Table of Contents for this Episode
Welcome to Episode 607
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 607, six cent sept.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: An Art Retreat in a Medieval Burgundy Village
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Julie Lynch, an Australian costume designer turned painter, who spent eight nights at an art retreat in Noyers, a tiny medieval village in Burgundy.
Now, I’m not certain if they say Noyer or Noyé. It could be either one. We talk about painting without pressure, afternoon outings to Vézelay, Avallon, and Chablis, and [00:01:00] why a slow week in a French village beats a packed itinerary.
Listener Support and Video Plans
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support. If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary consults, I write GPS tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and I do day trips around the southwest of France.
Everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And if you shop on Amazon anyway, starting at joinusinfrance.com/amazon costs you nothing, but helps the show.
Magazine segment
Annie: For the Magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Julie today, I’ll discuss Join Us in France video, and why I’m counting on your help to get it off the ground.
Meet Julie Lynch
Annie: Bonjour, Julie Lynch, and welcome to Join Us in France.
Julie: Oh, thank you so much, Annie. I’m really [00:02:00] thrilled to be here.
Annie: Wonderful to have you. So you are an artist, and we are going to talk about art retreats and things like that. It sounds like you’ve done a few and you enjoy France. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your career, and what connected you to art.
Julie: Yeah, sure.
From Costumes to Painting
Julie: Well, I was originally a costume designer. I did that for about 40 years really.
And around 2020 when COVID hit, I’d always planned to paint, and I always planned to paint when I got older, and I just decided, oh, okay, well, I must be older now.
I’d been teaching design online for a whole year during COVID and I just couldn’t face another year of it to be honest. And I thought, well, you know, this is the opportunity to sort of grab it and do it.
You know, being a [00:03:00] designer merges quite well into being a visual artist in that you are a practice person that uses your hands and thinks of ideas. But in terms of sort of art retreats, I’ve done a lot of sort of conferences, actually costume design conferences, and I’ve traveled to various places for those.
But I think this was actually my first individual overseas art retreat. I’ve taken, you know, lots of two-day workshops and things like that, but to actually travel somewhere and go away for a whole week, was you know, really a first actually.
Annie: Right. Right. So when you say costume designer, is it like costumes for the stage? For movies?
Julie: I really did focus on the stage and I… you know, that’s just how it turned out. I worked, you know, for Sydney Theatre Company and Opera Australia, and I did a lot of work.
Everybody’s heard of [00:04:00] the Sydney Opera House, and I did a lot of work at the Sydney Opera House. It became a, like a little bit of a home.
And I ran the design course at NIDA for the last few years of my sort of design for performance career.
Annie: Wonderful.
Stage Costume Museum in Moulins
Annie: You know, there’s a place you should visit in France, if you haven’t already, and that is the National Centre for Stage Costumes. It’s in Moulins in the Allier department.
Julie: You know, I’ve been there.
Annie: Have you? Okay.
Julie: Yeah. I went there in 2010. I was very fortunate to receive a travel grant. I sort of travel pretty much around the world visiting various museums like that.
The funny thing about Moulins, or however you say it, you know, you catch the train from Paris, and then I just thought you’d get out and, you know, grab a cab to the museum.
Well, that, that is not the case. It’s a very, very quiet town. And so I actually just [00:05:00] trusted my judgment and thought, well, I think it’s kind of over there.
And I just sort of walked towards what used to be a great big army barracks or… I seem to remember. And it is the most divine museum. It is absolutely-
Annie: It’s really interesting.
Julie: … highly recommend. It’s really, really stunning. It’s obviously incredibly well-funded.
Annie: I mean, it’s a national museum, and so if it says national museum for this and that, you can be sure they have money.
We have a lot of not national museums that struggle, but national museums are always well-funded.
And I was there, oh, maybe six months ago, maybe not quite that long ago, and they had just the most stunning displays of… And I know absolutely nothing about stage costumes, and I don’t actually love fashion that much. I mean, it’s just not me. I’m kind of a black sweater kind of person and move on. But I thought that was absolutely [00:06:00] fabulous.
Julie: It really is a stunning, stunning museum. You can get to it quite quickly from Paris really. I know that I didn’t stay overnight. I went there, saw the museum, and then caught the train back to Paris. So it’s absolutely possible to do it as a day trip. But that was a while ago now.
Annie: Yeah. And if you do that, there’s some other things to see in Moulins. It’s worth an overnight if you have the time. There’s a lovely restaurant called Le Grand Café. It’s an art deco restaurant in the central area. Because it’s true that the museum is kind of on the other side of the river, so it’s a bit of a hoof from the train station.
Julie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I found it! I was pretty pleased.
Annie: Very nice. Very nice. Well, that was not the topic of the conversation.
Julie: It was not.
Annie: But it’s a lovely place to mention really. All right.
Why Noyers in Burgundy
Annie: So let’s talk about your art retreats in France now.
Julie: Yeah. Well, this trip was actually with [00:07:00] four of my very, very close girlfriends, who I’ve actually known since kindergarten. We’ve done various travel around Australia together, but this was my first trip with them overseas.
