BONJOUR! AU REVOIR!

Water blowing sideways in Céret fountain

Having resided in France for a week now and not yet gone out to a restaurant, we decided to join the French for Sunday lunch today. After that dreary yesterday, we woke up this morning to blue skies - however.... the wind was even more fierce! So there was no way we were going to head for the coast and "Moules frites", as we had planned, but instead we opted for an inland restaurant in the village of Céret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Céret

Céret is famous - and I mean FAMOUS - for having been the home of many artists, for its Musée d'Art Moderne, for its bull running traditions (like Pamplona in Spain), for its cherries, for its Sardane - Catalan dancing in the village square, for its three Devil Bridges.

The Sardane

http://www.musee-ceret.com

If you're even remotely interested in art, the above link to the museum is worth looking at. The museum houses some real art treasures - works by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Braque, Miró, and it can boast a big collection of Cubist paintings. Many of the artists represented here lived and worked in Céret. Some say Cubism was invented in Céret, by Picasso.

One of my favourite restaurants - Le Gecko, Camélas

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g488137-d2621317-r135092324-Le_Gecko-Camelas_Pyrenees_Orientales_Languedoc_Roussillon.html

French restaurants are packed at lunchtime, especially on Sundays, and in Céret today we were shown to a table in an unassuming little place where we had Noix St. Jacques - scallops. Not a bad substitute for the mussels I'd been looking forward to! If there are two things (apart from the food) that I love about French restaurants it's these: 1) The waiters are friendly, but professional, truly proud of their job. 2) Everyone says Bonjour and Au Revoir! Even the other guests! I've tried this in restaurants in Norway - at first they look at you, wide-eyed and surprised, but more often than not they respond!

Last year in an Oslo restaurant my daughter Sophie and I got talking to a couple at the next table, it started with the guy looking at my pizza and me offering him some. We got so friendly with them that they shook our hands when we left! (NOT typical Norwegian - and this was actually one of our topics of conversation). The same thing has happened to me in France (several times), in Barcelona, and in New York (of course!) I'm sure this has something to do with the conviviality, the sudden closeness to strangers who are sharing the same experience - good food and wine.

Having philosophised a bit about restaurant eating today - and having definitely more than related from my own cooking in earlier posts - I have now stooped to ordering in a couple of pizzas for supper. Well, why not?

And I think the wind may be subsiding?

My mountain today - sun kissed