Christmas tree cheer

I was keen to go and buy our sapin – Christmas tree. I just love getting it decorated and enjoying having it in the house. We always buy it from the same place in a little village called Polisot. It’s usually packed with trees, but on this occasion they had almost sold out. Fortunately they had one the size we wanted, 2.8m. Brian grabbed it up, walked it over and proceeded to squeeze it into the car. It really only just fitted, along with a sawn log as a stand and a pile of pine branches to use around the house. The lady lets us take the branches for free, which I find so delightful.

We had moved the pew that normally sits in the salon into the hallway so that we had space for the tree to go there. It’s always fun trying to get it in the house, wondering whether this is the year we’ve finally bought one way too big!

We did need to cut the top of it to fit, which we’d told the lady selling it to us that we would need to do, and I think she thought ‘Why are they buying one so big?’ We always prefer to do it that way though, because we find the top 30cm or so are always a bit too stick-like.

With the tree in place ready to be decorated, and some classic Christmas songs playing, we thought a glass of bubbles was definitely in order.

It’s just magical decorating the tree at Christmas, it always brings me joy. Seeing all our beautiful decorations again that we have collected or been given over the years.

This year I’ve been collecting some crystals that have come from old chandeliers, I’ve repurposed them with some red string to hang from the tree, helping the little white lights glisten even more.

All it needs now is a few presents, I better start wrapping.

Festive spirit

The morning we left Amiens the snow had finally started to fall. We sat in the warmth of the hotel enjoying our breakfast together, chatting about our weekend and watching the streets outside slowly becoming white, full of snow, just beautiful.

Our friends were heading back to the UK, and we were driving across to Reims to meet another friend at the Christmas market there before heading home. It was about a two hour drive to Reims, then the same again to home, so a nice break in the journey.

The Reims Christmas market was huge, full of colour and excitement. They had lots of handcrafted items, and also food stalls, along with, of course, Champagne. We are, after all, in the capital of Champagne.

Such a wonderful way to get thoroughly into the festive spirit.

Les Orfèvres

The day in Amiens was wonderful, and for the evening we had chosen a restaurant where Brian and I had eaten before, and had enjoyed an equally wonderful meal, in fact, it had been an all round great experience. It’s always a bit tricky when you return to a restaurant, as you never quite know what it will be like, and we were also bringing friends, so the stakes were higher.

Things started well though, with a delicious array of amuse bouche.

We had plumped for the largest of the menu choices, along with a wine flight. The big question on all our minds though was whether we were going to make it to the end, knowing we had eight courses ahead of us.

The meal got started proper with a scallop served in a rich jus, which was super tasty. Then we had a smoked haddock ravioli, followed by a prawn mousse, and a piece of cod in a luscious white wine sauce.

Halfway in we then enjoyed a tartelette of leeks and truffle, with a Beaufort cheese sauce. A little more challenging for me was the pigeon, however it was cooked perfectly in a deep, rich, red wine jus.

Pre-dessert was a dark chocolate mousse, which was so light. This was followed by a prune compote with a herb ice-cream and a shard of lovage. Which was a very refreshing light palette cleanser to finish off our evening.

It was a very tasty and well presented meal, that lived up to our expectations, and was all the better for being shared with friends.

Light fantastic

Throughout December, at 7pm in front of the cathedral, the city of Amiens presents a rather spectacular son et lumière (sound and light show) projected onto the front facade of the cathedral. The show lasts for around 50 minutes, and is free to watch. But wrap up warm!

It starts with drapery being projected onto the whole facade of the cathedral, which gives it the appearance of a theatre. They then start to highlight the statues and carvings, bringing each of them to life in turn, the projection making them look as if they were moving. The circular centrepiece then turns into a mechanical sphere and starts to rotate. They then introduce vivid colours and it becomes an exciting, moving, graphical experience. All the time the music helps set the mood and pace of the show.

Finally they end with a kaleidoscope of colour and tricksy little illusions, a superb show against a spectacular building.

Journey to the centre of the earth

After a little pause for a warming cup of coffee we headed over towards the house of Jules Verne. Brian has fond memories of the most famous of Jules Verne’s stories, having often watched movies as a child of Journey to the centre of the Earth, Twenty thousand leagues under the sea and, of course, Around the world in eighty days. Sometimes when we visit brocantes he will find an old copy of a Jules Verne classic with a beautiful illustrated cover, and buy it if the price is right. So he was keen to see the writers home.