We could kind of see a small window where various people were traveling around in Europe, and the opportunity just seemed to… Kind of like a magical opportunity seemed to arise to meet in one place for, you know, a window of time. I’d always sort of had that place in my kind of almost like I’d seen imagery of it, a town called Noyers in Burgundy along the Yonne River, and there’s these wonderful photographs on their website of this, what I think is like a fairytale village. Certainly to [00:08:00] an Australian, it is a fairytale village.
Annie: Yeah, I intend to stop there. I’m going to make my way to Metz in May, and I intend to stop in Noyers, because I haven’t seen it.
Julie: Oh, great. That’s fantastic. Well, look, if you go, make sure you say hello to Michele Anderson at La Porte Peinte, and I’m going to probably say that wrongly, but she is the manager of the art retreat that we stayed in, and the building is actually, in a way, the centerpiece of that town, so it’s impossible to miss. She’s just the most adorable person, and she made our retreat really special. It’s one of those things when you go to a place that, you know, we didn’t… We’d never been there before. But once you connect to a local, it means you almost connect to all locals, when a town is kind of small enough.
Annie: Right.
Julie: They’re very welcoming, and they’re [00:09:00] kind of interested as well, which I thought was, really, really beautiful.
La Porte Peinte Retreat
Julie: We spent eight nights in La Porte Peinte art retreat, and it is this gorgeous medieval Jacobean kind of, half-timber house building, that’s been renovated inside but absolutely retains its character completely. But not only does it have individual bedrooms, but it also has all these art studios.
So she’s expecting artists to come. She takes artists from all around the world. Some artists who actually take workshops, where they invite various people in, and that artist runs the workshop. We had a different experience in that we created our own kind of artistic experience, and in many ways it was meant to be relaxed, and it was also meant to be without having to have any huge great artistic outcomes. [00:10:00] Because we spend our life having to have outcomes. And this was to, I suppose, be relaxed enough that we could absolutely absorb everything that Noyers and the retreat had to offer, and to do it in the most relaxed fashion.
Annie: That’s wonderful!
Julie: Yeah, really wonderful.
Annie: I’m looking at some photos of La Porte Peinte, which means the painted door.
Julie: Yes.
Annie: And probably that’s… I don’t know anything about this place, but I assume, I know that places didn’t used to have addresses.
Julie: Yes.
Annie: In medieval times you didn’t have, you know, a specific address. So people would characterize a place by something that made it stand out.
Julie: Yes.
Annie: So it was the butcher’s house, or it was the…
Julie: Yes.
Annie: … you know, where the cats go to hunt or whatever, and the painted door was [00:11:00] probably something that they did which was unusual, and so they called it La Porte Peinte.
Julie: Yes. It’s right near the gated entrance. It’s no longer gated, but it would’ve been once gated, and it… obviously there’s gates on both sides of the village, so it’s on one side. And I thought it, somewhere I read that painted door also referred to that there was a coat of arms painted on the door, but I don’t… I actually can’t remember where I got that from.
Annie: You know, I’m just making an assumption here, and not knowing the history of the town, but that would be worth looking into.
Julie: Yes.
Art Without Pressure
Annie: So this was kind of a relaxed art retreat. What sort of art was this? Was it, you were painting? You were drawing? What were you doing?
Julie: So what we did, and it’s funny because the group of us, you know, as I said, we’re from kindergarten, I’m actually the only artist in the group. [00:12:00] One is a social worker. One has been a banker. One is a nurse. The other lady is actually a potter, so she is an artist.
Annie: Oh, that’s a kind of artist, yeah.
Julie: She’s absolutely an artist, but she couldn’t bring her pottery wheel and everything like that with her. And often potters don’t draw, so, I think it… in some ways drawing was almost a little bit intimidating for her. But what we did do is, I took work along where I would be almost thrust into having to work in an abstract way. I normally from home, work and create Australian flora and birds.
And it’s very… It’s kind of exact work in a way. I think it’s good to not do what you always do. So I worked off what’s called a gel plate, and I created what I described as abstract Burgundy [00:13:00] landscapes. I’ve never been to Burgundy, this was my fourth… No, it was my third time in France, I’d spent time in the south of France and time in Paris, and, you know, driven up through the center of the south of France to Paris, but I’d never been in Burgundy, and I thought it was really breathtaking. I mean, there’s really no part of France that’s not breathtaking, in my opinion. I certainly haven’t seen anything that’s unattractive, so I’m obviously going in the right places and missing all the hidden bits.
Annie: We have our ugly shopping centers as well.
Julie: Yeah. Well, I’ve obviously avoided those.
Burgundy in Springtime
Julie: So, you know, you get off at Tonnerre station from Paris, and I was picked up and driven by a lovely French driver who did not have a word of English. But she drove me, and we kind of pointed at things and we smiled, and we kind of communicated beautifully in a way without having any [00:14:00] common language.
But the rolling hills of Burgundy are stunning, and there’s all those canola fields, which were at the time bright yellow. And then you also have those other landscapes where all of a sudden it goes up quite high, and you have towns that have been what I would describe as armaments in earlier time, where they would be protecting areas because they’re so high up.
