Category Archives: Lifestyle

Lifestyle, Loire Valley, Paris

Adjusting to Living in Two Houses

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Well, so far, I’m not doing so well! Relationnel came back to Paris on Sunday night by car and I followed by bus and train on Monday afternoon because I had to wait for the EDF man to increase the wattage. When I caught the metro in Paris, I suddenly realised that I had left the keys to my Paris apartment in Blois. Fortunately the train was late so Relationnel was home by the time I got there. I’ve now borrowed the keys from my cleaning lady.

When I took my shower in Paris, I had trouble getting used to the taps and the shower rose being at the wrong end! Then when I woke up during the night, it took me a while to work out where I was. That has never ever happened to me before. I am always totally aware of my environment the minute I wake up. I walked into the bookcase, then the divider before I finally realised I was going in the wrong direction.

Next morning, I was about to set up my computer (I had taken my CPU to Blois to transfer everything to my laptop but never found the time) when I discovered I had left the multi-socket thing in Blois as well. Sigh. Relationnel brought home another one at lunchtime but in the meantime, I had a rather frustrating morning trying to work with the laptop which doesn’t have all the files and programs I need.

I had no problem adapting back to my Paris kitchen though. It’s so much more practical! I don’t have to kneel down to take things out of the oven for a start. I pull out a drawer to get to the saucepans instead of bending down to find them in a low cupboard. I have plenty of bench space and a high stool to sit on when my feet are tired. The sink is made for people over 1 m 70 and there’s lots of food in the pantry (though nothing in the fridge …).

However, when I walked into my office, I was greeted by two flowering orchids (birthday presents from Leonardo in the past) and some African violets that had bloomed in my absence but I had missed the tulips on the balcony altogether! I hope that the wisteria will still be in bloom in Blois when we go back at the end of the month. I adore wisteria and the Loire is just full of it at the moment.

We have always made the choice not to have a country house or a beach hut so that we are free to go where we want on holidays because we love discovering new places. As a result, I don’t think I have ever spent more than one week at a time in any place other than my home of the moment, except maybe two weeks in a house near Albi about 10 years ago! So I don’t usually have any trouble remembering where I am.  When I spent the day alone in Blois on Monday, I really felt at home which I guess is what made the transition to Paris more difficult.

All the downstairs rooms are now furnished and decorated even if there are still a few details missing. You can see the photos on the website for the gîte under Accommodation: www.closeriefalaiseau.com.

This time, to make the transition a little easier, I dug out one of the two sweat shirts I wore most days in Blois. I immediately felt better. Maybe there is something to Linus’ security blanket after all!

Lifestyle, Loire Valley, Sightseeing

Easter Sunday in Blois

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Sunday being a day of rest, we decided to have a late brunch then visit one of the many châteaux in the Loire Valley with Thoughtful and Brainy Pianist who had come to spend the weekend with us. In the end, we decided to go to Blois Castle, particularly as it was open between 12 and 2 pm, in order to escape the Easter weekend crowds. Once we got there, Relationnel and I were both amazed that we hardly remembered it at all from our last visit a few years ago.

The château is right in the middle of the town, overlooking the Loire River, and encompasses several different architectural styles from mediaeval times to the 17th century. I won’t go into its very complicated history. Suffice to say that it all began in about the year 1000 with a rather horrible fellow called Thibaud the Trickster. Three of the original mediaeval towers still remain. One of the main features of the period is the magnificent hall of justice or Salle des Etats built in the early 13th century.

 

At the end of the 14th century, the château was bought by the Orleans family and nearly a century later, Duc Louis d’Orleans became Louis XII and brought his wife, Anne de Bretagne, and his court to Blois. They modernised it all, so to speak, with stairs at each end and balconies  on the first floor and decorated it with their emblems, the porcupine for Louis and the hermine for Anne.

François 1er, whose salamander is ever-present, lived in the château after he ascended to the throne in 1515. The Duc de Guise was assassinated in the King’s Chambers on the orders of Henri III in 1588 after plotting to take over the throne and Catherine de Medicis, wife of Henri II (son of François 1er) and mother of Henri III, died there the next year at the age of 70.

The interior is extremely rich and colourful with many fine fireplaces and majestic pieces of Renaissance furniture. We could see how they inspired the Henri II (or Neo-Renaissance) buffet, sideboard, tables and chairs now decorating our new Renaissance house !  I particularly liked the toad-foot feature on one of the buffets and the many beautiful firebacks. Any one of them would look just perfect in our upstairs fireplace.

There is also a lapidary section with gargoyles, statues, pediments and other bits and pieces taken from buildings on the site.