Jules Verne lived in Amiens for 34 years from 1871 to 1905. He lived as a tenant for 18 years of that time, between 1882 and 1900, in the Maison à la Tour, the house we visited.

There was a very comfortable, warm feeling about the home, I could see why he and his wife enjoyed living here.

The image above is his little study room where he often sat to write his books, and take a nap when he needed some time out.

Jules Verne was born on 8th February 1828 in Nantes, he died on 24th March 1905 in Amiens. Most of his novels were based in the period after 1850 and included the latest technology of the time, often adding his own creative spin or fantastical imaginings. A number of his novels have been made into colourful adventure films – one of my favourites is around the world in 80 days. I love the original with David Niven, and also the remake with Steve Coogan.

I’m not sure if it’s surprising or not, but Jules Verne is the second most translated author in the world, and the most translated in France.

We couldn’t help but buy two more of his books from the little shop in the foyer, these were of course french editions, part of a modern day set of reproductions based on the beautiful ones Brian buys in the brocantes.

Cathedral of Notre Dame, Amiens

Our hotel was right opposite Amiens cathedral of Notre Dame, so an ideal place to head for and start our day.

They started building the cathedral in 1220, and it took around 50 years to finish, which apparently is a remarkably short period of time for a Gothic cathedral. When you get up close, you can appreciate all the incredibly intricate carving and work that went into it, it’s a classic example of high gothic architecture. As you enter it, the enormity of the building is rather extraordinary, it’s height is breathtaking.

The builders were trying to maximize the internal dimensions to allow light to flood in, and also to appear like the building was reaching for the heavens. They certainly achieved it. I was also impressed with the level of small details they added at height throughout the cathedral, like the stonework garland that runs around the upper tier.

I wasn’t aware, before going there, that Amiens cathedral is the largest in France, at 200,000 cubic metres. It’s large enough to contain Notre Dame in Paris twice!

It has been listed as a UNESCO world heritage site since 1981.

Although Amiens Cathedral has lost a lot of its original stained glass, it is renowned for the quality, and quantity, of its early 13th-century gothic sculpture.

Much of its stained glass windows were removed to protect them during the world wars, although the church actually only suffered minor damage. But sadly, in 1920, some of the windows which were being stored in the workshop of a master glass maker for their protection were destroyed by a fire. The ones that did survive have been reinstated and are magnificent.

It’s such an exquisite building, and is well worth a visit.

Two boots please

In the evening in Amiens we walked over to the Saint Leu area, which is just behind the cathedral, near the Somme river. It’s a pretty little walk along cobbled streets, where you stumble across little artisan boutiques, like booksellers or art studios and brocantes.

After a bracing walk in the winter evening we settled in a cosy little bar for a pre dinner Christmas drink. The boys tried the ‘Bière de Noël’, that came in a very seasonal Santa boot. Dinner was a cheery time in a nearby restaurant after a couple of those!

Vin chaud

On Friday we arrived in Amiens for a weekend of meeting up with friends and visiting the Christmas market. After a short walk around a portion of the market our first stop was for a cup of warming vin chaud and a good catch up.

The Amiens Christmas market is the largest in northern France, and runs the length of the city centre, it’s quite a spectacle. At one end they had erected a huge big wheel, which I imagine had amazing views from the top, however it was very chilly even on the ground, and we all decided it was best not to go up. Phew, that saved me from having to play the vertigo card!

As we strolled along the main shopping strip, which is all pedestrianised, we could peruse the many stalls, as well as enjoying some of the wonderfully decorated doorways to the shops and restaurants. It was all beautifully festive.

The vin chaud stalls were a particular favourite, but we managed to resist the multitude of chocolate Santas.

Brian snuck off occasionally to buy a sneaky pressie I think, but I’ll have to wait and see.

Chocolate mountain

Christmas has definitely landed. This was the beautiful Christmas scene that greeted us at at a local hypermarché.

When we then walked further into the shop we were surrounded by piles and piles of chocolate, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much in one place.

Frothy coffee

We are waking to some thick frosts across the garden, temperatures now dropping to around -4°c. So my morning coffee was particularly welcome, and it was also particularly frothy, just how I like it.

Just after coffee, our delivery of wood pellets arrived. We used to be a bit daunted by all of this task, ordering them, and getting them delivered but now we have no problem in contacting them and arranging a delivery. It’s all very straight forward.

