Arrivederci

We are off to Tuscany for 4 nights.

Culture and museums.

Food. 

Shopping

Florence, Siena, Chianti. Montepulciano.

We are staying in a gorgeous little Agriturismo - which is a working farm/B&B. 

It's in the Chianti region.  

Chianti = Wine. 

Visiting wineries.Wine-y goodness.

Drinking Tasting wine.

M is designated driver.  He doesn't know this yet. 

I'll tell him when we get there ....

Should be a fun trip!

Later suckers!!

xxxx



PS - Will post photos from Barcelona and Tuscany when I return
I PINKIE SWEAR!!

Always in moderation

The wise Madame Lily Bollinger

“I drink my Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it — unless I’m thirsty.”

-Madame Bollinger-

*** I saw this over on Lavender and Onions Blog and thought it delightfully apropos. ***

B is for Bisounours

Yeah Yeah, Barcelona write up is en route.

So many great photos from sightseeing and cruising around.
So many truly horrifying sangria-soaked photos too.
Censorship is sometimes a good thing my furry friends. But it’s a-coming.


In the meantime. A random collection of thoughts.


Things that have amused or pleased me this week

I received my first ever speeding fine - (yeah, I know this should technically be in the “things that made me an angry gnome” category – but stick with me... ) it’s from the morning I was .. um .. . clearly racing, to get to Marseille airport to pick up Mezzle.

Anyways – it’s annoying but no biggie. What I found deeply amusing – so amusing in fact that I called M at work to share this with him is that, unlike almost all other paperwork in France – you can pay this online. Cool, that’s easier than having to line up at La Poste/the Tabac/ random building that you’ll never find.
The funny bit is that unlike EVERY SINGLE GOVERNMENT WEBSITE FOR ANYTHING REMOTELY USEFULL, this particular website is quickly and painlessly available in grammatically perfect English. Of COURSE! Websites explaining taxation, medical information, visas, legal requirements – no need to translate those or provide a translation service. Shit no. Website for paying fines – available in SIX languages.
Had to chuckle.

M has taken to calling me Bisounour. Which is ‘Care-Bear’ in French. Literally “Kisses-bear”. Heh heh.

We also had a rather bizarre conversation one night in bed when I’d pretty much dozed off and M felt that that was a perfectly good time to start wondering aloud whether Care-Bears have special powers, and whether their personality type affect their powers, or just their “look”, and what exactly a Care-Bear stare did to its victim ..... ah, the joys of being married means we never run out of important things to discuss.

Side note - when looking for a picture of a Care-Bear I stumbled upon this, hilarious website:

  Five Reasons Why the Care Bears are Really Communist. !!!!!

More warm fuzzies:

M and I are having really great, productive French lessons once a week and our teacher told me that she thinks my French is actually really good, that she is going to “pull” it out of me. Smiley face! I actually have a write up of our Barcelona trip in French I could share with ya’ll ... maybe I should just pop it into Google translate from French to English and see what comes out and post that ..... probably be about as coherent as what I usually blurt out hey!

I was asked to be a judge at the Final of the Speech competitions that have been held at all three schools I teach at this week and the whole experience was delightful. The kids were so good, so enthusiastic/shitting themselves and gave such hilarious, crazy speeches. Bonus was that one of my darling 4eme students and one of my 5eme Theatre students came equal first and they will now go on to represent the three schools at the big Grand Final.

On a school note – I have survived the first 7 weeks and am now on holidays! It has been pretty hard going and I’m certainly not quite hitting my strides just yet, but I feel like the students are starting to get a handle on who I am and what I’m about, so that’s good, and there have been some really successful moments and some very stressful too!

On the other hand ... 



Things that have not amused



These two happened today at the supermarket:

Umm, dudes, it’s OCTOBER. I love Christmas

But seriously - Chill the F out. 

This is all kinds of gross and is not what I want to see when I’m reaching for my mince meat for my Tacos. 

Mmm, tacos.

We have had some spectacular autumnal weather lately – cold in the mornings and clear as clear in the afternoons – just gorgeous. Apparently though, there is some unwritten rule that if it’s beautiful, clear and still, then you should go into your backyard or onto your property and burn stuff. What the hell?
 Every single day this week there have been plumes of smoke rising in the air, dotted all the way back from school to home. Yesterday there was such a heavy layer of smoke I thought Cannes MUST be burning to the ground in some anti-Sarkozy riot. Mais non, just people burning away willy-nilly.

