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Stacey came to visit last week and we had a few really nice walks around Paris, up to the river, and into the shops. Tea time at Marriage Freres was one of my favorite afternoons, especially since we bought Macarons at Laduree afterwards and ate them at Saint Sulpice. Once we met Max and Math (Matt, in French) for lunch at Place Saint Michel and once we had galettes for lunch at a little restaurant. The last night we went as a big group to eat Raclette for dinner, which is similar to fondue but much more complicated when you try to eat it!
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Another really nice thing we got to do was go with Marjerie to visit her grandparents in Saint Nazaire for the weekend. They met us at the train station and immediately took us on the grand tour of the small port town, complete with one WWII submarine and a German base. M, Seigneurin also showed us the beautiful old theater that the Americans destroyed when they saved the port from the Germans...I never know quite what to say when someone points out the skeleton of a building and tells me that the Americans did it. Is that an "I'm sorry" or a "you're welcome" or an "oops"?? Manners can be difficult! The lunch that afternoon was delicious, with multiple courses, lots of cheese and wine, and coffee of course. Then we rested for a while before piling in the car to see some other parts of the region.
We saw the salt fields in the marshes, when they apparently gather loads of the stuff. We were hurried through the medieval, walled city of Guerande and then stopped for a minute in the quaint seaside resort town of Le Croisic. I wouldn't mind going back to Guerande, to shop and explore at a slower pace some day. After a drive along the Savage Coast, we ended up at a restaurant in La Baule for yet another good French dinner. On Sunday we all had a nice breakfast together before leaving the apartment and heading over to the small cottage that the Seigneurins have bought and are fixing up, just across the bay. That was an even more relaxing day than the first. Marj, Stacey and I took a stroll along the coast, we all took a nap after lunch, and then there was plenty of tea to go around (which always makes things more cosy, in my opinion). Marj's grandfather is very into taking pictures with his digital camera and he e-mailed me a few of his favorites from the weekend:
So you see it was really a lovely time overall! Now Stacey is gone and it's back to work, back to life in Paris. Hopefully I will have a chance to do some travelling, a bit further abroad, in the near future. I'm hoping to make it to the south of France to visit some friends, and maybe over to Germany in December, before I head home for Christmas.
