Lunch in France (Again!!!)

September 23, 2010

Lunch in France (Again!!!)

Goats cheese salade

Jo had a big week in Rome. Eighteen hours a day on the go but she will do a blog on her personal adventure on this site soon. Stay tuned. We had a relax weekend. Sleepins. Lazy breakfasts at Boccards. Now breakfast in Switzerland is very different to the way we eat breakfast in Oz. No eggs and bacon. No eggs and anything. What the go is, you go to the window of the patisserie and point to your favourite baguette combos then two or three of the best looking sweet pastries, tarts you have ever seen, they pile them onto a couple of plates for you, you pay, then go onto the cafe coffee shop part and order your drinks. Jo and I usually share something awesome, you know the one plate two spoon deal. While we eat we look around and watch people (skinny people) arrive at their tables with two plates of goodies each and over the next half hour or so ever so delicately make every delicious flake on the plates disappear (and still remain thin but with a smile on their faces). We’ll work up to it. At least when I go to Boccards now Laureline the waitress brings my coffee without me needing to order it.

Monday was a public holiday in our Canton (the small state of Vaud) so we jumped in the Alfa and headed north towards the Swiss end of the Jura mountains. The Alfa loves the climbing hills around the lake. They snake their way from the water through vineyards and tiny villages until you reach the open highland farms before driving higher into the Jura alpine forests. The air is so cool and clean up there that you can almost forget that you are breathing. Well driving you do. Not so lucky for the people that ride their bikes the fifty k’s up and back to 1500 metres above see level before lunch. But at least they’re sucking in fresh air.

In the middle of the first stretch of alpine forest we found a beautiful place called Valle de Joux and stopped on the side of the road for pics. The cowbells were playing a song I knew but I couldn’t remember. It may have been ‘Raindrops keep Fallin’ on My Head’, but I’m not sure. The cowbells sound like a magnified version of the Bellbirds we used to hear around Kenilworth, but the songs are never the same, because of the terrain and the combination of the bells. Any way we took the photos but could not drove part way around the Alpine lake and village and Jo said ‘How about we go to France for lunch?’

She set the Tomtom on ‘border crossings’ and it came up as being eighteen kilometres away with the nearest village in France, that of Mouthe. Don’t ask me how you pronounce but it sounded like a perfect place to eat. After a casual half hour drive through kilometres of pine trees and cleared farming areas we arrived in the main street of Mouthe. But as is usually our luck it was in the French lunch ‘two hour’ and every thing was shut bar the pubs and a restaurant called. L’OEll-de-Boeuf. The waiter didn’t speak English but we managed coffee, drinks and our meals. Jo had her favourite goats cheese salad and I, because I, was unsure of the extras on the beef dishes, headed for the Perche Filets with salad and frites (fries). Both meals were awesome (see photos) and we kicked back for and hour or more beneath the tranquility of the French mountain sunshine and shared further experiences of the last week.

After lunch we drove back to Valle de Joux on the Swiss side, turned left at the lake and made a new route back to Rolle, drifting through sleepy rural villages and cow bell ringing cows. I even spotted a Vespa for sale in a farm building but after talking to the farmer for five minutes I called the one way conversation off, took photos of the Vespa and the phone number with the intention of at least finding out the price. We also taped a video for the Qld Arts Council for a nomination for the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang award (which we are a shoe-in to win) and caught some more subliminal views of Mont Blanc.

All- in- all it was a great drive in the Alfa and a very civilised way to have lunch.