All this smoke is ruining the fresh autumnal air.
Autumnal.


And the strikes. Ah the strikes. I don’t want to get too political as .... well frankly because I don’t care enough and this blog is many things (full of crap mostly), but it’s hardly political. But the strikes are on-going and causing a lot of headaches and a lot of heated debate.

I have no desire to offend my Frenchie friends, for whom la grève is a part of the culture and fabric of national identity. It is seen as their right and their mode of communication.

But personally, I don’t get it. It’s NOT part of my culture and I feel myself getting riled up and irritated by the whole thing. I cannot understand how, in a democracy, the only way to convey your message, to bring your agenda to the attention of the government is to go on strike, to rally, to march, to block supplies, to disrupt transport, to hold the population hostage to your cause, to torch cars and schools and to make life generally pretty darn uncomfortable for the people you purport to speak for. I understand that there’s more at stake here than raising the retirement age from 60 to 62, because seriously – get a grip guys – France has an ageing population, take a long hard look at how that will play out in the long run. But there’s a lot of unhappiness in France and this is how many people feel their voices are best heard. I think there is a fundamental problem with this. Strikes seem churlish, childish and it feels like they harm most the people who would be on the side of the unions.

Suffice to say I am over it. And I am over the constant news saturation of it. M loves to watch his news channels. I ....... don’t.

I put my headphones in and watch Glee instead. Much better.



Oooo – and finally - we have booked our flights home for Christmas – yahooooooieee!
AND – we are going to drive to Florence next Thursday and spend 3 nights in Tuscany.
Noice.


That’ll do Donkey, that’ll do.


xx Bisounours

A fine blog-mance

After exchanging blog comments and facebook messages, I was delighted when the wonderfully funny Miss Mez told me she’d found re-donk-ulously cheap Ryanair flights to Marseille and would be flying down from Edinburgh for a long weekend.

Mez was after three things:

• Sunshine
• French food
• Fun times

And I hope M and I were able to deliver.

After picking her up from the Marseille airport on Saturday morning (M was at home watching the replay of the Grand Final – and yes, he was wearing his Crows gurnsey – bien sur!) we made a stop in Aix-en-Provence for a beautiful wander through the old town, a quick shop at the gorgeous Provencal markets and then a long, restful lunch in the sunshine.

Mez was holding up particularly well after about 3 hours sleep, but clearly needed a bit of a rest! Unfortunately there was to be no rest for the wicked. I had hoped to quickly swing past the IKEA in Toulon, as we were pretty close by. This plan was thwarted by the fact that all the roads into Toulon were SHUT due to some strike/Industrial action brou-ha-ha (side note: I am OVER all the Industrial action at the moment – but I’ll save that for another rant/blog) – so we were stuck in traffic for THREE HOURS in a car that was slowly overheating due to the constant idling. We eventually made it out of there by essentially doing a massive U-Turn and heading back towards Marseille and then on to Cannes. ANNOYING.

The rest of her stay was less dramatic (I think) but totally lovely. M proved his worth in the kitchen by cooking us up a delicious roast chicken with all the vegies we’d purchased at the market and Sunday was spent at St Paul (which Mez loved and where she took many beautiful, artistic, cool photos) and then soaking up the sun on the balcony and at the beach.

With both of us heading to work on the Monday, Mez was left to her own devices in Cannes and then cooked us up a stunning Greek-style beef and vegetables dish. Yum-o.

It was incredibly lovely to see her. We’ve worked out that we essentially had the same childhood as we can recite lines to all the same movies and treated M to a delightful rendition of all the musical numbers from The Chipmunk Adventure Movie.
He loved that.

We also traded stories, reminisced about choir and school days and generally talked shit and laughed a lot.

We hope to get up to Scotland soon to see her (and Stu!) again.

I’ll let Mezzle post all the great snaps she took, but here are a few from when we were at the markets in Aix and one of the two of us at St Paul.

Hope to see you soon. xxx

Easy like Sunday mornings

I wrote this literally 2 weeks ago - *warning* - it contains serious rage against Easyjet.

Our weekend in Paris was great.

We didn’t get off to the “flying” start we’d hoped for though.

Knowing that I couldn’t take any time off work, our only hope to get to Paris for the Mumford & Sons concert on the Friday night was a 17.00 flight that should have got us in at 18.30, leaving plenty of time to get across town to our hotel, dump our bag and head to the venue.

