household name.  She was the slightly nutty chef on TV from the 60s to the 80s, but did you know that she was also an expat wife? When the movie, Julie and Julia came out, I instantly connected with her story. In her mid-30s, Julia Child moved to Paris for her husband’s job. She didn’t speak any French and struggled, just as I do, with how to spend her time in a meaningful way. She decided to take up cooking.

The movie, Julie and Julia, is based off of two stories – Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France, and Julie Powell’s blog where a 30-year old girl tried to add meaning to her life by conquering Julia’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in 365 days and blogging about it. A couple girlfriends and I recently finished Julia Child’s autobiography, and decided to take a daytrip to Paris to see some of the sights mentioned in her book.

Our first stop was “81 Roo de Loo” – the apartment where Julia lived. We laughed as we remembered her describing her apartment, and the similarities we all had when we moved to Brussels – tiny bathrooms, kitchens missing major appliances… Julia and her husband lived on the second and third floor. Though you can’t tell from the photo, it was a gorgeous area, just a block from the river and down the street from the metro.

Julia Child's Apartment

Reid, Jill, and Nikki at 81 "Roo de Loo"

We continued on to Dehillerin, Julia’s favorite cooking supplies store. It reminded me more of a little country hardware store with it’s dark, narrow aisles and crates stacked up high. Though Julia is not well-known in France, the guys at the store knew who she was and were eager to help us. We wandered around admiring the bins of knives, shelves of cake pans, and walls of copper cookware. We picked up a couple of souvenirs and headed next door to lunch.

Julia's Favorite Cooking Shop

Rugged Shelves in Dehillerin

After lunch was my favorite part – we toured the cooking school Julia attended – Le Cordon Bleu. We saw the demonstration rooms, the practice kitchens, and learned a bit about the history of the school. The chefs and students were so friendly, sharing their fresh-baked treats with us. Nowadays, there are two tracks of classes – 3-month programs for professionals and 1-2 days workshops for amateurs. I will definately have to keep this in mind for future trips.

Le Cordon Bleu, where Julia learned to cook

Master Chef shares his Madeleine cakes

Though only a daytrip, this has to be one of my favorite outings. I had a great time with my girlfriends and we were all inspired by this famous woman who lived such a similar life to what we are living now in Belgium. I can’t imagine doing it before the Internet exhisted, as she did. If you’d like to see more photos, I’ve posted them on PicasaWeb:

Birding in Champagne

  • October 8, 2009 4:57 PM
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Lapwing in Flight

A few weekends ago, Thomas and I went to Champagne, France.  It wasn’t the typical trip to Champagne, filled with fancy hotels and fizzy drinks, but instead, we were there to do some bird-watching.  Just outside of Champagne, in an area called Chantecoq, there are some lakes (Lac du Der and Lac d’Orient) where cranes stop during their annual southern migration and we tried to catch a peek.

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Riding through the countryside

Birding trips are interesting.  They involve early mornings (the best time to see birds is sunrise and sunset), carrying lots of gear (camera with a 500mm lens, binoculars, a birding scope, and two tripods), traveling to remote areas, and lots of sitting still.  We knew we were in the right place when we stumbled upon some other birders with huge scopes, heavy enough that they towed them in a children’s wagon.

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Birds at the lake

Though we saw many birds through our binoculars and scopes, we weren’t able to capture many with our cameras — they were just too far away.  We saw lots of Northern Lapwings, Eurasian Widgeon, White Wagtails, and a few Common Cranes and Black Storks.  We also saw some muskrats, a pack of wild hogs, deer, lizards, and frogs.

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Thomas in a field

It was a fun trip, and we did squeeze in a quick tour at the Mercier Champagne House, but I think we were a little early for the birding migration.  I think we would have seen more if we waited until mid-October…maybe next year.

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Misty Lake View

Below are some links to the places we did our bird-watching and the rest of our trip photos on Flickr:

Birding and Bunkers in Côte d’Opale

  • July 16, 2009 8:58 PM

It may sound kind of weird, but the most romantic trips for Thomas and me seem to be birding road trips. They follow our moto, “it’s for the journey, not the destination.” We usually have no idea where we’re going or what we’re going to find, but it always ends up an adventure. We went on a trip like that this last weekend – to Côte d’Opale, the Northern Coast in France.

