Two Months Left!

Two months! That’s all that’s left of our time here in Toulouse. Two months from today we’ll be boarding a plane and returning to life in America.

We are busy with career research and job applications, in the midst of figuring out where we’ll land exactly upon our return. This is an exciting process as it seems like with each click of a button (or application submission) life could be forever changed! Fortunately at this stage it’s not too daunting, but perhaps if things are still unknown a month from now I may feel differently…

The trickiest thing is knowing just how to balance our schedule right now; how much time to borrow from being in beautiful France, going out and making the most of our remaining weeks here, versus staying cooped up in the house laboring over one job app after another. Obviously we need to plan our next steps, but it seems a shame to do so at the expense of adventuring out and around the region during our free hours.

In this process which I know can be spiritually and psychologically taxing, I remind myself to be faithful that there is a universal plan for us, that what we have yet to know is already known, and trust that we will end up exactly where we are meant to be. Prayers and good vibes sent our way on this front are very welcome. 🙂

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Last month was here and then gone in the blink of an eye. In February we spent two weeks traveling and enjoying a visit from family, so an already short month was made even more brief. I will share details soon about our travels to Belgium, Germany, Paris, and Montpellier, but suffice to say we felt satisfied that we made the most of our February two-week break.

At the end of the month I spend two weeks being sick, one of which with no voice, so that was annoying! But, largely rainy weather helped me feel like I wasn’t missing out on too much outside anyway. While the east coast of the US continued to be battered with zero degree weather (and below), loads more snow and ice, we coasted through February with lows only in the 30s and highs in the 40s-50s each day. I feel so spoiled to be cradled in the mild southern-France-climate that I can’t even imagine what waking up to 6 degrees this very morning (which is the weather I currently see posted for my family) would feel like, while I am waiting for today’s weather here to hit the projected glorious high of 67 (we are only beginning to have temps in the 60s, which, considering it’s now March I think is perfectly fair ;).

I am glad to be back to work. I hardly spent any time at the school in February with the vacation weeks and then being sick. It’s nice to be back in the school environment; I really like my students and colleagues. They are special people and I already know I will miss them. I only have 6 instructional weeks left. Ah! Hard to grasp what time is…

Now I am off to the market to pick up some produce for a little dinner party chez nous this evening. Bisous tout le monde!

 

January in Toulouse

Ah, January.
This month goes quickly and slowly at the same time. Our winter weather in Toulouse is much milder than the northeast winter weather my family gets in NJ. At this moment they are embracing Winter Storm Juno with lots of snow predicted. We, on the other hand, would be lucky to see a dusting of snow this winter in Toulouse.

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WEEKEND EXCURSIONS. I did get to see some good, fresh snow last weekend in the Pyrenees though, so that was absolutely lovely, wonderful and refreshing. We took a day trip down to a popular ski town called Luchon. Nick went snowboarding and I gave snowshoeing a whirl with some friends.

The Pyrenees Mountains are just gorgeous. This was my first up-close-and-personal encounter with real snow-capped, rugged mountains in my life. Nothing like it back home on the east coast.  They are majestic, enchanting, and inspiring to gaze upon. I’m especially glad we made it down to see them up close since  we only live an hour or two north in Toulouse, and on clear days, we have a view of them from our apartment. We do live in the Midi-Pyrenees region, after all.

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TRAVEL. I am getting busy planning our remaining travels for the months ahead. We are getting excited to receive family and friends who are coming to visit us in February, March, and April. I’ve got itineraries all ready to go for touring our guests around Toulouse and we are busy arranging transportation and travel itineraries for the trips we will make elsewhere together.
JOB PLANNING. It’s also the time of the year for Nick and I to consider what comes next, after France. We are looking into jobs and possible places to relocate to upon our return to the US. It’s all an open book for now. Come May, we will be back stateside but we’ve got to decide where to call home. All our belongings and professional network await us in Baltimore, but our family and friends are mostly in the NY-NJ area, and of course Nick’s heart always belongs to the Pac-N-Dub (or the Pacific-Northwest, to the rest of us). Decisions, decisions. We will cast a wide net and see what happens.

