It’s called la Maison d’Hôtes – la Corne d’Or and, despite its centuries-old history, it has very nicely kept up with the many cyberspatial advantages of having a website – here.
Our room was La Suite Nature (which no, did not mean “clothing optional”).
Franck is the half of the couple you will see most. In fact, wife Isabelle is a full-time teacher, a family link to the profession that has created in Franck some rather passionately held, and not entirely complimentary, views on the current wave of Sarkozy government-instituted educational reforms presently underway in France. (To its opponents, the reform program will mean turning the entire system over to “accountants” and running it like a business, at the expense of the quality of education. For the pedagogically-minded in the room, the issues, from an understandably left-wing point of view, are summarized in this April 28, 2008 article from the World Socialist Web Site / WSWS.)
But even more passionate as a subject of interest for Franck is the history of the property he and Isabelle have turned into a small hotel. While we were there, he showed us copies of some fascinating documentation tracing the property’s ownership as far back as the registration that was mandated under the Napoleonic Code in the 1830s. He also told us that he has found some archival “traces” of evidence that date its construction to the late 14th century.
But he hasn’t let history consume the time required to run a first-class accommodation in Arras. Canadians – depending on your own political leanings – may or may not take it as high praise that he was selected to host a luncheon for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his officials when they stayed in Arras in 2007 to participate in ceremonies marking the 90th Anniversary of the Canadian attack on Vimy Ridge.
For a modest few extra Euros, you can enjoy a breakfast that Franck lays on that provides more than enough fuel to see you well into your day trips in and around Arras. Front and centre on the beverage sideboard was a pod-espresso machine and there were probably 15 different types of coffee, from powerful, full-bodied through a range of progressively gentler caffeine kicks, and even a couple of de-caffs from which to choose. If you’re unfamiliar with the pod system, it’s ridiculously simple. (Although you probably don’t need to go as far as the “Krups 15 Bar Pressure Thermo Block Pump Trouble Free Espresso Cappuccino Maker” I saw advertised in a recent pre-Christmas “Best Gifts at the Best Price” ad in the Globe and Mail.) The espresso machine stands at the ready, with a reservoir of fully pre-heated water. You select the pod you want – a small sealed pack that looks like a metal-covered chocolate – place it under a lever, position your cup under the spout, then press the lever. The action simultaneously punches a ring of small holes into the vacuum-sealed pod’s case, and pushes the water through until you release the lever. (This allows for a “long” or a “short” espresso – more or less water – depending on your preference. And the freshness, of course, is incredible, given you’ve introduced air into the coffee pod just seconds earlier.) And if coffee isn’t your preferred morning jump-start, in a side china-cabinet Franck had about 30 different teas and tisanes.
There was always a bowl of fresh fruit salad and a large pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice on the table. Cereal options included a couple of traditional – corn flakes, for example, and also a muesli / granola style. But what really set Franck’s breakfast table off was the enormous basket of fresh baked pastries, croissants and breads. The first morning we were there, he placed several slices of a nutty muesli bread that was so fresh and warm, it actually settled a bit as it sat in the serving basket.
His pastry source revealed itself when another family at the table that morning asked if there were any more croissants. Without missing a beat, Franck said, “Just a minute”, darted out the front door and was back in about four minutes with a half dozen, straight off the shelf of a lovely patisserie just across the street. Franck never admitted it, but the nearby presence of what he said was the best bakery in Arras might well have been a motivator in his and Isabelle’s decision to buy the Corne d’Or in the first place. (After all – location, location, location.) Lord knows it was certainly our motivator for making sure we never missed breakfast. The capper was a daily offering of a fresh hot entrée in addition to all of the foregoing – French toast one morning, fresh-smoked filet mignon (!) the next.
The morning after our Vimy visit, we happened to mention our underground sojourn in the la Grange Subway and when Franck heard how interested we had been, he said, “Then you have to visit the Wellington Quarry.”
I confess I am not a little embarrassed, now in the hindsight of having seen this place, at never having even heard of it before Franck mentioned it. In my Vimy post, you may recall I mentioned how much of the Vimy preparation was conducted underground. It turns out the Vimy digs were a relative drop in the bucket compared to the Wellington Quarry. Despite the repetition of describing a few points of yet another WWI underground network, a few of the Quarry’s logistics are worth a mention here.
Underground Arras is nothing new. Chalk has been mined from dozens of pits dug deep under the city for literally hundreds of years. “Pits” is deliberate. In mediaeval times, the stone was dug by simply excavating a small hole at ground level and gradually working down several storeys into the rock, gradually creating a sizeable cave in the earth until a specific pit was deemed to have been sufficiently quarried. Then another would be opened, and so on. Eventually, limestone became Arras’s building material of choice and the chalk pits were simply capped over and forgotten.
