Day 5 Argenton

Sunday.  We thought about trying to find a church where we could experience a French service, but had no idea (first) where the church was, and (second) how to find out the service times.  So we thought we’d take our walk for our breakfast bread, and see if we could see people congregating somewhere. 

As we approached the boulangerie, we found there was a line of about 8-10 people, and realized they were coming from the service that had just ended.  So we were out of luck.

We chose a different kind of bread for the day, and wandered around town for a while, taking in the sights.  The houses are so different here.  They are all made of stone, and have obviously been standing for hundreds of years. There is iron scroll work below the windows and on garden gates.  Nearly all of the houses have stone walls somewhere on the property, and some of the walls have been repaired somewhere in the past.  You can see the layers of the original stone near the ground, and maybe another layer or two of “newer” stone above.  All the houses also have working shutters.  When we first arrived at the house, we had to open them up to let the light into the house.  Many of the homes in this area are vacation homes, and are shut up for six months out of the year.  We are not too far from “The South of France” so the ocean is only a couple hours away.  This is a beautiful, peaceful place where people of many nationalities come to get away from it all.

We drove to Bressuire (a town about 20 minutes away)a bit later in the day hoping to find a restaurant where we could experience real French food.  But everything was closed for the day.  I guess on Sunday the only place you’d find open is the local boulangerie.  We saw three of them there.  We were also looking for somewhere we could get free WiFi.  There is none at the house, and not many places have it.  Much harder to find here than at home (That’s why I’m posting all these days at the same time.)  but we’ll go out tomorrow and look again.

As we pulled into town, we saw people coming out of another church, so we decided to see if we could go in and take a look.  Just inside the door of The Church of Notre-Dame, was a rack of information about the church printed in English, Spanish and German among others.  The first line of the brochure cracked us up: “Bressuire was probably born at the beginning of the 11^th century, so it is not a very old town.”  Talk about perspective!

The stained glass windows were huge: six that were maybe 6 ft wide and maybe 25 ft tall up each side of the sanctuary.  In the front, behind the altar was one huge one that was as tall as the others, but probably just as wide as it was tall.  They were done in vivid colors depicting many Bible stories.  The arched ceiling was ‘way above our heads.  I have no idea how tall that was.  Amy took and picture and I will try to include it.

There was some kind of ceremony going on at the front of the sanctuary, so we didn’t go in too far, or stay too long. But it was beautiful.

This afternoon we spent some time looking things up in a French-English dictionary and laughing at ourselves for the mistakes we had made.  But we remembered a lot, and seem to be getting along well (though this morning I answered the lady at the boulangerie with “Si” instead of “Oui”).  She just laughed – a good sport and obviously used to dealing with foreign language speakers.  Amy had studied a French program online before we came, and surprisingly, some of my high school French has come back.  Amber is picking it up pretty well, too, so between us, we’re doing okay in the communication department.

We made our shopping list (in French) for our trip to the grocery store tomorrow, then spent the rest of the day reading, talking, and laughing.