First French Festival...Fine French Food...

I'd been seeing posters around for the last few weeks advertising the 25th Jazz Festival of this area, held in Montlouis-sur-Loire (that's a Wiki link in French because the English version has about only one sentence about the village) and meant to be an International Jazz fest.  So me, a lover (and former player and singer...well in high school anyway) of jazz, was determined to go.  I managed to find a couple others interested in checking it out, in combination with a search for a rumoured nearby castle.

Once again, we ran into some trouble with the bus schedules working out well; they only returned to Tours up until 18h43 (there's some 24-hr clock for you) and the first concert wasn't scheduled to start until 16h30.  So, we really only had time to attend one concert.  And, well, it was pretty small...not many there.  And the town itself felt tiny and empty, although the festival wasn't in the downtown (presuming there is a downtown), so it's hard to know.  Definitely a different festival experience than the Montreal Jazz Festival, or even the Waterloo Jazz Festival.  There were later, not-free concerts, but we attended this first one, set in the "Village Gourmand" (which, by the way if you're into language, "gourmand" and "gourmandise" is used a lot here on menus, at festivals, etc and therefore isn't translated as "glutton" or "gluttony" like a standard bi-lingual dictionary may suggest and instead seems to imply something more like what anglophones mean when we say "gourmet" or "gastronomy" but not quite that fancy) where many types of foods were being served.  Mostly regional foods ie. "Tourangelle" food, food from the former province of Touraine (although there was a random booth of Portuguese food and another serving Tapas).

Here I am eating some Fouée, a type of bread cooked in a wood fire oven and then filled with various items of choice.  My friend chose Nutella and I chose Rillettes d'oie (oie being a word I coincidentally had just found in my dictionary this morning while trying to explain to my friend how Canada is overrun with geese and I wondered why foie gras or other uses for geese meat hasn't caught on).  So Rillettes are a regional food (check out the link for an explanation) and yes, I chose the goose meat version.  It was ok, but had some kind of fermented cabbage taste to it...I couldn't tell if it included cabbage or onions, but I decided it was like sauerkraut. I also tried out a Rosé Pamplemousse.  Nice.

The concert itself was decent.  The ensemble was Word Out and the lead guy (the pianist) was English but his French was fabulous and nous étions jalouses!  We particularly enjoyed the "grimaces" of the bassist and the fact that it was nearly impossible to capture a photo of the drummer with his eyes open.

We successfully figured out where to catch the regional bus to take us back to Tours and voilà...

It was like we were riding our own private limousine: the coach was completely empty for the entire 20 minute ride!  And the bus driver maneuvered some pretty tight, narrow French country roads too!  And all that for only 1 Euro!  For the entire day, including the city bus too because this weekend it's the European Heritage Days in France.  There are a bunch of things going on and transportation is almost free!  So tomorrow, we'll play tourist again and check out some of the free tours and such.

Yes, we did visit the castle today too.  But I'll save those photos and comments for another post.