Life in France

Cat on a hot tile roof

This is not a prison wall

Well, most of that title is correct. There was a cat. We have a tile roof. The cat was on the tile roof. It was however, at 3:00 AM, so it probably wasn’t very hot and he wasn’t up there the whole time. How do we know that? There is a motion detector in our courtyard that turns on a light if it detects any thing/one. Since our bedroom is upstairs well out of sight of being overlooked by any neighbors we don’t have any window treatments. That means when the summer sun comes up at 6 o’clock there’s no sleeping late. It also means that when the pitch black is interrupted in the middle of the night with a very bright spot light, we are suddenly awake, even from a deep sleep. Continue reading “Cat on a hot tile roof”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

How to saddle Oxford

Oxford’s Trout Inn

We’d been to Oxford several times before, but never with a guide. Friends Sue and Michael invited us to spend a couple of days with them seeing the sites that we had not already visited. Fresh from our time in Sheffield we happily donned our hiking boots instead of our Saddle Oxfords, and set out to see more of the town. Fish and water became the theme as we set off out of town along the river on a clear day that quickly turned rainy.  To escape the weather we dashed in to the Perch pub for a fireside beer before continuing on along the canal to our ultimate goal, the Trout Inn. More beer and a delicious early dinner followed. Continue reading “How to saddle Oxford”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

On the cutting edge in Sheffield

Ordering a beer with Pete at the Sheffield Tap

Whether it’s kitchen, pocket, or hunting knives, scissors, razors, or even letter openers, if it’s sharp, it has probably been made in Sheffield, England since at least the 14th century. The local football team is nicknamed The Blades. There are restaurants that keep with that naming tradition including Cutlers, Silversmiths, Cross Scythes, and Steel Foundry. There’s even a Grindstone Pub. There are at least 2 dozen breweries in town such as Steel City, On the Edge, and Toolmakers. Thanks to our friends Gaynor and Pete, who were the reason we went to this north-central English city, we got to sample real ale all over town. Continue reading “On the cutting edge in Sheffield”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Take the last train to London

London’s St. Pancras train station awaited us

On most days of the week it’s possible to take one train from the south of France all the way through to London, arriving in time to join the after-theater crowd for a late dinner. It starts in Marseille, so from Carcassonne you have to take one other train to catch the 3:15 PM Eurostar departure, and that’s exactly what we did last month. We are close enough to walk to the airport here from where we could fly directly to London, but we love the train. It’s relaxing, you can show up at the station a few minutes ahead rather than hours before departure, you depart from and arrive in the center of town, and leisurely drinks, snacks, and meals can be enjoyed with plenty of leg room while listening to music, reading a book, or just gazing out the window as the landscape glides by. Continue reading “Take the last train to London”

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Life in France

Eat this, not that

Nut trees by the canal

I was going to save this blog post until later in the year, closer to Christmas, with an appropriate title, something like “Chestnuts roasting”. We were walking home along the Canal-du-Midi and noticed all of these nuts on the ground. Gravity had been our friend because the shells had broken open when they hit the sidewalk and spilled their prizes before us: chestnuts. We knew that’s what they were because they had that familiar deep glossy brown shine that we had seen roasting in huge flat pans at food festivals all over Europe in the fall. The French word for brown is marron, which is typically the same word they use for these treats.   Eagerly we picked up as many as we could see, dropped them into our ever-present backpacks and took them home for cooking. Bill dutifully scored each nut individually to keep them from exploding when heated, spread them out on a cookie sheet, and placed them in the oven until the smell alone said that they were ready. Then he tasted one…. Continue reading “Eat this, not that”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Day trip to Nîmes

The arena of Nîmes

Writing this blog is a lot of fun because it gives us a chance to share our experiences and perhaps help others who are considering a move to France. We have an extra boost when someone who reads our posts gets in touch to say that they will be in town and could we all get together for a drink or a meal. Often people are passing through Carcassonne so it’s easy to meet at the main square and then settle in at one of the many cafés there. This summer Anne and Eliot were staying along the Mediterranean’s Côte d’Azur (you know—Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez, to name drop a few) and asked about meeting up somewhere between our home and theirs. A quick check of the map confirmed that we’d be spending the day in Nîmes. Continue reading “Day trip to Nîmes”

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Fill-er-up

Sparkling wine in Limoux

There are many advantages to not having a car. The most obvious ones revolve around money. If you haven’t already paid for the vehicle then there are monthly loan or lease payments plus your insurance bill to go with that. In the US, although we didn’t have to take our 2 Hondas in for service very often, each time we did it always seemed to average 400 dollars. Parking fees for us are now nonexistent. I once paid 40 dollars to park for an hour and a half in midtown Manhattan one evening. There are no repair bills to consider for minor dents and scratches that aren’t worth turning into your insurance company. No tokens to buy to feed into the meter at the automatic car wash. And of course, no gasoline. The average cost of essence in France is 1.37 euro per liter which equates to 4.35 dollars per gallon, but that still doesn’t mean that we don’t get to say fill-er-up! Continue reading “Fill-er-up”

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