If you’ve recently misplaced 250,000 Black Cats I think I’ve found them…they’re currently being set off by a small Chinese man outside my hotel window.  If only I were kidding.  Meghan and I were super excited to be in Beijing during Chinese New Year, and while we’re still very happy to be here we found out that it’s really a family holiday where people eat dumplings with their families and celebrate mostly at home (this was what our tour guide “Orange,” that’s her American name, told us this morning)…everyone that is except for our neighbor who had one Black Cat streak that lasted, I kid you not, 23 minutes.  I thought it was the grand finale, but turns out he has forgone eating all year just to afford every firework in the Beijing province.  As Meghan aptly described it as we lay in bed trying to sleep, “It sounds like Kosovo out there.”  So I’m awake and figured why not blog? Meghan and I arrived in Pau last Monday night on a train that we boarded from Montparnasse station in Paris.  It was about 5 hours, but I was finishing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (yes, I’m officially the last person on Earth besides Meg to read this book) and felt super short.  We arrived to a train station where our host, GAGFI was waiting.  GAGFI is the best friend of one of my best friend’s husband (Brie VanKeuren) husband Scott, and I met him at Brie’s wedding in July.  I’d like to give a special shout out to Brie and Scott Kelman for not only having an “epic” and amazing wedding but also for introducing me to most of the people we have stayed with thus far on our trip. 

Pau is a smallish (population around 80k people if I remember correctly) town at the Southern border of France.  It’s adorable.  When we arrived to the train station there was a gondola across from the station that takes you up to where the downtown area is.  It stops running at 9:40pm and we arrived at 9:45 so it was a short walk up a very steep hill to get to the apartment.  Gagfi’s apartment is in an over 200 year old building.  It’s a giant, fully furnished 3 bedroom apartment with oriental rugs, a piano, built in antique wood cabinets and it may or may not smell of rich mahogany.  With not only a place to rest our hats but also a washer AND DRYER, Meghan and I were in heaven.  We spent the first two days trying to catch up on (read: do for only the second time since we left Jan. 6th) laundry, exploring the city and eating daily Pain du Chocolat, which put every pain du chocolat we tried in Paris to shame. Pau as a city is charming.  It sits at a relatively high altitude with a view of mountain ranges in the background, but has palm trees all over the city area.  So the contrast is great and palm trees I swear make you feel a little warmer.  The castle in Pau is where Henry the IV was born and is a beautiful building with engraved stone and nice gardens that is open to tour.  As I mentioned the baked goods were outstanding, but even more impressive (just because we were in a small French town) was a Camaroonese restaurant located a block or so from Gagfi’s place.  He goes so often the woman knew exactly what he wanted and was very happy to meet more of his friends.  She cooks everything herself in a small kitchen in the back, and you just have to hope the place is empty so you can eat in a normal amount of time.  We ate Chicken Domba, a pork dish that tasted like the Carne Sudada my Tita makes so well and had plaintains and yucca on the side.  As a beverage, she makes a Ginger cocktail that is the strongest ginger flavor I’ve ever tasted in a beverage but is indescribably delicious.  Gagfi has asked her repeatedly for the recipe and she promised to share it with him in 40 years…he’ll be 72. 

After 2 days in Pau and with the blessing of our gracious host, Meg and I set out for a road trip in France.  Gagfi not only loaned us his car (with the warning that if we break it we bought it), he also gave us his iPhone so that we could call in case of emergency (see below for that story) and use the GPS without which we would never have made it home.  We set out bright and early (11am) for Bordeaux via Bayonne.  It was smooth sailing until I was forced to make any decisions regarding direction and took us on a 45 minute detour of some winding country roads.  It was sort of a blessing in disguise however as we had the GPS to get us back to our course and got to see some great little towns along the way.  We arrived in Bordeaux, had some sangria and sandwiches and toured Bordeaux a bit.  It’s a big city though, and Gagfi had highly recommended we see Saint Emilion, a small town in that same Bordeaux wine area.  So after lunch we headed to Saint Emilion with Meghan behind the wheel and me as co-pilot, a dangerous idea. We arrived in Saint Emilion a bit late so the free wine tastings were already closed…fail.  But the town was cute enough we didn’t care.  We stumbled upon a place that offered us fresh-out-of-the-oven macaroons and I fell a bit more in love with France.  I didn’t even know I liked macaroons.  We bought a box for Gagfi as a gift, which we ended up opening on the car ride home (I’m convinced every day I couldn’t have picked a better travel buddy) and continued our exploration of the city.  As much of it was closed, it was more about seeing a new place than getting to meet many of the people, but we were just happy to have seen it.  On the way to the car we found this sort of hidden fountain and saw coins in it.  I made a wish about a dear friend I lost and felt for the first time on this trip an ability to invite her to share something beautiful I was witnessing with me, and it felt wonderful.

