Category: Life in France

Before leaving the US, Life in France

Getting prepared

There’s an online forum that I look at each morning (one of our Favorite Links in the right column) where expats living in or moving to France can pose questions and share their experiences. One of the threads that caught my eye is entitled “Why France? And why not…” which the moderator had hoped would generate a discussion about why people would want to move to this country in particular rather than elsewhere in western Europe, for example, or even just change locations within their homeland. That latter point, she notes, would avoid any dealings with immigration and keep you in familiar surroundings (food, language, culture, friends) that could be especially important for retirees. Since it’s a forum for people who already live in France or are seriously considering moving here, it didn’t surprise me that the conversation went somewhat off-topic pretty quickly. Instead of addressing what other countries did or did not offer, most people wanted to talk about what drew them here and especially explain how they might have better prepared themselves for the leap. 

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

The almost perfect vacationers

One of the online French newspapers that I look at each morning always has a “View From…” section where they summarize an article written in a foreign newspaper about life in France. The topic is often politics but there are a fair number of discussions regarding food, wine, and culture. A headline that caught my eye was “The French, those almost perfect vacationers” in the section “View from the United Kingdom”. I was really curious to see why this writer from the London-based The Daily Telegraph would rate our new neighbors and friends as the ideal holidaymakers. I became even more intrigued when I saw that the title in English in the original newspaper story was actually “The beautiful corners of France that the French don’t want you to know about.” Lost in translation?

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Bram in 1 day

From Carcassonne the railroad tracks go east, west, and south. In the last 6 years while living here we’ve used them to travel to other countries as far as London, Amsterdam, and Venice. Within France they’ve taken us to the borders with all eight surrounding countries plus the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel, and the Mediterranean Sea. Although we’ve passed by the next station down the line from here, originally called Eburomagus (Yew Market) by the Romans in 600 BC, we were always on the way to a distant destination. With a journey time of only 10 minutes and a rail fare starting at 1 euro, it was time to hop aboard and visit the town now known as Bram.

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Life in France

Halloween beets

October 31st isn’t much of a holiday in France but it does seem to be growing in popularity. At the supermarket you might spot a few bags of miniature candy bars individually wrapped or as you can see in the accompanying photos, chocolate shops decorate their windows with sometimes creepy displays as did the tourism office (featured photo above). This year the city will be hosting scary stories this afternoon at the castle inside the walls and Chateau de Pennautier, just outside of town (photo and link below), got dressed up for the occasion too. This will be our sixth Halloween here and we’re expecting the usual number of trick-or-treaters that we see every year: between zero and one. For us it’s just an excuse to buy a bunch of Snickers. That aside, I wanted to see what, if any, history All Hallows Eve had in France and if they had anything similar over the years. Thanks to the website My Parisian Kitchen I found some answers.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Valence in 1 day

We get inspiration for our vacations from a variety of sources. Our train map of Europe that highlights the scenic routes is our number one choice. TV programs such as “100 Places You Must See”, “Beautiful Escapes” and “Invitation to Travel” give us plenty of ideas, sometimes in other countries, but right now we’re staying closer to home right here in France. In the US we were frequent watchers of house hunting shows and that habit hasn’t changed but here each episode begins with a quick overview of the city being featured where you get a bird’s eye view of the most picturesque parts. When we saw canals, fountains, Parisian-style architecture, cobbled streets, and open squares filled with sidewalk cafés we knew that we would have fun in Valence.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Turckheim on a whim

Last week I wrote about our trip to Munster that we made from our temporary “home base” in Mulhouse. We used a local train for the roundtrip and since we didn’t travel during rush hour the ticket allowed a stopover along the way. We had seen photos of this traditional Alsatian town so we thought it would be worth the hour that the tourist office suggests it would take to follow their “historic circuit” through this charming place that got started in 743. Normally we research all of the sites we hope to visit prior to leaving the train station but this time we simply followed the route on the map (link below) taking photos along the way. Some of these we could identify (click on a gallery photo to see the file name below) but others are simply private homes that appealed to us and hopefully to you too. Enjoy the wander!

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Belfort in 1 day

If you read our most recent blog post, France’s Favorite Monument, you had a clue about the city we were off to explore today. We were especially interested in watching the TV program that aired just over a year ago to see who the 2020 winner would be since we’d visited some of the 14 candidates. The competition included the Chateâu and gardens of Villandry, the Imperial Chapel in Ajaccio, Corsica, Nice’s onion-domed Cathedral St. Nicolas, the stunning stained glass of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and the one that received our vote, the Canal-du-Midi that runs through Carcassonne. Even though we hadn’t seen the others, we’d at least heard of all but one, the Citadel and Lion of Belfort, so that went on our list of future vacation destinations. With travel restrictions within the country lifted for the fully-vaccinated, it was time to make good use of our Senior Discount Railcards for another trip.

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