And we had a pleasant surprise with this order as it was a little cheaper than our previous one. Hopefully that downward trend will continue.

Skirting around the edges

Our bedroom and bathroom are on the top floor, within the eaves of our house. The bathroom is quite spacious, with a freestanding roll top bath and large vintage pedestal sink.

In one corner there is an alcove which is, I admit, a bit messy at the moment, as I store towels along the wooden ledge. I’ve always felt it’s not a great use of the space.

So the plan is to build some shelving across this alcove to better store our towels. There are also a few gaps around the edge that are quite drafty in the winter months. So firstly Brian has added some additional insulation to help combat the drafts.

He has a piece of wood similar to the existing skirting he kept in his workshop, so he is using that to complete the line of the skirting before building a frame over it to fit the shelves to.

Obviously his trusty laser is being used to ensure everything is straight.

I’m quite excited to see it coming together, and although we are losing some space, I think it will be a much better use of the space we have.

I can see the light

In our kitchen Brian adapted some old wooden units to use as our kitchen cupboards. It was always our plan to have some kind of illumination on them for the work surface below, but although we had plenty of plugs fitted when we did the kitchen we didn’t put any lights under the cupboards.

So last week we bought a couple of Hue light strips, which we can control via a Bluetooth controller, or via an app on our phones. These light strips can be stuck in place quite easily, so should be straight forward. The only challenge though is that I don’t want the light strip to be visible when I’m sitting at the kitchen table, which means adding some kind of beading to the base of the cupboard.

This cupboard is made of mahogany, a wood that you cannot easily buy nowadays, in fact, I’m not sure you can buy it anymore. So Brian has bought some oak beading and is trying to stain that to match, he will then use that to hide the lighting strips. It’s one of those seemingly small jobs that actually needs lots of patience.

Escape to rural France

We are often asked ‘What do you get to watch on TV?’. The answer is generally that we admit to no longer owning a TV, which isn’t exactly true, we do have our old one that we brought from the UK, but we have never set it up here.

In the summer we spend most of our evenings enjoying our time outside, but in the winter we do like to sit down in the evening after dinner to watch something before bed. Netflix and Prime are great sources for box sets or movies, and we watch them on the iPad or laptop. Our French Prime enables us to watch French shows with English subtitles or even French subtitles if we are not too tired. This is great for our language learning.

We also watch a number of shows on ‘YouTube’, it has some great content creators. ‘Chateau diaries’ was a spin off from escape to the chateau, and a few others have since come from that.

The vlog on YouTube we now love to catch most days is ‘Escape to rural France’. It’s filmed, edited and starred in by one man, Dan, who pretty much is single handedly rebuilding his newly acquired chateau that was damaged by fire around 50 years ago, and has been left to decay since.

It’s quite incredible and very inspirational, however not something we would ever take on!

It’s in the post

The day started quietly with a delicious milky coffee, made by Brian, and a couple of slices each of the fruit and nut bread I’d bought at the market yesterday. I’d lightly toasted it, and we enjoyed it simply with butter. However I felt it was lacking a little sweetness, so I sprinkled a tiny bit of sugar on the top, which Brian thought was a great idea.

The plan was to try and finish off making our Christmas cards today. Brian’s design this year has proven to be a particularly difficult one to execute, I think he’d completely forgotten how difficult it is to do this particular process. So we still have quite a bit of work to do on them before we can get them in the post.

Before dinner

The evening temperatures are starting to drop now across central France, in fact we have some snow flurries forecast for later this week. It will be wonderful to have snow in December, let’s hope we get some, but not too much though.

We tend to light the fire in the salon, around 5.30pm, it warms the room up nicely before we sit down at the end of our day for a little pre dinner drink. Sometimes that may just be a cup of tea, but normally a g&t or Brian may have a beer, but of course a glass of Champagne when it feels right. We normally take some time, half an hour or so, to practice some French, or catch up on the days news, or I may look at my blog for the day. It’s nice just to sit quietly, warm up and reflect on the day, before we enjoy our dinner

Thanksgiving

At the market today, as well as visiting my usual vegetable stall where I can always find some beautiful fresh produce, I discovered a new bread stall. It’s actually a producer that I’ve followed on Instagram @claire.et.hugo for a few years now. They first got my attention as they used to own a red, double decker bus which they traveled the region in, as a pop up street food seller. It seemed such a great idea, but somehow we never got to visit it before they then opened a restaurant with a bakery on the side in Troyes. We have yet to visit it. But today they had a stall at the Bar-sur-Seine market, and it was absolutely brilliant.

