Category: Travel in France & beyond

Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

A wedding in Paris

That title says it all, doesn’t it? No, it wasn’t us but a couple of whom we’ve become very fond. Baptiste is the great grandson of our 105-year-old neighbor and although he and the new bride live in Paris, they’re in Carcassonne at least monthly for a visit. Naturally they wanted “Mamie” (the French diminutive for Grandmother) to be present on one of the most important days in their lives. It was an honor that Bill and I were invited and we were interested to see how this big event compared to American weddings as well as what we’d seen on TV and read in books regarding the traditions of the ceremony.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Sailing to Strasbourg

Typically we would be writing about taking the train to a vacation destination, especially in France, but today it’s about travel on the Canal de la Marne du Rhine from Lagarde to a city we’ve visited several times, Strasbourg. Two of the times that we’ve been there were in December to experience the colorful holiday atmosphere when it truly earns the nickname, “Capital of Christmas”. This time, however, it was only last week when we were gliding past this Alsatian city’s familiar sites aboard a 22-passenger péniche, a canal hotel barge identical to the ones we cruised with on other French canals.

Gliding along the canal
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Travel in France & beyond

When’s our next trip?

Bill and I started making annual trips to Europe soon after we met. Because I was working for a British company at the time, those vacations were initially limited to within the UK. Sometimes, however, we were “daring” enough to venture across the Channel for a day trip to the coast of France that we eventually extended into Paris (Notre Dame in this photo) and beyond. With our discovery of self-catering holiday rentals, we could base ourselves in a town or village (like Saint-Jean-de-Côle above) and pretend for a week or so that we lived there. Given that we’ve been French residents for over 8 years, that idea obviously stuck with us. Those short visits always ended with a longing to return, typically discussing our next make-believe location on the flight back to the US. Based on a survey of other travel-loving Americans, we’re not alone.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Two day trips from Nice

This past spring we were on a repositioning cruise of a passenger ship that operates in the south of Spain during the winter and moves up to the Azur coast of France for summer trips to Corsica. We disembarked in Nice and instead of heading directly home we spent a few days there to explore a couple of the destinations that were on our must-see list. The local trains in that area offer an all-day pass for 25€ for the two of us—roundtrip tickets for one city alone would have been 60€—so it was time to discover another part of the country and do it at a bargain price.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Two day trips from Toulouse

By a fast train we live only about 45 minutes from Toulouse yet we decided to spend a few nights there to make a couple of day trips centered around the “Pink City” so named because of the color of its bricks. That way we didn’t have to start out as early, we could spend the day at a destination, and still get back to the hotel in time for an apéro before dinner. Taking some of our own advice, we clicked on the tab above marked “Topics & Tags” then “Destinations in France accessible by train” and scrolled down to “The Beautiful Small Towns around Toulouse” to find a list of 20 possibilities, including our own Carcassonne. Of the remaining 19 towns, we’d already visited 8 of them and we didn’t want to spend much more than an hour on the train so that left us with Gaillac at 40 minutes and at 67 minutes a town that wasn’t even on this list, Castres.

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Travel in France & beyond

Champagne, anyone?

We discovered canal cruising last year when Bill was reading an article in the online magazine The Good Life France about all of the inland sailing opportunities there are in this country. We initially chose that first ship because it was traversing an area that we’d never visited and it was all-inclusive: accommodation, meals, drinks, and daily excursions. Unpack once yet wake up in a new city each morning. Because these barges, péniche in French, are small with only 22 passengers, they can travel where larger river or sea-going vessels won’t fit and can dock very close to a town’s center. All I had to hear from Bill about this latest offering was, “Would you like to start in Paris and end up in Champagne?” Let’s go!

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Whatcha packin’ ?

Thanks, Larry, for sending us a link to an article with the intriguing title, “Why Tourists Need To Be Cautious Of The Clothing They Pack On A Trip To Europe.” Before moving here, we were one of those visitors making an annual transatlantic flight always trying to figure out what to bring and what to leave behind. Once we started staying in holiday homes/apartments with washing machines it became possible to cut in half the sets of clean clothes that we needed, effectively reducing our luggage requirement to just a carry on bag. I saw an ad for a travel backpack that promises you space for 5 days of vacation clothing. Hopefully that doesn’t mean just the “bare essentials” you might require at a clothing-optional resort.

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