Author: Bob

While living in North, Central and South America, in the middle of the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, and now in Europe, my passion has remained the same: travel and meeting new friends.
Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Car-free travel

We had the people who live on either side of us over for dinner on Friday night and part of the evening’s discussion centered on our quartier and the parking—or lack thereof—for the residents. Our street isn’t very wide so any of the legal spots that become available are highly coveted. It was during this conversation that one of our guests said with a grin, “You two are the ideal neighbors” that I was then hoping to hear words like “quiet, respectful, and orderly”. But no; the real reason that we are popular is because we don’t have a car so we don’t compete with every other house on the block. That prompted a question about how we travel both locally and long distance using only public transport which coincided perfectly with an article I had just read about visiting France car-free.

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Unknown's avatarBob11 Comments
Life in France

Daily life in Carcassonne…1586

And I thought that we  had it tough with inflation, global warming, floods, drought, strikes, and Covid. A popular prayer 440 years ago was “From hunger, war and plague, deliver us Lord” that gives an indication of some of what the citizens here were facing. According to the archives from the city’s Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) there were daily incidents of “massacres, pillage, ransom, ravages, burnings and other infinite evils”. There were also witches!

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Life in France

Change the channel

We’ve had fiber optic cable for the Internet, TV, and telephone at our house since the spring of 2020. Having it installed during the first of the 3 lockdowns for Covid was a challenge but we’ve been happy with it ever since. Well, that is until we received an email from our service provider, the largest one in France, that they were going to increase the monthly charge. Back in the US we were used to pitting one provider against the other at least once a year to obtain a better deal when the contract was up for renewal. Those “games” that we were playing on the other side of the Atlantic seem to have different rules over here.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Villages: most wanted

When an article pops up in the news a dozen times in one day it tends to get your attention. We read various online sources to see what’s going on around the world and we’re always on the lookout for new travel destinations, especially in France. That’s why when the headline, “Here are the French villages the most searched for in 2023 on the Internet” kept appearing one morning, we wanted to see which ones were included (photo gallery at the bottom). Although the website that had compiled the statistics was unknown to us, the popular French travel guide publisher, Routard, said that “Likibu is the Number 1 holiday rental comparison site (in France)” so we felt confident in their results.

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Life in France

Finding a new doctor

France is going through a dry spell. Apparently it’s the most severe drought ever recorded in this country and has been coupled with unusually high temperatures in both summer and winter. Water use restriction is not uncommon and there are even a few communities where drinking water is simply not available; bottled water only until further notice. Crops have suffered, hydropower generation has decreased while … Continue reading Finding a new doctor

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Life in France

Viollet-le-Duc, massive to mini

You don’t have to travel very far in France to see the name Eugène Viollet-le-Duc displayed on some type of medieval landmark be it a castle, a cathedral or a private building. In our case, we just look across the river to the walled fortress of La Cité de Carcassonne (photo at the very top of our blog) on which he began reconstruction work in 1853 or to the downtown 13th century cathedral Saint-Michel that’s a short walk from home. We had also seen his magic touch in Paris at the cathedral Notre-Dame-de-Paris, city hall, and the jewel-like Sainte-Chapelle plus elsewhere including Mont Saint-Michel, and in Amiens, Strasbourg, and Toulouse. On one list I counted 52 massive worksites around the country where he led the restoration in his 43-year career as an architect. But it’s something much smaller of his that’s on display this summer at our Museum of Fine Arts.

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Unknown's avatarBob9 Comments
Life in France

Feeling at home

We received an email from one of our readers who said that she would be making her first trip to France and that this area of the country was at the top of her possible retirement locations. Christine went on to say, “I really want to get into the culture of the area, do what the locals do, not just what the tourists want to see. Any advice?” Bill responded with quite a few suggestions that could probably apply to any new city although our experience is, of course, with Carcassonne. These general concepts worked for us when we were vacationing here and fantasizing about a permanent move so I thought they might be useful to others.

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Unknown's avatarBob16 Comments