Saturday Snapshot

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books.Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. how much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.

This week's picture comes from a freezing but beautiful tour of the old French town of Briancon in the Alps. We spent a week here and it was just one fabulous day after another, excepting the day it snowed and we couldn't go anywhere because of the ice. It all melted the next day so it turned out fine. I've never been so at peace and calm in one place for so long, the whole experience was absolutely incredible.

And yet another week of two pictures, because I couldn't pass up this one. This is a view from the front yard of the house in the mountains, which features the beautiful ancient town of Briancon with it's fortifications. If you're ever thinking about a trip to the Alps, I can't recommend this little town enough. It's the most beautiful place I've been to date, and unlike some Parisians (please forgive me and let me back into your town!) everyone I met there was very nice and understanding of language difficulties, and the younger folks were more than willing to try out their English to help you along.

I know I sound like a tourists advertisement, and I have a French market to get to, so I'll wrap it up by telling you that the castle like building you see is the Collegiale cathedrale which doesn't look like much from the outside due to fortifications and such, but inside it is all marble and paintings and colors and gold. Well worth the trip.

Day 2: another new time zone. sweet

Greetings once more from the lovely Nantes!

The title of my post comes from the difficulty I've had adjusting to the new time zone. This morning I woke up at 5:45am....the time back home which wasn't exactly concurrent with the 11:45am France time. Ooops.

Once he hauled me out of bed, Dad and I walked into town to mail some things to the cousins in Italy, and a few letters that Danuta asked him to send. I thought I knew French, but when trying to communicate with the worker at the post office, things got quite turned around and she and the other patrons thought we were Italians. Apparently because it was the last language I learned my numbers in, those were the numbers I was using. Whoops once again.

We had two hours to walk around before Danuta wanted us back for lunch, so we walked around the beautiful streets of Nantes, and got a few pastries to soothe our slightly ruffled feathers after the post office difficulty.

Dad got a red fruit crumble, I got a chocolate eclair with chocolate creme inside. We ate the

pastries on the steps of the cathedral with some university students taking their lunch break.

Afterwards, more trekking around and trying to familiarize ourselves with the city and find the epicerie, grocery store, to get the things Danuta had given us a list of to bring back. A very kind security guard at a department store pointed the way: down the stairs. This was a very classy looking establishment, not unlike a Macy's or other nice department store, but it had a legitimate grocery store in the basement, complete with ev

erything from fresh produce (and the little sprinklers keeping them moist) to a ham on display in the butcher section all decked out with the little chef's hat things on it's lopped off limbs.

Lunch was more of Danuta's brilliant cooking, a chicken/apple/rice salad, and tomatoes with vinegarette to start, followed by some kind of fish that I made myself eat (I am a strict non-eater of fish of all kinds in general) it had a hollandaise sauce on it and honestly wasn't half bad. There were also some delicious buttery potatoes, and of

course, baguette with any of three different kinds of cheese (I had Camembert).

After lunch we all had a brief siesta and the Marie took us on a tour of the chateau, which is absolutely gorgeous. While walking around the ramparts I leaned out one of the windows and a boy sitting in the grass by the moat below blew me a kiss. Very storybook like. The tour only strengthened my resolve to get a castle of my own, there's really no beating the thrill of looking out over the city with a moat rushing beneath and splendid gardens all around. Plus, it's a castle. And it made me feel like a princess.

Sadly, I forgot my camera for that bit of the trip, but afterwards we walked along the streets while Marie made another trip to the post office, Dad and I kept safely out of the way this time. After more walking around, we stopped and had some ice cream. Dad got caramel and butter, Marie got cafe, and I stuck with the good old mint chocolate chip, only they called it After Eight and it tasted more like real mint than the American stuff. Yum.

We returned just in time to help prepare for dinner, which I managed to sneak a picture of.

The first course was a salad of grapefruit and prawns with a sauce of mayonnaise and creme fraiche. I'm not a huge prawn fan, but apparently today was a fish day because the prawns were followed by some salmon, and more of the potatoes from lunch time. Then came the salad which I made under Danuta's tutelage. It had a nice vinegarette, apples, cheese, and walnuts that I made a huge mess of cracking before Dad stepped in to show me. Apparently he's quite the pro at it because his family actually cracked walnuts around the dinner table when they were in season. Cheese and bread followed, and then of course dessert which was the same chocolate cake that we had last night.

I skyped with Mom and my brothers today, and of course the cats. We had a lovely chat and as of now the youngest brother and I are at war with awkward pictures we take of each other and then post to Facebook.

Overall, we had a great day and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow! But you all must wait for that because, despite of the 5:52pm time stamp this might have, it's actually almost midnight here and we have to get up early.