Première Neige à Gap

Here is the view from our bedroom window this morning:


I'm actually quite excited about the snow! But if you check back with me in a few months, I can't promise that I'll be feeling the same way...

Emily vs Winter in the French Alps... should be interesting!

September, wow!

September 2008 has surely been one of the busiest months of my life! I have zillions of photos to post on here and just as many stories to share with you about all my adventures over the past few weeks. In the meantime, let me whet your appetite with a few choice photos from the "September of Em"!

As you can see, I was here, there & everywhere...

Paris...

Nice...

Italy...

and somewhere in-between...

!!!

Birthday brunch and beyond!

Spending my birthday in Paris was one of the better ideas I've had. Needless to say, it was fantastic!

My day started out with brunch at "Breakfast in America", a good old American-style diner. As we sat down at our red vinyl booth and opened our big plastic-coated menus, Laure said, "I feel like I'm in an episode of "Happy Days!" I couldn't blame her...




Please note the grille-pain at our table so we could toast our toast exactly the way we like it! That was way too fun. Equally awesome? The old-school Michael Jackson tunes on the stereo, the deliciousness of perfectly-cooked bacon and (most exciting of all...)

Dr. Pepper. In a can. With a bendy straw.

(I am no longer a teenager. Far from it. But yes, I drank pop through a bendy straw at breakfast and enjoyed every moment of it!)

So after the gluttony that was brunch, we burned a fraction of the calories with lots of window-shopping and a little bit of buying and then a walk through the Palais Royal gardens near the Louvre.


Next up was a matinee of "Mama Mia" at the movie theatre and then an evening of champagne, take-out sushi (yum!) and dancing to ABBA in Sophie's living room. So fun!

More photos of my birthday celebrations and my week in Paris soon...

And now off to bed, as I'm going to meet my Mom and Dad at Charles de Gaulle airport bright and early tomorrow morning. Then we're off to Pommiers for a few days, to a dance festival in Lyon, to Gap and surroundings... followed by a week or so in Italy. All this before the month of September is up!

La semaine des "birthdays" à Paris

So here I am in Paris again (swoon!), visiting les filles, wandering around all my favourite haunts, and celebrating not one but two birthdays!

My lovely friend Laure's lovely daughter Lilas turned one on Saturday! The birthday girl was in top shape and ready for a party in her honour:

Laure & I were also feeling quite festive in our party clothes:

There was cake, bien sûr:

And, after Lilas was snug in bed, there was apéritif, followed by Laure's famous lasagne and festive beverages. Cheers to birthdays!

To see more photos of Lilas' party, click here.

Summer Vistors

Summer's almost over! Tomorrow is Labour Day so I'm thinking of all my teacher friends back at home... bon courage !

We have been lucky enough to have quite a few visitors come see us in Gap this summer. First up was Andrea alllll the way from Galiano Island. She and I used to teach together at JLS College in Vancouver. She was on a whirlwind trip to France, Italy, and Scotland and managed to arrive in Lyon just in time to meet me for the Leonard Cohen concert. I have never swooned so much in my life! It was beyond fantastic.

The next day we hopped on the train from Lyon to Gap. It takes about three hours to get from one place to the other, and the clickity-clack of the train was all too much for poor jet-lagged Andrea.

Once back in Gap, I was thrilled to show Andrea around my new 'hood. Here we are enjoying the view from chez moi:


François and I also took her to our favourite swimming hole about 45 minutes from Gap, complete with lovely cool fresh water and a stone bridge built by the Romans way back when!


Our second set of visitors were François' sister, Delphine, and brother-in-law, Eloi. They arrived for the Bastille Day long weekend, which we kicked off with a group picnic at Les Gorges de la Méouge, the aforementioned favourite swimming spot. Picnics are always yummy fun, especially in France... with a bottle of rosé!




Later that weekend, Andrea continued on her way towards the south of France and Italy, while we stayed local and rented a boat on the Lac de Serre-Ponçon, which is a huge lake near Gap. It was created when they built what turned out to be Europe's second largest dam back in the 1950s. Artifical or not, it's still a beautiful spot and it was so fun to be out on the water on a beautiful summer day!

Click on the link below to see more photos of our
afternoon out on the lake:

Lac de Serre-Ponçon

Moving right along, our most recent visitors were the lovely Florine, Alice, and Emie from Lyon, who came to see us in mid-August. What you need to know: Florine and Alice are sisters who spent a lot of time with Francois and his family while they were growing up, due to the fact that their parents were/are good friends. (Despite this, the girls seem to be pretty much normal! Hee hee...) As for Emie, she is Florine's brand-new daughter (only 3 months old!) and was definitely the star of their visit to Gap.


