One good thing about living in a time zone that’s 6 hours ahead of the eastern US is that festive events like Christmas and birthdays seem to arrive that much sooner. Our day is well underway while friends back in Atlanta are still soundly sleeping. By the time we’ve had our second cup of coffee, the people we know in California may not have even … Continue reading Happy spring!
In 40+ years of working, I don’t remember ever being told “Take the day off”. Like most people, you fit your vacation days around those of others. Other than when someone calls in sick, there just aren’t any surprises or even the opportunity to simply stop what you’re doing and walk off the job, even for a day. That all changed when we moved to France for a couple of reasons: we’re both retired now and one of the requirements for obtaining a visa to live here was our promise that we wouldn’t work. Sounds like a permanent day off…until you buy a house. Continue reading “Hometown tourist”
Well, I do, but those details are for a bit later. When we decided to move to Carcassonne about a year and a half ago, we started reading everything we could find about living in the city. There were articles about the cost of living, housing, transportation, shopping, education, entertainment, taxes, history, sports teams, and recreation. As long term users of various types of cardio equipment, one line I read really caught my eye: “Get off of your treadmill and get outside”. The author was suggesting that instead of joining one of the gyms here in the city, you could use the many walking trails that take you along the river, beside the canal, and up through the 12th century fortress and castle above. Continue reading “Who needs a treadmill?”
One morning last week I happened to look out the kitchen window just as a couple of our neighbors from the end of the street were passing by. They were clearly on the way to the market, rolling cart in tow, but stopped long enough for a quick chat. Francis told me that they were going to buy the ingredients for a choucroute that his wife, Isabelle, always made at this time of year. That word sounded familiar and it only took a minute to pull out an ad that we had saved from our favorite bistrot promoting their 10 euro/dollar plate of the day: Choucroute-charcutière. Continue reading “Comfort food”
Former Carcassonne residents Tracy and Alan, whose “An Italian Point of View” blog we follow (link in the right column), told us that although the streets here might seem deserted if the weather is bad, as soon as the sun comes out, so do the people. That was definitely the case last weekend when the city seemed to come alive after being cooped up for several days running. Continue reading “Winter blooms”
It was a year ago today that we moved from the United States to France. Part of those last few weeks “over there”, first in Georgia and then in Florida, remain a blur. There were so many things that had to happen in a specific order and within a limited time period, that there was little time to think about anything other than checking tasks off the calendar as the days flashed by. I still get anxious remembering arriving at the check-in desk at the Atlanta airport pushing two rolling luggage carts piled high with 2 backpacks, 2 carry-on bags, 3 checked bags, and a travel dog house with Heather sitting happily on top. We were about to find out if those 18 months of planning, preparation, and paperwork were going to pay off. Continue reading “The year that flew by”
What kind of question is that? If you’d asked that about our house in Atlanta, we would have said “two”—one emergency bar upstairs in the kitchen and a full-service one in our basement British pub. If you go in our kitchen here in France the answer would be “15” because that’s how many bars of pressure our espresso machine has. But today’s post has to do with a third kind of bar and how to cope with thick stone walls that keep you from them. Continue reading “How many bars?”
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