New Year's Eve

Time to celebrate the arrival of 2009! We had been kindly invited to celebrate the occasion at Isabelle’s parents place near Nantes, in the small and charming village of Catiho. So morning of New Year’s Eve, we jumped on the TGV at Angers, and barely a blink of an eye later (the TGV is THAT fast), we arrived at Nantes, where Isabelle was waiting for us (she had arrived just 20 minutes earlier).

We met her in the local café, and had some fake cappuccinos (what I mean by that is that it seemed like a normal coffee with milk to me – except that they charged the cappuccino price i.e. double for it), whilst waiting for our ride down to Catiho. About an hour later we arrived in the rural idyll of “nearly Brittany” - Isabelle keeps insisting her parents live in Brittany, whilst technically speaking they are actually located in Loire-Atlantique, which is in the Pays de Loire region. But let’s not get bogged down in technicalities ;-).

I was happy to see Isa’s mum & dad again – I get along just great with them (especially with his dad, since we had a bottle of 16 year old Lagavulin’s single malt together on Isa’s 30th birthday at this very same farm – oh the good old days, eh…?), and also to reacquaint myself with the farm (it had definitely changed since the last time – when it was a bit of a work in progress). We eagerly dug into the delicious Couscous and Tagine (apparently an authentic recipy Isa'd dad had learnt from his Moroccan brother-in-law) that had been prepared for lunch - I was positively starving by now.

The afternoon was spent leisurely preparing the evening (setting up the karaoke, inflating balloons, drinking beer), watching the “legendary” movie Brice de Nice (yes it is set in Nice, and no it’s not actually a classic - but we did have a fair few laughs), and waiting for the other invitees – which included our good friends Flore, Christian and Stephane (whom we’d of course seen but a few days earlier - I could already see the headache coming). Isa’s brother Arnaud came with his family as well (including their little daughter who's grown up a fair bit since the last time I've seen her), as well as his sister-in-law’s sister’s family (hope I got that right?).

In the evening things got well on the way with a dinner of yet more couscous and tagine (during which I did my best dragon imitation - turned out that sauce I drowned the couscous with really was rather hot...), with generous volumes of wine, champagne and beer (so, a typical French feast then). The festivities culminated in French karaoke – hurray (note the lack of exclamation mark - my singing is nearly as bad as my dancing). I’m actually rather happy the music was French – at least it gave me an excuse to sing poorly. But anyway, everybody, including me, had a great time. And I even found another bottle of 16 year old Lagavulin towards the end of the evening - which meant Isa had to go and fetch her dad (I would have felt like a criminal, had I drank it alone). I was even sober enough to appreciate the taste of this divine Scottish delicacy (the first glass of it, anyway...). But I have to admit getting into bed was a rather challenging task at the end of it all…

The next day started off rather slowly, and not surprisingly with me moaning about a sore head. But we did manage to summon up the energy to have a walk around the village. The hike in the icy wind certainly helped to clear the head, and of course it was nice to get to see a bit in the countryside as well. After another couscous/tagine lunch (followed by a galette de roi – a French speciality that's normally eaten on Epiphamy - so we cheated a bit), it was time to head off… Since us as well as Flore and Christian had a fair bit of time on our hands before our train and plane respectively, Isa kindly took us for a brief visit to a nice seaside town called St-Marc-sur-something (Mer?). We headed down the Hulot Beach (as in the funny French chap, played by Jacques Tati, who went to the Cote d’Azur on holiday), from where we took a walk along the coastline – once again assaulted by the icy Breton wind (I’m really turning into a real big girl’s blouse here in the South, eh…?).

We then desperately hunted for an open bar/café, any place where we could get a warm drink, but in wain (obviously we weren’t the only ones recovering from the New Year’s Eve festivities…). Since there were none, we drove on to St-Nazaire, which is a decent-sized town on the way to Nantes – but alas, we had no more luck there. And by then it was time to drop Flore & Christian off at the airport, and for us to head to Nantes train station, to catch our night train back to Antibes.

A big thanks to Isabelle and her family for organising a memorable New Year’s eve for everybody!