Savoring a fine old port

We didn’t take long to RSVP when friends who are renovating a 200-year-old farmhouse near La Rochelle invited us to visit in August. “It’ll be good for the children’s sense of history,” said my French wife, Claudie, a college professor. I readily agreed, noting the proximity to Cognac, where the world’s most famous brandy was born, and to Marennes-Oléron, France’s finest oyster bed. And there was La Rochelle’s new aquarium, a tantalizing lure for the kids.

Of course, there was also the setting and the scenery.

La Rochelle has one of the best -- and most picturesque -- harbors along the Atlantic Coast, as well as western France’s largest yachting basin. The entrance to the Vieux (Old) Port is guarded by two 14th century towers, the Tour St. Nicolas and the Tour de la Chaîne, from which links of the chain that once blocked the harbor at night still dangle. The view toward town is also impressive: An outsize clock tower rears its domed head above the town gate, dwarfing all other dwellings. Arcades and stately mansions grace medieval byways that play hide-and-seek in the folds of time.

We arrived at our friends’ house on a Wednesday night and enjoyed their hospitality the next day. But that made us slow in getting started for our actual destination. We finally rolled into La Rochelle at twilight, when the gulls fly low and the sky closes in, reclaiming the city from the sea.

Our little clan of four joined a group of 80 or so spectators near the Tour St. Nicolas, the fortified, slightly off-kilter keep named for the patron saint of mariners. We awaited the appearance of a guide to lead us on the Ronde de Nuit (Night Watch), a hike through old La Rochelle organized on Thursday nights from early July to mid-September by the local tourist office.

Children don’t usually take kindly to historical walking tours, especially nocturnal ones. But when at last our man emerged from the tower in medieval garb with staff and lantern, a ring in one ear and a twinkle in his eye, my kids followed him as if he were the Pied Piper, racing to keep up with his commentary.

Pointing his staff out to sea, the night watchman (alias Philippe Laugrand, manager of the welcome center of the La Rochelle tourism office) launched into the saga of the fishermen, monks, merchants and mariners who made their mark on this accommodating rock (la roche in French, thus the name).

The two-hour romp through the past made the cobblestones come alive. There were encounters with barefoot Franciscans, white-wigged merchants and women in 18th century décolleté, all tourist office staff. It helped to have good walking shoes and at least a rudimentary knowledge of French, although the tourist office also runs walking tours in English.

Returning to La Rochelle the next morning, the Night Watch still fresh in our minds, we lingered awhile at the Vieux Port, which was full of small boats. “Will you buy me a toy boat to sail in it?” asked my 7-year-old son, Jacques, evidently charmed by the harbor’s Lilliputian dimensions.

Toylike to the contemporary eye, this big bathtub hardly seems large enough to contain all the history that has sailed through. It was from here that the wines of the Charente, the illustrious brandy from nearby Cognac, and precious salt harvested from the neighboring marshes made their way into the world. Here the fiercely independent Huguenots, who had turned the town into the capital of French Protestantism, made a last stand before succumbing to the forces of Cardinal Richelieu. Some sailed all the way to the New World to save the faith and founded such havens as New Rochelle, N.Y. Later, the Vieux Port was a pivotal link in the so-called triangular trade with Africa and the West Indies, harboring heavy vessels laden with spices, skins and slaves. Fortunes were amassed and lost here by merchants and ship owners gambling on the trade winds.

Leaving the harbor behind, our crew entered the old city, as travelers and traders have done for centuries, through the Gothic Porte de la Grosse-Horloge (Gate of the Big Clock Tower). Continuing along the Rue du Palais, the city’s central axis and shopping street, we ducked into the palatial courtyard of the Chambre de Commerce, built in 1749 in the style of a miniature Versailles. We passed the opulent 18th century residences of the great shipping magnates that line the stately parallel thoroughfares, Rue Admyrault and Rue de L’Escale.

We then stopped for a look at the luxurious trappings and human toll of trade at the Musée du Nouveau Monde (Museum of the New World) in the refurbished digs of an 18th century merchant family named Fleuriau.

The museum highlights the exotic and the dark side of the city’s heritage of trade with Africa and the New World, a heritage with which, for better and for worse, we Americans are deeply bound. Cargo vessels sailed for Africa laden with French textiles, clocks and firearms and returned with a hold full of slaves.

The people on board were then shipped back through La Rochelle to the Americas and the Antilles, where they were sold for sugar, spices, cotton, coffee and cocoa. Merchant families like the Fleuriaus invested heavily in plantations on the French enclave of the island of Santo Domingo, the future Haiti.

Jewels of the sea

After the museum, lunch was a platter of oysters and other seafood freshly shucked beside the city’s former fish market, under the arcades of the colorful Chez André, a beloved local institution since 1947.

Our sightseeing was beginning to try the patience of the junior members of the crew. My fashion-conscious 12-year-old daughter, Aurélie, had had it with the trappings of the musty past, insisting on a shopping spree among the boutiques that line the Rue du Temple.

