Life in France

Attractive cities

The attractive village of Rochefort-en-terre in Brittany

Radio station Europe1 had on their website an article that was headlined, “The Three Most Attractive Cities in France.” Since Bill and I enjoy traveling, especially here in this country, I was anxious to read about some new destinations. The lead-in said that at the top of their list of 30 places were Besançon, Orléans and Saint-Étienne while Bordeaux was at position 20, Paris at 26, Nice at 28, and Nîmes at the very bottom. Interestingly, we have visited all of those cities that came in at the low end, some several times, and always found them inviting.  In contrast, we only knew one of the top cities, Orléans, because we stayed overnight at a pet-friendly hotel when we moved here with our dog, Heather, and were driving from Paris to Carcassonne, but that doesn’t really count. What that headline meant, we thought, was lots of new discoveries to make…until we read the rest of that first paragraph. Continue reading “Attractive cities”

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Life in France

Retiring overseas

Chambord castle

Our friend Larry tipped us off to an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal that addressed the topic of retiring abroad. The newspaper contacted about a dozen of their previous contributors who had written pieces about moving from the US and settling elsewhere in the world. Because most of those original articles were so optimistic about this big change in life the editors were especially interested to see if that initial enthusiasm continued years later ranging in time from 4 years to 14 years in residence. Some discussion suggestions were provided such as what’s changed since you’ve moved and what advice do you have for others considering living outside the country, but to get things rolling they asked everyone, “How did your decision to retire overseas turn out?” Continue reading “Retiring overseas”

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Life in France

Number 1, again

The Eiffel Tower at night

It didn’t surprise us to see a headline that read, “French Nationality Ranked No. 1 Globally for 8th Year” with the story continuing that for the eighth consecutive year France was at the top of a worldwide nationality list. We knew that with 90 million annual international visitors the country had more tourists than any other. After all, it’s hard to beat attractions including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles, and even both of our own UNESCO World Heritage Sites— the medieval walled city of Carcassonne and the Canal-du-Midi—all in one landmass area about the size of Texas. So, we were pleased to see this continuing recognition but we didn’t know what it meant. What is the Quality of Nationality Index (QNI)? Continue reading “Number 1, again”

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Life in France

Our not-so daily bread

Just out of our oven and still warm

When we first moved to Carcassonne we ate at least one baguette, sometimes two, fresh from the bakery every day. It just seemed the right thing to do. After all, we could be out in the neighborhood, morning, noon, or night and see someone carrying a baguette home, often with the end bitten off since it’s hard to resist that delicious crispy crust right out of the oven. So, how many calories are in a baguette? On average, 700. That’s a significant portion of the 2500 calories we’re supposed to eat every day but our dog Heather made sure that they didn’t stick around for long since she took us on some very long walks twice a day. Sadly she was only with us for the first two months we lived here, so we had to find a substitute for those extended outings. I got a treadmill and Bill got a bicycle and although we continued to travel by foot, we had to take more drastic measures: no more daily baguettes.  Continue reading “Our not-so daily bread”

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Life in France

A Carcassonne Christmas

Joyeux fêtes!

Just the other night we were walking home from dinner with friends at a ski resort and realized just how lucky we are. Something about that sentence doesn’t sound right. Walking home, yes. Dinner with friends, certainly. Lucky, definitely. Ski resort, not exactly. As you’ll be able to see in the photos below, Carcassonne is decked out in its finest for the holiday season. There are four major centers of lights and attractions around town plus plenty of side streets and shop windows that echo the excitement. The city has constructed a giant scaffolding structure at Place du Géneral de Gaulle, on top of which is a chalet-style restaurant and stationary ski lift cable cars with dining tables inside that would fit right in on a mountainside in the Alps, hundreds of kilometers from here, but we had a view of the medieval walled Cité with Père Noël pointing the way. The best news for us? Everything starts about a 10-minute walk away from our front door. Continue reading “A Carcassonne Christmas”

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Life in France

Country sounds

Goats do roam in Carcassonne

We recently had to replace our house exhaust fan and I was astonished at the sound level rating for this new device on its normal setting: 15 decibels. For comparison purposes, a pin dropping rates 10 decibels while a whisper is 30; so it’s pretty quiet. A second surprise was that although there’s an exhaust outlet in both bathrooms and in the kitchen, there’s only one motor mounted in the attic and connected to each room by duct work. In every house in the US in which we lived each room had its own independent fan/motor, all of which we replaced anytime that we moved because they were always so loud. By chance, the same morning we were preparing to do the work in our attic, I saw in the newspaper that noise levels were being addressed elsewhere in the country, but with a twist.  Continue reading “Country sounds”

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Life in France

The lights of Lyon

Lyon Cathedral 2019

“You know, it’s dangerous for us to watch TV,” is what Bill said to me last month when he asked me what I wanted to do one evening. That response was prompted by my suggesting that we view one of the two programs we sometimes record: Ëchappées Belles (Beautiful Escapes) and Les 100 Lieux Qu’il Faut Voir (The 100 Places You Must See). They typically feature destinations in France and we even keep a rail map near the television just to see if can activate our motto, “if there’s a train station, we can go there”. Such was the case when the familiar sight of Lyon appeared on the screen. We’d been there in the spring of 2017 but the sparkling lights, decorated yule trees, and the small wooden chalets of the Christmas Market made it look different and inviting, as did the Grand Illuminations. Continue reading “The lights of Lyon”

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