May 21 Milly la Foret

Our first day outside of Paris, and wow, was it a terrific one. We drove down to Milly la Foret to see the Maison de Jean Cocteau, which just opened last year (with Pierre Berge backing). We rented a car at the Hotel de Ville and had a bit of difficulty getting out of Paris. Just at the beginning as we wanted to get across the river to the big avenues running north/south. Once we wended our way through some crazy streets in the Marais, we did find the way to the A6, and then arrived at Milly le Foret in about 45 minutes.

We found parking in this lovely place just down the street from the Maison. It was covered with gorgeously gnarled trees and kept the car shaded from the sun (have I mentioned the lovely days? Farmers are worrying about drought, but tourists are glad of the sunny skies).

The house/museum/gardens were lovely. It's clear that not only is this an expensive proposition for M. Berge (Yves St. Laurent's boyfriend and the director of his company) but also one of love. The museum is lavishly appointed and fascinating and a gret legacy for Cocteau. Only three rooms from the house are reproduced, the living room, the bedroom and the study. All fun to look at, of course, stuffed with interesting objets. The study is wallpapered in leopard skin and has a reproduction Rousseau on the wall. I would have been very comfortable lounging in a room like that. The rest of the house was filled with Cocteau's artworks, paintings, video clips on high tech glass screens, recordings, photos, and those lovely sketches where Cocteau managed to get personality and character in just a few lines.

The gardens and woods are about 4 acres. Canals run through them. Ducks paddle serenely. There are so many birds it makes me wonder where are the birds in California? I know we live in a desert, but I was never so conscious of the vast amount of different bird song until I sat in the little forest there and listened to them compete for attention.

We had a wonderful time wandering the garden. There are espaliered pear trees, identified by the most elegant signs ever created. The flowers were blooming, lots of poppies, bright red against the wild grasses. It was a terrific combination of wildness and order. I'll have to read more about it to see if it was like this in Cocteau's time.

Lunch was in the town square, whose claim to fame is an old marketplace, a big slate-roofed affair, with flower baskets hanging between the posts. There was no market today, only a school's science fair with students and their creations and anxious parents hanging out. We ate at a small bistro and had a nice meal. Nothing to blog about, but the wine was particularly good. The waiter seemed more interested in the wine, and he came through with the perfect glass for me, refreshing but not too alcoholic.

Now it was off to the Cocteau's burial place, which is in the Chapelle de St. Blaise des Simples. We started merrily off in the wrong direction before asking a man walking a dog, who pointed us in the right way. St. Blaise des Simples was originally a leper colony, and "simples" are medicinal herbs. The chapel is a small, pointed-roof affiar, surrounded by the herbs and gardens. It's tiny and lovely, and inside is decorated with lovely bold paintings of herbs up the walls, done by Cocteau of course. He's buried there, as is his last lover (kind of weird since he was the gardner, then Cocteau's lover, then, after his death, married and had two children). Another oddity is that when you enter the chapel, a recording plays, telling you about Cocteau, and it's read by Jean Marais, a famous French actor and another ex-lover of Cocteau. The French know how to encapsulate reality.

On the way into town, Ira noticed a chateau that he had previously visited on a garden tour. We decided to stop by the Chateau Courrances and wander the gardens. The chateau is blessed with a lot of water, and it's in great evidence here through the large moat and the incredible pools and canals that extend across the vast space of the formal gardens. It's almost too much. The lawns seem to go on forever. And the forests seem ever more extensive. There's one path (closed to the public) that seems to rise into infinity, the trees dwindling off into the distance. Again, the skies were blue and clouds were as ambitious as we were, ambling by, above us.


Back in town we parked the car at Hotel de Ville again, and then rested for our dinner with Ann, Ann, and Roberta. We chose Itineraires, because it seemed fresh and new. The food was wonderful. I started with the melon and ham appetizer, though this was dotted with balsamic vinegar and small tomatoes, and other vegetables. Everyone else had a green salad with bacon foam dressing, which was tasty but a bit kitschy. Both Ira and I fortunately ordered pigeon, and it was perhaps the best pigeon ever, tender, still almost raw of course as you can't even think of overcooking squab. I sucked on the bones it was so good. Accompanying the pigeon was a bowl of mashed potatoes so creamy that they should be called creamed potatoes. It was like a thick, gorgeous potato soup that just melted deliciously in your mouth. That was a great meal. By the time we got to Berthillon's on Ile St. Louis, it was closed. We had to get cones from a shop window and sit in the cafe chairs that they hadn't yet collected. We chatted and had fun until the waiter finally came out to bring in the chairs and we stumbled home at about 1 a.m.

One of the things I love about Paris is that it stays so light. We have light in the sky until about 10:30 p.m., so it never feels like you're out too late, even when you are!