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BIRTHDAYS. We recently celebrated a big birthday for Nick. He turned the big 3-0 a few weeks ago. Our friends joined us for some weekend revelry, including our first rugby match, and then a lovely dinner out for his actual birthday. He welcomes his new age bracket gracefully and is happy to embark on what he considers a more dignified period of adulthood, you know, when folks take you more seriously. Good for him. I’m always glad to have him break on through to the other side of each new age before me. Takes off the pressure 😉

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FOOD. Since October we’ve held a tradition with our assistant friends in Toulouse to gather together for a weekly potluck dinner. We are continuing this tradition in the New Year. It’s fun to find new ingredients to work with at the market each week and to see what recipes we can come up with and do a decent enough job with here in our limited kitchen. Tonight I’m making butternut squash chili and it’ll be the first chili I’ve had in a months. You have to cut corners here and there and make lots of substitutions for ingredients you can’t find here, but that’s a fun part of cooking anyway. Like every time I use our little oven, it’s automatically an experiment since the thing has no temperature settings or any real method for control.
Speaking of, for Nick’s birthday, the cake I made him was a total from-scratch-experiment (duh, box mixes don’t exist here). Don’t get me wrong, I am all for from-scratch baking. But not only did I have no idea how our oven would behave, I had to totally guesstimate my measurements (I haven’t any measuring tools; I used a small glass and said, “well, this might be a cup…”). I also had a heck of a time finding the right baking ingredients (ahem, baking powder, vanilla extract, powdered sugar… of course half the battle is uncovering the correct french translation, then discovering whether it’s sold in your supermarket…).
I don’t have any proper cake pans of course. So improvisation encore. I ended up making one cake, realizing the batter was nowhere near a sufficient a quantity, decided to redouble my efforts and start again with a second cake. This worked out because then I was able to do a layered cake with a raspberry coulis layer in the middle. The batter didn’t seem interesting enough, so I added some spices and, voila! It turned into a spice cake, which I should’ve thought of from the start because that’s Nick’s favorite.

I’m not a big cake lover myself, but I firmly believe everyone must have a homemade cake on their birthday!!! (Thanks Mom, for deeply rooting this tradition in me!) So just because I’m in France without real baking equipment, a lack of familiarity with French baking ingredients (which turn out to be surprisingly tricky to come by), and a crazy oven, I obviously wasn’t going to not bake my man a birthday cake. And after all that, somehow it turned out fine. Nick says it was his favorite one ever. ❤
(Probably owing in part at least to having witnessed the effort that went into it; he saw the struggle that is beating two batches of cake batter and making your own frosting without any electric tools, old-school style. He was even eventually recruited to lend some muscle to the cause for just a little while).
It wasn’t much to look at, but anyway it was done. Happy 30th birthday Nick!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

The 2014 holiday season has come to a close. Nick and I spent most of our vacation time off at home in Toulouse. We did take a trip for several days before Christmas to a small town called Gourdon, 1.75 hours north of Toulouse in the department of Lot.

We stayed at the apartment of another language assistant who invited others without plans to travel home for Christmas to come visit her and discover her small countryside town. Gourdon was quaint and cute. We enjoyed going for long walks through town, a hike around a lake, preparing Christmas-time French meals at home, visiting a café or two, and ultimately attending a Christmas Eve mass in a very old French cathedral in town.

 

The 9:30pm Christmas Eve service was well attended by the town-folk. It opened with a 30 minute children’s pageant (though not at all the same content as those I know in the US!), followed by a formal service that must have lasted at least 2 hours itself. I was struck by how freezing cold the church was! Apparently I’ve never sat in an unheated church at night/in winter before. But of course these 600+ year old churches have no heat… I guess I just never realized heating would never have been added? In any case, after 2 hours I was frozen and ready to go home so I confess we slipped out early… after all Santa comes around midnight, doesn’t he? We ended the night with a toast among new friends and tried to get some shuteye.

On Christmas morning we took an early morning train back to Toulouse. Back at our place we were able to enjoy gift opening, coffee, and some breakfast. Nothing in town was open on Christmas day so we set ourselves up at home and had our own “French Christmas feast” of raclette, oysters, artichokes, buche de noel, and clementines. Traditional French meals are served in courses. You may start with an appetizer course, then have an entrée (in French called the plat), then perhaps a salad, next a cheese plate followed by coffee and dessert, then fruit at the finish. I won’t pretend we established all the required courses for just the two of us, but we emulated a French Christmas dinner as it suited us.

The clearly american food items pictured on the right above were a gift from some good american friends back home. Nothing like receiving a package stuffed with peanut butter for Americans in France 😉

I asked my students and colleagues before Christmas what is typically eaten here on Christmas. Among the items listed were some easy ones I would cross off our list like turkey and fois gras, but the tradition of eating seafood (especially oysters) appeals to Nick especially so we were sure to include it.

