Dreaming of France -- Southern France

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Yesterday, I had a lovely Skype conversation with my friend Delana who moved to Aix en Provence for a year and never came back to the States. 

She's answering questions about how to transition to France. So we talked about things like when to apply for our Carte de Sejour. I didn't even know that we needed to do that!

Delana suggested we come over in May for a few weeks to feel out the area in Languedoc and decide where we would like to rent an apartment for a few months while looking for a house.

Earl and I both jumped at the chance to visit France this year and immediately started calculating how expensive the trip would be. 

I found an apartment in Nimes for 10 days. Nimes is right on the cusp between Provence and Languedoc, but technically in Languedoc.

 I thought Nimes would be a perfect place to stay so that we could visit Delana and tour Languedoc. That's when I remembered that Earl and I had visited Nimes before, on our bicycle trip through Provence.

We started in Avignon. 

This is me in front of the Pont de Avignon

We rode our bikes 40 miles that first day from Avignon to see the Pont du Gard, the famous Roman aqueduct.

I don't know why, but it surprised me that we could ride our bikes across something that old!

And here's another shot after we had crossed. 

At the end of the day, we arrived in Nimes where we spent the night. Our hotel was located across the street from a Roman amphitheater, and we also toured some Roman gardens. 

As much as we'd love to, we may not get to visit France this spring, but I know that next May we'll definitely be flying across the ocean as we look for a new home in France.

Dreaming of France -- That's Paris: An Anthology of Life, Love and Sarcasm in the City of Light

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

When I found out that Vicki Lesage and Adria J. Cimino were putting together an anthology of stories in Paris, I got excited. What's better than hearing stories about Paris?

Some of these short stories are blips of experience in Paris. Others are more complicated and slowly unwound with the scenery of Paris as the setting.
Cimino wrote a story, "Love Unlocked," about an activist trying to convince people to stop attaching locks to Pont des Arts, a bridge over the Seine. She chains herself to the bridge and meets a man searching through the locks.

"I'm unlocking it." He pulled a small key out of the pocket of his jeans, released the lock and tossed it into the trashcan a few feet away.
"Why did you do that?"
"Our story is over. We broke up today."
"You only wanted to get rid of your lock because the relationship is over? Typical. You're not doing this because you care about the bridge or our environment."

Some of the stories aren't about Paris. They are simply human stories that are set in Paris. Like "La Vie en Rose" by Marie Vareille about a young widow whose friends force her to go out with them after two years of widowhood. In a French bar, she meets a man who doesn't treat her as if she's fragile, and she begins to feel whole again.
In "Le Chemin du Dragon," an intriguing story by Didier Quemener, takes place in Pere-Lachaise cemetery at the mausoleum of Chopin. The young musician is about to make a discovery in the dark of the graveyard.
Along with enjoyable stories, I learned some things about moving to Paris, like the fact I should get an international driver's license before I move so I don't go through the pains that Jennie Goutet wrote about in "Driving Me Crazy." She spent three years and thousands of dollars for driving school, so that she could get her French license.
These stories are lovely little appetizers for those of us hungry for Paris.
The book is available on Kindle at Amazon for 4.99.
Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave a comment and visit each other's blogs to see more examples of people Dreaming of France.
 

Dreaming of France -- Cats and Postcards

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Inspired by a couple of blogs that I read today, I'm posting pictures of postcards from France with cats. It's kind of a tradition for us, since about 1998 to send home postcards with pictures of cats that look like our cats.
I was reminded of that tradition today when Corey from Tongue in Cheek first talked about pictures on her refrigerator. Then I visited Virginia at Paris Through My Lens and she had a picture of cat lounging on the walk in front of a building with gorgeous green shutters. At Paris and Beyond, Genie had an fluffy orange cat sauntering along the sidewalk.  And then Anne in Oxfordshire writes frequently about her postcard collection. They all came together and I decided to write about some postcards from France with cats, and those postcards are currently stuck on my refrigerator.

Our last cat, the one we got when Grace was a 1-year-old, was totally black like this cat. When traveling in Paris with my friend Michelle, I sent this postcard home to Earl and the kids. I joked that they had left the door open so Buddy had escaped and traveled to Paris.

The next time Earl and I traveled to France, we went to Provence and sent this postcard home to the kids. Again, a black cat that was anxious to get from Ohio to France. 

We never seem to have any trouble finding postcards of cats in different French locations.

 
When Grace traveled to France, she sent home a postcard with cats too.
Does your family have a France tradition?

Dreaming of France -- Peaches for Father Francis

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.

I finished reading  Peaches for Father Francis by Joanne Harris. She's also the author of Chocolat, the book and movie set in a small town in France where a single mother and her daughter are judged by the people there.
In this new book, a sequel to Chocolat, the main character Vianne is living in Paris when she receives a letter from an old friend who has died. The letter tells her presciently that she is needed back in her old village. The priest there, who had disapproved of Vianne, is struggling with the new Muslim population who have moved to the village. The acceptance of Muslims in this very Catholic country is obviously an issue the whole country is dealing with as they argue about whether Muslim girls can wear headscarves in school. I hadn't considered that the reaction to this mandate might be that Muslim families simply keep their teenage girls home from school.
In addition to dealing with these cultural rifts, this book combines a lot of the things everyone loves about France, the meals and the time to enjoy life, family and friends.
 The story is told through the viewpoints of both Vianne and Father Francis.  There's lots of small town intrigue and a little magic through the chocolate that Vianne finally makes to get a handle on the problems in the town.
The book dragged a bit, until about two-thirds in and then I stayed up much later than my bedtime because I just had to finish it.
It's worth a leisurely read to enjoy the atmosphere and the relationships.
Here's a photo that looks like a typical French village where Peaches for Father Francis was set.  Everytime we drive some place like this, I wonder how the cars will fit up the narrow road, especially when people are walking along.