Three BBQs - or the Summer of 2019

This, the summer of two significant canicules, my wife and I enjoyed three significant BBQ events.

It's a Wednesday and coming up to late June. Jude after breakfast casually scans the weather forecast.  Calm and tranquilly she skims the 10 day prognostication.  She calls my name in a note of sudden urgency.  As I'm sitting just across the table from her, this must be serious.  Tuesday next, she tells me, goes from nice and pleasant to instant BBQ in the span of just a couple hours.  Enter canicule number one.

Quick as bunnies we find a place forecast to be much cooler than Paris, a hotel to stay, a car to rent, and un Train a Grand Vitesse to help us escape the oven that our city would soon become.  The forecast for Carnac is looking good, so it's off to south Bretagne to visit les alignements.

Our first summer BBQ came three days into the trip.  Someone in Paris left the oven door open and we started to get rather toasty warm ourselves out on the beach.  It wasn't too terribly bad, but 90+ degree heat for two days was enough to lightly brown our exteriors, while keeping the insides nice and moist.  Still, it was a good escape.

It's a Wednesday and coming up to late June. Jude after breakfast casually scans the weather forecast.  Calm and tranquilly she skims the 10 day prognostication.  She calls my name in a note of sudden urgency.  As I'm sitting just across the table, this must be really something.  Tuesday next, she tells me, goes from nice and pleasant to instant BBQ in the span of just a couple hours.  Sound familiar?

Bunny quick for the second time in thirty days we look for the coolest place we can find in Europe (after lightly BBQing ourselves in Carnac we hoped to find something better), and, well, now.  Isn't this strange?  Porto, Portugal is prognosticated to not cross over 82 degrees the entire time Paris BBQ's.  So, planes out of Roissy are booked, an apartment is rented, taxis are arranged, and sweet fortified wines are researched. Enter canicule number two.

This time our research of a cooler destination paid off.  And oh boy did it ever pay off gloriously, too.  This time the BBQ came in the form of delicious meats grilled a la Brazil.  The Portuguese love their BBQ. 

Our first meal in Porto included 1/2 a chicken for Jude, a rack of ribs for me, a glass of wine for Jude, a glass of beer for me, and two after lunch coffees.  All up our meal set us back 14Euro90.  BBQ is absolute heaven in Porto.  This was an unexpectedly wonderful escape from Paris.

The BBQ was so good that we ate it nearly every single meal other than breakfast.

After our sometimes sweet city decided to cool herself off (after record smashing heat) we looked at each other, my wife and I, and asked where to go in September?

Well find we love Bretagne and the apartment owners of our first squat (if you can call an apartment in the 16eme a squat, regardless of condition) spoke highly of a small town on the Cote d'Armor.  We rolled the intellectually satisfying emotionally charged happy feet let's get outta Dodge yet again travel dice and said sure, why not.  Let's go to Saint Brieuc, shall we?

For the second time this summer we scheduled a Train a Grand Vitesse and rented a car.  For the third time this summer we found a place to stay.  Everything was arranged and, well, since this trip didn't feel as urgent as the prior two BBQ events, we took a leisurely approach to figuring out what to see and what to do.

Wherein we discover that no matter the internal state of being, and no matter if you feel you have to "call it up" or not, brilliant BBQ is just down the street.  What, you might ask, do the French do BBQ? Why, yes, Martha, they sure do.

They call it open flame grilling and when in Bretagne, the Land of Asterix et Obelix, magic potions and herds of sanglier, it is well worth seeking out if you are so inclined.  Just walking in the front door will convince BBQ connoisseurs that they have just walked through those creaky anvil struck heavenly tall iron grill gates and into Paradise.

It was so good that we ate BBQ twice during our four day stay. 

Oh, and galettes, too.  But this is a post about BBQ.  The story of galettes and cidre de bretagne will have to wait their turn for another post.

So there you have it.  Three BBQ events in one lonesome-long record-setting climate-changed totally hot summer.  Life is good.