sea beauty

a peak at what's outside our door.

I'll admit, I'll miss this when we leave.

relief

there's light at the end of the tunnel!

 

After weeks, scratch that...MONTHS, I picked up my temporary French resident permit this afternoon! Enough with the paperwork... I think it's over... for now, anyway! As Mark said, while we were waiting, you learn about Ellis Island in school and you think "yeah, immigration, eh..." but really, I have a lot (a LOT) of sympathy for anyone who tries to move to another country! I can't even image what it was like then. Because our process was not easy! It's especially hard when you don't speak the language... no, unfortunately, our French is not improving. We are both letting out a sigh of relief and ready to spend Easter weekend in London! Hurry up Friday! Au revoir!

foreign

I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing "USA" in the international aisle at the grocery store.

No wonder we have an obesity epidemic! Is this really all we've got to offer?

I'd be lying if I said that Aunt Jemima wasn't going to find a home in our cupboard!

I'm wondering if those missing Pepperidge Farm cookies means there's some secret English speaking,

cookie lovers around this town... my ears are open for the sound of language!

And just so you know - those mini-Skippy's were 5euro ($6.50)!

it's not spring yet

Just after we thought spring had sprung, northern France got hit with a blizzard! Normally, we wouldn't mind, but I was making a trip to Paris to meet a college roommate and friends traveling from London. My 5:59am train made it safely to Paris while their two hour trip turned into TWELVE! Since it only snows a handful of times a year, I was happy to see the city of lights covered in white! I'm sad I didn't snap any photos, but it was pretty miserable to be outside!

My friends were only staying two days in Paris before a couple of them were making the trek to us so with one day wasted on a train, we had a lot of site seeing to catch on Wednesday! Most of the snow had turned to puddles by morning. Despite frigid temps, after filling ourselves with morning pastries, we decided to walk as much as we could stand so they could take in as much as they wanted instead of being stuck underground in the metro. Our first stop was Hotel de Ville...

Thankfully, next on the list was Notre Dame Cathedral so we could thaw out.

Across the street was Shakespere and Company... books, Books, BOOKS! From ceiling to floor, books filled every nook and cranny. It was a really cool place. We weren't really supposed to take photos, but I couldn't resist!

After a quick lunch, we saw the Louvre.

On our way, we came across the Lover's Bridge. I'd read about it once, but I thought they had banned it because of the weight the locks were putting on the bridge - guess not! The bridge is covered with locks, all shapes, sizes and colors, that couple's write their names on. After closing the padlock on the bridge, the couple is supposed to throw the key into the Seine River. The bridge was actually really pretty!

A trip to France is not complete without macaroons - even though I've heard they are orginally from Italy. After getting our fill, we finally made it to our last stop of the day...

An exhausting day of site seeing ended with wine, bread and cheese!

We caught the train in the morning to Lorient and had an eventful Friday night at a local pub. We were told the pub had a singer scheduled for the evening... ok! We didn't realize that meant a family of singers, sitting in the crowd, getting up every few minutes and singing - sometimes involving the crowd! To top it off, it was in the native Brittany language, not even French! We were the crazy Americans tapping our feet and bobbing our heads but completely clueless to what they were singing about! Even though it was only a one day trip, it was really great to have familiar faces around! We are ready for our next visitors... who will it be?!?



le Mont Saint Michel

After a busy week, we decided to take a trip to Le Mont-Saint-Michel on Saturday. Click here for the website if you're interested! We had read that the streets inside the walls are packed with tourists during the day and it's almost like a ghost-town by night so we decided to book a room at one of the hotels inside.

after a foggy drive, we turned a corner and spotted it

Mark would have failed height requirements to guard the island

 the surrounding bay has the highest tides in Europe. because of current construction, it was almost impossible to get a photo of both sides when the tide was high. they are working to make it a true island again by building a road bridge that water will flow under - through the years, too much sediment has been brought in with the tides and well, unfortunately, it's not much of an island anymore.

as we'd hoped, the streets were completely empty by dinner



Before completing this post, I grabbed the mail - we received a nice letter from Mark's grandma with some photos from their trip to Normandy in 1982. Ironically, one of the enclosed photos was Mont-Saint-Michel!