As we reached the car we decided to “fuel up” before our long drive home.  I had made it a habit of drinking more tea than coffee before I left, but coffee (with a lot of milk and sugar) has been a nice substitute for meals when in a pinch on this adventure.  We headed into a shop right by the car and ordered two cafe au laits.  I asked the woman to come out and take a picture, and as we set down our box of macaroons on the counter, she launched into a big time spiel about how the place we bought from did not make “real” macaroons and had copied her style.  She then went to retrieve a book with at least 40 newspaper and magazine clippings about her bakery and insisted that we had made a huge mistake.  I apologized but was actually really happy to have met someone as passionate about food as I am. Our ride home was pretty uneventful until….cue problem to solve….we passed a gas station.  I asked Meghan if we should stop but the tank was on 1/4 tank and had been for quite some time.  15 minutes later the tank was on empty…20 minutes after that we had not only NOT passed a single gas station, but not even a street light…uh oh.  I got on our trusty iPhone and saw Roquefort (not home to the amazing cheese, I later learned) was the next biggest city.  As we rolled into the city on fumes in a car we borrowed from a new friend who had to be at work the next morning and needed both his phone and his car to get there, we grew more and more anxious.  There were no lights on in apartments and everything was closed at 8pm.  We got to the bottom of a hill and saw a woman putting patio chairs away in a restaurant that was clearly the last to close.  She explained where the gas station was (en France bien sur), and I used my powers of deductive reasoning and charade skills, hoping we were headed in the right direction.  2 minutes later my faith was restored.

We pulled into the gas station, actually jumped up and down dancing and then it happened.  The machine ate my credit card.  So now we had no gas, no food and our pets heads were falling off (Jane, that Dumb and Dumber shout out was for you).  But in all seriousness, we were stuck and now we risked me having no credit card for the next 2 months.  Because guys are this way, Gagfi happened to have pliers in his glove compartment, which we used to pull the card out of the machine manually.  Meghan then tried her card with trepidation and we learned that they didn’t accept American credit cards.  Merde. 
There was only one thing left to do…Me: “Hey, how was work today?”
Gagfi: “Good.”
Me: “Did you solve any big problems?”
Gagfi: “No, it was pretty low key.”
Me: “Want to solve one now?”

With only one option that seemed plausible between the three of us, Meghan and I put the car in neutral, rolled down the hill and prayed to find…anyone.  Find someone we did.  A lovely woman and her son were sitting in her car smoking…they were exactly who we were looking for!  I tried in French to explain what happened with my typical simple sentences. ” I have credit card. I don’t have gas.  Credit card is not good.  I have cash.  You pay with your card? I cash you.”  (that is a word for word translation of what I said in French).  She laughed as did her son and they drove with us, presumably on our absolutely last drops of “gazole” in the car, to the gas station.  When we tried to stop pumping early so that we could give her the difference in Euros as a tip, she waved her finger at us and pumped the rest of the gas herself.  She was an angel. Upon returning to Pau, Gagfi vowed to never lend us his car again and we vowed to never ask.  As a thank you for letting us stay with him and loaning us his car, we cooked dinner for him and his friend Habib.  The next night we were headed to San Sebastian, and that is another story for my next post.