But my memory of Burgundy was actually soft rolling hillsides. Pretty, pretty, pretty greens and golds and yellows. And we were there in the beginning of May.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Julie: So it was just warming up.
Annie: Right.
Julie: And they had actually said, “Oh, there’s a lot of rain, but the flowers are coming out,” and they were all getting very excited. And I could see why, because [00:15:00] even though it was cold and sometimes the light was a little gray, there was the most extraordinary wisteria everywhere, wisteria that I’d never seen, all the way throughout the village coated in blankets of wisteria, and then what I would describe as Van Gogh irises just popping up everywhere out of the ground.
Annie: And the great thing is wisteria and irises, they just come back. They’re very faithful. If they like a place, they will just come back.
There’s nothing you have to do. They just… Well, you have to trim it a bit, otherwise it’ll go out of control. But yeah.
Julie: Well, we, in Australia, we just don’t get that extreme cold that turns them into these very rich, sizable plants. We do get irises, but they’re not plump like a Van Gogh iris. And the wisteria, I mean, it could be also by the age of the plants. Some of the [00:16:00] plants are obviously incredibly old. But they, you know, they were hanging over bath houses and over, you know, over beautiful sandstone walls, and it was just so special.
So, you know, sometimes the girls would say, “Oh, well, we could come back when it was a bit warmer,” because we’re Australian. But I would say, “But we’d miss out on these incredible flowers.” And I just, I thought it was amazing.
Annie: Yeah. Early spring, you do risk rain if you come in early spring.
Julie: Yeah.
Annie: It’s rainy season in France.
Julie: Yeah.
Annie: … but, but you do have a lot of beautiful, beautiful greens and colors and flowers, and everything just pops back up to life, and it’s a very positive, hopeful, you know, all… Like it’s… Being outside makes you feel better, makes you feel good.
Julie: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I, you know, I’ve never been in Europe in winter.
Annie: [00:17:00] Mm.
Julie: So I don’t really… I can only imagine what it’s like.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: But so I think May is the earliest I’ve ever been to the other side of the world.
Annie: Yes, yes, yes.
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Afternoon Excursions Nearby
Annie: So, this was just art retreat. You didn’t have any planned visits to the area or anything like that?
Julie: So what we did, and you know, when you’re trying to organize even a group of five women, getting a kind of almost like an agreement on what we might do, we decided that if we did whatever we wanted to do artistically in the morning, we had a beautiful kitchen, we’d have a… just a quick lunch in our beautiful, you know, classic French kitchen, which would just be things we’d bought and be quite quick. And then we would go on some kind of mini adventure.
And from Noyers, you [00:18:00] can pretty much just travel for 15 minutes and you can see, you know, some of the things we did, we went to a town called Avallon, which had a historic costume museum, and we actually just stumbled across the historic costume museum.
But Avallon is one of those towns as well, which is higher, so you’ve gone past those rolling hills and then suddenly you’re higher. And it’s quite a town. It’s got quite a… You know, there’d be doctors and, you know, supermarkets and various things. But it is medieval buildings as well as 19th century, quite a lot of 19th century buildings. And within it was this absolutely gorgeous building, which was a costume museum, and the museum itself was run by two women in their 80s that could walk up the stairs quicker than we could as they took us through really a collection of, I [00:19:00] think it’s something like 2,000 costume elements and objects.
And they only spoke French. There was no English at all, but there’s a lot of terms that English people understand that are fashion terms.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Julie: So they could… You know, you would see the object and they’d be talking about the object, and you could… you could understand what they were telling you.
And they were– It had obviously been their lives. They’d been collecting since the 1960s and, you know, that didn’t mean that their depth of collection was the 1960s. It went right back to the 1700s. There were definitely 18th century examples in that collection. So that was one afternoon.We went to a town called Vézelay, and there’s a huge church called Abbaye Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay The Basilica of Saint Magdalene.
And that, again, that was a recommendation by our wonderful host, [00:20:00] Michelle Anderson. And that is, again, one of those towns that’s almost built on rock, and you’ve got the huge basilica right up the top. But then you go up a very, very steep hill, and there’s just all these gorgeous little French shops dotted right all the way up.
Again, all covered in wisteria. It was sort of rainy and misty, but it just doesn’t matter. Every town in France is different in some wonderful way, and to me, it was completely, that town was completely unique. Once you get to the top of the basilica, yes, the church is lovely. It’s, you know, the big stone floors. Quite simple in design, but absolutely grand. And then surrounding it is this wonderful sort of garden with brick walls that then you just look out to this immense view, immense Burgundy [00:21:00] view. So that was one afternoon. We also went to a beautiful château. Now, there are a lot of châteaux in France, you know, grand châteaux. There’s a lot of grand châteaux in France, not even the ones that…
Annie: About 45,000, I hear.
Julie: Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Well, this was spectacular, it was called the Château d’Ancy-le-Franc.
And it really is grand restoration style, I would call it. Quite symmetrical in its architecture and full of painted rooms. So painted ceilings, painted walls, rooms that, interestingly, the first time I had ever seen, bedrooms that had what I would call an en suite.
