“I appreciate the respectful milieu here, even if the classes don’t mix very much,” said Alain Naudeau, a merchant who sells jewelry from Indonesia and Thailand here. The market’s goods tend to be upscale: cashmere sweaters, linen shirts, textiles from Morocco, towels from Tunisia, vintage linens, perfumed soaps, Panama hats.
The Ars open-air market can become crowded but never rowdy. This is the place to buy the island’s famous waxy potatoes; the flaky, delicate, hand-harvested sea salt known as fleur de sel; mountains of local mussels to steam in white wine and finish with crème fraîche; and every kind of ocean fish.
Ars, however, is inhabited mostly by old-timers. Some are third- or fourth-generation residents, descendants of farmers and fishermen. Others are wealthy Parisians who decided to invest in homes by the sea 40 or more years ago; they often have more substantial familial houses (even chateaus) in the heart of France. They rent out their homes in Ars when their children and grandchildren aren’t visiting — and they do so quietly and most often by word of mouth.
Some natives of Île de Ré will tell you that the unique esprit of the island was broken forever back in 1988 when a 1.8-mile toll bridge from La Rochelle on the mainland was opened and the ferry stopped running. Then budget airlines opened routes between Britain and Ireland to La Rochelle, encouraging more Britons to come. Now you hear English, German and Dutch at the two campgrounds on the edge of Ars, and the nearby supermarket now sells English shortbread, chutney and tortilla chips. Property values, meanwhile, have increased about fivefold in the past decade.
Patrick Bernard/Abacapress.com, via Newscom Former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin vacationing in Ars-en-Ré.
“Monsieur, perhaps you don’t recognize me, but I’m your upstairs neighbor in our building in Paris,” Andy said.
Old bicycles are the preferred vehicle of transportation along the 60 miles of bike paths on the island. Only children and Americans seem to wear helmets as they make their way through the salt marshes, vineyards, pine forests, potato fields and nature reserve that attracts more than 300 species of birds.
The gentle, unadorned style extends to home decoration as well. Hollyhocks grow wild from the cobblestones and cracks in the concrete. There are limits on the height and number of houses. The roofs tend to be terra-cotta tiled, the walls whitewashed, the walls made of local stone. When a Dutch friend married to a Frenchman painted the shutters of their house bright blue instead of a neutral shade of gray or green, there were complaints from the neighbors.
Ars stands in contrast to the island’s other popular towns: Les Portes-en-Ré on the glorious ocean beaches toward the northern end of the island is where the newly rich build big houses with swimming pools and guest cottages. St.-Martin-en-Ré, the largest town closer to the mainland in the middle, attracts a clientele that some on the here call “populaire,” a catchall designation that can mean either down-to-earth or the slightly more pejorative transient and working-class. The towns closest to the mainland, which attract day-trippers, are the most downscale.
Another difference here from many other vacation spots in France is the unwritten but certain dress code. Real Rétais, as residents are called, do not wear bright colors, flashy prints, real jewels, fitted clothing Coach Bags Outlet, deep tans or recognizable designer shoes. They do wear well-cut linen shirts and dresses, faded Breton-style striped sweaters, espadrilles, ballerina flats and every shade of beige and gray. Voices stay low; music stays soft. The women who walk topless along the shoreline of the beaches near Les Portes are considered “vulgaire.”
Of all the towns on the 18-mile-long island in the Atlantic, Ars, toward the far end of the island, has always been the most tranquil and private. Its whitewashed stone cottages and narrow streets have earned it a spot on the official list of “the most beautiful villages in France.” The heart of the town is St. Etienne church, with its 12th-century facade and dramatic white spire tipped in black that from afar looks like a rocket ready for launching.
Out of context, Hubert couldn’t have been expected to recognize a man he had only seen dressed in dark suits. But there we were, hundreds of miles from home in this sleepy town on the Île de Ré, an island off the west coast of France, making small talk, and connections, with our Parisian neighbor. It was one of our first lessons in the ambiance of Ars, a centuries-old port that has retained its very discreet charm, even as visitors to the island now number three million a year and its real estate has become some of the most desirable in coastal France.
I once incurred Jospin’s wrath when I met him after we finished playing tennis on adjoining courts. “It’s an honor to meet you,” I said. Except Jospin heard my pronunciation of the word “honneur” as “horreur” — horror. He lashed out at me. “Horreur! It’s a horreur to meet me?” I fell over myself with apologies and joked that my flawed French was to blame. I thought that as a veteran politician, he would laugh it off. He did not. Perhaps he was miffed that his daily routine had been disrupted by a perfect stranger — and, even worse, a foreigner.
Sylvain Sonnet/CorbisThe bell tower in Ars-en-Ré on Île de Ré, France.
Next year, the loan for the construction of the bridge to the mainland will be paid off. That means that the justification for the steep toll for reaching the island will cease to exist. If access is free Coach Bags Outlet, will Île de Ré go the way of St. Tropez?
What differentiates Ars from other seaside destinations like the Côte d’Azur, where people go to see and be seen, is that this is a place for the famous to be anonymous. The fashion designer Nathalie Rykiel can dine at the Café de Commerce at the port without anyone invading her space. No one bothers the actress Nathalie Baye and her actress-designer daughter, Laura Smet, when they are at their house with the wooden shutters and tiny garden. The Former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin can bike along the island’s flat terrain without attracting stares. “Jospin comes every morning to buy his charcuterie and no one even looks up,” said Régis Benatre, a bookseller who sells secondhand paperbacks, including tomes on history and philosophy, at the daily open-air market on the port. (Ars is considered the most intellectual of the island’s towns, a kind of French Sag Harbor.)
One August morning years ago, there was a knock on the door of the small Coach Bags Outlet, 19th-century stone house in Ars-en-Ré that my husband, Andy, and I had rented for vacation. There, alongside a bicycle laced with rust, stood a silver-haired man, elegantly dressed in a faded rose-colored linen shirt and long khaki Bermuda shorts. He had come looking for the owners, who were his — and our — friends from Paris. His name was Hubert.
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