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Insert note about our dear French friend Bernie : a Toulousain Americanaphile with a welcoming home and hugely generous spirit, Bernie is our friend who loves all things American.  He invites all visiting Americans to join him and discover for themselves the glory that is his self-constructed American Western Saloon behind his house. It is without a doubt the best place to go for a drink here in Toulouse. He has adopted us during our sejour to be his American regulars, always invited to join him for drinks in his private saloon out back and even to join the occasional meal with his family (yes, complete with all the French courses).

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Having never before experienced French raclette—and thanks to Bernie who kindly lent us his raclette machine over Christmas while he travels with his family for the holidays—we decided Christmas was the perfect time to try it out.

Raclette is a type of cheese but also refers to a meal of grilled things topped with said melted cheese. What I call the “raclette machine” is just a table-top grill with small pans.  You grill things like veggies (and charcuterie if you’re a carnivore) on the top surface, while you melt sliced raclette cheese below in the little trays. Then you pour your melted cheese over your grilled things and enjoy. I’ve been hearing my students talk about raclette for months and now I understand why it is so popular. It is fun and delicious!

Finally, bûche de noel (or yule log cake) is the traditional dessert served on Christmas. I’m told that the cake originates from the idea that the French would all leave their homes on Christmas Eve to go to evening church services. They would leave one log on the fire to keep the house warm and welcome them upon their return home. The bûche de noel therefore represents the log in the Christmas Eve hearth that welcomes cold, hungry people home as they embark upon the hour of Christmas Eve feasting and celebration.

The first buche shown here was an ice cream cake version, the second is a sampler of 4 flavors: vanilla, buttercream, coffee, and chocolate, and the third buche is perhaps the most traditional as your standard chocolate ganache. We recommend the real cake and not the ice cream version. Preferred flavors: coffee and chocolate. I’m not a cake lover, but the buche is nice.

The huge Christmas feast in France takes place on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day as it is in my family. I know American families who do it one way or the other. I think I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of both; I say the more feasts and traditions the better!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Christmas is Coming!

My days have been busy recently and the weeks are flying by. I’ve been spending more time at work for the last month since my classes are in full swing and I’ve been lunching at school several days a week. I’m enjoying getting to chat with and get to know my French colleagues. I’ve also been comparing notes with my students about how best to prepare for Christmas in France. It seems that 50% of my students and colleagues will stay in Toulouse for the holidays and the other 50% is heading for the mountains (the Pyrenees).

Speaking of holiday plans, ours have been in flux for a while. I would so love to travel to a snowy place for Christmas (I originally thought it would be a good time to visit Strasbourg up in the Alsace region or the Alps) but predictably, flight and train rates have skyrocketed to unfeasible heights. So it looks like we are settling in for Noel à la Toulousaine.

My prerequisite for staying in Toulouse for Christmas was that we must have a Christmas tree and other decorations in our apartment to make it feel adequately festive. I thus set out to discover the French mega-store called Auchan where my Assistant friends assured me I would find ample decorating options at affordable prices, and I wasn’t disappointed. (That is, aside from my disappointment that arriving on December 9th I was WAY too late to get the traditional Advent Calendar which bestows a daily chocolate through advent… I should have KNOWN the 50 thousand they had in stock were sold on December 1st!)  At Auchan I was able to get just enough to deck the halls chez moi and I am feeling much more Christmasy now. 😉 Plus, I have been channeling ELF and making tons of Christmas decorations myself; I’ve got quite a collection now of paper snowflakes and Christmas drawings draped around the walls to further the Christmas spirit chez nous.

I am a person who values tradition, and I definitely love Christmas family traditions.  This year’s Christmas will be my first ever spent away from my family in New Jersey. Plus, our friends here are all traveling so we are on our own.  Thus it will also be my first Christmas with just my husband and me as a duo. Since we are staying put in Toulouse, I am thinking we ought to make a little itinerary for our Christmas Eve/Christmas Day to make it full and eventful. Any suggestions? Any ideas for Christmas traditions for two people far from family to feel festive?

So far my plans for us include a Christmas Eve dinner that mimics the traditional french feast, attending a midnight mass in one of the beautiful 900 year-old cathedrals here on Christmas Eve… I’m sure we’ll need to arrive super early to wait in line in the hope of finding seats.  We’ll save gift opening for Christmas morning of course… Face-time with family on Christmas Day will likely happen in the afternoon and evening… I don’t know if any places will be open here on Christmas Day nor if people will be out and about, but I figure a good long walk around town might be nice.