Annie: Uh-huh.
Julie: So these are, you know, beginning in the 1700s kind of [00:22:00] buildings, and they have been renovated at some point. Probably had a washroom originally, and then maybe in the 19th century became more sophisticated. But they had carried the design and the paint work all the way through into these little en suite rooms, which I thought were absolutely gorgeous and a big surprise for me because I hadn’t seen it.
Annie: It’s a beautiful château. I’m looking at a picture of it.
Julie: It really is. And you know, it is just up the road.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: Which is just kind of nuts. it’s a really beautiful château, and within that château, it also had a pavilion that just sat in a body of water, like a lake. You could only get to that pavilion by boat, so to me, it’s almost like a folly where people with a lot of money would probably have food brought to that pavilion, and they had a sit [00:23:00] and watch, you know, those gorgeous ducks, you know, beautiful bird life that we got to see. And again, irises popping up everywhere, as well as lots and lots of tulips. Full of tulips while we were there.
Annie: Yeah, that looks like a very stately, beautiful…
Julie: It was very stately.
Annie: So, like, it’s 1500s, so a second Renaissance, they say 1540 to 1559 to 1564.
Julie: Yeah.
Annie: Very nice.
See, that’s the thing with France. it’s so full of places like that, that doesn’t matter how long your list is, you can always make it longer, because there’s…
Julie: Oh, yeah. I mean, I don’t know how anybody gets to see all of France, even if you’re a French person.
Annie: Right. Oh, as a French person, it’s terrible because every day you go to… I mean, you have work to do. You can’t be traveling every day. And you have all these things you want to see, but it’s also very lucky that we usually don’t have to travel [00:24:00] very far to go enjoy places like this. I mean, by not very far, you know, the longest you can drive in France is probably, what, 14 hours, 15 hours?
Julie: Mm-hmm.
Annie: You know, between the Spanish border all the way to Lille, or Calais or somewhere.
Julie: Yeah.
Annie: It’s probably 15, 16 hours tops, nonstop driving. Of course, nobody would drive it nonstop but it’s not that big a country compared to Australia, obviously.
Julie: We’re teeny tiny.
Yeah. Well, it’s quality tiny. That’s what it is.
Annie: Thank you. Thank you.
Favorite Places in France
Annie: You’ve been to other regions. I mean, you’ve been to Nice, you’ve been to Lyon, you’ve been to Paris. You’ve visited a lot of these places. Tell us, do you have a favorite? Do you have a place where you always like to go back to?
Julie: I feel with France, I’m always wanting to see the next thing. I don’t know why that actually is. I often, and I suppose this happens to everybody, when you [00:25:00] travel, you say to yourself, “Oh, I could live here,” or, “This would be the perfect place to live.”
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: And you kind of justify in your own mind why that could be, why that is actually better than what you’ve actually got in your life now. And I think for me, and also at this point of my life… So when I was working as a costume designer, it would’ve been, “Well, I want to be in Paris because I want to be able to see all the museums, and I want to be able to try and get work at the, you know, opera house,” or, “I want to be able to shop for all those fabrics.” And because that interest now has changed to I want more quiet, and I want peace, and I want to be able to paint, and I want to be able to see natural beauty. The village life inspires me now because of, I feel like [00:26:00] so many of the French villages actually have pretty much everything that I need to sustain myself, as long as there’s a hospital not that far away.
Annie: Right.
Julie: So there’d be many, many, in a way, French villages. One of them in particular I seem to think… Well, Antibes. I love Antibes.
Annie: Oh, that is gorgeous.
Julie: I feel like that is close to Nice, but not as chaotic as Nice.
Annie: It’s not as big a city. Nice is simply a big city. You know, it’s like the fifth or sixth biggest city in France. I can’t remember what the ranking is now, but it is a big city. Whereas Antibes is a city, but not… It’s constrained. It’s on a peninsula, so it’s constrained by the peninsula.
Julie: It’s so, so beautiful.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: I also really, really loved Cézanne’s hometown.
Aix-en-Provence. Now, that is busier, but it also had that kind of… I love the town [00:27:00] squares. I love that feeling of there’s kind of real people making and cooking and conversing. They’re proud of their town. I mean, I really noticed that in Noyers, how proud they were of that town. And you’d say, “Oh, it’s so beautiful.” And they’d say, “Oh, yes, there’s nothing like it.” And in a way, there’s not anything like it.
Annie:
Julie: But there’s plenty of great French towns. One thing about Noyers also that, sort of drew my attention is there’s a very famous movie about Molière, “The Life of Molière.”
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Julie: And I used to recommend various movies to students as to, you know, what would be good to see for costume and, you know, various histories, and that was shot in Noyers.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Julie: So, for a movie that [00:28:00] I had kind of coveted for 20 or so years to then be going to the town where that movie was shot, I never would’ve imagined when I was watching that movie for the first time that I would be getting to walk under those archways and onto those… on those cobblestones. You know? It’s just really, really special.
Life in Tiny Noyers
Julie: I just looked up Noyers has a population of 587 inhabitants.
