Eeny, meeny, miny, moe

A number of people have asked how we choose the places we rent, so here’s a rainy day blog post. Our rentals are generally through VRBO/Homeaway. The rentals there usually have pretty lenient cancellation policies, and all the information is in English. Our Brittany rental (which we first found on Homeaway) is through Gîtes de […]

Beach Day!

This morning we were seriously regretting our decision to not go to the beach yesterday. On Sunday we had had a delightful visit to the Plage de Pentrez, spending half an hour in the water that had warmed as the incoming tide ran over the sun-warmed sand. Yesterday, based on a forecast of absolutely clear […]

Hiking Crozon: Cap de la Chèvre 2022

One of our favorite hikes is a loop at the Cap de la Chèvre, which is the tip of the southern point of the trident formed by the Crozon peninsula. It has a memorial to fallen naval aviators and an area for people to make their own smaller versions from the plentiful rocks on the […]

Hiking Crozon: La Lieue de Grève to Ty Mark

We did two shorter hikes over two days to explore a piece of the coast that is quite close to our rental that we had not yet visited. We started in the middle of a very long beach, the Lieue de Grève or the Strand League (league being a distance, not an association). At one […]

Hiking Crozon: Plage de Lostmarc’h to Pointe de Dinan

With a little conditioning from our short hikes under our belts and a decent weather forecast, we headed out for our first longer hike yesterday. We started at the beach at Lostmarc’h, which is on the southern section of the trident-shaped Crozon peninsula. The beach is split into sections – one for surfers and one […]

Revisiting old haunts

Our first two hikes were local… we aren’t really in shape for long ones! J spent a lot of time weeding before departure and M cut up a huge amount of firewood – both strenuous in their own way, but not great preparation for long hikes. We’re getting up to speed with some easy hikes […]

We’re Back!

Our last days in France in January 2020 seem like a very, very long time ago. In retrospect, having to leave France early turned out to be the silver lining to the dark cloud of family medical issues. Instead of being marooned in France when the pandemic struck, we were at home (and, as an […]

Au Revoir

Unfortunately, we’ve left France early, heading home due to a serious health issue with J’s dad. We’re sorry to go, especially from our great rental in Narbonne, a city where we could see living (at least in the winter, when it isn’t too hot). We hope we’ll be able to come back for another long […]

Nîmes

One day in Nîmes was not enough! We could easily have spent a full day just wandering (and getting lost in!) the narrow streets of the old city. We were particularly impressed with the large number of beautiful balconies… We started our visit with an outstanding lunch at a South African-influenced restaurant, L’Esclafidou. It was […]

Le Pont du Gard

We spent a day with Roman ruins in and around Nîmes on Tuesday. It’s amazing what the Roman engineers could achieve with the arch! And they built it in just five years, around 2 AD. Environmental permitting wasn’t a thing back then… The view up and down the river was also delightful: