2009 February | Flying Ready

On the eve of leaving France I’m starting to feel a little sad. And I feel like writing about stuff in bullet points.

Last week we drove to Avignon for an overnight, visited the Palais des Papes and the Pont d’Avignon, and experienced the Mistral firsthand.
It (the Mistral) is every bit as skin-flaying as it’s reputed to be.
We had plate licking dinners (cuisse de canard confite with a potato gratine for me, some sort of beef dish for Tim) at the BelgoCargo.
An adorable jazz pianist entertained, gamely playing the requests from a table of patrons who sang along, especially when he played New York, New York.
The next morning we wandered around Villeneuve-les-Avignon (Thursday is their market day), the Mistral flogging us the whole time, and then drove to Châteauneuf-du-Pape where we sampled some Châteauneuf-du-Pape poured by a lovely, grandmotherly woman with a bad cold.
She blamed it on the Mistral.
I don’t blame her; it’s some serious wind.
Her tastings were generous, so by noon I had a light buzz.
Blaming the Mistral for our appetites (and my buzz), we drove to Orange for a plate-licking lunch (pot au feu for me, grilled fish for Tim), and then stopped at the Pont du Gard on the way home.
It was a very satisfying 36 hours.
But that last hurrah was the warm-up to yesterday’s when I took Rufus for a walk along a trail called the Tir a L’arc, that winds up through the mountains on the outer edge of the village.
Just past the area where the archery club does their target practice, you turn a bend on the trail, and there’s complete, heart-thumping stillness.
You can’t hear the river or the village.
It’s just you and the mountains and some vineyards and the boars and the deer and the hawks and all the other unseen wild things in this exquisite countryside…
which is one of the things we’ve admired most about this slice of France where we landed nearly 11 months ago.
We’ve also become friends with some amazing people who make us laugh until we hurt, or are just lovely people plain and simple.
And yet we’re itching to escape.
Beauty and humor aren’t not always enough.
Yet many thanks, France. Au revoir.

I was offered the opportunity to do a guest blog post on Geezeo, a company that strives to help people make informed financial decisions.

Geezeo (http://blog.geezeo.com) offers a free web-based personal finance application that makes it easy to track all your finances, see where all your money is going, set financial goals and learn from others.

There’s a wealth of information on the site. If personal finance is your “thing” for 2009, check it out and consider joining the community.