I would SO love to see some snow here! Chances aren’t good since our temps hover in the 40s, sometimes dipping to the 30s with a good deal of rainy days at this time of year.   Maybe we will get down to the Pyrenees at some point anyway and find some snowy nooks there.  That’s the Toulousaine thing to do at Christmas, after all!

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go;
There’s a tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well,
The sturdy kind that doesn’t mind the snow.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the bells will start,
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart.”

Christmas Markets come to Toulouse

Les Marchés de Noel sont arrivés!
During the last week of November, Toulousains gathered for the ceremonial lighting of the Christmas decorations we had been seeing go up in town for weeks. We were eagerly anticipating the lighting of the Christmas lights and decorations. They had been strung up around town but awaiting their lighting debut for nearly a month, and at last, it happened.

We gathered downtown to hear the Mayor address the Toulousains in the Lighting Ceremony.  Among wishing everyone happy holidays and inviting the inaugural lighting to take place, he also took the time to tell the good people about how this year the city gives us a greater number of Christmas lights which will be lit for more consecutive weeks, and all while operating on a smaller budget than in previous years. What a feat! One Christmas-loving citizen interrupted the Mayor’s speech at one point, crying out in protest that the season of Christmas lights is not long enough… too French.

Also debuting during the last weekend of November here in Toulouse was our grand Christmas Market (le Marché de Noel) which is held in the big square at Capitole. The Christmas Market features tons of local crafts and goods for sale, all of which of course make great Christmas gifts. Here you can buy your loved ones exotic spices, miniature hand-crafted characters for nativity scenes, Russian nesting dolls, Toulouse novelty items, special teas, chocolates, cheese, liqueurs, jewelry, wines, and knit things galore. You name the gifty-trinkets and you’ll likely find it at the Marché de Noel.

 

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. “Le Thanksgiving” does not exist in France, but we are making it happen, bien sur! Who would give up the opportunity to eat stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie?? Not us!

Tonight we will gather with our assistant friends to celebrate Thanksgiving with a potluck meal à la Français-Americain.  At minimum, we will be eating mashed potatoes, mac’n cheese, candied sweet potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and gravy.  These are the essential dishes we were committed to seeing on the Thanksgiving table and whose ingredients don’t happen to be impossible to find here. Some ingredients that we take for granted in American supermarkets just don’t exist here (breadcrumbs, any quick mixes like for stuffing, cornbread, or biscuits, cornmeal, condensed soups, etc).  (I must add, I don’t regret that French Thanksgiving has pushed me to learn how to make green bean casserole from scratch; I mean 100% from scratch– !!!)  Luckily, as a predominantly vegetarian group, none of us felt obliged to splurge for a French turkey which would not only be impossible to find and uber expensive if we did find it, but also totally impractical; only one of us has an oven and it’s sure to be filled up with all our other dishes. :p

It’s funny that I get so many vacation days and have a very light work schedule here in France, but go figure that my longest work day of the year so far is today on Thanksgiving Day, a day when everyone in the US will be at home.  So I did all the food prep I could on Thanksgiving Eve and plan to finish the rest in the one hour I have between work and our Friends-giving gathering!

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Reflection on Thanks

One of the reasons I chose to come to France for the year was to make an escape and have the time to work on my French, yes, but also to work on myself; spiritually and in balancing everyday life.  This is a work in progress, as I imagine it will always be. That peaceful, easy feeling I’d love to own permanently comes and goes; during my first month in France I was feeling blissful, grateful, peaceful. After returning from our fall vacation, I started stressing that my time in France is already moving too fast.  I know I must recover the notion that everything is happening just as it is meant to, and that nothing I could accomplish by worrying would make my experience better, only certainly worse.

“My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and what misses me was never meant for me.”

So Thanksgiving represents a time for the expression of gratitude. Allowing yourself to feel fully thankful and to meditate on gratitude is itself balancing and uplifting.  Therefore I think this holiday season is an especially important one for me to embrace and use to my benefit.

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus

In my head are the words of one of my dearest, oldest friends, who offers me a wealth of inspiration and support in matters of self and spiritual improvement:

Life is short and we are not promised tomorrow. We must learn to live in the present, to be grateful for what we have, for where we are, and to accept who we are TODAY. This mantra is a reminder for mindfulness and gratitude; each moment is precious and we must profit and draw happiness from our lives everyday. We must seek peace, joy, and balance.

