Montilly sur Noireau

OK. Post number two!

Yesterday, Olivier and I went to Montilly sur Noireau for a fair type thing. We found out about it from the signs with pictures of farm animals and carnival rides that were up around town, and from my students who jokingly suggested I go. Since there is nothing else going on within a 10 mile radius we put in on our calendar! Also, our neighbors told us that there are baby animals there so we pretty much had to go.

We were planning on on going Saturday morning because that is when most of the animals would be there, but we got lazy and decided to go Sunday instead. On Sunday, after a pancake breakfast at home, we headed out into the grey chilly air, not really knowing what to expect. Before we got outside the town limits (aka three minutes later), we saw an old man hitch-hiking, so obviously Olivier stops and asks him where he is going. He was going to the same place we are (of course) so we picked him up and all three of us headed to the fair. The man turned out to be very sweet, although he had a very thick accent so I understood only about half of the words that came out of his mouth. Luckily Olivier small talked enough for both of us, and the drive was less than 10 minutes long.

The lovely cows of Montilly sur Noireau

The fair was in the middle of a field, and things were pretty muddy from all the traffic and rain. There were all sorts of stands winding around every which way, filled with people selling everything from dried sausage to as-seen-on-TV type window cleaners. There was a whole covered section of household improvement items like window treatments and roof repair outfits. There were sections of jewelry and clothes and produce and candy. They had one long section of food which was obviously my favorite. The food choices were one thing that really stuck out to me. In the US if you were at a carnival like this you would see food like hotdogs and french fries and hamburgers, maybe corn on the cob or chicken fingers or fried cheese curds. In France you see french fries, but also whole rotisserie chickens and pork loins and merguez sausage and kebabs with fries. I ended up getting a sausage in a baguette bun, of course. It was delicious. The only other thing we bought was a bag full of dried saucisson for 5 Euros! We thought we got a pretty good deal.

Pork for sale!

Another highlight, besides the food, were the puppies. We thought we missed the animals, but thankfully we were mistaken. We heard the sound of dogs barking and followed the noise until we came to a puppy section! At first I was a little sad. Usually puppies in this sort of place come from puppy mills and their lives are sad and they will be killed if they don't get adopted. Luckily these dogs were being sold by people who came from farms nearby or who breed dogs out in the country. Some even showed pictures of the dogs running happy and free! They had all kinds of puppies, lots of hunting dogs, things like Setters and I don't know what else. I don't really know dog breeds, but I do know cute, and these dogs were super duper cute. Olivier is a much bigger dog lover than me and he had to pet every dog we saw. He was making this one little kid jealous because he was too short to reach farther back in the cage to pet more dogs. Sorry kid.

After a couple of hours we decided we had seen enough and decided to go back home. Olivier requested we watch 101 Dalmatians when we get back to continue the puppy theme, and of course I said yes.

Although the fair was a little too crowded and there was not a lot of cool stuff, (it was kind of crappy and expensive for the most part), it was fun to do the typical thing with the rest of the community and see what fairs like this are all about. Luckily the food and the puppies made it all worth it!

A terrible photo of some of the food stands. . .Sorry!

I don't work today so I will try to prep a little for my classes tomorrow, though I don't really know what I am supposed to do, and Olivier and I are going to take a forest walk after lunch. It is raining pretty hard so I hope it lets up soon!

I apologize for the state of my photography skills.  There was a lot of smoke from the cooking fires and I felt like a creepy tourist taking pictures. Oh well! I'll do better next time, I swear!

Thanks for reading!

Shoshana