Yeah.
Annie: So it’s a very small… It’s a village. It’s a village.
Julie: It really is a village.
Annie: In Yonne. And Yonne is not a heavily populated department of France.
Julie: You know, we probably met 100 of those, or saw at least 100 of those 500 people. But I loved the fact that there was individual, you know, there was the butcher, the baker,a most amazing pottery, La Potterie, which was an English and French couple [00:29:00] that had set themselves up. One antique shop, one little chemist. Everything was just one-off, and that to me felt like real fairytale village life.
Annie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Julie: And the town itself also, it is completely circled by a ring road which kind of runs along the river as well. So you have this beautiful walk around the town, which really only takes about 40 minutes.
Allotment Gardens Explained
Julie: And another little curiosity about that town, and maybe this happens in France a lot, but some people would… they’d own a house, and then over the road next to the river, they would own their garden.
Annie: Oh.
Julie: There was a lockup garden that was theirs, but there was a row where everybody walked or [00:30:00] drove completely in between. And I hadn’t seen that before.
Annie: So city gardens. No, it happens. Village gardens. So in the village you don’t have land, enough land for a garden. You might have a bit of green, but just for a few flowers. But then the municipality will make available a gardening plot, and you can be assigned a gardening plot. That happens in a lot of cities in France.
Julie: These were fenced off.
Annie: Yes. Yes, they are. They are typically fenced off.
Julie: And locked. And locked.
Annie: Correct. Correct. So you have… So, like, not every plot is locked, but the garden area, as a whole is locked, and each person has their allotment. They probably have a little, some sort of small structure where they keep their gardening tools, but it’s very small, and their pots and their things. And you are granted this plot. You don’t own it. At least in Toulouse you don’t own it.
Julie: No, okay.
Annie: [00:31:00] You just are granted this plot, and if you stop taking care of it, if you stop using it, it will be given to somebody else, and there’s a long list of people waiting for such a plot.
Julie: Oh, okay.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: Yeah, right. I had just assumed they were owned. So there you go.
Annie: Perhaps in this particular town they are, but it also happens in France where they’re not.
Sharing the Harvest
Annie: I grew up in the city center of Toulouse, and we had a neighbor who had one of these plots, and he would… When he came back from his garden in the high production season, he would just drop off a bag of things in front of your door, because he had too many. He had too, you know, too many tomatoes, too many zucchini, too many whatever it happened to be. He lived on the fourth floor. On his way up to fourth floor, he would drop off a little bit here. People who he liked, obviously. He didn’t make gifts to people he didn’t like, but anyway, yeah, that’s a pretty common thing in France.
Julie: Yeah. Well, we just are so used to just having our [00:32:00] funny Australian backyard. I was…
Annie: Yeah. Yeah.
Why Choose a Retreat
Annie: So you think that doing a retreat is actually perhaps a better way to travel than just going on a trip?
Julie: I think, it’s just, it’s another way of seeing the world, I suppose. What I particularly loved about this one was I felt like, I see some retreats and they look like they’re kind of almost like middle of nowhere.
Now, I’m not saying that’s France, particularly France, but I like the fact that this was two hours away from Paris, so you… It was very easy to get to. And even without, even if you didn’t have a car, you could have easily booked a driver and been dropped off to various places.
So we had a car, and we had two people that were happy to [00:33:00] drive on what we would call the other side of the road.
Annie: Yes.
Julie: But if it was up to me, I don’t have that skill. I can’t think that way. So I would’ve been just booking people to drop me off. And to me, there was lots of great things that I could see and not feel like I was almost trapped in a retreat either.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: So we had a retreat that we could shape ourselves. There were kind of no rules to it, but it had all the facility.
Annie: Right.
Julie: And then we had the opportunity to see… you know, in our case, we saw something every afternoon. And that was just a lovely way of doing things.
Chablis Market Day
Julie: We also went to Chablis and…
Annie: Wine fame!
Julie: For some reason I thought Chablis would be really posh, and it was just really just, in a way like Noyers but, like, times 20 in [00:34:00] size.
Annie: Uh-huh.
Julie: And we went on the day of the Sunday market, and it was just full of people and beautiful produce and beautiful things for sale and then all the shops are lovely in Chablis, and the restaurant’s gorgeous, and they’re relaxed and it was really… You know, we did book. We did book a restaurant. We were told often that, you know, if you didn’t book, even in Noyers, you could potentially miss out, so we would always book. But it was… That’s a beautiful town, and that would be a town that I, you know, I would potentially like to stay in because, again, not very far away from Paris, but has so much to offer. That was gorgeous.
Reserve Small Town Meals
Annie: Yeah, you make a good point about the restaurants in smaller areas. The good ones, meaning the sit-down restaurants with an actual nice cook, a chef, a trained chef who will [00:35:00] make something nice, they usually fill up. Last Sunday I went to visit a very small place, a Cathar castle called Puivert. And in the little town of Puivert they have, kind of a kebab sort of place where you can just grab something. But they also have a sit-down restaurant with a nice view. So this was a Sunday, we’re recording this in February, and it’s filled up. I hadn’t reserved, but when I saw it filling up, we were there very early, we got there right on at noon.