We had a lot of fun drinking tea and playing with Emie at the apartment, having picnics in the park,

and going out for gelato in the evenings.

It was nice for me to have a good dose of "girl time"... and while François was at work, the girls kept me entertained with stories of how much of a goofy, nerdy kid he was (not much has changed, apparently!)

To see more photos from the girls' visit, click here:

Al, Emie, Flo à Gap

So now you are all up-to-date with the summer visitors to 14, rue de France. Next up to check into the guest room? My Mom and Dad! That's right, my parents arrive in France on September 12th for a three-week visit. I am so excited to see them over here, introduce them to Francois' family, and be tour guide extraordinaire !

Week-end de 15 août

I'm starting to wonder if the French even have ordinary, normal two-day weekends. It seems like we are constantly burdened with long weekends. What a bore, non ? Earlier this month was no exception. August 15th is Assumption (which, according to Wikipedia, is "important to many Catholics as the day that Mary was received into Heaven" - don't worry, I didn't know either...), so François had the day off (along with everybody else). We hit the road (along with everybody else!) and went to spend the weekend in Malaucène, a village about two hours from Gap. Why Malaucène? Well, Nicolas (FQ's brother) and his wife Stéphanie, along with Arthur (FQ's nephew/godson) are currently renting a house there for a couple weeks of summer vacation. Most of the time, they live in New York City (you'll remember that FQ and I spent a week in NYC chez eux back in March). You can imagine the view from their apartment in Manhattan is just a little different from the view from the maison de vacances :

If you're wondering what that bump in the middle of the photo is, you're not alone. Apparently, it's the remmenants of an old fort. Nowadays there's a chapel up there, a few olive trees, and a beautiful view of the village:

The house Nicolas and Stéphanie rented is the one just to the left of the centre of the photo (can you spot the white parasol?)

Of course we never get tired of taking the classic "long-arm" self-portraits whenever there's a nice view to be had:

And please note how my new shortish French haircut goes well with the French scenery:

And how cute FQ is in his new stripy sweater:

Speaking of cute, here is FQ's nephew/godson Arthur, who turns four next month. I love the moustache de lait !

OK, enough French cuteness! Back to the long weekend recap: we had a lovely time doing not much at all, French-style. In the mornings, we wandered into the village to buy croissants and newspapers, came back, ate breakfast, read the paper, played Lego with Arthur, opened a beer as soon as the village church bells told us it was noon, ate lunch, took a walk, took a nap, had apéritif, BBQed something for dinner, drank some wine, chatted, went to bed. Ahhhhh.

You can see all the photos from the long weekend by clicking here:

Weekend du 15 août

Reporting live from the French Alps to Bejing, this is François Quairel!

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. This blog seems to be taking on a bit of a sporty theme... first Le Tour de France, and now Les Jeux Olympiques !

As you know, François is a journalist at Alpes 1, the local radio station in Gap. And he's crazy about his job and the profession of journalism as a whole. Crazy enough to get up many mornings at the crack of dawn to do the a.m. news broadcasts at the radio. And even crazy enough to wake up at 3:15 a.m. to go cover a special news story. Yes, 3:15. In. The. Morning.

"Why??!" you ask?

Well, there is a French swimmer called Alain Bernard who comes from Châteauvieux, a little village of 450 people close to Gap. At least 150 of those villagers are just as crazy as François, because they chose to get up in the middle of the night to watch Alain Bernard swim in the Men's 100m freestyle event. Which, with the time difference between here and China, took place at 4:45 a.m. French time. It must have been a very festive atmosphere there in la salle des fêtes (the community centre) with a big-screen TV set up and champagne bottles at the ready. Alain Bernard's parents and relatives were there, along with the village mayor and other folks. The swimmers started the race and the atmosphere was tense. Everybody clenched their fists and cheered on their hometown boy. And then somebody stepped on a cable and the TV image went blank. Zip. Zero. Rien.

(Note: that "somebody" is not me! I was, of course, home fast asleep during all this. My retelling of the story is thanks to FQ and the news report he filed.)

Can you imagine the panic? The disappointment? The desperation?

Luckily somebody had brought a radio, so they tuned it in just in time to hear that Alain Bernard had won the gold metal. Champagne all around!

Anyway, it sounds like it was all very exciting and FQ's report for the AFP (Associated French Press) was sent straight to Bejing. He has since received congratulations on his reporting from the AFP, their team of reporters in Bejing, and (most exciting of all!) François was on national TV as part of a news report on the whole hullabaloo. Whee!

To read the report FQ filed for the AFP (en français, bien sûr), click here.

To see the video on the LCI website (basically, the equivalent of French CNN), click here! And keep your eye out for the cute French reporter in the red shirt! (Dave and Ange, are you loving the Stanford plug?)