The grounds around the château offer wonderful views of the rooftops of the city of Blois and the Loire River and an excellent view of the city’s most interesting church – that of Saint Nicolas, built in the 12th and 13th centuries, a combinationof both Romanesque and Gothic. We couldn’t quite see our house because of the trees but we could pick out the general direction.

 

After our visit we discovered a brocante on the esplanade along the river which takes place on the second Sunday of every month. Relationnel was not keen because he said there were obviously only professionals. But we managed to find a walnut bedside table for our bedroom and three long-handled gardening tools. While he went off to get the car, we rooted around but didn’t find anything else worth buying.

Lifestyle, Loire Valley, Renovation

The Fireplace Operation

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I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath to hear the results of the fireplace operation. As it turned out, Relationnel was the only performer because the polyethylene tent could only contain one person. Not that I really minded. I had other things to keep me occupied, not to mention the fact that it would have taken me hours to get the soot out of my hair. Fortunately Relationnel didn’t have to worry about that.

You might remember that we’re talking about the fireplace in the master bedroom. We were sleeping downstairs in the bedroom of the future gîte until the operation was over. So, first, Relationnel set up the tent and also protected the light-coloured carpet with plastic. Then he donned his throwaway boiler suit and gas mask at which point I breathed a sigh of relief that I was only spectator and helpmate.

 

So that he wouldn’t be asphyxiated, he had added a flexible tube to take fresh air from the window into the airtight tent and up the chimney. First, he removed the polystyrene that had been used to plug up the chimney duct. As it came off, down came two huge hornets’ nests (empty thank goodness). After cleaning it all up, he used a power mill with a metal brush attachment to get rid of the initial caked soot and other debris then finished off with a finer abrasive disk.  Once he had achieved the required result, he got out the vacuum cleaner.

And that’s when the fun began. As we all know, vacuum cleaners suck up dirt at one end while expelling air through a filter at the other. The problem is, the filter on our industrial vacuum (a gift from the owner of a flat I once bought which had a closed parking space that the said owner neglected to empty) was no good and as Relationnel vacuumed up the debris, fine red and black dust went charging out the other end, leaving a nice thick layer not only over the entire bedroom, bathroom and built-in wardrobe (fortunately empty), but also flying up the stairs to the mezzanine above the bedroom and out through open bedroom door onto the other mezzanine which gives onto all the other rooms below.

So the entire house had to be vacuumed from head to foot with the other vacuum cleaner which understandably got overheated and sulky and eventually gave up altogether. Relationnel had to wait until it cooled down to use it again. Meanwhile, I was off at Carrefour Market and then Le Penalty drinking cappuccino and using the Internet as the little dashed line is still running madly around the display window on the Freebox showing no sign of indicating the time, which is a necessary prelude to it working.

All traces of the vacuum episode had disappeared by the time I got back I’m happy to say. Before we could move into the bedroom however, a second operation was needed – sweeping the chimney. We had bought some very neat chimney sweeping equipment in Leroy Merlin that looked like something out of Mary Poppins. Relationnel set up a rubbish bag and funnel system to catch the debris (I helped to cut the packing tape to seal the joins) with a hole to poke the broom through.

After it was all swept clean, Relationnel plugged it up again with suitable material to stop the cold air getting into the room as the fireplace will continue to be purely decorative.

 

We are very happy with the results and have now moved into the upstairs bedroom.

France, Lifestyle, Loire Valley, Renovation

The Henri II Buffet Finds its Place

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With the kitchen and bedroom more or less completed, except for the decorative elements, the next room on the list was the living room starring the Henri II buffet I mentioned in a previous post.  For transport purposes, it had to be separated in two so Relationnel and I were able to wheel each half down the road from our “little house” next door (which he will be renovating after his retirement) on two little trolley affairs that can each take 200 kg and are very practical. You just have to strap them onto each end of the furniture properly so they don’t escape when you go over the rough bits.

Relationnel then repaired all the bits and pieces that had gradually come loose  over the years. We decided where it would go (very easy because there is only one wall wide enough) then put the lower half in place. That was the easy bit. The top half (which is excessively heavy solid oak I might add) sits on top of a backboard and two little columns. I put my lumbar belt on and some anti-skid gloves and we hoisted it up onto the edge of the bottom part. Then we started lifting it up on top of the columns which promptly fell over (of course). We quickly realised however that there was not actually enough ceiling height under the beams. Back down onto the floor.

So Relationnel said we’d take the top curlicue bit off. Even then there was not enough room to raise the upper half high enough to slide it onto the columns. There seemed to be no solution until I suddenly had a brilliant idea. If we turned the whole thing lengthways and used the space between the beams to lift it high enough, we could then turn it the right way afterwards. I got a « bravo » for that! However I then didn’t have enough strength to lift the top half high enough to get it on top of the columns. But Relationnel managed to hoist his side up and while I steadied it, he came and lifted my side.