I am grateful for her wise words and for the motivation people like her inspire in me. I must challenge myself to keep my feet on the ground, motivation in my head and this mantra in my heart.

 “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ― Marcel Proust

THANKSGIVING!

• I am grateful for all of the friends who are in my life, old and new.
• I am grateful for good health as I am aware of so many around me who suffer from lack of it.
• I am grateful for my family, who though they are far away from me now, feel closer than before.
• I am grateful for my husband who I fail to give enough credit to most days; he is my rock, my number one supporter, and my beloved partner in all things.
• I am grateful for new opportunities, for the ability to learn new things, to meet new people, to explore new places, to turn a new leaf in my own life, to be in the beautiful country of France, living quite differently than I was just a few years ago.
• I am grateful for my “life-pause” in Toulouse.

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” -Oprah Winfrey

Fall Break 4th Destination: Barcelona

 

We stayed in Barcelona for two days. On our first afternoon we walked about in the historic district, the gothic area, Las Ramblas, and Port Vell. We visited Barcelona’s History Museum which we really enjoyed; you get to explore the subterranean archaeological site of the Roman city that existed here two millennia ago. It provides anthropological and architectural insight into an interesting period of the city’s history.

History of Barcelona Museum

We found Barcelona to be a bit of an expensive city to visit, especially after leaving Portugal which was really budget-friendly! From our first moments in Barcelona when we spent about 40€ getting from the airport to our Airbnb apartment we knew we had entered a different tourist economy! We noticed that transportation, food, and accommodations are pricier, most museums charge 20€+ for entry, and even cathedrals charge 8-20€ to enter (in France we are used to the latter for free).  We did as much savvy tourism as possible, mostly admiring historic sites from the outside and going everywhere on foot.

Our food experiences in Barcelona were underwhelming in comparison to our previous ones, but of course we may have just not chosen well.  When I eat out, as a general rule of thumb I try to order things that a) I can’t make at home, b) I don’t ordinarily have access to, or c) are the specialty of the region I’m visiting.  We knew we wanted to have paella in Spain and find some other classic dishes too perhaps…

For our first night in Barcelona, we tried an organic vegetarian restaurant which had a nice description in the guide book I splurged for, but unfortunately the food and service didn’t live up to the potential of the place. We tried our luck at a bakery next door after dinner to find something to carry us through but we struck out again by selecting a dry, tough loaf of bread. Then we came upon a fabulous outdoor market off of Las Ramblas (a bustlng, touristy, lively street in downtown Barcelona where everyone must go when they visit), where I got a fruit smoothie which finally hit the spot. 🙂

The next day we visited La Sagrada Familia: a super interesting cathedral that continues to undergo construction today. It’s worth looking up for more information if you aren’t familiar with this ongoing art project of a construction site [more about La Sagrada Familia].  We opted to tour it with our eyes from the outside because entry is expensive and the lines are crazy long! Next, we walked all the way downtown to the Gothic area again and eventually to Barceloneta, Barcelona’s premier beach neighborhood. We had a late lunch here at one of the countless outdoor restaurants which advertise a fixed menu for paella and other things… Nick got to have the paella he’d been waiting for here. We also checked out their fried cod balls and gazpacho soup which was awesome, albeit heavy on the olive oil.

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Knowing that our last vacation destination would be a beach in France, we didn’t push ourselves to experience the beach scene by day in Barcelona, but we did catch the end of a beautiful sunset here on the beach.

We are happy to have visited Barcelona on this vacation, but also happy that we will be returning with friends later this year since there’s lots more to be discovered here than we had time for!

Fall Break 3rd Destination: Porto

Our third vacation destination (and arguably our favorite) was Porto, Portugal.

We flew from Carcassonne to Porto with Ryanair which was a quick, cheap and easy flight. Figuring out Porto’s metro system once we arrived was a little less straight-forward, but after an hour or so of navigating the metro we eventually made it to our Airbnb apartment in the beach neighborhood called Matosinhos.

This area is gorgeous. The beaches are beautiful and well-kept, the surf is strong enough to entertain serious surfers but still swimmable. The water is clear and just as warm in late October as the NJ Atlantic temps I’m used to in the summertime.

