The lights come down in Rodez -- mais pas chez moi!

(Christmas lights on the Avenue Victor Hugo, Rodez)

This evening my eldest daughter announced to me, quite morosely, that the Christmas lights in Rodez were being taken down.

Mais bien sûr! The French are pretty quick about removing their holiday decorations, although perhaps not as swift as Americans or the British who, from what I've been reading, seem to feel that "everything must go" no later than January the 2nd.

The situation is different in our house. We have made a conscious decision to keep the Christmas tree and other holiday decorations up until...late January.

Of course this means having an artificial tree -- something that, as a Pacific Northwesterner, I was originally loath to do. But the desire to keep Christmas cheer in our home after la rentrée de janvier won out a few years back.

Since the whole family loves Christmas lighting, I think we were right in our choice. This year, I was struck by all the Facebook updates and tweets from friends who were sad, even "depressed," about taking down their Christmas decorations.

At least we have found our solution to that problem. By the time we finally pack ours away, we are actually pretty sick of them!

Betty and Loulou's adventures, Part 3

A new, cozy and colorful salon de thé called "La Toile Cirée"

(2014 Post-script: La Toile Cirée is now closed)

Until the day before she came, I was ever so excited about Loulou's visit to Rodez, planned for the 10th and 11th of November.

Then Rodez went weather-crazy, as it is known to do.

I had to go into town on Monday the 9th: the wind was whipping, it was pouring sheets of rain, and it was just oh-so-barely over freezing. I also found out that Chez Marie, the cheese merchant/restaurant that Loulou really wanted to try out, was going to be closed for those two days.

"This is a terrible idea," I started to think. "She's going to hate Rodez" -- who doesn't when the weather gets so dreadful? "She's going to freeze to death."

Well, she did freeze, although not to death, but my other dire predictions did not come true.

The weather was downright chilly, true, but we were able to warm up over hot chocolate at a new salon de thé that I had never been to. And Loulou liked Rodez, calling it "sophisticated" (!) and well kept-up.

(Shadows in the Rodez cathedral; photo courtesy of Loulou)

Rodez does have its dark, gloomy side, as we discovered in the shadows of Notre Dame de Rodez. And I learned that it is mossy. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I had never noticed the moss, but Loulou pointed it out to me. Yep, it's there.

She even claims that cattle she had seen as she was driving up had moss growing on them, but my husband and I are still waiting for photographic proof on that one!

Speaking of photos, I suffered two camera malfunctions, one on each day, so I don't have much to show for her visit -- but take a look at her blog for a lovely shot of Le Trou de Bozouls, which is ten minutes from where we live.

Loulou, thanks for braving the elements and making the your way to Aveyron!

A new angle on Rodez

Rodez se réveille

Even though I drove my eldest daughter to her high school on the outskirts of Rodez every morning for two years, and I've driven myself to my job in Rodez's new business district for many more, I've never really gotten a feel for downtown Rodez in the early morning.

I love how the few open shops stand out as the sun rises

Now that my eldest daughter has an apartment in the hyper-centre, and my youngest goes to a high school that is also right in town, I'm led at times to come into town quite early, around 7:15 or so.

It's a different Rodez, one with many free parking spaces, subtile shades of light -- and residents! Living outside of town, I usually thought of downtown more as a place to shop and not so much a place to live.

Sure, I saw that above every shop were apartments, but the notion of people living up there was abstract -- after all, when I was in town these town center inhabitants always mixed in with the crowd.

Now I see them scurrying about: employees rushing to catch the shuttle bus to go to work in Bourran, where I work, and schoolkids hulking their huge backpacks through the pedestrian district. On Mondays and Fridays, when the internes (boarders) arrive and leave, a number of students are also dragging suitcases.

Looking up from where I park on early-morning apartment runs

This year is a different life, and Rodez has become a different world to me.

The calm after the storm

(All photos by Thierry Jouanneteau. Click on them to enlarge.)

I imagine everybody in the expat blogging circles is posting about the storm that hit France yesterday. Here in our part of Aveyron, we experienced a mix of rain, flooding and windstorms followed by a blizzard, leaving in their wake surreal scenes like the one above.

The French media says that 1.7 million homes lost power during yesterday's storm. All trains in and out of Rodez were cancelled. Here in Aveyron, the papers say the lights went out in 17,000 homes at about 6pm yesterday. I noticed the lights flicker at precisely that time...there but for the grace of God...

My husband and I actually had braved the elements Saturday afternoon and gone into Rodez, not really knowing that roof tiles and even major hunks of scaffolding from the cathedral were flying around the city. The BBC reports:

"Another reader, Simon Ritchie, witnessed the damage wrought by the storm in the French town of Rodez.

'This morning, I awoke to the sound of very strong winds and lashing rain or hail,' he said.

'I looked out of my kitchen's skylight window to see scaffolding and sheets or corrugated iron blowing of the adjacent cathedral. One such sheet blew about 50 yards from the tower and landed on a car below, smashing it in completely.'

'People were screaming on the street below, and bits of masonry and scaffolding continued to fall,' he added.

We drove home from town in blizzard conditions, still with no real knowledge of everything that had been happening on le piton, as the town center of Rodez is called.


This morning, things looked so peaceful in our area that no one would have suspected that snow had been whipping vertically against village homes and buildings throughout the previous afternoon.


We didn't get the worst of this storm. We were lucky.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday 42

Happy New Year!
Bonne année 2009!

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau -- click on it to enlarge. I promise it's worth the trouble.)

Looking up, things are

These photos of Notre Dame de Rodez won't put a song in your heart, but they reflect a certain mood that she can get in -- a decidedly chilly one.

We've been through quite a cold snap, and Wednesday my daughter and I went into town for lunch. I was struck by the difference between the weather "up there" and "down below" on the sidewalks. It was certainly cold both places, but where we were walking, it was totally clear with no sign of fog.

But the Rodez cathedral can be in a totally different weather dimension from the city it dominates. The bell tower is 85 meters, or nearly 280 feet, high -- and this can mean a real difference in atmospheric conditions.

To give you an idea of how ethereal the cathedral can appear compared to the world below; my crystal clear Wordless Wednesday photo this week was taken only a few minutes earlier and only a few streets away.

Notre Dame de Rodez has often been described as "brooding." Perhaps these photos can help illustrate that image.

Rodez by dusk

It feels like night, but the changing dusky blue sky reminds us it isn't...

quite yet...

(This post has been submitted to this week's Sunday Scribblings collection: The Photograph.)

She's Always There Somewhere

I wasn't looking for her the other day, but she just peeked out at me.

What would Rodez be without its cathedral? And why is it not that well-known?

Personally, I'll take it over any French cathedral I've ever visited. Of course I can't pretend to have seen them all! You probably have your own favorite and I'd love to hear about it.

My Michelin guide gives the town of Rodez itself only one star ("Intéressant") but the cathedral rates two stars ("Mérite un détour") out of the maximum three.

I have news for the Michelin writers -- you can't dissociate the two.

The Bride Wore White

There was quite a wedding taking place in Rodez last week. The bride wore white...

...but her father couldn't hide his disapproval of the match:

He had preferred her angelic but spurned lover who was weeping from a distance:

All this high drama didn't stop the guests from having a good time, though, and this one apparently drank a few too many at the reception!

(Photos courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)