But if, if we had gone there later, they wouldn’t have seated us. So even in small places, very often you don’t have a lot of choices of nice restaurants, and so it’s best to reserve. If it’s a pizzeria or a sandwich shop or something, then of course, obviously, no.
But if you want the nice sit-down restaurant where you’ll pay, you know, between 30 and 50 euros per person for lunch, you probably need to reserve, [00:36:00] even in a very small town, especially in a very small town.
Julie: Yeah, and we did. Every night we booked. We were told by our lovely friend Michelle that that would be the best thing to do, so that’s what we did.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: And that way you don’t get disappointed. You’re only there for a short time.
Annie: Right. But this is not the sort of place you book far in advance, just a couple of days in advance. Like, you let them know, “Oh, we’re coming back this night or that night” or whatever.
Julie: Yeah, you’re right. You don’t need to have a long lead-in time.
Annie: Yeah, yeah, don’t try to call them six months in advance to reserve a table, they’re going to think you’re crazy.
Julie: Yeah.
Menus Without English
Julie: And also, I found they didn’t speak English, and that’s all fine. Like, that’s allowed.
Annie: Oh, yeah. It’s a fact.
Julie: Yeah. So often Michelle would make our booking for us, which was very kind.
Annie: Right. Right. But then to get served and decide on the food you didn’t have any trouble?
Julie: No. Well, you know, you’ve got Google [00:37:00] Translate, and you just look at a menu, and it just… I mean, it’s, everything’s changed.
Annie: You open Google Lens on your phone and you point it, and it will translate for you. It’s kind of magic.
Julie: I know. It’s unrealistic.
Annie: It’s amazing.
Julie: It’s nuts.
Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julie: Yeah, so none of those kind of quirky things that you had to go through 10 years ago, none of that exists anymore.
Annie: Yeah.
Self Directed Art Retreat
Annie: So this is not the sort of retreat where you had somebody who came to teach you a specific skill. This was you deciding, “We’re going to work on our own, do our own thing.”
Julie: Yeah, yeah. So I did, yeah, my landscapes, and my friend Joy, who does watercolors, she did her watercolors, a lot of wisteria kind of watercolors and things. And she actually taught two of the girls in our group also how to use watercolors. So she actually was very generous with her time.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Julie: Whereas I, I tucked myself away in my little studio and [00:38:00] went, “I’m going to make the most of this and do what I want.” I think it would be different, if I was to go to an art retreat where I was going to do some pottery, and I was really relying on the teacher to tell me what to do. You know, that would be a great way to engage. But I don’t really want to go to an art retreat, and pay for another painter to teach me how to paint when I kind of can paint already.
Annie: Right.
Julie: I mean, you always learn from other people, but maybe you might do that for a day, but I wouldn’t want to do that for a whole week.
Retreat Types in France
Annie: And there’s all kinds of retreats in France. Usually it’s going to be in a very nice setting, like where you were, and you have authors’ retreats where they just… one I saw they were just sitting around a big table, and at times they had a person giving [00:39:00] some tips. But at times they were just sitting there and writing and engaging with one another during breaks and whatever, and it was mostly quiet and people working away.
Julie: Yeah.
Annie: And the energy of having other writers near you doing the same sort of effort, I think is good. You have dance retreats, you have cooking retreats, you have painter’s retreats, you have all sorts of… authors, anything… I’m sure people are yelling at their phone like, “Oh, you idiot- … not this type.” There’s a bunch of them, okay? There’s a bunch of different ones.
Driving and Navigation Tales
Annie: And it’s different from traditional sightseeing, but I can see how, especially if you take the time, and if some of your friends had a… If you had a car… So you rented a car, right? That your friends were driving.
Julie: Yeah. So one of my friends rented the car, and we just contributed to that rent during that time.
Annie: Right.
Julie: Two of [00:40:00] them were happy driving on the other side of the road. And I would just sit in the back and be taken to where we were going to next, which just suits me fine. And whenever we have been overseas where people are driving on the, what I would describe as the other side of the road, my husband is great at that stuff.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: So I’ve been to places I couldn’t possibly sit on the train purely because he’s able to just think differently, deal with all those roundabouts and… Even when we didn’t have somebody telling us where to go, turn right, you know, we’ve done it all before the big, you know, all the big Navman stuff. We’ve done it with the funny written maps and we’ve managed to see a lot, which has been great.
Annie:
Slower Travel With Age
Annie: I think taking a retreat in a place like this is really [00:41:00] quite a good idea for people who like rural sort of settings. There are some people who would go nuts because there’s not enough stimulation. But if you are happy in your own space and in your own mind, and doing an activity that you find interesting and stimulating, then it’s wonderful.
Julie: Yeah. And I think also there’s a very big difference to traveling in your early 60s to when you were traveling in your early 30s and you hadn’t seen very much, and you had to do a lot, and you had to feel like you had to fit it all in.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: Whereas when you’ve already seen so much, you can actually relax about it. And you think you’re also more accepting, “Oh, okay, well, I missed that.” You can’t see everything.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: But I know initially when I first [00:42:00] began traveling in a significant way, there was such a list that had to be done every day, and it’s exhausting. But once you’ve done, once you’ve ticked off those things, it’s almost, it’s really freeing, because you can just take time and, you know, smell the roses or smell the irises. You know, whatever- … whatever’s around, I suppose.
