French Gardens, Gourmets, Champagne and Madeleines

France
Follow the trail of Marcel Proust, author of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, father of the modern novel. See plaques at viewpoints and his bust in the hotel where he wrote in a room lined with cork.His statue is in the middle of a roundabout in front of the hotel.
Read A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

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No Time Lost

On

Garden Tours For Gourmets

by Angela Lansbury

Our regular travel writer, Angela Lansbury, spent an amusing week exploring French gardens including a computerised English garden, a Jewish garden and the garden of two gardening princes

On a tour of French gardens I had not expected to see English gardens or Jewish gardens. Grabbing a plastic-wrapped cake from the breakfast buffet at the small one star Terminus Hotel facing Orleans railway station, I found I was holding a madeleine! That’s the cake which sparks off memories for Proust at the start of his three-volume tome, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu which features the Dreyfus case.

Proust’s books describe Proust’s Garden of the Pre-Catelan which is open to the public and mentioned in the tourist booklet Parks and Gardens Central Region (region centre in French). The home of Proust’s aunt would interest literary and Jewish groups.

I travelled to France with gardening enthusiasts, taking Eurostar to Paris (where the Pere Lachaise cemetery has monuments to Proust and the Rothschilds) then driving around the Parks and Gardens of the Loire Valley in Central France, south of Paris. The gardens’ owners have formed an association which issues trail maps enabling gourmets and garden lovers to travel from one delightful chateau to another. While eating home-grown French food you learn tips from living counts and princes about how to create attractive kitchen gardens.

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RASHI

In the Champagne region is the city where Rashi lived. See an old synagogue and a monument in the centre of town.

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Postscript update
Proust stayed at the Grand Hotel, C a b o r g.
You can read reviews of the hotel and area on Trip advisor. (Spell check insert a space.)

Angela Lansbury. Travel writer and photographer. Author and Speaker.