Friday, May 23, 2014

Franco Fridays: St. Ceneri le Gerei, part one

Are you ready to step into the dreamiest village you've ever seen?


When we planned our trip through Normandy we didn't really know where we should go, and my online research led me to Design Mom, a blog written by an American living in Normandy with her family for a few years.  I found this post where she shared about this village and how it was supposed to be one of the prettiest villages in France.  I'm so glad we went because it was the most charming place I've ever been.

We parked our car by the river.  I think there was one RV parked beside the river as well.  There was no one else about, and all was quiet.


Wouldn't you want to walk down that road?  Everywhere your eyes fell there was beauty and something to be exclaimed over.  KJ just kept laughing at me because I couldn't stop the exclamations.  That fence!  The roof!  Those flowers!  What is this place?   In fact, last night we went out for a little while for our anniversary, and in his top three moments of our marriage was my delight in this village.  I was pretty delighted, I guess.

Isn't it charming?

This is one of the main thoroughfares in the village; there was absolutely no one about the place except for two or three people sitting outside a bar talking.  We thought about eating, but everything was closed.  It was a Sunday evening, and Sunday evenings are obviously pretty quiet here.

 It felt like every door we passed was photo-worthy.  Not to mention the windows!


I thought those lace curtains in the window were so pretty, and the gates were also in the running for most charming feature.



We just kept walking until we saw this sign up ahead and thought it might be worth our while to follow it.


It was entirely worth it.  My heart could barely take in all of that beautiful perfection at once.  

The view reminded me just now of something I read in high school once when I bought a volume of Emerson's essays.  I've never read past the first page of the book, but the first page gave me this:

The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up
of some twenty or thirty farms.  Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning 
the woodland beyond.  
But none of them owns the landscape. 

There is more to come, including an old church protected by bees.

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