Cali-Parisien

baby it's cold outside

I saw this little smoothie trying to warm up in la grande épicerie. Just how I feel in Paris with my scarf, convertible mitten-to-gloves, boots, and hat.

posted by bookworm @ samedi, décembre 31, 2005 0 comments   

'O Christmas Tree

For those of you that have been to our place, you know that it's pretty small.

So we decided to make like Charlie Brown this year for Christmas....

posted by geek @ dimanche, décembre 25, 2005 0 comments   

Thanksgiving in Vallée de la Loire

As mentioned earlier, we had other plans for Thanksgiving weekend...

While Shanta was searching the job-listings, she noticed an enticing announcement. An American was starting a gîte (bed-and-breakfast) in the Loire Valley and decided to hold a special Thanksgiving weekend.

As we were feeling homesick and haven't explored much of France, we decided to be adventurous. We took the train out to Orléans (the old one) and then rented a car to get to the little hunting village town Ligny le Ribault where the gîte was. As this was the first time driving in France, it took us about an hour of aimlessly circling the one-way streets and highways in the vicinity of Orléans before we figured out the international (aka non-US) signage and how to use the map properly. But eventually, with Shanta's navigational skills, we found our way in the right direction. The trick was using the signs pointing toward the next towns to discern our location and direction rather than trying to find the often unlabeled roads by name.

So with a map and our newly acquired skills of how to use the map, we set out to visit as many of the famous châteaux in the region that we could get to. Thankfully we had a warm fireplace at the cozy gîte to warm up at the end of the day, because we were freezing each time we had to step out of the heated rental car. We even saw some big snow-flakes (though not enough of them stuck for us to play in).

posted by geek @ dimanche, décembre 04, 2005 0 comments