Snow and Sea

More on our recent trip to France...

As we drove along the coast, we kept seeing scenery like this: snow-capped mountains in the distance, with the Med in the foreground. Awesome. I can't remember what town this is in the background, but it was where we stopped to get coffee - a real beach town that looked, at first glance, to be completely shuttered up. Then we discovered the harbor area where all the sailboats were waiting patiently for spring and some of the cafes were open.

This is a pretty typical fortress for southern France. This one just happens to be on the edge of the sea. Of course I can't remember the name of this town either (where are the maps when you need them?). I'll do some research and get back to you.

Our City House

Remember I said the road in front of our townhouse in Saint-Chinian was under construction? Like totally torn up.

This is a view of the back of our little house. It wasn't fancy and it wasn't big but like I said, the location was great.

They don't hate everything American

They pick and choose. Somehow they manage to love Ben & Jerry's. We were in Bruges on Free Cone Day.

In fairness, you hear less anti-Americanism in Belgium than you do in France, and even there it's all among the political pundits. Most ordinary Frenchmen have a pretty positive view of American culture. Of course, it's about as distorted as our view of French culture.

That ol' timey feel

I guess you can say that the porch is now officially finished, since they came and took the lock box off the front door day before yesterday. And this is exactly the reason we wanted it, to give our house that old-fashioned feel of days long gone when we all had time to sit and relax. And surf the web.

An Experiment in "City" Living

During our recent trip to southern France (pictures to be posted soon, we promise!), we stayed in a townhouse just a short walk from the main square in the village of Saint-Chinian. In past week-long vacations to France and Italy we've stayed in nice accommodations outside of town, which meant we had to drive to buy groceries, eat out, or do anything. But this time we decided to try living in town. And we liked it. While "town" was pretty small, there were several restaurants and cafes, three bakeries (although I never saw the third one), and a decent Sunday and Thursday morning market. Best of all, though, was the wine store almost across the street from our house. David and our friend Steve made a habit of visiting almost daily to have the conaisseurs there pick out a wine for our dinner, whether it was roast chicken from the market or asparagus (from the market) rolled in ham (from one of the butchers in town). Since Saint-Chinian has its own appellation (AOC) for wine from the region, there were a lot of wines to choose from, and almost everything we drank was really good, even to this diehard beer drinker!

As for our experiment in city living, we gave the house mixed reviews, but the location was ideal. Of course, the road in front of the house being totally torn up and thus closed to traffic made it quiet, in the front. It was a little noisier from truck traffic at the back of the house, but since that traffic was not immediately behind us, it wasn't all that bad. The house itself was adequate for the four of us but it was a good thing none of us is big or we wouldn't have fit in the showers. Can't beat the price though - we got an off-season rate of 275 euros plus a 60 euro cleaning fee for the four of us for a week.

We look forward to continuing our research into the many vacation accommodation possibilities in southern France (most of which, interestingly, seem to be owned by Brits...).