Mary Winston Nicklin

We were halfway to Ile d’Aix when I realized we forgot the butter. Aboard the Pierre Loti — a ferry named for the wayfaring 19th-century novelist — I spied dozens of wheeled carts brimming with groceries. The island’s 213 residents and weekenders haul all their supplies from the mainland, the French Atlantic coast in the Poitou-Charentes region. Aix is car-free, with only a smattering of cafes and boutiques in one sun-bleached village. The Pierre Loti sliced through the waves, and the mainland’s houses, and that soon-to-be faraway supermarket, melted into the horizon. A weekend without butter, the most holy of French culinary staples?

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