Then along came World War I and its attendant need for shelter from the shelling, and for a safe place in which to prepare for a coming battle. Add the presence on that section of the front of a unique regiment of some 500 New Zealanders – including native Maoris and nearby Pacific Islanders – who, to a man, came from a mining background. And within the almost unbelievable span of about a year, they dug no less than 20 km of tunnels linking all the mediaeval chalk pits at a depth of about 70 feet below Arras.
The Wellington Quarry today is both a tourist-accessible section of the network and a museum honouring the New Zealand miners,
and also the soldiers who fought and died in the fighting that took place in and around Arras, culminating in the massive offensive launched in April 1917 that, coincident with the Canadians’ attack on Vimy, saw fully 25,000 British soldiers spill from openings dynamited from five different exit sites tunnelled up close to the surface. The British attack overwhelmed the Germans in the nearby trenches. So complete was their surprise, and so thoroughly were the Germans shocked, the attack in its first day achieved the until-then-never-achieved success of pushing the Germans back no fewer than 11 km across the entire Arras section of the front.
It was as unexpected to the Allies as it was to the Germans and in short order they outstripped their own supply lines. Unable to keep their guns in ammunition and their bodies in water and food... they simply stopped. The delay was sufficient to allow the Germans to rush reinforcements and reserve troops forward and they, in turn, pushed back, undoing pretty much all of the Allies’ gains. In a film presentation at the end of the tour, you hear the utterly disheartening news that the German supreme commander, Hindenburg, said that 24-hour delay on the Arras front probably “saved” Germany from likely having to capitulate entirely, and sealed the world into the fate of a further 18 months of World War I, and Germany into a deep post-war economic catastrophe that gave rise to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Here are a couple photos I took in the Quarry and the Museum. It’s hard to appreciate from these pictures the size of the mediaeval caverns that the New Zealanders linked together, for the simple reason they were too large for my flash to illuminate. But it is an amazing place, the more so to me for adding an entirely new chapter to my World War I knowledge.
(The carved chalk steps lead up to one of the wartime exits through which the attacking British emerged that surprising April 1917 morning after dynamiting an opening through the final couple of feet to the surface. The dark circle on the step in the lower right is a 90-year old helmet.)
Outside, on a long concrete wall at the ramp that slopes down to the Quarry’s entrance, the units that fought in the Battle of Arras are immortalized.
If you zoom in on the bottom row in this photo, you’ll see the names of the many Canadian Brigades who took part in the Vimy assault.
And with that, I said a most thoughtful goodbye to the many wartime sites I’d seen on this trip. (But not entirely to militaria. Be advised that a visit to Paris’s Musée de l’Armée is still to come.)
The ocean-removed perspective of Canada necessarily confines one’s appreciation of the impact of two World Wars to readings and what you see on TV or in movie theatres. And no matter how eloquent the TV script or the book writing – whether by historian or participant (or both in the case of a writer like Edmund Blunden) – there is nothing to make it all seem so real as a simple sign in a glade telling you there are still unexploded munitions about, or a single poppy stuck in the wall of a garden in tribute to a dozen Canadian soldiers who were executed on the very spot on which you are standing, or an equally poignant poppy wreath placed in a German soldiers’ cemetery by British schoolchildren, and the countless plaques telling me that I was where so many of the events in my many years of readings actually happened.
From the miles-long sweep of a Normandy beach to a nameless soldier’s two-inch by two-inch pencilled drawing on a chalk wall deep under Arras that was his best memory of the woman to whom he hoped one day to return, I am deeply glad of the experience of having seen all of these places.
Out of Arras and on to Alsace. (Let’s face it – all France is poetry.)
(Oh, and an Arras footnote. On our last night there, we opted for an ensuite dinner consisting of some wonderful local food shop finds. I had never before heard of white Bordeaux, but I am here to tell you now it is a fantastic wine!)
When I was but a lad of 7 – 11, Dad was stationed at the Royal Canadian Air Force base at 2 Wing (Grostenquin) France. The civilian residences – PMQs (for Permanent Married Quarters – although I never did find out whether it was the permanence of the marriage or the quarters that earned one’s family a place to live therein) – were located about a dozen kilometres from the base, in a town named St Avold. At one point in our day’s drive out Arras, we passed a sign that told us St Avold lay about 45 km away, but I resisted a 90-minute or so side trip merely to point to a couple windows on the fourth floor of a four-storey apartment block and say to Leslie, “We lived there for four years”. She never actually said thank you, but I think she appreciated that even my nostalgia has its limits. (But as we passed signs for Nancy, Metz, Toul, crossed the Moselle River and drove through Pont-a-Mousson, I couldn’t resist telling her we were in my old neighbourhood.)