Annie: Or discover which irises have no scent whatsoever.
Julie: Yeah, that’s right.
Lilacs and Village Scents
Julie: One, another flower that was there, which we really don’t have at all in Australia, is the lilacs.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Julie: And they have scent.
Annie: Yes. Oh, definitely.
Julie: They have very, very differing colors.
Annie: Yes.
Julie: Subtle differences of colors.
Annie: Yes.
Julie: And they were also in many of those gardens that were lockable gardens. You could kind of [00:43:00] see them over the fence, and they were truly, truly special because we just don’t seem to have them here at all. I’m not sure why.
Annie: Oh, yeah, no lilacs in Australia? Perhaps it’s too dry. Lilacs like a bit of wetness.
Julie: I think they really, again, I’m imagining they really like the cold. So perhaps there’s some in Melbourne, but they’re certainly, they’re not around in Sydney.
Annie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Julie: They were very special because there was a scent. There was actually a scent in the air as you walked around the village.
Annie: If you have enough of them, yeah. I planted a beautiful dark purple lilac bush two years ago, and it gave me very small flowers last year, and I hope this year we’ll get some good size flowers. But they really come into their own when they’re about five years old. You know, it takes time.
Julie: Yeah, yeah.
Annie: But they do come back every [00:44:00] year. They’re very predictable sort of trees. And in France, you know, you even, you can set your pruning time and your planting time by when the lilacs bloom.
Julie: Okay.
Annie: Yeah. It’s best to do all the pruning and planting before the lilacs bloom.
Julie: Oh, okay.
Annie: So if you have a lilac bush, you’re like, “Oh, okay, it’s ready. It’s getting ready.” And that way it’s not a calendar, it’s the nature. And this year that tells you, okay, now is the time, or not the time.
Rural France Weeklong Stays
Annie: Yeah, so rural France has a lot of charm really. It doesn’t have to be Noyers. There are a lot of beautiful places where you can spend, I wouldn’t spend a month, but five days, a week is lovely. You can get a lot of things done.
Julie: And I know my, because I did the two trips to France last year, and the first trip was eight days with my girlfriends, and then I went back to Australia for three weeks, then [00:45:00] I came back with my whole family for four weeks.
And I spent a week in each place, and that was really great to spend a week in a town and enjoy that town properly and not be in a rush.
Annie: Yeah. Yeah, I think a week is a good amount of time, even in small places, so long as there are some walks you can do and a cafe you can go sit and, you know, a bit of a medieval city center, which most places in France will have.
It’s pretty nice, but it’s very relaxed. Don’t expect, you know, high octane sort of travel. This is like low-key travel, enjoy the day sort of travel.
Julie: Yeah, that’s right. It was.
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Farewell and Artist Eye
Annie: Well, Julie, we have been talking a long time, so I think it’s time to say goodbye.
But yeah, it’s been lovely talking to you, Julie. You bring a beautiful perspective as an artist, as somebody who [00:46:00] creates things to kind of your vision, the eye, you know. « Le regard » is how would I would say it in French.
You have a way to look at things that is very interesting because a lot of us just, we skip over all these things. We don’t look at the wisteria, we don’t look at the lilac bushes… we don’t look at the texture of the cloth, and we just, ah, you know, just doesn’t matter.
But it does matter. Those things do matter, and spending some quality time in beautiful places makes life better, I think.
Julie: Yeah. Well, I think France is just full of so many beautiful things.
Annie: Yeah.
Julie: It’s very easy to have a whole day where you’re really just looking at wonderful, beautiful things that in many ways have some story or they’re steeped in history. So it’s a pleasure and, you know, I’m [00:47:00] already thinking about when I’m coming back, so I really love it.
Annie: Yeah, that’s more my sort of travel. I go somewhere and then I start visiting the church. I start going to the city hall. I go to places. I talk to people. I ask about the history of the place, if there were anybody famous who lived here or was born here, and things like that. And, I love to dig and then see online if I can find some books about a place. Usually you can find something, but sometimes it’s really, really dry. It’s some local historian who wrote it and who was not clearly trained.
Julie: Oh, yeah.
Annie: But it, I find it interesting. I love to hear about the history of places, so that would be more of what I do.
Julie: No worries. I was just going to say I do recommend you say hello to Michelle when you do visit because she’s fabulous.
Annie: I will. I’ll stop by and say hi. It’s not going to be till May, but…
Julie: Well, the [00:48:00] wisteria will be out.
Annie: Yes, it will. Merci beaucoup, Julie.
Julie: Oh, merci.
Annie: Au revoir.
Julie: Au revoir.
Patreon Thanks and Support
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that, you can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Mary Peter and Anna Juang or Juan, very French name.
Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards.
And to support Elyse, go to [00:49:00] patreon.com/elysart.