We had synchronised watches and military-style precision plans in place for getting to the airport and, demonstrating all that we’ve learnt from watching The Amazing Race, made sure we were at the front of the line to ensure seats at the front of the plane and a speedy, hand luggage only exit.

Our Easyjet flight was delayed. By an hour and 10 minutes.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccckkkkk Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Of course it was. OF COURSE.

Easyjet is always ALWAYS delayed coming in and out of Nice. We knew it might happen but we were still pissed when it did.

Who ever came up with the name “Easy” jet is a sick, twisted individual who deserves a punch to the gonads.
Flying with Easyjet is NOT easy. It's painful, frustrating and infuritaing.

A more appropriate name would be "yes-we're-the-cheapest-but-we'll-totally-screw-you-over-jet"

Once in Paris, it became a race against time to try and get a taxi from Gare du Nord to our hotel.
 No such luck – I have no idea why, we just seriously couldn’t get one so we decided to leg it, only then it began to rain. So now we’re running, in the rain. Wonderful. We arrived at our hotel, dishevelled, puffing (me) read in the face (me again) seriously late and soaking wet. A further delay as we waited for a taxi we were finally on our way to the concert.

I don’t know how much of it we’d missed, and I was really disappointed that we were so late, but it was all worthwhile when we walked in and found a spot and Mumford & Sons launched into a rousing rendition of “Little Lion Man” that tore the roof off.

The concert was fantastic. They were wonderful live and the atmosphere in the small venue was electric. So good, and so worth the hassle, just such a shame we got there late.

The next morning it was up at 05.30 to make our way to an Aussie Pub to watch the AFL Grand Final. I was sure that it was going to be like when we were watching the World Cup in Rome and we were the only people in the bar watching the Australia game.

Not so at all.
The pub was huge, it had about 4 or 5 big screens and was packed to the rafters.
And so many Collingwood supporters. I’m surprised they’d even know how to read and write well enough to fill out the Passport Application form ....

My stipulation that M could wear his Crows guernsey only if other people were wearing theirs was totally negated by the three other losers wearing their Crows gurnseys.

The boy was happy though. Even happier when he enjoyed his meat pie & Pale Ale.

Pies as Plat du Jour - not such a common sight in France. First pie in nearly 2 years. And it was gooooooood.
Even if it was at 7.15am.



Then the game was over, and all the bemused punters had spilled out onto the street, shaking their heads in disbelief over the result. We still had a whole day up our sleeves, so had a quick look through our Paris guidebook to try and find some of the attractions we hadn’t done – it’s getting trickier! We need a more detailed Paris guidebook now! Other than the requisite visit to Pierre Hermes for, I shit you not, THE BEST macarons in the world (the chocolate and passionfruit ones = orgasmic) we had a free day in the best city in the world, so it was off to explore some as yet unseen sights.

First up we visited the Rodin museum, which was gorgeous and then a quick lunch near Montparnasse, a walk through the cemetery and then on to the Catacombs.

Gardens at the Rodin museum

I really loved this sculpture - the hands are so expressive

Lovely autumnal light.

Autumnal is one of my favourite words.

Autumnal.

Catacombs. Bone-y, a little freaky and - frankly - kind of boring. 

Killer hangover.

heh.

That night we had a delicious – and meaty – dinner at Le Relais d'Entrecote.
No menu, just a quick question on how you’d like your steak cooked and then all the steak and frites you could possibly eat. Delicious and well worth the queue.

Next morning we met up with Aussie friends Jane and Bernard for a long, gossipy brunch and then it was a pleasant wander around the Marais and buying up big in WH Smith before we had to hop on our train back to Cannes.

So, despite the rough start. A great weekend. Ahh Paris. Je t'aime.


xxx

mea culpa

I'm a bad blogger.

And I'm sorry.

To my 6 remaining readers who have expressed their disappointment in my lack of blogging.
I'll try to be better.

I wasn't helped by the fact that when I DID try to upload photos and details about our trip to Paris and Mez's visit, blogger decided to be a grade A douchebag and informed me that I had no more memory/photo storage which required a lot of stuffing about with Google accounts and Picasa web albums and basically a whole lot of hassle I didn't have time for.

Anyways. We should be back on track now, so there will be a bit of backlog to clear first, and then we'll be up to date.

Hope you're still with me.

xxx