Now that it’s there, I can tell you, it won’t be going any further and I’m sure I can turn the curlicue into something very decorative.

France, Lifestyle, Loire Valley, Renovation

Our Favourite Barbecue is Back!

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On our third night in Blois, we finally had a barbecue with our Barbecook, which is a story in itself. When we were married nearly 14 years ago, it was a second marriage for both of us and we each had two children so finding an appropriate date was not easy, let alone having a honeymoon as well! We did manage an overnight stay in Honfleur though and visited Bayeux next day. And we found our barbecue! Not very romantic you might say, but it’s a wonderful barbecue (and don’t forget I’m Australian). It operates on a really neat system. You put newspaper in the cyclindrical part, then the charcoal on the fire grille, on top of which there is another grill for the meat. You light the barbecue with a match through a hole near the red knob halfway down the cylinder which is used to adjust the air flow (and therefore the heat). It’s really very clever and you don’t need any « starters ». Even I can light it (not that I ever do!).

You may remember that to send my last post, we intended to go to Le Penalty, which turned out to be closed on Mondays as luck would have it. But Relationnel had the wonderful idea of parking outside and seeing if there was a connection. It worked! Unfortunately, Le Penalty is located on one side of a roundabout where you obviously aren’t supposed to park so he had to keep a watch-out for the police. Then of course, my battery was running low but Relationnel has a transformer in the car so I was able to recharge the laptop provided we kept the engine running. Not very environment-friendly I’m afraid.

But apart from the Internet connection, we are slowly getting things up and running. The kitchen furniture is all in place and part of the decoration is finished. When we have breakfast, we can watch all the birds that come to eat the seeds left by the previous owners. I’m a newcomer to bird feeding/watching. It seems you should only put out seeds and fat during the cold months. Otherwise the birds get lazy. There is a pair of blue tits who have built a nest in the tree just outside the window that we love watching.

The next room that is almost finished is the downstairs bedroom where we’re sleeping at the moment because we haven’t attacked the fireplace in the upstairs bedroom yet. I thought I had found a miracle product but unfortunately it doesn’t work. Relationnel put up the wardrobe today but initially found he couldn’t finish it because the hinge things were missing. Fortunately he realised later that he just wasn’t familiar with the system. We also cleaned the rug. Obviously one spray can was not enough so I had to go back to Carrefour and get some more.

I didn’t really mind because, although it’s about 6 km away, you drive through a lovely forest mysteriously called Route du Rain de la Forêt to get there. The leaves are all tender green. And the people in Carrefour are unbelievably friendly. While I was waiting for the butcher to come, the fishmonger came and asked me if I was being served then went off and found the butcher. When I was searching the shelves for the carpet shampoo, a shelf stacker actually asked me if he could help! At the checkout, when I said I hadn’t found the nutcrackers, the lady went and looked for them. They didn’t have any after all, but she came back with a smile. This is definitely not the service I’m used to in Monoprix on avenue de l’Opéra.

I can tell already that I’m going to love living in Blois.

Accommodation, Australia, Cooking, Food, France, French customs, Lifestyle, Paris, Sightseeing, Travelling, Wine

Favourite Paris Wine Shops – Phone App: Google Translate – Creating a Healthy French Pantry

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Where to buy wine in Paris, a helpful traveller’s phone app and healthy eating the French way are  the subjects featured in my Wednesday’s Other Blogs this week.  Thank you to Like Home in Paris (vacation apartment rentals in Paris), Femmes Francophiles (fellow Australian blogger with an ongoing passion for France and the French language) and Mademoiselle Slimalicious (a young Sydney-based French blog writer who promotes healthy eating, fitness and exercise based on the principles of the French Paradox).

Sipping on Saturday – Favourite Paris Wine Shops

from Like Home in Paris

I know who I go to ask when I have a wine question or can’t decide which glass to take – Preston Mohr, that’s who. Our favorite drinking partner tells us about his favorite wine shops in Paris and believe me you’ll want to take note. Read more

Phone Application: Google Translate

from Femmes Francophiles

Translation apps are a growing market. No longer do we need to fossick in back packs or handbags for our bilingual dictionary or phrasebook. No doubt there are now young international travellers who have never had to worry about the weight associated with carrying these books with their dog-eared pages.  Read more 

Creating a Healthy French Pantry

from Mademoiselle Slimalicious 

Cooking at home (rather than ordering take-away) enables you to be fully in control of what you eat by being aware of the nutritive value of your meals. In order to manage your weight efficiently (the way French women do), it is important to make cooking everyday one of your priority.  Read more.

Lifestyle, Loire Valley

Blois, Here We Come!!

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I feel like I’m in a sort of limbo at the moment – on the verge of a great new adventure that I can hardly believe is about to become a reality. In just two days’ time, we will have the keys to our late 16th century Renaissance home in Blois. At last we will see it without furniture (well, practically) or decoration (almost). So difficult to imagine.

The previous owners are moving to a slightly smaller and much more modern home so they unfortunately won’t be able to take all their furniture with them. So we are going to inherit (for a pittance) some original pieces such as a dresser with a built-in clock, a maie in which flour used to be kneaded, various utensils connected with our bread oven, a Henri II sideboard and an art deco bedroom suite.

In the meantime, we are making various preparations. To divide the house in two for rental, Relationnel has devised a separation consisting of a series of door panels (photos later!) and we have bought a trailer for which he has made a réhausse to increase the height of the sides. We lost the panels on the highway last time we were in Blois, nearly causing an accident, because it wasn’t secured properly. Very scary. The new system, however, can’t possibly get away!

I have been sorting through cupboards in the apartment to find anything we aren’t using here that might be useful in Blois. Need I tell you that I am amazed at what I’m finding. It’s also giving me the opportunity to throw out things I know we’ll never use again. One of the things I’m getting rid of is my Encyclopaedia Britannica, bought on credit in 1975 when I started freelancing as a translator. Who could have imagined then that those twenty or so volumes, not to mention the Year Books, would be replaced by just one CD-Rom?

All the moving and throwing out is going to give us extra space for our home exchanges as well as I won’t have to play musical shelves to provide room for our exchangers to put their belongings. I’m going to make sure I leave all the top shelves free so that I just have to move our things up from the bottom shelves before we leave each time. It’ll make them easier to find as well. After our Madrid exchange, it took me a while to remember where I’d put things!

Yesterday, we continued our purchases through the second hand site, www.boncoin.fr, with a new 44-piece porcelain dinnerware set for only 15 euros. We’re waiting until we’re in Blois to buy the rest as we’re running out of trailer space and time! We did go to Leroy Merlin though to buy an amazing array of power tools. One of our first tasks, before we move into the main bedroom, is to clean the very sooty fireplace. It seems we’ll be donning masks, hoods and boiler suits and enclosing ourselves in a PVC tent to do the job. I’ll post photos!

So, bear with me for the next few days. We’re supposed to have an internet connection but I imagine things will be quite chaotic for the first few days. I may not be posting as often.

Dieting, Food, Lifestyle

How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 6

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This week has been like mid-summer in Paris, yet we’re only just moving into spring! So I’ve been swapping over my wardrobe from winter to summer. Strange, I didn’t realise that extra kilo or two had sneaked in there. My winter clothes weren’t getting tight but I have a couple of pairs of summer trousers that are more closely fitting. I guess I haven’t been exercising as much lately (I haven’t been swimming for a while) and maybe the trip to Madrid didn’t help either!

So what to do? One of the most important things when you lose weight is to make sure that you nip any subsequent weight gain in the bud immediately. Thinking “well, I’ll just wear some looser clothes for a bit and it’ll come off all by itself” is courting danger! You need to apply the “200 grammes of protein at each meal and no carbs” rule for a day or two. If you’ve only gained a kilo, it should come off pretty quickly. You should then continue the 200 g protein day once week until your weight is stabilised again. It’s even a good idea to do it regularly.

If that extra kilo or so turns out to be a bit more stubborn though, you could start writing down what you eat again as I explained in Part 2. Either you’ll automatically adjust your eating pattern or you’ll be able to see where the extras are coming from. You can also cut out wheat-based products for a couple of weeks. That should be the trick! If it doesn’t, you’ll need to analyse what’s really going on.

Maybe that snack-reflex has come back again recently for some reason – a new source of stress or extra fatigue in your life. Each time you see yourself wandering towards the kitchen, stop, turn around and go into the living room. Sit down, close your eyes and imagine yourself on a beach or in a forest. Breathe deeply and relax. Then go back to what you were doing before you felt like snacking. At mealtime, remember to serve food in the kitchen and take it to the table so you won’t be tempted to seconds.

It usually takes a month to get rid of a habit so you may have to persist a little. You might need to start listening to your hypnosis tapes again too. And if you’ve kept any of your “bigger” clothes “just in case”, it’s probably the moment to get rid of them altogether!

