Amboise is in the chateau region of North-Central
France, the Loire Valley. The city is famous for its Sunday market, marché in
French. I can see why. We visited markets in several European cities, Paris
(Marché Bastille), Barcelona (Mercado de La Boqueria) and Santiago de
Compostela market and all had their appeal but Amboise farmers market is the
Michael Jordan of European outdoor markets. Okay, I’m using a small sample, but
the advantage of Amboise is an airy, roomier and more relaxed than big cities
markets can possible offer. We walked past fruit and vegetable vendors, the
cheese outfits, fishmongers, meat sellers with sausages on display, and egg men
and women. Then there are handmade leather bags and jewelry, jackets and
pursers, massive woks filled with rice, a golden hued, saffron color mixed with
meats and sausage, chickens cooking on rotating spits and a coffee-drinking
corner with tables and chairs. The vibe is friendly, warm and professional.
These folks have been doing this awhile and know the drill.
We visited a colorful handmade soaps stall and
bought 8 bars of soap for 20 euros. They were cleverly marketed with a vivid
variety of colors and evocative names—musk, lavender, rose, cherry, lime,
masculine and tonic—all lined up in bountiful rows. The soap man encouraged us
to touch—knowing that once we inhaled and touched the soap our commitment to
buying had increased. The Amboise Marché happens along the riverside with an
island in languorous trees hanging about, adding green to this day’s overcast
gray sky. The clientele is a good demographic mix of old and young, locals and
visitors, walking the aisles and purchasing the products.
Not fully recovered from our day of many trains, I
fell asleep on the couch of our apartment in the middle of a CNN program. I
like Fareed Zakaria and his panel was good, but exhaustion from the previous
day’s train odyssey just knocked me out.
We had dinner at Lolit, a place recommended by
Gloria Belknap. The dinner proved impressive with some diners seated near the
chef at a U-shaped bar. The chef, a slender young man with deep set eyes and a
gray apron entertained by his presence and prepared in the nearby kitchen. We
got a table for two situated next to an American couple, as it turned out. They
were from Richmond, Virginia and had a military background, he as a military
lawyer and she as an Army nurse. Leon Panetta was my nickname for the guy and I
thought of her as Mary, with her resemblance to a boss from my university
employment.
Our conversation with Leon and Mary, following on
the heels of our discussion with a New Hampshire couple at the La Vieux Manior
breakfast table, helped me realize a commonly known fact: Rick Steves is Travel King. He and his European guides serve as
Bibles for the upper middle class American tourist. Steves and company own their
travel niche like the Mafia used to run Las Vegas. And it’s a wide niche. The
New Hampshire couple recounted how they ran into Steves himself, not once, but
twice, in Florence—and even snapped a photo or Rick. He asked “who snapped my
photo?” But he got into a friendly discussion with Mr. and Mrs. New Hampshire. Mary, from the Richmond couple attended a Rick Steves lecture, delivered by one of Rick’s
acolytes, but said the conservative Richmond upper crust ladies in the audience
did not take well to the Steves “get down with the locals and meet ‘em where
they live” philosophy of travel. I joked
with the Richmond couple how I ended up liking Steves recommendation for travel
cubes as packing organizers. I added, ‘’Shoot me if I wear the Steves zip off
pants that turn into shorts.” Reed told me that Leon actually mentioned having
a pair of the pants, where you unzip and remove the lower half, but I must not
have paying attention. The French have a word for it—faux pas.
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