Category: Life in France

Life in France

A matter of taste

Texmex, pizza, and beer
Texmex, pizza, and beer

Across the street from where we often catch the city bus is a restaurant that advertises “Tex Mex” in two large signs on the front of their building. We haven’t eaten there yet but we are intrigued to see how one of our favorite meals is translated 8000 kilometers (5000 miles) from Dallas. Much closer than a transatlantic flight, as in a short walk that we take every week or so, is a grocery store that sent us a catalog entitled Taste of America featuring products that they associated with the country where we grew up. This was going to make for interesting reading to see how an international supermarket chain, based in Germany, was going to label and promote to a French audience what they considered representative of the USA. Continue reading “A matter of taste”

Unknown's avatarBob8 Comments
Life in France

The magic of Christmas

Entrance to Père Noel park
Entrance to Père Noel park

The city of Carcassonne never seems to do anything halfway. After all, with Europe’s largest medieval fortress as your imposing background, it’s hard to do anything less than big.That thought is carried over into this year’s month-long celebration entitled “La Magie de Noёl” and there is definitely lots of magic in Christmas here. Last week’s post about the torchlight march was just the beginning of a very colorful time in the city. Continue reading “The magic of Christmas”

Unknown's avatarBob5 Comments
Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Do you know the way to San…James?

The blue and yellow symbol point the way
The blue and yellow symbol point the way

It’s 1000 kilometers (600 miles) from Carcassonne to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Bill and I walk a lot but that distance is way more than we would want to cover on foot yet lots of people come here to do exactly that. Known by a range of names including the Way (or the Path or the Trail) of St. James, the Route (or the Road) to Santiago or the one we hear the most often, Camino de Santiago or just The Camino, it’s a pilgrimage pathway to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Believers go to the shrine there seeking the final resting place of the apostle St. James. Continue reading “Do you know the way to San…James?”

Unknown's avatarBob4 Comments
Life in France

Welcome to the season

Garden gate welcome to Christmas
Garden gate welcome to Christmas

When I was growing up, the school year always started at the beginning of September and the first holiday we had to look forward to was Halloween. That was followed a month later by Thanksgiving and only after that huge feast was a memory did we start to look forward to Christmas. Somehow, over the years, all of those months got compressed into “Hallo-anks-mas” where store shelves that had been stocked through the summer with back to school supplies were suddenly filled with a combination of candy corn, pumpkin pies, and candy canes. It’s a little bit different here in France. Continue reading “Welcome to the season”

Unknown's avatarBob3 Comments
Life in France

Matryoshka

A castle within a castle
A castle within a castle

Today’s language lesson changed from French to Russian because I had to look up the name of those nesting dolls (and this blog post’s title)  that stack inside of one another, each getting smaller and smaller. This folk art was started in a craft workshop near Moscow in 1890 by an industrialist searching for a new style for his country. Carcassonne has its own bigger-than-life version, as in 10 meter (32 feet) tall stone walls, that got their start at least 800 years before those tiny carved dolls. Continue reading “Matryoshka”

Unknown's avatarBob
Life in France

Now we live there

Keyhole connection for the phone/TV/Internet cable
Keyhole wall connection for the phone/TV/Internet cable

Although we bought our house here in Carcassonne a few months ago, I haven’t felt as if we really live there…until today. One of the requirements for getting a visa for our first year in France was to have an address, so we rented a fully-furnished house. It’s really comfortable and truly came with everything we needed to live, down to the knives, forks, and spoons, and the all-important Internet. The only problem is that once we venture outside of our 2-foot thick (60 cm.) walls, there is no wi-fi, so when we go over to work on the house I feel a bit out of touch…until today. Continue reading “Now we live there”

Unknown's avatarBob2 Comments
Life in France

Not like I recall

A very fit and trim Père Noêl
A very fit and trim Père Noêl

This time of year was always fun growing up because lots of Christmas catalogs would arrive and you could spend hours sorting through all the latest toys, games, and all the other items you never knew you wanted. As an adult in our fantasy land called France, it’s really no different except that the amusements that now catch our eye are likely to be centered around food and drink but it’s still fun to peruse all of these catalogues de Noël looking for everything we didn’t know existed, seems unusual, or we just don’t recall ever having seen before. Continue reading “Not like I recall”

Unknown's avatarBob1 Comment