Dealing with government, Life in France

Getting a refund

One of our neighbors needed a new computer so Bill and I decided to order one for her as a gift  and have it delivered to our house. In reality, it was a practical decision since it would fall to Bill to set everything up and then explain how to use it, so getting it sent directly to our home was going to be the easier option. The leading seller of electronics and appliances in France has a store in Carcassonne but the specific computer that we wanted for our neighbor was only available from their online catalog. Two days after placing that order, we were anticipating the delivery and as expected the mailman arrived at our front door but something was clearly wrong since he waved  to us with the box in his hand as if it weighed nothing.

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Life in France

If you’re French & in the US, don’t do this

Conventional wisdom says that the more you listen to a language the more you will pick up. After all, from the moment we’re born, we’re immersed in the speech of those around us, and we instinctively begin to copy the sounds to eventually express ourselves verbally. Following that logic, Bill and I get our daily dose of French TV, radio, music, news, weather, and neighborhood conversations. In addition, there are countless online videos, some for grammar, history, or culture but others just for entertainment. It’s especially fun when a French person talks about vacationing in or moving to America since we get to compare their reaction to ours of being the foreigner in a foreign land. Such was the case when I saw a video on the YouTube channel JeanUSA.

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Travel in France & beyond

Herculaneum and Naples

With two weeks in Rome, we had enough time to make a one-hour train trip south to Naples with the ultimate destination being Herculaneum. In keeping with our “let’s see something different” visit to the capital city, we decided that instead of going to the world-famous site of Pompeii, another excavated city in the same area would be better. It takes about 20 minutes on a commuter train to get to Herculaneum and with a suggested visit time of two hours, we were going to have the chance to see a bit of Napoli before returning to Rome later that afternoon.

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Travel in France & beyond

All trains lead to Rome (part 2)

Here are some fun facts about Rome: 250 museums, 400 major monuments, 900 churches, 2000 fountains, and the entire historic center of 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 acres) is a UNESCO World Heritage site. And the biggest secret: while those churches aren’t technically classified as museums, dozens of them house masterpieces by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Bernini that you can view entirely for free. Although we were first-time visitors to the Eternal City, it already felt familiar, so we were hoping to explore some of the places that don’t immediately come to mind when you think of Rome. Last time on the blog we talked about the ancient center and now we’ll look at some Renaissance and Baroque areas before crossing the Tiber river.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

All trains lead to Rome (part 1)

We’ve crisscrossed Europe by rail for decades, discovering countless destinations. For us, train travel is all about the convenience: a quick walk to the station, a relaxing ride (often with a picnic lunch!), and arrival just steps from our hotel. Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, Madrid—with more to be discovered. We’ve even explored Italian treasures like Milan, Turin, Bari, and Venice; yet, one iconic place remained unseen: the Eternal City. All roads (or in our case, rails) lead to Rome, but somehow, we’d never taken that particular route. We decided to change all of that by embarking on a special train journey from Paris (we joined it in Lyon) to that fabled destination for our 40th anniversary.

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Life in France

Rude? You talkin’ to me?

There’s an old joke about European stereotypes regarding the ideal situation vs. what might be a nightmare. The story goes that Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, and it’s all organized by the Swiss. On the other hand, Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and it’s all organized by the Italians. Given that we live in France, I’ll take the safe way out and say, “No comment”, but I did want to address something that we often see repeated about this country: rudeness.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

A refreshing break

In honor of today being the first day of summer, is the story of our wintertime visit earlier this year to Luchon in the Pyrenees mountains. It will be one year ago tomorrow when the train line into this ski and thermal baths resort town reopened after a 10-year absence.  We’re always on the lookout for a new part of the country to discover—by train—so this was a great chance to add another destination to our list. Since we seldom see snow where we live, a visit in the winter was going to be ideal.

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