Bastille Day

Spent 3 lovely days in the middle of the French countryside to celebrate Bastille Day– which was a big departure from my normal ritual of having drinks at a French restaurant on the LES with a bunch of French expats. A friend of B’s has a huge old country home in Corréze, a tiny little town about 5.5 hours southwest of Paris, and invited 3 couples (along with my cousin and another friend) to drive down for a relaxing few days. We drove down on Friday night, arriving around 5am and crashed till the afternoon. On Saturday, we spent the day lounging on the terrace, playing table tennis in the backyard, eating and drinking local wines and wandering around the river and the little town square.

On Sunday, we went to visit an old underground cave. Don’t ask me what that was about—the entire tour was in French and I had no idea what they were saying so I just sat in the little boat and took in the pretty scenery. But it was packed and we waited a good hour or so to get in—so apparently it was a really popular site. On Monday morning, B, one of his friends and I woke up early, took out the bikes and did a tour of the gorgeous countryside.


We got back to the house and the whole group rented canoes and went canoeing down the river. It was a 2 hour trip from top to bottom and not without its snags. At one point, the boys stopped to climb to the top of a bridge and fling themselves into the river (I had keep my mouth shut on that one, can’t be embarrassing B in front of his “boys”). Then, about halfway down the river my canoe (with my cousin and a guy friend of B’s) had a little mishap and veered off into the trees and bushes that were hanging down into the river. When we finally managed to untangle ourselves, we found our boat covered with spiders and bugs! They were just crawling all over us! My cousin was freaking out big-time so that got me laughing, but then I kept seeing spiders all around me and since I couldn’t very well jump out of the canoe into the river, all I could do was scream and cry. Meanwhile, the guy in the canoe is cracking up at our freak out so he isn’t helping, B is calmly rowing off down the river b/c he’s used to my bug-phobia, and the rest of the group is just looking at us like we were a couple of crazies. Sorry folks, I just don’t do bugs and spiders. It grosses me out. Funny enough, before we left on the trip, the guy who owns the house asked B, “Is Stacy going to be ok out here? I know she’s a city girl…”. Well…

Finally, B rowed up beside our canoe and made a half hearted attempt to pull the spiders out of my hair while I tried to stay calm and act like I was still having a blast—in actuality, I was just waiting till the end of the stupid ride so I could go back to the house and scrub myself down in the shower. It was fun in the beginning but after the spider fiasco I was so through. Ugh… just thinking about it is giving me goosebumps… That evening, we had one final dinner before packing back into our cars and driving back to Paris. It was a really nice weekend… I got to know B’s friends better and spend 3 days in a part of France that I’ve never been before.

The funny part was the girlfriends. The entire trip, all they did was cook and clean while their boys sat around drinking and talking. Like literally, on their knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. And the cooked every meal from scratch—baking cakes, making crepes, eggs, pasta. And they did the dishes afterwards! And during every meal, they were just silent and let the boys do all the talking. They barely made a peep! My cousin and I just couldn’t get over it. You can’t put an American (or New York rather?) girl in a setting like that and expect her to play the mute little housewife. The only reason we didn’t contribute to the conversation much was because they were talking so fast and we couldn’t understand all the French slang. But the two French girlfriends had no excuse! And I’m sorry, I’ll wash a dish or two and maybe you can get me to toss a salad one night, but I’d be damned if I’m going to cook 3-course meals and clean every day while my man sits on his ass like some King. B may get a home-cooked meal once in a while, but we are going 50/50 on that sh*t. My cousin and I couldn’t stop laughing at the situation. After a feeble offer to help (which the girls promptly denied after we explained that we barely know how to boil water) we just sat outside drinking with the boys while the girls cooked. But I guess these girls are better than us, they sure do know how to take care of their men. Maybe that’s why French girls are never single…