One thing I really liked about French highway signs is that when you are exiting a ramp off a highway, they have a very effective way of giving you an early indication of the sharpness of the ramp’s curve. As you enter a ramp, if you see a quick succession of signs that stage from 110 to 90 to 70 to 50 over a relatively short distance, you will be wise to ease up on your speed, because the ramp is a sharp turn. By contrast, if you enter the ramp and see only one sign on the shoulder – 110 – it means the ramp’s turn is so shallow that you barely have to nudge the steering wheel to carry you onto your connecting road without reducing your speed at all. It’s especially helpful when you’re driving in fog and can only see a limited section of the exit ramp.
Our destination today was a place Leslie picked solely for its proximity to the Alsace wine region. In recent years, we’ve discovered we quite enjoy Riesling and Gewürztraminer white wines, both of which coincidentally are hailed around the wine-lovers’ world when they come from wineries in Alsace. Of the place – the Chateau d’Adonénil in Lunéville, Leslie would only say, “I think you’ll like it”.
Uh huh. 1. Late afternoon
2. Early morning
And 3. inside our room.
That evening, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner in the Chateau’s dining room. Here (and be warned, there’s really no way to characterize the meal description you’re about to read as anything other than a gustatory orgy) is what we both agree is probably the most lavish meal we have ever eaten in our lives. Leslie ordered “agneau” and, eventually, a dessert. I ordered “sandre” and, also eventually, a dessert. I’m sure you see a pattern that might even sound a little tiresome here: Leslie: lamb; me: fish (“sandre” is pike). But I’m leaving a great many meals out – and we do both tend to revert to our consistent restaurant favourites, especially when the setting, or a host’s recommendation, tends to suggest a superior quality on both items.
So here’s how our four-item total order transpired...
The moment we arrived, we were faced with a tabletop battery of cutlery, china and glassware that would have drained most single-family domestic kitchens. (Fortunately, the staff was most helpful throughout the meal. As each new serving would arrive, they would position the applicable utensil on the plate. All that was missing was, “Ready, set, go”.)
On our table was a martini glass filled to the brim with a mix of roasted and glazed cashews, hazelnuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. After we settled in, admired the meticulously arranged decor, a waiter (all of whom were dressed to the nines) appeared and offered us a choice of four different fresh-baked breads – a traditional mini-baguette, a country wheat bread, a raisin loaf and a walnut bread. A few minutes later, a platter of three appetizers arrived – for each of us. One was a mushroom purée on a thin crisp; the second was a purée of tomato sitting on a thin slice of chorizo sausage and the platter was rounded off with a miniature baked pastry that had the texture of warm pretzel dough. No sooner had the doughy warmth cleared our palates when bowls of soup arrived that was like nothing either of us had ever experienced – it was as though someone had perfected the formula for liquefying fresh parmesan reggiano and ladled it over two more baked items, a thick slab of baguette and a sweet gaufrette wafer.
More bread arrived and with it, a waiter to take our order. (By this point, it had completely slipped our minds that several appetizers and soup into the meal, we had still to officially order anything. The fact that we were each a good glass and half into a beautifully balanced Alsace Riesling might have contributed to our temporary amnesia.)
Leslie, as I mentioned earlier, ordered the “agneau” and it arrived, if you can believe it, as three flawlessly prepared chops and a side (a side!) of a filet mignon steak. The balance of her plate was filled out with asparagus, a medley of finely chopped vegetables pressed into a brownie-like square and, in a separate bowl, a garlic mousse that we were unsure whether it was intended to be a wholly separate side dish, or a garnish for the asparagus and veg.
Meanwhile, while we were waxing rapturous about the garlic mousse, which we both had sampled the moment it arrived, my own plate was slid into position. My “sandre” was a large, thick disk of beautifully flaky fish, cooked to perfection. Two separate side dishes included, in one, a thick sauce of a wild and domestic mushroom blend, probably including truffle or morel but I have had such rare experience with either, I wasn’t completely sure. The second side dish was a sauté blend of pearl onions, mushrooms and chick peas, all lightly charred on the outside, hot and steaming inside. Yet another side bowl landed and it carried another of those wonderful concoctions – richly cheesy in my case – that left us unsure as to whether it was a side dish, or a sauce. (I confess that I am someone who makes no bones about asking in circumstances like this when I am unsure and the waiter delivered the most perfect of answers – “Whatever monsieur wishes...” So I spooned it onto the sautéed vegetables and it was a marriage made in heaven.