We bought an Apple tart, (eaten already) a gorgeous baguette, very tasty with a great crust, and some fruit and nut bread, which was sold by its weight. I’m really looking forward to breakfast.

I admit that I didn’t think I’d bought much at the market, but Brian said the bag had got very heavy, and when we returned home and put it all out I have to say that there did seem to be quite a lot, a veritable feast. As we are Brits we don’t really celebrate thanksgiving, but we wish a happy thanksgiving to everyone that does. I do however remember celebrating harvest festival at school, and I felt my table of produce was definitely worth celebrating.

Into the blue

We woke to gorgeous blue skies this morning, it was a little cool but a good day for doing some jobs in the garden. Brian was already out there once I’d wrapped myself up and headed out. He was staring at the sky saying ‘I can hear them, but I cannot see them’. I could hear the familiar chatter of the cranes, who had returned for their winter sojourn.

‘Just there’ I said, pointing into the blue.

Really high in the sky you could just see the cranes flying overhead. They always bring a smile to me when I see them, I think it’s because they have chosen the area we live in to migrate to, so delightful.

One of the garden jobs was to plant some tulip bulbs I’d bought. However, the ground is very hard and quite claggy, due to the rain, so it was pretty hard going.

I knew roughly where I wanted to put them, so together we soon had them planted. We then tidied up the ground around them, ready for, fingers crossed, when they start sprouting in the spring.

Le Cellier

We tried out a new restaurant for us this week when we met up with some friends in Bar-sur-Aube for dinner. Le Cellier restaurant is situated in the restored cellar once used by the monks of the Abbey at Clairvaux. The restaurant was very comfortable, with a stylish, modern setting, with nicely spaced tables and a very friendly atmosphere.

The menu had plenty of choices, including plat du jour. I chose the beef, a slow cooked piece of brisket in a rich red wine sauce, it was delicious. Brian wanted to try their beef burger, which he said was a very generous dish, and just what he fancied.

The ceiling to the restaurant was spectacular. They had restored the vaults and retained the beautiful inscriptions left by the winegrowers in the 1930s. I’d like to learn more about its history, I need to do a bit of research I think, and hopefully I can share more in a future blog.

Settling in

It seems to have been a bit of a whirlwind week since arriving home, but we’ve got ourselves settled back in, cleaned the house, caught up on the laundry, prepared the guest rooms, cleaned and stocked the fridge, booked the chimney sweep to come, and started on the mountain of ironing. We are now very much back into our rather flexible daily routine.

Taking time out of any type of routine or schedule helps free the mind and brings renewed energy. With the changing of seasons I always find it’s a great time to plan what’s next. Brian is planning his next projects, he will be starting the library after Christmas, but he has a few little jobs he’d like to do before then. I have some things I’d like to do, more planning on the garden, and getting ready for some potential winter jobs in the garden, although it’s not possible to do too much. We need to review our jobs list and prioritise what’s important.

It was such a gorgeous day, with a beautiful blue sky, so we took time out to walk up to the point de vue, just before the sun was ready to set.

The stillness of the village is delightful in the warm autumn sun. The log fires are starting to be lit for the evening and we can spy the puffs of smoke drifting out of the chimney stack’s, all different in their design and look.

What a beautiful place we live in.

Hoorah!

A few weeks ago, just before we traveled to the UK, the application for my ‘actual’ Carte Vitale* card arrived. They were requesting my photograph, and proof of identity, to make the card. They only give you 2 weeks to return it, and the letter was dated 11 days earlier, so I knew I had to do it before we traveled. It was a bit of a scramble to get the form completed, with the proof, before we left, but we really didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise it. So we completed the night before travel, diligently checked it over, and posted it from Calais just before getting on the shuttle.

Last Friday Brian’s form arrived, so not to dally we completed it and went and posted it this morning.

When we got home, Brian emptied the post box and amazingly my card has arrived - hoorah!. What a wonderful start to the week.

I’ve waited over 3 years for this, fingers crossed Brian doesn’t have to wait too much longer either.

*Carte Vitale card allows you access to the French health system.