"French Nobility Her ..." a Saint-Étienne Travel Page by jrgentle

It all started with a simple party invitation. My good friend Marion invited Heike (German friend), Olivier (French friend), and myself to a party being thrown by her family and her cousins at there family house in the center of France. A weekend in the country? Why not? I can do that. So we took off to the the city of St. Etienne. This is where her parents lived. It is a lovely city and I of course took the opportunity to do some shopping “French style”. We stayed with her parents, who showed us a wonderful time. We did the whole wine and cheese thing. I even managed to check out a bit of the nightlife. We then took a wonderful drive through the French countryside to “Montel De Gelat”, the village where her grandmother lives. Marion said that her grandmother has lived there on her own in an old family home. What she failed to mention, and as we discovered to our delight, was that the old family home is actually a Chateau with about 20 bedrooms. OH MY GOD. The place was huge. I actually got to stay in the round tower. (You can see the top of the Chateaux in the picture) Get me, I’m cinderfella;-). Also on the property were two chalets, with about 7 rooms each, a old Roman Tower, and a turn of the century carriage stable. I was a typical American tourist, and took pictures of everything. The first night I met a whole bunch of her friends and cousins that had traveled from all over France for the weekend. I was the only native English speaker out of about 30 people, so I was really playing catch-up with the little French I know. Thankfully they took pity on me and spoke slowly. We went to a little town on a lake called La Chazotte. There is a little 80 something year old lady called Marté who turns her barn into a little restaurant for special friends. This place literally had chickens running around the place, and under the chairs. She cooks everything with the help of her son and a friend. It was probably one of the most memorable meals I have ever eaten. It was very simple, yet wonderful. And Marté was a delight. We sat and had a conversation (in French) and she held my hand the hold time. After this we stopped by the OTHER country house that the family owns. This was where the party was taking place on the Saturday night. In the morning we all bundled up snugly and took off to the Volvic region to go and climb a volcano. It was a pretty steep climb, but worth it. The views were magnificent. We had a picnic, and played Rugby, right in the center of the crater. He headed back to the farmhouse and had a BBQ and partied well into the night. The next day we unfortunately had to depart back to Germany, but on the way we stopped in the Bordeaux region and I bought a case of the most beautiful wine. Of course we had to taste a whole bottle first.