We took our time and savoured every last morsel, occasionally passing a nibble to each other’s plate with an “Oh wow... you have GOT to try THIS!”
We also settled the food with a steady, but temperate, flow of the Riesling, supplemented by generous quantities of Evian mineral water that the staff ensured never fell to less than half a tumbler’s worth.
The main courses done, we mused about whether we had room for dessert and agreed that, given the promise indicated by what had so far gone before, we simply had to.
Then a separate platter of what the waiter informed us were “amuse-gueules” was brought to the table. Not a choice – the entire platter. We each savoured a sweetened puff pastry that was like a miniature Yorkshire pudding in texture, a chocolate mousse square with actual gold leaf flakes garnishing it and a disk of something we never did identify. Suffice to say it was blue-grey in colour; it looked for all the world like a scale model of a curling stone but since it was garnished with a fresh raspberry where the stone normally carried a handle, we correctly took it to be the third of the “amuse-gueules”. It was delicious, and I suspect its flavour root was some sort of wild berry -- black, blue or huckle. Its texture was like a pudding-cake.
At this point we began to let our conversation slide in favour of using our throats to gasp for breath. And suddenly, there was our friendly waiter again, this time placing something in front of us that he informed us was a “pre-dessert”, a cup of lemon-ice “granité” that turned out to be an icy foam infused with a lychée liqueur in addition to the lemon.
At this point, he asked us what we wished to order for dessert!
In response to my request for “Oh, OK, but just something light”, the waiter recommended a Grand Marnier soufflé. When it arrived, of course it couldn’t just be a magnificently puffed and lightly browned soufflé almost floating out of the ramekin in which it was served, it was accompanied by something I recognized as having come straight from the kitchens of master French chef Jacques Pépin (because we have one of his cookbooks and Leslie has made this very thing) candied citrus peel – a mix of sugar glazed orange, lemon and grapefruit peel sections and a second side (Even the dessert had side dishes!) that consisted of a hot, sweet slice of egg loaf layered with a delicious filling of currants, nuts and something – light maple syrup? – to add a perfect degree of sweetness.
And I don’t know how you measure a great restaurant, but when the waiter left the entire bottle of Grand Marnier brandy with me to slather as much as I wanted onto my soufflé, I knew we were in the presence of culinary greatness. (Insert increasingly foggy-eyed smiley here.)
Leslie, meanwhile, had ordered a strawberry / raspberry ice, which she foolishly assumed would also be a “light” dessert. When it arrived, it was surrounded by an amazingly constructed meringue that appeared to be a cage of delicate pink rings forming a complete arch over the ice. (In fact, it looked a little unsettlingly like the rib cage of the legendary rare dessert-beast of Big Rock Candy Mountain-opolis.) And to further top off that presentation, the dessert was itself nesting on a checkerboard pattern of raspberry coulis with a side of sliced strawberries.
We had also decided to end with coffee and of course it also came with yet another tray of mini-sweets – cubes of cotton candy made in-house, and four marshmallow squares we were told were made from a Japanese fruit that most closely resembled a cross between a lemon and an orange.
And finally, believe it or not... the waiter came by once more with yet another tray covered with a beautiful variety of chocolates, chocolate truffles and the like. “Please... as many as you wish...” We confined ourselves to one each. What a surprise – they were superb!
Our departing form of locomotion could probably best be described as a waddle, and we opted for a late night “digestif” stroll around the grounds of the Chateau (There’s something you don’t get to say every day!) At one point, rather than let a black cat complete its trajectory across our path, I cajoled it into coming over for a friendly scratch behind the ears, a greeting it endured for about six seconds before clamping both front paws fiercely about my arm and sinking its teeth into my wrist. After shaking it off and determining that I wouldn’t bleed to death in the time it took to get back to our suite, I muttered something about thinking that a long ago feline acquaintance named Toby of similar appearance and temperament (at least in his youth) had obviously been reborn on French aristocratic soil, and we returned to our room, where I gave my forearm a long, warm-water soak and a thorough cleansing.
Next: The difference between wine grapes and champagne grapes, what Disneyland might have looked like if it had been designed by Kaiser Wilhelm II instead of Walt Disney, and we bid our rented wheels adieu in absolutely the last parking space left deep below the Gare de l’Est in Paris.
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