Christmas eve morning

Christmas eve. We actually woke quite early for us, 7.10am, and we were already having tea in bed. “Shall we get up?” I asked. It will be good to get into Bar-sur-Seine early before it gets too busy”. I said that with great confidence, however although I knew the butchers was open ‘non-stop’ as they put it, And I was pretty certain the bakers would be open, I was not at all confident the market would be on.

As we drove there, I shared an observation with Brian. “Hun, you do realise we have seen no-one since leaving home , 10 minutes ago, I’m just not sure what may be open!”. Brian is surprisingly way more positive than me at times, and he was pretty sure it would be okay. As we approached the market I could see there were lots of parked cars. “That’s good” I exclaimed.

First we went to go and get the bread. It really was a good job, as the queue was about 20 people long, and as usual there was no urgency. Oh well, we were not in a hurry, just in need of coffee.

After about 40 minutes waiting at the bakers, watching many people coming out with sacks of baguettes, and boxes laden with bûches de Noël, we had bought our bread and pastries and Christmas treats. We then headed to the market. “How about some fish for dinner?” They had a delicious array of tasty shellfish, prawns, langoustines, lobster. But they also had some turbot, which we both love. So we bought a turbot, some of their best prawns and a box of scallops. With a few bits from the veg stall, and a bottle of locally made fruit juice, we were done.

Off we went to the café for some coffee and a chat about how we are going to cook our little haul of fish.

We were not done though. We then had to go and collect the meat we had ordered. We dropped the fish off at the car and trotted up to the butchers. The shop was empty so we were able to go in and spend some time chatting to the butcher. It’s good practicing our french on a very receptive participant, he is always cheerful and makes time to talk to us about what we are buying. We really did buy some fine looking produce, which I can’t wait for us to cook and try out some new recipes.

Home now to start Christmas proper.