Brittany Research Trip Plans
Annie: By the time you hear this episode, I’ll be spending a couple of weeks exploring Southern Brittany. I’m taking this trip because I want to enjoy that beautiful part of France, I’ve planned it for several months, but also because the more time I spend in a place, the better I can tell you about it, whether it’s here on the podcast or during one of my itinerary consults.
This is not a press trip. I’m paying for everything myself, which means I don’t owe anybody a glowing review. If something is wonderful, I’ll tell you. if something disappoints me, I will tell you that, too. I think that’s the best way to earn your trust.
And while I’m away, feel free to browse everything I offer at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
That’s where you’ll find my itinerary planning services, my self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and other resources to help you plan a great trip to France. Thank you so much for supporting my work.It really does make [00:50:00] these research trips possible.
Launching the Video Channel
Annie: If you’re one of my Patreon supporters, you’ve probably heard me mention that I’ve wanted to add a video component to Join Us in France for quite a while, months, possibly years as a matter of fact.
The problem wasn’t that I didn’t want to do video. I do enjoy a challenge, and it will be a challenge. It was that I couldn’t figure out what kind of video I wanted to make, and more importantly, what I could realistically keep doing week after week. And I knew what I didn’t want.
I didn’t want to do what so many podcasts have become these days, two talking heads on Zoom. I understand why people do it. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a lot more work, and I don’t think it adds much.
Besides, my podcast has never really been about interviewing celebrities or people on book tours who are promoting their latest work or [00:51:00] whatever. I’ve had a few of those over the years, but they’re the exception.
Most of my guests are ordinary people who’ve had a great experience in France. They’re sitting in their home office or at the kitchen table. They don’t have studio lighting, professional microphones, or any desire to appear on camera, really.
They just want to have a conversation, the same way they chat with a friend or a family member over Zoom. Yes, I do record those interviews on Zoom, but one reason they work so well is that my guests know that the video will never be published. That helps them relax. They don’t worry about what they’re wearing, whether the room behind them is tidy, or how they look on camera.
And as a result, we have honest, enjoyable conversations with people you probably wouldn’t hear anywhere else.
So the audio podcast is not changing. It will continue exactly as it [00:52:00] always has.
But now I finally figured out what I do want to do with video, and I’ve started a completely separate YouTube channel called Join Us in France Video.
On that channel, I’ll be publishing two kinds of videos.
French Shorts and Visual Guides
Annie: The first will be short videos in French, and there will be a handful already by the time you hear this. I know that many of you are learning French, and one of the hardest things to do is find natural, everyday spoken French that is not either a formal lesson or so fast that it’s impossible to follow.
I am not becoming a French teacher. There are plenty of qualified people doing that already. Instead, I’ll simply speak to you in French about whatever happens to be on my mind that day. I’ll speak clearly, use everyday words, occasionally repeat, or rephrase something if I think it’ll [00:53:00] help, and I won’t spend hours editing.
It’ll be short, simple one-take videos designed to help you get used to hearing real French as it’s spoken every day in France by French people.
The second type of video will be in English. These will let me show you things about France that are much easier to explain visually than in an audio podcast, whether it’s a place, a monument, a map, or something that simply makes more sense when you can see it.
To make things easy, I’ll keep the French videos and the English videos in separate playlists so you can watch whichever interests you the most.
Join Us in France Video is brand new. Right now, it has very few subscribers, very few views, and I know it’s going to take a lot of work if it’s going to grow.
Subscribe and Comment
Annie: So if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I’d really appreciate your help. Please subscribe to Join Us in France Video on YouTube, and if you enjoy a video or have a question, [00:54:00] leave a comment. Comments are actually a nice feature of YouTube, and you can’t do that with iTunes or any other podcast app.
Even on my website, I’ve turned off the comments years ago because they were truly a cesspool, and I couldn’t keep up with any of it. But on YouTube, comments tend to be helpful, you know? So thank you very much for your support and hopefully I’ll see you at Join Us in France Video on YouTube.
Vacation Recording Break
Annie: Oh, and another thing, while I’m away in Brittany, I won’t have my recording equipment with me, and my wonderful podcast editor is taking a well-earned vacation as well.
That means I won’t be able to thank new Patreon supporters by name the way I normally do. You’ll still get a new episode every week, but no new thank yous.
But if you become a patron while I’m away, or if you’re already a patron, you can always reach me through the Patreon app. Yes, even while I’m on vacation.
Most French people would be horrified at the idea of checking work [00:55:00] messages during their holidays, but I suppose that’s the life of an independent podcaster.
I’ll do my best to answer when I’m not out exploring a village or a beach or a creperie, who knows? And if you do join while I’m away, thank you in advance.
I’ll make sure to give you a proper shout-out as soon as I’m back behind the microphone.
Newsletter and Next Episode
Annie: If you want a short recap of what I’m going to be up to on vacation, sign up for the free weekly newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast
Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode about Catherine and Anne de Medici with Elyse. These two women come up a lot when you visit France. We’ll be detangling who they were and why they matter so much. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.
Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, [00:56:00] hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:57:00][00:58:00]