Life in France

Cherry festival

Life can be a bowl of cherries, thanks Sally!

It’s said that even without a calendar you can tell what month it is in France just by visiting the market. If all of the stalls are full of heads of cauliflower as big as basketballs, it’s probably March. In April the asparagus and artichokes compete for space. May brings flats of strawberries the size of golf balls and spilling from then into June, bright red cherries entice you to bite them. Just as some cheeses are known by the area they come from like Roquefort or Camembert, for example as are wines such as Champagne and Cognac, fruits and vegetables can be just as well known. Just say “Charentais” and everyone’s mouth begins to water when they think of sweet and juicy melons. The same goes for Mirabelle plums from Lorraine and Bill’s favorite, les cerises de Cerét, cherries and we went to the festival. Continue reading “Cherry festival”

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Life in France

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy 100th birthday champagne with our neighbor who is a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother!

No, it’s not wrong; just different. We use that phrase a lot when talking about contrasting situations between the country where we used to live and where we now reside. For example, Mother’s Day was two weeks ago in the US but in France it’s observed today, 112 years after the Alpine village of Artas issued an award of merit to two mothers with nine children each. In 1929 the government, in an effort to promote childbirth after WWI, formally recognized the day and in 1950 it was written into law to honor French mothers on the last Sunday of May in what is fittingly called the Fête des Mères or if translated literally, the “Celebration of Mothers”. Continue reading “Happy Mother’s Day”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Bonus day in Provence

Castle ruins at Les Baux de Provence

In keeping with last Sunday’s “accidental” theme, the bonus for us was discovering that our friends from northeastern France were on vacation in the vicinity of Avignon at the same time that we were there. They had a car and suggested that we spend the day with them exploring parts of Provence only half an hour or so south of the city. Their itinerary included the market town of St. Rémy de Provence and one of the gems included in the Most Beautiful Villages of France collection, Les Baux de Provence. This was all new territory for us but the day began at some place quite familiar when they picked us up at the train station. Continue reading “Bonus day in Provence”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Accidentally in Avignon

Pont d’Avignon from the île de la Barthelasse

“You can’t get there from here,” is what the French rail website might as well have said when we were trying to get home from last week’s trip to Aigues-Mortes. Caught up in the excitement of staying on board our own boat, we anticipated that our return to Carcassonne would be as easy as the outbound journey. Unfortunately what should have taken a bit over 2 hours in travel time was showing up as 16 hours because of layovers, connections, and being sent up to Paris to catch the night train that has only seats, no sleeping berths. We then learned that because of track repairs no trains would be running for 3 days in the direction of home so it was time to get out the map and see where we could go. Since we knew that there were trains running northbound in the direction of the capital, it didn’t take long to settle on Avignon as the place to wait until the rails were once again open. Continue reading “Accidentally in Avignon”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Acutely dead

Anchored on the Canal du Rhône à Sète

If you make a direct translation of the town name we recently visited, Aigues-Mortes, one of the options that you can come up with is the title of today’s blog post. Luckily for us it was anything but dead; for the 3 days we were in town there was plenty to do. In fact, we could have been entertained right from our accommodations, a canal boat named the African Queen because it was exactly this style of a 1927 steamboat that was used in the movie that won Humphrey Bogart his only Oscar. While relaxing on board or fishing from the deck did have its appeal, there was much to see in this once-Roman town with ties to our own Carcassonne. Continue reading “Acutely dead”

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Dealing with government, Life in France

Well I declare: income taxes

Declaring your taxes online

While April 15 will always stick in my head as “Tax Day”, it’s a little later in France and varies by a week or two depending upon where you live. For us this year it’s May 21 and I’m happy to say that because we didn’t change anything in the last 12 months, the online procedure was even easier than in 2018. We signed into our account with the tax office, Finances Publique, where we found that our information from last year had already been carried over to the forms for the current year. All that we had to do was to confirm our names and address, update the income figures and the dollar/euro exchange rate, put a check mark in the electronic signature box, and we were finished. Done in just a few minutes and we anticipate owing the same amount of income tax as before: zero. Continue reading “Well I declare: income taxes”

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Dealing with government, Life in France

Public transit survey

City bus at the castle. photo © Ville de Carcassonne – Julien Roche

Beginning in March of next year all public transportation in Luxembourg will be free to residents and visitors alike. No more tickets to ride the buses, trams, and trains within the borders of the country. The government hopes to ease some of the traffic congestion and the resulting pollution that results when 60 percent of the workers who commute use their cars. Later this summer the French parliament will take up the same issue for this country and in preparation, some members of the Senate have begun gathering opinions from the public. We only found out yesterday that you have just until the end of this month to answer an online survey (link below) regarding the possibility of free transports en commun here as well. Continue reading “Public transit survey”

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