The Natural Skinnies and Us
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 1
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 2
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 3
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 4
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 5
France, Italy, Lifestyle, Paris, Sightseeing, Travelling

Pickpockets on the Metro in Paris – Siena – an Italian escape – Burgundy at a Glance

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The posts from other blogs that I’m featuring this Wednesday are by American blogger Mary Kay, from Out and About in Paris, who is a fund of useful and interesting information and will help you have a pickpocket-free holiday, fellow Australian and photographer Karina from Carams who takes us to Siena in Tuscany and Doni Belau from Girls’ Guide to Paris who recommends a visit to Burgundy as a day trip or weekend out of Paris. Thanks to them all!

Monday Morning Musings on Pickpockets on the Metro in Paris

by Mary Kay, from Out and About in Paris

After dodging holiday shoppers and having my foot run over by a renegade baby stroller while visiting the Christmas Market on the Champs-Elysées yesterday, Stéphane, Sara and I decided to take metro line 1 from George V to Tuileries to have some hot chocolate. As we always seem to arrive at Angelina’s just after it has closed for the night, I stood on the metro platform with my back to the wall to check their opening hours on my iPhone. Stéphane and Sara were facing me, we were speaking English and for all anyone knew we were tourists in Paris. Read more.

Siena – an Italian escape

by Carina at Carams

Up until last year when we found ourselves in the area, Siena had never been near the top of my travel list. Yet there we were one morning, driving winding roads through Tuscan valleys, following signs to the old city, named (according to legend) after Senius, son of Remus, of the Remus & Romulus duo. Read more

Le Petit Weekend: Burgundy at a Glance

by Doni Belau from Girls Guide to Paris

As much as all Parisians love Paris, they also adore a petit weekend—a getaway, either a day trip from Paris or an entire weekend. Recently, during autumn, I hightailed it out of the city for a wine-tasting trip to Burgundy. My friend Kelly and I headed for Beaune, which is perfectly situated to explore both côtes, Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune. Read more

Australia, France, Lifestyle

Daylight Saving in France

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Cycling in Briare after dinner

I do, of course, love the long summer days when it stays light until 11 pm. Cycling after dinner is particularly attractive. What I don’t like is the actual changeover because it puts me out-of-kilter for at least a couple of weeks and I’m not a good sleeper at the best of times. Black Cat tells me that everyone in the metro was overly aggressive in the metro this morning because they all had to get up an hour earlier than usual! The changeovers take place around about 21st March and 21st October each year.

Relationnel never manages to remember whether he has to put his clock back or forward each time. In French they say “avancer” or “retarder l’heure” meaning “putting the time forwards or backwards”. Of course with all the electronic equipment we have these days, it’s much harder not to know about the changeover and miss a train or something though I noticed the clock on the car hadn’t changed yesterday.

Unseasonable weather in Paris

We’ve been having unseasonably warm weather too (not that I’m complaining!) which means that no one was very keen on going to bed an hour earlier than their biological clock last night either. I can remember how difficult it was to get the kids onto the new time when they were little. I even joined a lobby group in the hope that daylight saving might disappear altogether, but it didn’t do any good.

It all started of course for purely materialistic reasons. According to the French finance ministry, “Daylight saving (or l’heure d’été – summer time – as they say in French) was implemented in France in 1975 after the 1974 oil crunch with the aim of saving energy by reducing lighting, particularly in the evening. Today, it is estimated that 250,000 tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) are saved each year as a result of daylight saving in France”. So, there’s not much hope of a lobby group having any effect!

It seems that daylight saving goes back to Ancient Times and was resurrected by Benjamin Franklin in April 1784 in a well-known satire. The next person to promote the idea was New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson. He was a shift worker and used to collect insects in his spare time so obviously wanted as much daylight as possible. He presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1895 proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift. It didn’t catch on though until an Englishman,William Willet (poor man with a name like that), published a pamphlet in 1907 called “The Waste of Daylight”. He thought up this really complicated system of putting the clock forward by 80 minutes in 4 stages in April and then back again in September. No wonder it took another 9 years to be voted in by the British parliament, by which time poor Willet had died of the flu.

Ireland, Italy and France followed suit as did most of the other European countries after the War. But France did away with daylight saving in 1946 and didn’t bring it back until 1975, the year I arrived in France. Having been born and bred in North Queensland, I’d never experienced daylight saving before. Queensland is still holding out against the rest of the country but there’s a lot more lobbying these days, particularly by groups such as the The Daylight Saving for Southeast Queensland Party.

So now, Leonardo (who’s in Sydney) and I are 9 hours apart instead of 10. For the moment, I don’t know whether it’s better or worse.

And thank you, Wikipedia, for all the facts and figures!

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