Above: A pretty spot in the residential area of Valognes.
As sightseeing in the region had been gotten out of the way, yesterday was spent mostly on DIY at Valognes apart from a fancy lunch at Brasserie Marcel along the way, including foie gras including foie gras served in three ways:
- The first was perhaps au naturel or sous vide, sliced with some yellow fat on the outside.
- The second was a choux pastry filled with creamed foie gras.
- And the third was a foie gras crème brulee which I found too rich.
I reciprocated with an Indian dinner in the evening back in Cherbourg.
Today would be similar but with breakfast at the military mess beforehand. My task for the day is to paint three I-beams which I had cleaned up yesterday, chipping and brushing off loose concrete spots.
I can be a little trying with manual tasks and DIY so it is pretty good that I completed everything without anything too untoward happening to myself or between me and my host! The only tension arose not from the actual DIY but the mock-up of how future doors would be positioned, and the terminology “pocket doors”.
The weather had brightened up from a couple of days ago and it hit 29 degC today. The old house was very well insulated and so cool that we missed the hot weather till leaving around 1830 to attend a talk on the history of glassmaking in the region.
I finished my stay in Normandy with dinner at a family (with five bespectacled boys) from church. A priest was at dinner too and after the pre-dinner prayers of Hail Mary, Our Father and Gloria Patri in French (rather than Latin as used in their church normally), he blessed us all individually. It had been a while since I’ve had a personal blessing.