Retour aux Etats-Unis

Wow! I've been home for just over two months, barring the two week trip to Sea Isle City:)

It has been so enjoyable and well, comfortable being home. Which makes me realize that some of the discomfort being abroad is something I've loved! But I am truly happy to be around family, friends and fiancé. I don't think I experienced as much cultural shock coming home this time as I did moving back from Boulogne Sur Mer. But there were definitely still moments. The pace at restaurants,

The main reason I wanted to sneak on here one more time was to post some pictures from my last hoorah in France- a week in Corsica!!

It was just stunning.

And May, my experience tells me, is the best time to go to Corsica. There aren't really tourist yet so it's kind of empty in the best way. It was really something for my friend Jenna and I, to see the lack of Anglophones there. We really got to use all our French almost without interruption and we wondered what a non-French speaker would do.

So Jenna and I rented a car for next to nothing and drove our way across the island. It was a manual, so I did the driving and WOW that was a trip. The impossibly narrow roads climbing up and down the seaside cliffs and the turns... Let's just say that after a week driving there I had blisters on the one hand that had the steering wheel gripped tightly. (The other hand was of course constantly shifting gears, going up and down mountains and turning 180 degrees more often than I would have imagine possible.) The locals would whip around the corners not knowing what they'd meet, on roads barely wide enough for one car. This was a constant form of some sort of entertainment, if you could call it that.

So we landed in Ajaccio and spent the first day there.

 

The view from our hotel room

 

Our first delightful glimpse of beautiful Mediterranean waters

 

Ah, how I love these typical French petit-dejeuners

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited Napolean's childhood home, which was very pretty and I especially appreciated the painted walls.

 

The view from young Napolean's bedroom.

 

 

N.'s mother left this church when she went into labor with the future ruler of France.

 

 

Our first evening there I suggested a visit out to see the les îles Sanguinaires at sunset which did not disappoint.

There are the iles Sanguinaires, and closer to the foreground is a hill we climbed with one of the famous Corsican towers at the edge of the little peninsula.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here is a taste of Ajaccio, qui j'aime.

 

 

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Canal St. Martin + Paris

Last week was a great week in Paris with KC, Steve and Elise. It is so much fun having family come to France! And of course any time with Elise is sure to be tops. So neat to see Elise grow and learn and change from day to day, and interact with French adults (e.g. grumpy old stereotypical French man) and kids (e.g. an energetic 18 month old Antoine at the park.) Thank you for a memorable week in Paris Steve and KC!

It was great too because we stayed near Canal St Martin and I decided I should live here at some point. It's my idea of the perfect part of Paris. So picturesque, cool restaurants and shops, a little quirkier than other parts of Paris. I even found the perfect appartement on leboncoin.fr, only missing on guest rooms for my many visitors I'd ideally have :)

 

 

 

 

I want to share more about the visit but I am getting ready to head off for one more adventure for this year in France. Plus I can hardly see what I am writing on my iPad sitting at this cafe- too bright outside. It's a nice sunny afternoon for a glass of rosé, maybe not evident in the picture.

Our destination: Corsica. My friend Jenna and I are going to Ajaccio for the first couple days, then spending a night in Calvi, Corte, Porto Vecchio, and finally Bonifachio. We rented a car which only I can drive because there are no automatics to be rented in Corsica. I read that there is a maximum of 300 meters of straight road in Corsica and there's often more goats on the roads than cars. Excited to explore this Mediterranean island! :) Bon weekend à vous!

 

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Guerande salt fields

One more blog to wrap up Suzanne's visit! 

But before that, I've been wanting to write down a couple of the things I've learned about spoken French living here this year that surprised me, or that I felt I really should have known. For starters, the pronunciation of the word le shampooing. I always pronounced the -ing like they do with most words in French like le parking. Not so! A few other Americans and I were so surprised that it's pronounced like shampwa, kinda but more nasal-y. I told my class of all girls studying English how we had thought it was pronounced and they thought it was hilariously cute :) 

Also interesting were some phrases I hear allll the time like "tu m'étonnes" and "t'inquiète".  These would translate to something like "you shock me" and "worry yourself." But mean more or less the opposite it turns out. "I know right [you don't shock me]" and "don't worry" respectfully. Which is so funny, because they've dropped the ne and the pas which make verbs negative. Also funny since way back in the day the ne made verbs negative and other words like pas and jamais were added to emphasize what was being negative (ne pas originally meant "not a step" ne jamais meant not ever.) For whatever reason, the ne pas stuck to be used for all verbs. Today just a few of the other extra words like jamais remain. But in spoken French the ne is dropped and all you have is pas, which makes little sense considering the history. But in the above sentences you drop both ne and pas and your friendly foreigner is confused! Language is a funny thing.

Back to Zan's visit. We drove out towards the coast and stopped on the way when some ruins caught our eye- an advantage of driving vs. the train.

Passing by beautiful chateaux on the way makes for one nice car drive.

We stopped in the very quaint old town of Guérande on the way to the salt fields.

And here are the fields where the world famous Guérande salt is harvested.  We got a lot of rain that spring so everything was flooded.

 

From there we headed south to Nantes and stopped in the coastal town of Le Croisic for lunch. 

 

Back in the car for a stunning drive along la Côte Sauvage.  

We really weren't in any rush to get anywhere so we stopped once again, this time at Pornichet.  It's not as famous as neighboring La Baule, a Parisian resort town. But still very pretty and the main thing, I really wanted to see the ocean and walk in the sand. :)

And final destination before home: Nantes! Suzanne got to see the castle, even if it was dark. 

And we stopped in a funny bar where every room was decorated like a room in a house. We could see people sitting in a bath tube in the next room. We happened to be there in time for a concert by an R&B/Soul/Hip hop French singer named Audrey Lopes. She was sooo talented and sooo shocked when she learned we were American, I think because she sings only in English. She had everyone there wish Suzanne a happy birthday and got back to performing. It was such a great, random night!

 

Friday. One last day in Angers spent shopping till we drop and having a sunny lunch by the fountain. I'm smiling but bummed that the week flew by so quickly. 

Friday night. Making cheese labels.

 And Saturday morning. Off to Charles de Gaulle bright  dark and early. Hope you loved France Suzanne! :)