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Curvy road to Cap Blanc Nez

Côte d’Opale is only two hours from Brussels, but we took the motorcycle on backroads, making the trip 9-hours round trip. We were really curious about how much we could pack on Thomas’ bike, and were surprised that we had plenty of room for 2 sleeping bags, a tent, a birding scope, cameras, tripod and lenses, and a change of clothes.

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Thomas with his loaded up bike

The weather wasn’t the best with overcast skies and occassional rain, but Thomas is an ATGATT (all the gear, all the time) rider, and we were set. I had on a quick dry t-shirt, blue jeans, rain pants and jacket, motorcycle pants and hi-vis jacket, helmet, gloves, and boots. I stayed dry when it rained, cool when it was warm, and warm when it cooled down.

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Dallas waits while Thomas fills the bike with gas

When we ride, we stop every hour to walk around and take a break. One of our breaks was at Trench of Death – a free museum of a WWI bunker. It was pretty neat to be able to walk around the bunker and see how tough the conditions must have been for the soldiers. Thomas (a history buff) added in lots of details like that many of the soldiers suffered from trench foot (an infection from wet feet), and due to the technology boom in that time, some soldiers were still using old fashioned clubs while others had tanks and guns.

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Thomas in the Trench of Death

We also breaked an old cemetery where we wandered around and looked at some of the old and different-styled tombstones – most actually had photographs on them of the person buried there. Another stop was at the cute little town of Dunkerque where we got a tasty snack at a patisserie.

Afterward, we headed to our campsite and setup our tent. I’m a bit disappointed in the European campsites I’ve seen so far. They’re just nice grassy parking lots for RV’s – not the pretty woodsy like you see in the US. Still, for 6 euros, I’m not complaining – I was so exhausted by the end of day that I would have slept anywhere.

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Sheep next to a bunker

Before dinner, we headed over to Cap Gris Nez, a cape looking out towards the British coast. It was surrounded by old bunkers (and sheep), but it was a gorgeous view. I think my favorite part of the whole trip was standing on the cliff and watching the sea birds fly around under us – it reminded me of our honeymoon in the Galapagos.

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Cap Gris Nez

We then enjoyed a nice seafood dinner and headed back to camp for a deep sleep. The next morning, we headed out to Cap Blanc Nez. It was a misty morning, but still there were amazing views.

That afternoon, we headed to Le Platier d’Oye, a birding reserve. They had several permanent hides set up around a marshy lake and a trail out to sand dunes and the ocean. We saw a few new-to-us birds that we’re still working on IDing and a ton of frogs.

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Dallas uses the scope on the Dunes at Le Platier d'Oye

We had one more stop before we headed home - Le Clipon. The GPS lead us out to a jette on the coast. We saw about a dozen wind gliders on the water and rode over a long gravel road to a pier loaded with fishermen. We didn’t see any birds there, but it was a nice break from the riding.

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Wind gliders at Le Clipon

Like I said, it probably sounds like a crazy adventure, but we had a great time. Our helmets have bluetooth headsets so we can talk to each other as we ride, and the scenery on the country roads was beautiful. If you’d like to see more photos from this trip, they’re on Flickr:

Larger than Life Lille

  • July 13, 2009 10:29 PM

Today I went on a day trip to Lille, France with Reid and her daughter. It may seem from these photos that Lille is the land of the giants, but part of that is due to using my wide angle lens. The other part is that Lille just had some big sights – giant climbable flowers, huge dragon baby statues, and large ornate buildings.

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Giant Flowers and the Ski Boot Building

At one point in planning our overseas move, Thomas and I considered living in Lille – even though it’s in France, it’s the same distance to his office as Brussels is. I’m glad we’re in Brussels, but from what I saw of Lille, it looks like it would have been an okay city. It even had a Gap Clothing store. :)

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Baby Dragon Statue

One of the weirdest things we saw today was a milk protest. Sorry, I was so confused by what was going on that I forgot to take photos. Just as we were nearing the border back into Belgium, we came upon a long stretch of two-lane highway where 18-wheelers were backed up (for a couple miles?) in one of the lanes. Cars were passing freely in the other. Once we passed all the 18-wheelers and got to the front, we saw that the road was blocked by tractors with just enough space to let cars pass through. Supposedly, farmers have been blocking the 18-wheelers since this weekend to protest the price of milk. Shrug, that’s France and Belgium. :)

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Arch and Belfry

If you’d like to see more photos from our trip, they’re on Flickr: