Off the Atlantic Coast of France.
How do you pronounce it?
"Aye?"
"A-eye?"
"Eeee?"
No. It is "Ex."
Ill-Dex, the Island of X.
So now, re-read the title of today's post.
Get it?
I am standing a quarter mile off-shore, on a reef made up of oysters, rock and seaweed. I swing my oyster hammer and hit the middle of the shell instead of underneath, so the top pops off and the oyster is sitting there, perfect in the bottom half of the shell, in brine and seawater.
Carefully I pry under the shell, then lift it and suck in the freshest oyster I have ever tasted.
My eyes are closed. I can taste the salt water, the slight metallic taste of the oyster in the back of my tongue. The smell of the bay, the seaweed, the breeze off the water and the mist of the rising fog on my skin. I open my eyes to see if this is real.
Yes, I am here on an island in France, collecting oysters with Jean-Pierre. Swinging the hammer, I crack off another, one, two, three.
But I make sure to pop two or three others, “by mistake” as well. I notice Jean-Pierre smiling as he eats his way along the oyster bed next to me.
How in the world did we get here?
And where are we?
The ferry over took about twenty minutes, and cost €15 round trip. It was pretty empty, since most of the visitors left after the weekend.
Ile d’Aix is a very small island off the Atlantic Coast of France. I cannot remember exactly how I found out about it. I was looking for an unusual place to stay, and came across the famous Ile d’Re and Ile d’Oléron. Both of those islands are very touristy, and are connected to the mainland by bridges, so you can drive across. Ile d’Aix sits between them, kind of forgotten.
When we disembarked onto the quay, I noticed that we were actually “outside” of the island. That is to say, there appears to be a wall around the island, with what must have been an old drawbridge and gate system.
We walked through into a perfect little island, and the perfect set of memories.
There are basically no cars on the island (a few construction vehicles) and everyone walks or bikes. People use hand carts, and everyone has a little aluminum-framed cart that attaches to their bicycle.
The island itself is about 2KM by 7KM, in a kind of croissant shape. There is one hotel with 16 rooms, a couple people with guest rooms/apartments, maybe five restaurants, two places for simple meals (burgers, crepes) three trinket shops, a bike-rental guy, and one church, Saint Martin. Of course there is a tabac, patisserie, and market.
The entire town is four blocks by two.
The houses are mostly one story, kind of a white-beige color, with bright, happy-colored doors and shutters. The houses are connected to each other, with flowers planted everywhere. Hollyhocks are big right now. There is a town hall style building, three stories high with a clock and bell that clangs every hour.
The rest of the island is made up of scattered houses, a farm or two, more historic forts, a couple nice beaches and one small vineyard. There are one-lane, gravel or semi-paved roads connecting everything, and paths run off through the woods and along the shore. There are twin, red and white lighthouses at the fortress end.
There is really nothing to do here, which was part of the appeal.
King Louis the 16th built up the island as a defense against those bloody English, building Fort de la Rade and bunkers around the island’s perimeter. And my first impression was correct, as we later found out. The entire island is walled in. Some places it is a two-to-five foot seawall, some places it is a defensive wall, and some parts it just helps contain the soil and control erosion. You can walk the entire island on and along the wall.
In 1815 Napoleon surrendered to the British in a house here, now a museum. This is where he spent his last three days on French soil. Napoleon is big here. The main street is Rue d’Napoleon. The one hotel is the Napoleon Hotel, and the Joséphine Café. There is the Napoleon museum, and kids are here on school field trips, over from the mainland.
You get the idea.
I found it here.
We got off the ferry, walked through the defensive wall, across the green and to the town. At the hotel we turned right one block, and as we came around by the low seawall a lady was leaning on the wall, watching the ocean.
It was Marie-Cécile, waiting to welcome us.
The apartment is charming, located around the corner from the market and patisserie. We can see over the seawall, to the mainland.
After we dropped our stuff off, we walked into town. I had this idea to buy some wine, bread and cheese, and invite Jean-Pierre and Marie-Cécile down to have an afternoon snack with us at our outside table.
Fresh anchovies in oil were just in, so I got some of those, and a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, so expensive in the US, was just a few euro here.
This turned out to be the best idea of the trip so far.
When we got back to Le Jamblet, I quickly set a table, popped the wine and called upstairs for Jean-Pierre and Marie-Cécile to join us. They were surprised, and pleased. Jean-Pierre murmured his approval at the wine choice, and Marie-Cécile looked at what we had out and ran back upstairs for more cheese and some sausage. Then we sat and smiled and ate, as we talked in broken English and very poor French.
The more wine we drank, the better our French and their English became.
Thank god for the iPhone. We were able to show them photos of our family and life, and they showed us their grand-daughter, son and daughter.
We are their first guests ever from the United States.
Bonus points: California! (Most people visit from Belgium.)
The hours passed, and before they left, Jean-Pierre invited me to get oysters tomorrow at low tide. I offered to bring the wine, but he insisted otherwise.
“Today we drink you wine, tomorrow we drink my wine.”
And that was the end of it.
Well, we had been snacking for three hours now. It was 20:00, and we were not all that hungry for dinner, but wanted to get something to eat, so we walked around the block into town.
Everything was closed.
As I said, this is not really a tourist place, and so the market and restaurants close early so all the locals can get home for dinner. We walked around half the island, then went back to our apartment to finish the cheese and bread, washed down with more wine.
The EuroCup Soccer games are on every night, so I read and watched the game as Gail did email and read. The windows were open, and it is perfectly quiet except for the lapping of the waves.
He lent me Marie-Cécile’s bike, and we rode off across the island. He had a wire basket attached to his bike with bungie cords. We rode about five minutes, level and easy, cruising half-way up the island and out to the long, west-side beach.
Jean-Pierre unhooked the basket, and we left the bikes leaning against the sea wall and walked out, way out, on the exposed rock and reef. Crabs scuttled away ahead of us, seagulls whirled and cried, and we carefully picked our way along the jagged shells and slippery seaweed.
It was fortunate I had on good hiking shoes.
Jean-Pierre stopped, and showed me how to pick out the bigger oysters. He handed me a hammer-pick; two blades, one at each end of the head, twisted ninety degrees so you could swing and hit down, or sideways.
Chop chop and pry, toss in the basket. Chop chop and pry, toss in the basket.
We worked our way along, enjoying the sun as it started to peek out. Out further two people were fishing off the edge of the reef; another group of three were gathering oysters to the side of us. Every once in a while we would stop and eat an oyster right there, right out of the water.
“You can do this every day!” Jean-Pierre smiled.
We filled the basket in about fifteen minutes, then he dumped them into a small pool of water. We rinsed them off, and carefully placed them, right side up, in the basket and covered them with seaweed to keep them cool and fresh.
In no time we were back at the bikes, riding home.
Marie-Cécile brought us down a glass of chardonnay to sip as we scrubbed the shells clean, and popped the oysters open, arranging them on a tray.
Must. Have. Wine.
It helps with the cleaning.
Jean-Pierre taught me how to pop the shells with a knife. Of course, we made the occasional mistake, and had to eat the evidence before anyone noticed.
As soon as we finished cleaning them, we all went upstairs where Marie-Cécile had everything set.
And this was the start of our gastronomic excess.
The oyster extravaganza.
For the next four hours we ate and drank.
Four.
Hours.
We started with Cognac and tonic water, to wash down little tomato-basil-cheese-puff appetizers. It was the biggest bottle of Cognac I have ever seen. Outside in the warm sun, on their deck overlooking the main town and harbor, we just relaxed into the afternoon.
