Kodiak Haakansons: Boulogne Sur Mer

Sven had to get up and out of the hotel early to meet with the director of the Chateau-Musee in Boulgone-Sur-Mer to talk about exhibits and a talk they are giving together in two days in Paris. He was back shortly after we were done with our breakfast and then we all got packed up and checked out of the hotel. In the old town we found a Laundromat and put in one load of clothes (clean pants!) while we walked around looking for an open coffee shop. We did not have luck, but we did go into a little antique shop run by a wonderful man we’d met a couple other times and caught up on the state of France (not looking too positive), were plied with all sorts of free stuff, and bought a wonderful art nouveau dish decorated with a naked woman pulling in a fishing net.

It was now time to meet for lunch with the deputy mayor of Boulogne Sur Mer and a couple of employees from the Chateau Musee to talk about some future plans with the Alutiiq Museum. In France, mayors are quite powerful and have veto power over all sorts of things. We’d prepared the girls for the meal, telling them how important the meal was for daddy and how to use all those eating out skills we’d taught them (but rarely enforced) to help daddy with his meeting. We left VERY impressed with them! The meal was a 36 euro per person meal in a grand, high-ceilinged salon starting with an Amuse Bouche of a little cheese pastry with smoked salmon, served with champagne. This was followed by a wonderful pumpkin and coconut soup with a drizzle of raspberry sauce with warm bread, along with a crisp woody white wine (the only ones drinking were me and the mayor and somehow we polished off the bottle… he looked at me and said “Thank you!” when everyone else turned down the wine… I enjoyed it immensely, as I usually order the cheapo house wine.) Following this we had a little foil packet of cod, salmon and vegetables with a curry sauce and a little bowl of lentils. Two hours after we walked in we finished up with my favorite, the café gourmand, which was a little cup of espresso served with a mini crème brulee, a plate of three miniature cookies, and a chocolate mousse. Through it all the kids sat very still with big eyes, saying very little and somehow holding it together. At one point I gave them math homework and the mayor and Eilidh went back and forth correcting each other’s problems and giggling.

After lunch we went back to the Chateau Musee to look at the collection while Sven and Anne-Claire met to go over their Saturday presentation. We enjoyed looking once more at the amazing collection of Kodiak masks (old mixed with modern now!) in a room lined with floor to ceiling photos of Abercrombie forest and the channel and it made us feel just a tad homesick. After this we got on the road once again to go to our hotel two hours away in the town of Caudry, chosen because it is near the Musee Matisse, which we’d heard was borrowing a few of the Kodiak masks for an exhibit on the avant garde art scene (focusing mostly on Matisse) and their Alaskan and Eskimo inspiration. The hotel was the worst we’d been in during this entire trip (super modern, yet 40 degrees) so we cuddled together for warmth until we could check out.