The tourism part of our European sojourn is taking a back seat to the living in France phase.
We’ll still be seeing the sights, but mostly we’ll be resuming our writerly occupations along with daily chores such as going to the grocery, cooking dinner, and tidying the apartment we’ve rented for a month.
John trying out the French cooktop, energy efficient induction.
Directly under our apartment is a small organic market, very convenient for purchasing our daily bread. I saw the bread truck arrive this morning and waited a few minutes, then headed down for a pain de campagne (country loaf), a tub of goat yogurt and a tomato. A couple of blocks away is a full-service Carrefour, the Harris Teeter of France but with much more reasonable prices. We’ve heard French people complain about the cost of groceries, but so far, we’ve found food items to be less costly than in the States, sometimes significantly so.
My former Traverse City wine merchant, when I asked him why European wines were less expensive than U.S. wines, told me “the Europeans paid off their mortgages centuries ago.” The view out our apartment window is a daily reminder of how many centuries have passed in this human settlement.
The aqueduct of Montpellier, constructed in the style of the Romans.
Before we checked into our apartment, we left Leah with her French host family. She’ll be immersed in la langue française for the next four weeks, taking classes at Accent Français and speaking only French at her residence.
Tonight, we begin wine week with an opening dinner at a nearby restaurant, where we will meet the founders of the Princess and Bear wine club, which imports wines from artisan producers in the Languedoc region of southern France. I highly recommend this club if you are able to arrange the shipping. Michigan has weird laws that prohibit it from being shipped to us there, so we send it to our son in Chicago or to North Carolina for the winter months.
À plus tard !
