As part of my too-ing and fro-ing with france this way, I deal with quite a few travel companies. Often, they are wanting to market a travel product of some sort on the site.
The suggestions aren’t always suitable, and trying to sell unrelated products - website hosting, for example - on a travel site, is [...]
Back in May I wrote about some troubles we were having with our EuroPiscine pool liner. Not surprisingly, the problem still hasn’t been resolved and the company seem to have decided that silence is their best approach.
Happily it seems that things can proceed anyway, and our legal representatives have appointed an expert to come around [...]
Our holiday season in the gites finished last Saturday, so this should have been a quiet, restful week. It turned out a bit differently, hence no blog entries since almost a week ago.
To celebrate the end of the season, Mrs B likes to throw a big party, so we had that on Saturday night.
After a [...]
More on this picture of Florida’s state flower in a moment. First a few general comments about life here in France this week, particularly the way it revolves around the village hall.
Autumn must be on its way, because the signs for ‘night markets’ (places were villagers and tourists eat together in a town centre, while [...]
You’ll be pleased to see we’ve reached the final instalment of our is anyone suitable to live in France series. Normal service will be resumed in a couple of days. .
The last question was ‘How well do you know the place in France where you intend to live?’…and does it matter?
It’s quite easy to have [...]
This is part four of the would you suit life as an expat in France series. Reading the previous entries won’t make you any better informed and might well make you bitter and resentful, but if you must, take a look at the ‘Expat requirements’ category.
One question that was posed was, ‘Do you like French [...]
OK we’re half way through this interminable series of responses to the survey at Would you enjoy living in France - not far to go now, and I’ll keep this one brief.
I have nothing very helpful to say on this subject, since it depends entirely on your own personality, but I do know that it [...]
In this next thrilling episode of our survey ‘are you suited to a life in France‘ I’ll share my thoughts about how much money you need, always a thorny issue but one that is hard to ignore. (You can see the original survey and other responses in the ‘Expat Requirements’ category).
If you answered that you [...]
(This post is the first in a series of responses to the questionnaire posted at Would you like living in France. See the ‘expat requirements’ category for all posts in the series.)
The first question asked was ‘do you speak French?’.
Ah, obviously the answer is, there is no point moving to France if you can’t speak [...]
Since this blog receives many visitors from people searching for ‘living in France’ I assume there must be lots of readers who are contemplating it. So in a short series of posts over the next couple of weeks I will attempt to answer the question - would you make a good French expat?
I’ll post all [...]
A few years ago, when we first arrived in rural France, there were a few ‘downshifters’ around. Families who believed a peaceful, low-impact, low-cost, environment-friendly life was A GOOD THING.
Or rather, parents who had dragged their kicking and screaming children with them, telling them that growing their own vegetables and learning to knit was a [...]
We’ve just resolved this years little run in with the world of French bureaucracy, mostly of my own making, so we are happy.
A few months ago a nice man from the water board came by, smiling and pleasant, and stuck a piece of paper under my nose for me to sign. They wanted permission to [...]
I’m always harping on about French expats and visitors to France who don’t make any effort to speak French, even a few common courtesies that everyone must remember from school. You remember: “bonjour”, “merci” and a few others.
So today I’m going to pay special tribute to two overheard conversations - congratulations to those involved for [...]
