Bacon here in France is called poitrine, but it is more like Canadian bacon. It doesn’t crisp up.
British friends have given me streaky bacon, but again, it’s more ham like than bacon.
So I was overjoyed when I found poitrine fumée (smoked) fine (thin sliced). It looked like American bacon but I couldn’t be sure.
I took it home and threw it in the skillet one morning, along with French toast.
As soon as I saw it cooking, I texted two American friends with pictures. So happy to share my news that I let the bacon get a bit dark.
“Are there bones?” One American friend asked and I had to laugh.
We have had gristle or bacon in the poitrine.
No bones!
What else do I miss here?
Bagels.
I tried my hand at making everything bagels, but I didn’t boil them as soon as I shaped them, so they rose again and didn’t hold their shape when I did boil then bake them. Still, they tasted good.
And sometimes I wonder how I managed to move from the 21st century to a place where most people don’t have clothes dryers.
I thought about that as I spread a white sheet over a radiator and imagined my grandmother being horrified that I’d given up the luxury of a dryer and fluffy towels, instead watching Earl hang clothes on the line on sunny days or drape them over river the drying rack.
It has been 10 months since I was in the States.
I might find bagels and bacon and even a clothes dryer, but more importantly, I’m about to spend a bit of time with two of my children.
They’re awaiting us in Dublin right now as Earl and I fly direct from Barcelona.
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.
Everything is back on track for our move to France.
We're scheduled to sell our house in early December, live with friends for a few weeks until we finish work, and then head down to Florida for Christmas.
From there, we'll fly to Paris.
Of course, things could fall through, but I have to be hopeful that things will workout and soon I'll see Paris again.
This is the Pont Alexandre III, a bridge over the Seine.
We stayed on the bridge until these lamps were lit.
Here I am in the Jardins du Luxembourg soaking up the sun.
Even the clouds are romantic in Paris. How dramatic.
I've never been in Paris during January, so that will be a new experience. It might be cold, but I have a beautiful gray wool coat with a full skirt and a black faux-fur collar. Plus, if we get cold walking, we can stop inside Laduree for a cup of tea and a pastry,
or even Angelina's for some of their famous hot chocolate.
And the best thing about our move will be that we won't be rushed. We'll have days and weeks and months to explore France.
Thanks for cheering me on as I continue this uphill journey to uproot our lives and settle in France.
Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France. I hope you'll visit each other's blogs and leave comments. Also post your blog info in the Linky below.
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.
Today, I clicked on some travel sites and started searching for plane tickets.
What?
Yes, in a short 130 days, I should be headed to France.
Here's a sunrise picture out the window. Can't wait to see it again.
Here's the screen in the seatback that showed me our progress throughout the trip.
Okay, there are a few hurdles yet.
The house hasn't sold. My husband hasn't retired yet, but, by golly, we're going.
My latest plan is to drive to my parents' house in Florida, store a few things, and drive to an airport down there -- Orlando or Fort Lauderdale or Miami.
Just entering those airports inn the travel search brought up airlines I wouldn't usually see if I flew out of Columbus or connected in Detroit. Where was Air France and Delta? Instead, TAP Portugal popped up.
And the flights would take over 11 hours with stops in places like Iceland or Dublin. Usually, we had a straight shot from Detroit to Paris.
A tired Earl on the tram through the airport once we arrived in Paris.
Pablo Picasso seems wide awake and a bit intrusive in the poster on the wall.
Maybe we won't be able to fly out of Florida. Maybe we'll have to fly out of Columbus.
But what I do know is that once those airline tickets are in our hands, there's no stopping us.
We have so many things to figure out.
We need to order new birth certificates and marriage certificates and have them translated into French. We're looking at health insurance to cover us for the entire year. We'll need to share our bank accounts to prove we have enough money to survive for a year in France without working (which shouldn't be a problem once we finally sell the house).
The only catch is that we need to show we have a place to stay for the year. We actually are planning to move around quite a bit. As I shared a few weeks ago, we are scheduled to house sit for a menagerie of animals in January. So we'll start there and we are still negotiating for house sits in Aude and the Pays de Loire in February and March. (Fewer animals at those houses). And, of course, we can also rent a place to stay through Air B&B.
In Pezenas
In Beziers
Or in the mountains of Quillan.
We actually want to stay some more in our chosen towns to see if they are the right fit for us.
I'm generally an optimistic person who thinks that surely the rules can be bent for me. I'm not sure why I think that since I can't recall a time when the rules were actually changed to allow me to do what I wanted. So I messaged my friend Delana to ask her what to do. Maybe she can claim she invited us to stay with her for the year.
Or maybe we can talk to our friends in Nantes and see if they will write a letter saying that we will be their guests. Can you imagine how complicated it might be to convince a French-speaking person to claim we'll be their guests but we won't actually be their guests? I can picture the hilarity that would ensue as our friends try to figure out how to tell us that they don't want us to stay for the entire year, or they expect us to stay and we never show up. I'm sure there's a way around this.
As the time grows near, I'm more and more excited and ignoring some of the negatives that loom ahead, like selling the house.
I'm sure we'll have all the visa details worked out by the time we make our appointment at the French consulate in Chicago and travel there for our appointments. How can they turn down a Francophile like me?
Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your link below and visit each other's blogs to share your love for France.
My hands are covered with dust and my brain is muddled after spending a few hours in the basement clearing off bookshelves.
I have so many photo albums filled, mostly, with pictures of my children throughout their growing up years. Once Grace hit 12 or so, we switched to digital photos, scattered throughout the landscape of my computer, but easy to carry with me to France.
As I'm easily shifting books into giveaway bags, I wonder what to do with the photo albums. Do I take all the pictures out and save them in boxes?
Do I send the photos to a digital site and ask them to put them all on flash drives so I can carry them with me in my computer? I know that it's about $250 for 250 photos from Legacybox. I probably have thousands of pictures. Which do I discard and which do I keep?
And although I can easily get rid of books, knowing I won't move them to France with me, I can't get rid of my husband's books, so the shelves still hold things like Leroy Nieman paintings and the History of Baseball, not to mention some ancient books that don't even have covers any more. I wonder how we'll ever sort through everything.
I came across a Student Survival Guide to Wilmington College. That's where I went the last two years of my college. Why do I still have this? I've moved it from Ohio to Washington D.C. to Florida to Michigan and back to Ohio for more than 30 years.
That's my brother with his back toward the camera.
My brother is on the cover but you only see him from the back. Is that why I saved it? I asked if he wanted it and he said yes!
Then I found this newspaper clipping.
My best friend got married 32 years ago right after she graduated from college, and I was the maid of honor. I held onto the clipping. Then I was the maid of honor again at her second wedding. She finally didn't invite me to the third wedding and this one has worked out. I don't think I need to hold onto the newspaper clipping any more.
Some things are easy to discard. But what do I do with all those photo albums?
If I was moving from the UK, I could load them all into my car or a moving van, but I can only take things on a plane.
Any advice? What would you do?
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