Fontainebleau and Fouvent Le Bas

After leaving Paris we were well and truly ready for some fresh country air. We had a stop in Fontainebleau to visit the chateau of not so long forgotten French Royalty. The Chateau housed people from King Francis to Napoleon. Again, I got in for free, but we had audio guides which, although we didn’t actually want them (slight misunderstanding with the French ticket lady) were actually quite good. We saw the Grand Apartments, the lesser apartments as well as the Ball Room and the Trinity Chapel, the place where Napoleon married Josephine.

We continued on our drive through fields of sunflowers, wheat and many, many cows, stopping for the occasional photo here or there. We finally made it to out to a little B&B which was tucked into the forest about 3km out of Fouvent Le Bas, a small and unassuming town in east, north-east France. We took a walk before dinner through beautiful fields of golden wheat, silent except for the sound of jets flying miles overhead.

The house we were staying in is slowly but surely being converted from a barn into a house. The owners bought it in the 80’s and have been working tirelessly ever since. The Lady of the house, Anne, is a tiny little thing with bright orange hair and missing teeth, but she sure does know how to cook! She cooked us an amazing vegetarian meal with 4 courses! Everything was from her garden and was all organic (except the lentils, which she told me were not worth the effort and were from the supermarket). Here’s what we ate:

     Vegetable soup with home made bread

     Tofu and salad with beet, sauerkraut and a herb dressing

     Baked potatoes, peas, carrot, lentils, rice and herbed zucchini

     Pancakes with Quince and honey

     Home made lime blossom tea. 

We somehow managed to roll ourselves to bed where we all slept like babies! Had another delicious breakfast the next morning then we were off again, way to soon.