On our first night in Porto we went out to find a place to dine in our neighborhood. We headed toward the beach and discovered a really cool little restaurant: formerly a surfers’ grab’n-go snack joint, Casa de Pasto Flor da Praia now hosts some really talented chefs while maintaining the laid-back beachy vibe. We had an awesome little dinner with, among other things, The Most Amazing olives and grilled octopus that we know to exist on this earth… Who knew Portugal has the best olives?! They’ve been keeping some secrets from us Americans, or perhaps it is as one of our hosts later explained to us, that the Portuguese just haven’t figured out how to market themselves and showcase what they do best to the rest of the world. Spoiler alert: look below for my list of Portugal’s best-kept secrets exposed.

Two of our assistant friends from Toulouse came and joined us for a couple days in Porto. We enjoyed time together at the beach with swimming, running, and yoga, going out for sightseeing in the city, dining in Matosinhos, and even a cozy movie night at our apartment.

After 3 nights at the first apartment, our friends left Porto and we moved to a different Airbnb place for the next 3 nights. Here we stayed with Olga, a mid-60s Portuguese woman who touched our hearts with her personality and hospitality. She is seriously one of the sweetest women you could ever meet. She doesn’t speak English so we communicated a lot through google translate on her laptop. 🙂

Olga’s daughter Luisa was there to welcome us the day we arrived. She speaks English as Nick said, “like a poet” and had lots of interesting things to discuss with us. We actually chatted for three hours the afternoon we arrived and we are so appreciative for the insights and information she provided us about her homeland. She and her boyfriend offered us a ride via the scenic route into Porto so we could continue our sightseeing. They were so kind and interesting to talk to!

We explored Porto by day and by night and really enjoyed our time there. We ate some amazing pastries, delicious seafood dishes, and even got to enjoy a cold beer or two (in France it’s hard to find inexpensive beer, let alone cold beer). We even got to eat our first non-canned sardines there, which Nick is all about.

Porto is a uniquely beautiful city because of its topography. It’s situated at the mouth of the Douro River and the Atlantic Ocean. The terrain is so hilly that no matter where you go or how you turn, there are incredible views either looking up or looking down. You can endlessly discover amazing views in any direction; of the river, bridges, churches, houses, and Porto architecture is super charming.

Of course, one cannot forget that Porto is the home of Port! We got to experience a couple of port cellar tours and tastings. We learned that although in the US we only really know the tawny variety, port actually comes in four varieties: tawny, ruby, rose, and white. They are all delicious. Hard to pick!

Our List of Portugal’s best-kept secrets:
1) olives
2) pastries
3) knives
4) beaches
5) the nicest people

Olives: The Portuguese olives we were automatically served in restaurants were outrageously good. How come we only see Greek & Spanish olives in our American supermarkets?? Where are the Portuguese olives? It seems customary here to serve a bowl of olives to guests when they are seated. The olives are marinated in delicious oil and tasty herbs and boy, I could eat them all day long.

Pastries: We discovered that Portugal also has the best pastries (sorry, France). These little gems called Nata are little custards, kind of like flan-meets-crème-brulée-and-croissants. Pastries are also inexpensive in Portugal and you can make out like a bandit in the bakeries here!!

Knives: Anne, our French host from Toulouse advised us that we could buy some high quality kitchen knives inexpensively when we went to Portugal. We kept our eyes peeled as we looked around, but by day 5 we went on a mission to find them. Just when we were starting to worry that they didn’t really exist, we happened upon a hardware store that had a few knives in a window display. We went inside to inquire and, lo and behold, he sure did have knives for us to choose from; we knew immediately it was SO worth the hunt. We got a set of five knives (the best we’ve ever used) for an incredible €30 and they work like magic!! Yes, magic.

Beaches: The beaches we saw are gorgeous, picturesque, and great for sun-bathers, surfers, swimmers, and beach strollers alike.

People: All of the people we met in Portugal were among the absolute friendliest, kindest, most helpful individuals we’ve met anywhere. In spite of language barriers, they were always willing to meet us more than halfway. It really seemed that people were happy to go out of their way to accommodate and assist us, regardless of our inability to speak their language.

Our host Olga even prepared a special treat to share with us on our last night: homemade quince jelly, Portuguese cheese, and vintage port. It was so yummy and sweet of her to share with us. She even explained her recipe for quince jam and sent us off with a collection of quinces so we could try making it ourselves. God bless her! I didn’t even know what a quince was before Olga. 🙂

Needless to say, Porto is a really cool city and a wonderful place to visit.  It is rustic and charming while also offering lots to see and do.  It’s an inexpensive place to stay too. Nick and I loved it and would definitely return.

