Category: Life in France

Life in France

Learn a language, live longer

It’s pretty easy to get a consensus from health authorities around the globe on conventional ways to live a long life. The World Health Organization (WHO) reinforces the idea that lifestyle is the most powerful tool citing 4 essentials: regular physical activity, eating well, getting quality sleep of 7 to 9 hours per night, and staying socially connected. To that they would add controlling any conditions such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, stopping smoking, and getting regular screenings for early detection and treatment of issues. While those ideas all concentrate on the body, another avenue of thought revolves around stimulating the mind.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Coach Trip to Puy du Fou

There was a British TV series called “Coach Trip” where a busful of passengers traveled around Europe and each day they could vote off one couple that didn’t fit in with the rest of the crowd. We had our own version of that show when our neighbor brought us the paperwork for a 4-day bus trip—one day to get there and one day back plus two days at the French theme park, Puy du Fou. They skip the rollercoasters and other rides in favor of massive, historical, live-action movie set productions ranging from Roman coliseums to 17th-century villages. We set off for our long weekend adventure early on a Friday with the promise of a pause café and lunch before we got to our hotel just before dinner.

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Life in France

Fun French food facts

Blog readers sometimes send us links to articles about France that they have read in other publications. There’s a French news source, Courrier International, that in a sense does the same thing for us with their section, “France seen from abroad”, that referenced an article in the British newspaper, The Telegraph. Journalist Anthony Peregrine has been based in this country for over 20 years so he has an amazing collection of articles with descriptive headline words such as “loveliest, greatest, most elegant, and popular”. When I saw a mention of “11 reasons why French cuisine is still the best in the world”, I definitely wanted to read about that.

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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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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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