Coucou, France ! At Last, Nantes et Les Sables-d’Olonne

I was born on a wintry Monday in January 2001 and sometime during the months that followed this momentous occasion, I decided I wanted to move to France.

For years, I stared at travel-themed calendars with Novembers set in Marseille; decorated my computer with screensavers of sidewalks covered in cafe tables; watched black-and-white, subtitled movies; and ached. I listened to playlists while I did homework called “French Cafe Sounds” and tried to understand even a fragment of rapid-fire radio broadcasts. I took French the first year I was able to (seventh grade) and continued every year, even when I ran out of classes in high school and had to learn the subjunctive in an online course designed for homeschoolers. (I gently resented my parents for speaking the language and yet refusing to teach me as a child so they could communicate with one another in secret.) I found cheap flights and gorgeous apartments and high-speed train tickets I couldn’t buy.

And then, at 9 am on April 26, 2022, I stepped off the plane in Nantes.

Nantes wasn’t exactly the city I’d been dreaming of for fifteen or so years (no offense, Nantes, you just weren’t on my radar), but it was France, and it was filled with French people I was not equipped to understand but thrilled to be confused in front of.

By the time we got settled in our Airbnb, Andrew and I were starving (we’d been up since 4 am with nothing to eat!) and so we visited La Reine Blanche, where we tasted the local specialty: the Breton* galette. It’s essentially a crêpe that’s instead made with buckwheat flour and is typically stuffed with savory ingredients like ham, egg, and Emmental cheese. Sometimes restaurants get more creative, though, and serve up dishes like the potato and curry sauce one in the picture below. Yum!

*Nantes isn’t technically a part of the region of Bretagne (Brittany) anymore, but it was for hundreds of years and still remains very much so culturally Breton.

After eating, we wandered the quiet streets of our Airbnb’s neighborhood (technically not Nantes, but in a city just over the river called Rezé) and soaked up the quintessentially French-style homes. There’s just something about those blue shutters!

We also discovered these atrocious-looking bagels. Do you see those edges? Were the individual bagels cut out from a massive sheet of conjoined bagel-like creations? Why were they not cooked separately?! I fear we may never know. Given the name, this place felt almost antisemitic.

We also visited the Château des ducs de Bretagne, which houses one of the most well-curated historical museums I’ve ever been to. It jumps around a bit—one room was on the slave trade and then the next on the sardine packing industry—but it was incredibly informative and engaging.

And then, after only two and a half very short days, Andrew and I took the train to our next destination, a beach town called Les Sables-d’Olonne. Before I explain what we were doing there or why I had been literally counting down the days until our arrival for weeks, I need to back up.

In the fall of 2020, I saw a viral tweet about an organization that was pairing retired, native French speakers with some time on their hands with younger French learners in an effort to both give the students real conversation experience and to build bridges between different cultures and countries. I signed up but saw that their waitlist had exploded overnight as a result of the sudden press and so thought little of it. Then, in March 2021, I got a call saying they’d found me a match.

Christine and I met for the first time via a program called Jitsi (think Zoom) and, after a brief, nerve-wracking call where I said maybe five words in French without stammering, we agreed to talk for thirty minutes a week for three months.

Flash forward dozens of conversations that flew past the one, then two-hour mark; countless text messages; and thirteen months; and Christine and I were about to meet in person for the first time.

I don’t have a picture of our first encounter (don’t worry, other photos ensemble are below), but I do have one of the breakfast spread she and her husband Jacques laid out for us each morning. I can’t possibly put into words how generous and welcoming the two of them are, but I think this image encapsulates it pretty well.

We spent nearly a week with Christine and Jacques, and each day they had something new and interesting planned for us. Below are photos from our grand tour of Les Sables-d’Olonne, which included a long walk through the three ports around which the town is built.

We also drove down the Vendéenne coast (Vendée is the département in which the town is located) and made stops at beautiful beaches, salt marshes, and the home of former French statesman Georges Clemenceau.

Today, the salt marshes, or les marais salant, are mostly just water, and the land is designated as a nature preserve. However, a couple of the pans are still used for harvesting and there’s been a recent revival of this 2,000-year-old production method.

At Georges Clemenceau’s house, we even discovered that Christine and I have a shared ancestor! Monsieur Clemenceau’s mother’s name was Emma Gautreau, with Emma, of course, being my connection and Gautreau being Christine’s maiden name!

In addition to the sightseeing, there was also excellent food. Not one to peak by breakfast, Christine made incredible dishes for us every day and made sure Andrew and I got to try a wide array of traditional fare. We went to the market to buy langoustines and oysters (both firsts for Andrew and me), sampled cheese tarts and cheese and onion tarts, and, naturally, finished almost every meal with des fromages qui puent. Stinky cheese!

I don’t think I have ever eaten so much cheese in my life.

One day, the four of us visited some friends of Christine and Jacques in a neighboring town and had the most picturesque lunch imaginable. We also had some very exciting news to discuss! The day before this lunch, I received official confirmation that I’ll be spending next year studying abroad at Sciences Po Paris (the culmination of about ten years of dreaming and planning) and Andrew learned that he was selected as a fellow for the Avodah Service Corps program (the culmination of about a million hours spent writing application essays and enduring job interviews)! This means while I’m eating croissants on the Seine, he’ll be working for an immigrant justice center in Chicago. Naturally, we all clinked glasses of champagne in a garden in the French countryside to celebrate.

After only a few days in Les Sables-d’Olonne, I was beginning to think that this might just be the life for me. As long as Christine wants to stay on as my personal chef, of course.

While it was challenging and more than a little exhausting to spend all day, every day speaking and thinking in French, I’m impressed with how much more comfortable I am conversing and I can’t believe how much Andrew picked up! It was quite the immersion into la vie en France.

Eventually, our week with Christine and Jacques came to an end. Christine, I cannot express how happy I am that we began this delightful friendship almost fourteen months ago and there are not enough words in English or in French to properly say “merci pour votre accueil” to you and Jacques. Thank you for correcting my pronunciation, for forcing me to practice lists of words ending in “-ouille,” and for always finding something to talk—and laugh—about. I feel very lucky to have gotten to spend this week with you and if you’ll have me, I promise I’ll come back next year.

In love and adventure,

E