The French touch

The French Touch
What are the Decalogue of being French?
French Castles... in B&W
Anamorphic Portraits by Bernard Pras
What things to understand before moving to France?
What is the foremost French word in your language?
Was Richard the Lionheart really French?
What does one consider France, besides Paris?
, lives in France
I love it. i'm unabashedly a Francophile, so you'll take everything I say with a grain of salt. I do love Paris, but I don’t have the means to measure there.

So, I own a house within the “real” France. It’s a really small town/big village of about 6700 people. Not much English-speaking happening here, which helps me with my struggling French. I’m retired so I don’t work, which allows me perhaps a special view than those that do.

Pros? Beautiful countryside, patient, friendly people, crazy-good food, cheap groceries and wine and occasional - all compared to the US. We don’t have a Starbucks around these parts and my local cafés charge €2 for a restaurant au lait. €3–4 for a glass of wine. Oh, and therefore the cheese….the variety is astounding. we've an excellent market once every week and alittle one once every week, where we do 90% of our shopping. Supermarkets are a car-run to shop for heavy things like cat litter and petfood.

Cons? Bureaucracy. barrier (I recover annually, though). Fuel prices.

I love visiting new French cities and not only seeing their sites (cathédrales, châteaux, museums) but also to spend time in cafés and wandering the streets. France isn’t a small country and therefore the sort of topography keeps things interesting. Oceans and rivers and mountains and rolling hills, oyster beds and vineyards and salt beds and farms and livestock, forests and beaches and miles of country lanes.