Dreaming of France -- Picking a Place to Live

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.

If you were going to move to a new country, how would you choose where to live?
My husband and I have narrowed it down to a specific region of France. We chose it for the climate and the home prices, but how do we choose a town or a village?
We'd like to live in a charming village that has a market each week, and we'd prefer a town with a bakery and a few restaurants.
As we look at the map, there seem to be endless villages to choose from.
We searched for charming villages in the area and then we cross referenced with some of the best markets. Here are a few of the contenders:
Pezenas

Photo from TripAdvisor

Its Saturday market includes artisanale food, flowers, and clothes, according to golanguedoc.com. But the market gets crowded in the summer, according to the website. It might be too touristy for us, since an article on creme-de-languedoc.com says it has arts and crafts shops, restaurants and antique shops. That might be a terrific place to visit, but too we want to live in a village that is overrun with tourists throughout the summer? We've done that before when we lived in Florida, but, of course, the tourists and older people came in the winter for the warm weather. We definitely plan to visit Pezenas in May when we travel to France.

Roquebrun

This is another town that made the list of charming and best markets, but the article begins by saying it isn't easy to get to. That might discourage tourists, but it might also block us in more than we want. 

I think I might like to nestled against the mountains like this. 

This village has a market on Tuesdays and Fridays and is known for its wines, according to golanguedoc.com. A river runs along the town too, providing for some water activities like canoeing. 

Photo from flckr

That might be fun.

Olargues

The final village that makes both articles is the medieval town of Olarques. Apparently, it has a market on Sundays that features food, including cheeses and wild boar pate.

Plus, Olargues even makes the list of 151 most beautiful villages in France.

I'm interested to explore all of these places, plus so many more, and I hope that it just feels right when we find it.
How bout you? How would you narrow down where to live if it didn't depend on a job? What criteria would you choose?

The Final Year

One year from tomorrow, my husband and I will have packed up and sold our house. We will have limited our lives to four large suitcases, and we will be leaving to live in France.
One year!
I can't write this post tomorrow because I committed to a post for FranceBookTours, so instead I'm writing it today.
Why did we choose May 20? It's the week after Mother's Day. It's the end of the semester for school, and at least two of our children will be graduated from college.

Whoever took our picture, cut off the top of the Eiffel Tower!

I'm so fortunate that my husband bought into my France dream.

I've dragged him to France numerous times, and he even went once without me when depositing Grace in France. (She hates to fly.)

This was our first trip to France together. I think my husband
has a shirt tied around his waist, rather than really high pants.

We plan to spend a few days in Paris before we take a train to the South of France. We'll rent a house for three or four months while we determine which village we want to live in.

Here we are on a windy day in front of Versailles. 

I picture us riding our bicycles or the taking the train or a rental car to various villages on market day to get a feel for each one. When we figure out where we want to move, we'll start looking for a house.

Here we are on our bike trip in front of the Pont du Gard. 

By September, I hope we'll be in a French home of our own.

This was us in a Moroccan restaurant. The building is ancient. 

And, of course, I plan to take all of you along with us, and to share the ups and the downs of moving to a new country.

FranceBookTours -- In Another Life

CLICK ON THE BANNER TO READ REVIEWS, EXCERPT, INTERVIEW, GUEST-POST

I received a copy of In Another Life by Julie Christine Johnson in exchange for a fair review. And you can enter to win a paperback copy of the novel at the bottom of this post. Make sure you enter!

I was excited to start this novel set in Languedoc, France, which is the area my husband and I plan to move next year, and now I have an avalanche of images and history about the region that I can draw on.
This novel focuses on Lia who returns to France a year after her husband died in a bicycle accident to see if she can begin living again. That's a story I would have enjoyed -- to simply see her finding solace in the countryside and culture of France, but I hadn't counted on the magical elements in the story. Lia, a historian, finds that she is wrapped in a reincarnation story that stretches back 800 years to the tumultuous past of the region when the Cathars were killed by emissaries of the Catholic church. Lia has to figure out who the good guys and bad guys are over the 800-year chasm.
This book definitely kept me guessing as to what would happen next. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, a new twist would send me in another direction. The story is full of romance across the centuries and historical mysteries solved, at least in the novel. Now I'll have to investigate it to see how much of this historical fiction was history

(Historical Fiction/Contemporary Women’s Fiction/ Fantasy/Romance) Release date: February 2, 2016 at Sourcebooks 368 pages ISBN: 978–2954168197 Website | Goodreads

SYNOPSIS

Historian Lia Carrer has finally returned to southern France, determined to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. But instead of finding solace in the region’s quiet hills and medieval ruins, she falls in love with Raoul, a man whose very existence challenges everything she knows about life–and about her husband’s death. As Raoul reveals the story of his past to Lia, she becomes entangled in the echoes of an ancient murder, resulting in a haunting and suspenseful journey that reminds Lia that the dead may not be as far from us as we think. Steeped in the rich history and romantic landscape of the Languedoc region, In Another Life is a story of love that conquers time and the lost loves that haunt us all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by Al Bergstein

Julie Christine Johnson is the author of the novels In Another Life (February 2016, Sourcebooks Landmark) and The Crows of Beara (September 2017, Ashland Creek Press). Her short stories and essays have appeared in several journals, including Emerge Literary Journal, Mud Season Review; Cirque: A Literary Journal of the North Pacific Rim; Cobalt, the anthologies Stories for Sendai; Up, Do: Flash Fiction by Women Writers; and Three Minus One: Stories of Love and Loss and featured on the flash fiction podcast, No Extra Words. She holds undergraduate degrees in French and Psychology and a Master’s in International Affairs. A runner, hiker, and wine geek, Julie makes her home on the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington state with her husband. In Another Life is her first novel.

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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.