Jean-Pierre took me down to a trap door, leading to an old, underground vault from the 17 or 1800s. He found it when they were fixing up the house. It is his wine cellar, and we rummaged around looking for something to go with the oysters.
He settled on a magnum of Gewurztraminer. Normally it is a sweet wine in the US (like American Rieslings) but this was a dry wine (like the German Rieslings).
We took the bottle, plus a bottle of red Bordeaux, and went into the house where the oysters were waiting. After pouring the wine, it was everyone for themselves. I ate mine with just a squeeze of lemon, or sometimes with this leek-vinegar that Marie-Cécile made. It tasted a lot like caramelized onions.
Gail, my vegetarian wife, liked the first oyster enough to eat two more!
We didn’t talk much during this time, except to say “ummmm,” or “UMMM!” or “good!” Occasionally we stopped long enough to pour another round of wine. Marie-Cécile likes the sea snails, and we had saved those (they were attached to the oysters) so she had a pile of them. She’d pry one out of the pile, and you could sometimes see the little antennae poke out…
Marie-Cécile offered one to Gail who said, “No thanks.” But when she offered me one, I thought, “Oh hell, why not?” and so I grabbed one and before it could poke the antenna out I popped it out of the shell and chewed.
It is more fun in the re-telling than it was in actual life.
It didn’t taste slimy at all, in fact it had a chewy, sort of tough feel and was a little bitter if anything. I am totally grossed out now even thinking about it. I mean really, who eats raw sea snails? Uck!
Anyway, I smiled and when she offered me another I pointed and said, “Je préfère les huîtres.” Or at least it was something close enough to that, for she went back to her snails and I went back to my huîtres.
After a time we sat back and looked at the pile of empty shells and lemon rinds. Jean-Pierre gathered the shells and carried them out to throw over the sea wall, back into the ocean. Meanwhile, Marie-Cécile fired up the barbeque, and threw on a pile of sausages.
I looked at Gail and raised my eyebrows.
Soon there was a delicious looking vegetable tart, and a pile of hot sausages on the table in front of us. Red wine all around, and we dug in on the real meal. You se, the oysters were just the warm-up.
Boy, were those sausages great! And the home-made tart…
I was drinking gaz eau (water with gas) and wine, and the sausages kept coming and coming. Marie-Cécile patted
Jean-Pierre’s stomach and they laughed; we kept on eating. About the time I could take no more, were were finished.
For the moment.
Until the cheese for dessert. A huge plate of cheese, with more wine. Five kinds of cheese… and so we kept on eating and drinking, and I thought to myself, “I will be lucky if I can walk out of here.”
Then, mercifully, it was over.
Until the next dessert course of fresh fruit and cookies and coffee...
And so, if you were wondering how someone can eat a four hour lunch, well, there you have it.
We decided to go walk the island to work off the food. It was either that, or go sleep in the sun, on the beach.
Tough choice.
So, we walked every road and trail. We poked into every “neighborhood” and side street. I pushed us through a closed section of trail, through brambles, just to see what was in that section of the coast.
We put on over eight miles on this little island.
And when we returned...
we opened another bottle of wine.
We ate well, and drank a lot of wine.
We spent the hot afternoon on the big west beach swimming, reading and sleeping, and didn’t return until after 19:00.
We drank a cool bottle of the local white wine, a Chardonnay, from the only vineyard on the island, Cuvée Montrésor. It was not great, but it was local.
The sun is still high in the sky at 21:00 here, and it doesn’t get dark until almost midnight.
Long, lazy summer days.
So, what do you do on an island where the main form of entertainment seems to be going up to the seawall a couple times a day to watch the ferry come in?
A place where people just stop in the street and talk, as if they haven’t seen each other in years.
Where the food grows right in the ocean, ready to be harvested, and the good wine flows freely and inexpensive.
A place where the sun shines and the sandy beaches are full of shells. Where there are paths to walk and history to see.
You live.
That’s what you do.
La vie c'est bon, brother!