Life in France

Wall art

Harlequin mosaic
Harlequin mosaic

Since we don’t have a car and use the sidewalks in town extensively, we’re always peering into shop windows to see what’s new. Last month it was pretty easy to tell when the semi-annual country-wide sales were finished since the big and splashy SALE! signs were replaced with merchandise promoting fall fashions and back to school supplies. Ugh, I still get a pit in my stomach at this time of year when that threat of the end of summer vacation and the beginning of a new school year looms in the air. The other day when I averted my eyes from one more display of pencil boxes and backpacks, something got my attention. Continue reading “Wall art”

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Life in France

The king’s touch

Gentle curve of the Canal-du-Midi
Gentle curve of the Canal-du-Midi

Louis XIV, the Sun King, always comes to mind when someone mentions Versailles. We’ve been to that magnificent palace just outside of Paris a few times and we always come away impressed with its size, grandeur, and this shear feat of 17th century construction. Although we’re 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the capital city, the king’s influence is equally prominent here as a result of his royal decree in 1666 that created the Canal-du-Midi.

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Life in France

Oh it’s wineing time again

This week's wine advertisements
This week’s wine advertisements

Twice a week our mailbox is filled with flyers from lots of businesses; both national chains and local businesses vying for our euros. These are called pubs, short for publicités that you and I might recognize with the English word “advertisements” that we could easily stop, but why spoil all the fun, especially at this time of year. It’s grape harvest time so every catalog that we receive is featuring wine.  In the photo you’ll see just a few of the pubs that arrived today. Looks like we need to go shopping! Continue reading “Oh it’s wineing time again”

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Life in France

If they only knew

The picnicking wall...or so it seems
The picnicking wall…or so it seems

On Sunday Bill and I were walking through the park that runs along the Aude river here in Carcassonne. It’s very popular on weekends for all kinds of sports activities and is a great place to watch the fireworks over the castle on the 14th of July. Since the weather was nice, lots of people were picnicking including the group you see here sitting along a wall behind which runs a mill stream. The two of us had a bit of a chuckle wondering if these outdoor diners realized the original purpose of the wall upon which they were sitting. Continue reading “If they only knew”

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Life in France

Art day

Fly away to the Fine Arts Museum
Fly away to the Museum of Fine Arts

In elementary school, one day a week was devoted to art. Although it was not a subject at which I excelled, I still looked forward to those days because it meant that we could temporarily put aside long division, cursive writing, and vocabulary lists in favor of crayons, colored pencils, and poster paint. Bill and I had our own grown up version of Art Day last week and we didn’t even have to get messy. Continue reading “Art day”

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Life in France

Sunday in the village

The flea market linking the "new" city to the old
The flea market linking the “new” city to the old

When we first started thinking about moving to France, we skipped right over the glittering excitement of Paris and envisioned a quintessential rural village with stone cottages, a mill by the stream, blooming flowers everywhere and the tiny lanes alive with chatter from friendly local residents. While that ideal still exists here, reality stepped in when choosing to live without a car meant that we would need to be within walking distance of all of our daily needs with easy access to public transit for longer journeys. Although we don’t live in a rural location, this past Sunday reminded us that we still found that village life we were seeking.

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Life in France

All change

Sink on tank
Sink on top of the tank

What a difference a day makes. Last week, on the last day of August we bought a new toilet. We paid for it at the front of the store and the salesman sent us around to a side entrance to retrieve it. To our good fortune, the young man who got it out of the stock room opened the box and that’s when we discovered that the tank was broken. He explained that we could wait for a new one to arrive at his location in 3 weeks or if we were willing to pick it up at their store in Narbonne, they had one on the shelf and he would reserve it for us. Visions of a city by the Mediterranean Sea, only 30 minutes away with the item we wanted in stock made the decision for us. That’s when things got lost in translation. Continue reading “All change”

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