CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The France I Know, Now in Flames

Cap Ferret peninsula, photo by Becky Grant.

If you think of France as a place to see the Eiffel Tower, sip wine, and eat confit de canard or escargot in chic cafés with old zinc bars and woven café chairs, you aren’t entirely wrong. Those moments continue to exist, and tourists can expect to find those same scenes in every wonderful arrondissement; choose your favorite, just like you’d pick your pastry at the pâtisserie… is it a pain au chocolat or a mille-feuille or a delicate flaky croissant? There’s still a petite-bon-coin for every taste.

But if you’re lucky enough to spend time outside of Île de France, you’ll get to know the quaint villages scattered throughout the country. Lying between these fairytale villages are expanses of vineyards and farmland, with bucolic scenes of grazing sheep, cows, and goats supplying the milk for the astounding variety of cheese from small farms, as surprising as discovering aisle after aisle of glistening pink bottles of rosé in a Provençal grocery store, or the sheer number of fresh-caught fish options you’d find in the Basque Country.

It wasn’t long ago that on any given day, a visit to one of these villages one could forget which century they were in when wandering around the market on cobbled........

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