Money drop

We love the game shows on the French TV stations. They happen to be broadcast during our happy hour(s) every evening. We watch with the subtitles on in French so we can comprehend some of the words that are spoken so quickly. Money Drop is a great show where money is placed on trap doors of the answers and the losing answers drop the money away back to the vault.

Plane over rooftops
Another load of tourists arriving

We think of this show every day as the planes line up to land at the local airport and they have to pass by the Cité and over the Bastide St. Louis. Yes there might be a bit of noise as they fly directly overhead but the planes are filled with tourists coming to the area to spend their vacation (and Euros) in the region. Each and every tourist dropping out of the sky helps our local economy and in turn helps keep the taxes lower for those of us living here on a permanent basis. As the region is known for the wine production and the two UNESCO world heritage sites there are not many large businesses as a tax base, although this is the world’s largest wine producing region and we are doing our part to keep the vintners in production. Continue reading “Money drop”

Temptations

Baguette in a backpack
Baguette in a backpack

Last Wednesday we rode the bus for 15 minutes to one of the zones commerciales on the outskirts of Carcassonne. These are the shopping areas with lots of big box stores and parking lots that just won’t fit on the narrow streets in town laid out almost 900 years ago. But what we were in search of would fit (sort of, as you see in the photo) inside our backpacks: bread. Continue reading “Temptations”

Your train is a bus

Bus at stationWe love trains, so much so that over the years many of our European vacations were planned around train schedules and where we could find a station. Once we had settled on France as the country to where we’d be moving, we then had to choose a city or town and one item that was on the must-have list for any final choice was a train station. So then, why do you see a picture of a bus here? Continue reading “Your train is a bus”

When east is west

The Dome, 1728, in Carcassonne
The Dome, built in 1728 in Carcassonne

Today we took a city bus for the first time in years. Living in Chicago and LA, that’s how we got to work or anyplace else we couldn’t walk to since we didn’t have a car. Now that we’re back to foot transportation we opted for a bus since it would have otherwise taken an hour to get to the store, it was cool and rainy, and we anticipated carrying back a 40-pound (18 kg.) box. It was worth a euro each way. Continue reading “When east is west”

In training

TGV at the Carcassonne station
TGV at the Carcassonne station

The weather forecast for today was rain so we planned a relaxing day in. That meant a bit of a sleep in, a leisurely morning with a full pot of coffee to go with a baguette and croissants, and nothing particularly planned for the afternoon. Then the sun came out and Bill said “Let’s go to Italy. There’s a train at 11:32”. Uh oh, the last time he started a sentence with “Let’s…” we ended up moving to France. This turned out to be just an exercise to see if we really could be spontaneous and take advantage of being within a 20-minute walk of the station. Continue reading “In training”