Le Tour de France

Le Tour de France was in my 'hood this weekend! The cyclists didn't pass through Gap this year, as they have in the past. However, they started out today's leg of the race from Embrun, which is about 40 kilometres east of Gap. Was I there? Mais bien sûr! Did I mill around in the pouring rain, shivering along with all the other commoners? Mais non!

Francois is a journalist, right? And journalists get special privileges, right? And Canadian girlfriends who are thrilled at the prospect of cheering on Le Tour de France get to take advantage of those privileges, right? You bet! It is thus that I am currently proudly sporting a very yellow, very official Tour de France wristband that allowed me access into the Tour de France village, for V.I.P.s only, baby!

So great!

We arrived around 9:45 a.m. and there was already a party going on in le village. For someone who loves freebies (moi, for example!) it was paradise. Free coffee, breakfast pastries, newspapers, shopping bags, even wine! (Personally, I felt that having a glass or two of red before 10 a.m. was perhaps a bit much, but there were others who were not of the same mindset!) Wine or no, it was very festive, with music, people on stilts, crazy bicycle demonstrations, and oh... did I mention the freebies?

Actually, I was having so much fun in the freebie zone that I somehow forgot to go back out and join the unwashed masses (!) in order to see the start of today's leg of the race (which, by the way, started in Embrun and ended 183 km later in Italy. You can see a video with highlights from today's leg here.) And check out my super-exclusive yellow-wristband-only photos from le village !

Tour de France

Salade Niçoise

 

I've noticed the trend (especially on blogs written by North Americans living in France) of taking photos of yummy food. I am slightly embarrassed to join their ranks with this post, but don't you love the salade niçoise I made for dinner last night? Yum. It was actually really easy. Just required a little boiling and a bit of chopping... et voilà ! The green beans and new potatoes came from FQ's parents' garden in Pommiers (delivered to Gap by his sister Delphine when she came to visit last weekend) and the tomatoes were bought at the Wednesday market here, which was full of delicious fresh produce. Salade niçoise originated in Nice (hence the name) but is found on restaurant menus all over France. If you'd like to make your own, here's the recipe I used. Bon appétit!

P.S. How cute is my new tablecloth?

C'est la fête nationale de la France!

I am just watching (live, but sadly via the TV) the hugely enormous military parade that takes place on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Wow. Marching bands in all their finery, jets performing a fly-over with coloured smoke in red, white, and blue, tanks rolling along towards the Arc de Triomphe, parachutists armed with the French and EU flags jumping out of planes, floating down over Paris and then landing right in front of the French president... Not too shabby.

There will be a military parade here in Gap this afternoon. There will surely be less fanfare than in Paris, but hopefully lots of handsome French soldiers and firemen all the same! This evening, Francois and I have been invited to a "garden party" (I'd give you the word in French, but they use the English term so what can I do?) Such parties seems to be a typical way of celebrating Bastille Day. That plus fireworks, which happen tonight at 10:30. C'est la fête!

Les Nuits de Fourvière (in other words, R.E.M. and Leonard Cohen come to France and play in a Roman amphitheatre in Lyon just for me!)

I am way too excited. This time tomorrow night, I'll be sitting in a Roman amphitheatre in Lyon watching R.E.M. live on-stage!!! And then (as if R.E.M. is not enough!) on Wednesday night, I will be back in said amphitheatre but this time to see Leonard Cohen!

It's all part of a big music/theatre/dance/cinema festival, Les Nuits de Fourvière, that takes place in Lyon every summer. Right now I am too keyed-up to explain in any more detail, so go have a look at the festival website if you like.

Now, before I sign off, let's recap, shall we?

R.E.M. (who I've loved since I was 16 and have already seen three times in two different countries but who's counting?) and Leonard Cohen, who, as I explained to François, is pretty much the Serge Gainsbourg of Canada. While doing my degree in Canadian Literature back in the day, I took a semester-long course in Leonard Cohen. And now I'm going to see him. In France. In a Roman amphitheatre. Really, the mind boggles, n'est-ce pas?

Le 4 juillet en France

This past weekend, thanks to my friend Camille, I had a chance to celebrate the 4th of July here in France.

 

Camille invited François and I to the traditional Independence Day BBQ that she has been helping organize for a good many years now. As you can see, it was très authentique, with chicken and (hooray!) potato salad.

Like any successful summer gathering, there was swimming. François and Nina (Camille's grand-daughter) jumped into the pool the second we got there.

 

There was also a bit of relaxing...

 

and a whole lot of chatting, in English and French!

There was, of course, la table des enfants. Look how nicely French kids wait for their dinner!

Meanwhile, back at la table des adultes...

All in all, it was a very cool way to spend a sunny summer afternoon.