Not your average train station reception area

Fall Break 2nd Destination: Carcassonne

Second stop on our fall break: Off to Carcassonne! Carcassonne is a medieval, walled-in, fortified city that was touched up in the 19th century and preserved for all to see and enjoy. It’s basically the closest thing to fairy-tale-castle-land that you can find. The interior of the cité has lots of tourist shops and restaurants.  It is really beautiful, especially the view of the cité from the outside at night. Carcassonne really has two separate halves; the fortified cité and the area outside where the town built up around it.

We had a crummy hotel experience here, but I guess that’s what we get for booking cheaply at a hotel near the train station in town. Hotel Bristol has an old glory to it from the outside, but inside the hotel has definitely seen its better days. Everything eventually worked out, so now it’s just a humorous anecdote.  This was the only part of our vacation when we actually stayed at a hotel; for the rest of our stops we used Airbnb and one traditional B&B and had very good experiences.

Carcassonne is absolutely a neat place to visit for the historical sites, but we found the people of the city to be a bit less friendly than other southern towns we’ve visited.  They seem a bit soured by the tourist economy which presumably dominates livelihoods there.  Two days was enough time for us to spend here.

So so hard for me to resist buy soaps!

Fall Break 1st Destination: Castelnaudary

Our first fall vacation destination was the French town of Castelnaudary.  Castelnaudary, home of the French dish cassoulet, is located about 30 minutes (by train) east of Toulouse.  Our train travel there was a story in and of itself:

The saga of the train to Castelnaudary: for our 2pm train out of Toulouse, Nick and I arrived early, as usual.  The train was delayed something like thirty minutes, as usual. Ok. When the train was close to arrival time, they announced a change of track. The whole crowd moves underground to cross to the other side of the station to the new track. Ok.  The train arrives and it is small, like half the size it should be to accommodate all the people standing on the track who they’ve already sold tickets to. They board us anyway. Okayy. There are clearly not enough seats for all of us ticket-holding passengers (by the way, since when does purchasing a full-price ticket for a train not mean that you have purchased a seat?? Come on France… Note: this is not the TGV high-speed train line; this is the local train.)                                                                    So we are standing on the train in the aisle, sandwiched with our luggage between countless others and their luggage.  Ten minutes later someone decides this isn’t going to work and they decide to have everyone de-board the train. We get off the train and we’re told a new, bigger train will come for us in 45 minutes. Ok. We wait and another change of track is announced, so we move. We wait and the train arrives after an extra 20 minute delay or something.  The train that arrives is NOT bigger AND it already has passengers. They board half of us and tell the other half to wait.  We got on. Nick and I found seats, but there are not enough for everyone. Nick gives his seat next to me to an elderly woman.  She sits and he stands in the aisle again with many others.  Ok. The train eventually departs- standing passengers and all- and thirty-ish minutes later we arrive at Castelnaudary.  Since there are no audible announcements on this train, we only know it’s our stop because I asked some guys nearby to let me know when the stop came. Thanks French guys. So we made that leg of our journey and got a later start in Castelnaudary than we’d expected, but thank God we didn’t have any pending connections! Ah, French trains…

We loved Castelnaudary. It is a small town and good for a 2-day stop. The first day we walked around town and ate dinner at Chez David, a top restaurant in town and probably our favorite restaurant experience (at least top 3) of our vacation. We ate some beautiful food there and were really blown away- starting our vacation by spoiling ourselves!

The second day we rented bikes from our BnB hosts and rode 30 miles up and down the Canal du Midi (which is really cool by the way, check it out . It connects Mediterranean France to the Atlantic coast, constructed in the 1600s, and you can ride a bike along it the whole way if you’re a courageous biker!).
It was a beautiful day and a beautiful tour by bike.  Generally speaking, I’m not the happiest person on a bike but I acknowledge that it’s a really great way to see the area and it was a perfect way to spend our day there.
We had a late lunch in town after our bike ride; another meal to be remembered. We ate at a restaurant located right along the canal that we figured might be touristy and not have great food, but were we wrong! It gave Chez David a run for our money!
We did a lite dinner that evening with odds & ends we picked up from a little grocer in town. It was quaint and lovely and we even caught the sunset over the Pyrenees in the distance. 🙂