Today (Sunday) we head to Melun for Church, lunch with friends and hopefully a few hours at Fountainebleu Chateaux.
Our travels require us to get from our apartment, to Gare de Lyon, and then switch onto a train headed to Melun.
Church was an hour of straight French and the family enjoyed the homemade baguette for the sacrament bread and speaking with the three American Elders (no more sisters in Melun! The mission even had to sell the sisters apartment during covid when the mission dropped to 45 missionaries!). Madeline had a ball catching up with her family of 10.5 months. She loves the Melun ward!
We were very blessed to be invited over to the Bishop’s house for a multi-course, delicious traditional French lunch! Despite the language barrier, we had a delightful time with la famille Ponnelle ! (Madeline did a lot of translating).
Courses:
Entrees: Thin slices of salmon on homemade toast, avacados with homemade vinegarette, Escargot (snails), huîtres (oysters! Still alive! With more homemade sauce), a variety of breads.
Plâts: Bacon-wrapped green beans and marinated chestnuts, ham with figs, and baked mashed potato balls.
Dessert consisted of endive and nut Salade with an 8-cheese plate (including some very flavorful bries from Melun and Meaux), and a homemade génoise/crêpe cake with pineapple and persimmon dusted with coconut and 2 beautiful choux swans.
We had fun time watching everyone’s faces as we quick swallowed the oysters from their shells! Josh decided that escargot was his limit.
We love the Ponnelles!
2 Responses
Bruv that’s me
Roy and I were talking last night about all the stages in a journey from central Paris to a Chapel outside of the city (Paris banlieu). So it was fun to see that Jim documented them all. We speculated that you would attend Church in Versailles. Sam looks very swank with his aqua-blue tie. We only had Sacrament Meeting in our Ward this morning; if the Melun Ward did the same then that may have given you enough time to go to Fountainbleau.