My son enjoyed his own just recompense at the Aquarium La Rochelle, on the right bank of the Bassin des Grands Yachts. Built like a giant fish tank, the aquarium holds 792,000 gallons of water and 10,000 specimens of sea life. The numbers may seem abstract, but the sum total is dazzling for children and adults. It is sobering to stroll through a water tunnel of jellyfish and fathom that these slimy things have been around for millions of years. The tunnel of the shark tank was the most popular spot for my son, who jubilantly declared, “I’d like to live here!”

Expedience demanded that the next day’s sightseeing be generously dosed with child-friendly attractions, such as the Automaton Museum and the Museum of Scale Models just next door, both of which were hits. Also popular were the Museum of Natural History and the Neptunéa Maritime Museum, with its access to the weather ship Le France I.

We had planned to spend only five days in La Rochelle, so in the two days that remained -- though we had by no means exhausted the city’s riches -- we turned to its environs.

Northeast of La Rochelle, the marshlands of the Marais Poitevin, intersected by man-made canals called conches, immediately bring to mind the bayous of Louisiana. Submerged in prehistoric times, the Marais surfaced as the salt water receded. The region was cultivated and irrigated by medieval monks, who controlled the water flow with an intricate system of dikes and dams.

Today the ecologically fragile landscape is rapidly eroding. An audiovisual show at the Maison des Marais Mouillés, a regional museum in Coulon, explains the geology and history of the marsh. Just outside town we spotted a few splendid old cabanes, vintage whitewashed, water-side houses with colorful shutters, typical of the region. They line the banks of the Sèvre Niortaise River.

We wanted to explore these wetlands, known as Venise Verte, or Green Venice. In the village of La Garette, we found a little black skiff steered by a strong-armed guide who used a hooked pole not unlike the Venetian gondolier’s oar to ram the boat down sleepy waterways.

Along the way we saw a poule d’eau, or water chicken, with atrophied wings and webbed feet; a slithering black eel; and a diving nutria, a native of North America originally imported for its fur. Tall, straight-backed poplar trees that line the conches were imported from Virginia to prevent erosion and subsequently became the typical trees of the region.

The next day we discovered a far more moving Franco-American link in Rochefort, a boat-building center and naval arsenal town established under Louis XIV southeast of La Rochelle. A team of historians, craftsmen and maritime enthusiasts is rebuilding the Hermione, the frigate on which the young Gilbert du Motier (a.k.a. the Marquis de Lafayette) sailed to Boston in 1780 to rejoin the forces of the American Revolution. Here, in a dry dock of the old royal maritime arsenal, we climbed into the oak ribs of this mammoth labor of love. Plans are underway, when the boat is completed in 2008-09, to sail it across the Atlantic into Boston Harbor. The canopied construction site is part of a vast marine park along the Charente River.

A taste of history

All this salty fare built up an awful thirst that no common beverage could quench. Continuing southeast, it was Daddy’s turn to indulge in a city whose name conjures up cultivated sloth.

Billboards along the road to Cognac flash the legendary names of distilleries: Hennessy, Courvoisier, Rémy Martin, Camus, Martell, Otard, each of which can be visited. Every wall in town is blackened with a microscopic fungus that thrives on the potent fumes euphemistically known as la part des anges (the angels’ share). Developed in the late 16th century, brandy was originally a “burnt” wine, fired to prevent spoilage on long-distance ocean voyages. It would take 200 years for the firewater of Cognac to evolve into the king of spirits.

What more fitting place to ponder the pedigree of this elixir than Château de Cognac? The birthplace of King François I, the château has been the home of Cognac Otard -- one of the city’s most illustrious distilleries -- since 1795. A guided tour takes you through the royal residence, including the Helmet Hall, where Richard the Lion-Hearted once supped, and a reception hall allegedly designed by Leonardo da Vinci.

In several cellars in the former dungeon known as le Paradis (Paradise), the oldest casks are left to age in a snow-white coat of fungus. A soused breed of spider, its state shamelessly revealed in the asymmetrical weave of its web, feeds on insect larvae and watches over the precious stash. It takes 60 years to age a cask of Extra, the highest category of cognac, but it takes less than a minute to succumb to its divine effects. Every tour ends with a tasting.

Bidding farewell to our friends and to fair La Rochelle on the last leg of our trip, I shed crocodile tears, my mouth already watering for the oyster beds of Marennes. We bypassed the bumper-to-bumper traffic to the Ile d’Oléron, an island overrun in season, and followed the signs to Marennes’ oyster port.

Boats take you out to tour the mother lode, where, in rectangular rows, washed by the tide, the mollusks fatten to maturity by feeding on microscopic algae. We had no time for touring but satisfied our palates at a simple roadside restaurant along a canal where oyster boats lay beached at low tide.

Shuffling the shells on his plate, my son made a mess. I asked, “What do you think you’re doing?” He said, “I’m sailing into La Rochelle.”

Peter Wortsman is a freelance writer in New York City.