Wordless Wednesday 50

Holiday in Waikiki

My "USA" daughter got to take her short February break in Hawaii.

My "France" daughter got to take the regional bus down to Montpellier to spend a weekend with friends. All right, Palavas in February is nice enough, but it's not Waikiki!

I had no days off and neither did mon mari.

Jealous? Are we jealous?

Wordless Wednesday 49

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau, who would do well to read my previous post!)

Happy Valentine's Day...

...to all of my readers, or course, but especially to a certain "reader" who mainly likes to look at the pictures -- when they're his own!

We actually started celebrating on Friday the 13th because our favorite local restaurant, or at least the one we felt most like going to, is open only one evening a week.

Clearly, we are not superstitious!

Wordless Wednesday 48

Guessing Game: My Top Five Getaways

Getaway Number 1

My daughter is on two-week winter break already, and she's only been back at school for five weeks since Christmas. It's a pity I don't have any time off, because I'm feeling cabin-feverish.

If the weather cooperates next weekend, though, we hope to pull a little getaway. I'm looking for a new place, and have a nice idea thanks to Loulou.

In the meantime, here are some photos of my top five getaways. My ranking combined two criteria: how much I like a place, and how often I manage to get there.

Getaway Number 2

So this is not exactly a list of "my favorite places to go" or "the most beautiful sites I've ever visited." They're just places I get to on a somewhat regular basis, for various reasons, and that always perk me up and give me the feeling I've had a nice break from the everyday routine.

Getaway Number 3

Most of these locales are not that far-flung. My/our stays there range from day trips to weekends to short holidays. One is a city I go to for work, and I always come back rejuvenated and more aware of the world outside Aveyron.

Getaway Number 4

Convenience is a major factor in these getaway destinations. I always chuckle when friends back in the States tell me "oh, living in France, you must just go to Italy all the time!" or "I looked on the map and I see you're just a hop, skip and a jump from Provence!"

Getaway Number 5

They are always shocked when I tell them that I have never been to Italy, and that while Provence is within reach, it's a little out of my driving comfort zone considering the limited time I have available to travel around France.

Do you recognize any of my getaways?

Wordless Wednesday 47

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

February, or it's been a long winter

This is the view from my home office window this morning, the first day of February.

I made no attempt to take a good picture, nor crop it, or even take it again. And no effort will be made to write a perky post today either.

That's just how February makes me feel. The best thing I can say about this month is that it's blissfully short.

Wordless Wednesday 46

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau. Click on it to enlarge.)

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.

Wordless Wednesday 45, posted on Friday, but you'll see why...

When the Ship Comes In, Part 2

Well over two months ago, I held my breath and published my last post before the election: When the Ship Comes In. It consisted of nothing more than the first part of the lyrics to the famous Bob Dylan song.

Never had a song spoken out to me more; I had listened to it over and over for days before the election, and it is the one my daughter and I chose to blare out of the car as we triumphantly drove into Rodez the morning after, honking our horn and each raising an arm through the car window into the pouring rain.

At the time I didn't dare post the rest of the lyrics. First, it seemed so appropriate to finish with the line "the whole wide world is watchin'." Second, victory was not certain, and although the whole song uses the future tense, I couldn't quite bear to go so far as "you'll be conquered."

Of course Obama, in his laudable "let's work together" mentality, is certainly a better person than I am, for I cannot shake my rage over what Americans have gone through the past eight years. In spite of all the joy and hope in the USA now, I cannot forget that there were-- and still are -- foes.

And we finally beat them.

Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'.
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it's for real,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Then they'll raise their hands,
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands,
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered.
And like Pharaoh's tribe,
They'll be drownded in the tide,
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered.

(Extract from "When the Ship Comes In" by Bob Dylan)

Découvrez Bob Dylan!

Wordless Wednesday 44

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

L'hiver à la Gare de Rodez

It was freezing and snowy all over France last week -- even on the Riviera, where snowfall in Provence and the Marseille region stranded thousands of travellers and commuters.

Here in Rodez, we got only a few centimeters of the white stuff on Wednesday, but they came at the worst possible time -- between five and seven pm, right as employees were leaving work AND as alarmed shoppers, who had come into Rodez for the first day of the official winter sales, decided to flee the town center.

That evening, it took me an hour and twenty minutes to do my usual twenty-minute commute, but at least I didn't end up in a field as I had a few years back when the area was struck by an evening snowstorm.

The next day, I didn't have class, so I decided not to risk early morning driving and to go into work a little late -- at least in daylight hours. Since I was in no rush, I stopped to take a few shots of the ever-fascinating Rodez train station.

This is one of my favorite places in Rodez. I hope it will never be subject to a smart modern renovation.

Wordless Wednesday 43

Going, going...Le Grand LeClerc

Yesterday, after an outing to Rodez on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, my husband came home and told me "I took some great pictures that you'll want to use on your blog."

Without missing a beat, I guessed that they would be of the Rodez area's latest destruction site: the old LeClerc hypermarket.

Weird minds think alike, I guess. I couldn't have been happier had he brought home his usual photos of pastoral peace, or crazy countryside scenes.

I myself had almost stopped to shoot several times, as I drive by the demolition scene almost daily. But I hadn't quite dared get up close and personal. In fact, the old parking garage kind of scared me even when it was still in use:


Le Grand LeClerc, as the locals called it, must have seemed grand indeed when it was built, perhaps in the 1970s. The architecture below is the result of a renovation done in the past ten years, but somehow even the new look didn't cut it:



By the way, neither of us know what that tree is doing there, so don't bother to ask.

And yes, as you can see, tagging and graffiti strike abandoned sites even here in the heart of La France Profonde.

Now grocery shoppers flock to le Nouveau LeClerc, complete with a mini-mall, a Flunch, and a fitness center.

But apparently the old site still welcomes us, at least for a few more days:

In its own way:

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

(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.)

La France Profonde: Three years and three hundred posts!

A few of the guests at La France Profonde's third anniversary party

Today I am celebrating La France Profonde's third anniversary -- and my 300th France Profonde post.

I'm a few days late, as I actually started this blog on December 23, 2008. But I thought it would be nice to coincide with the 300th post. Plus, after three years, what's a day or two?

For this significant event, I took a look back over some old posts as well as my comment history.

First, what has been the most commented-on post on La France Profonde? I thought it would be this one, but actually it was:

Is life really a bitch without big chocolate chips?

So I guess among my readers, food wins out over politics any time.

I also made a list of a few of my favorites posts, in no particular order:

Traces of cafés past

Good-bye little bird -- and don't forget to fly home

An Odd Couple

La Gare de Rodez at Dawn

Old reflects against new

The latter post also contains what may be my favorite photo -- at least among those that I've taken:


After that, I also took a rather quick look at my early comments. I had been writing this blog for over a month before I got a comment that just "came in" from somebody I didn't know: on February 4, 2006, on a post about the local Bosch factory, I received a comment from Stéphan R., who kept up the Toulouse, One Day, One Photo blog very nicely for almost two years before disappearing from the blogosphere in May 2007.

I often wonder what happened to Stéphan, and I suspect if I went back carefully over my comments, I would find plenty of bloggers that I was in touch with for months before either their blog or our communication dwindled down to nothing.

But for now, I'm here, and La France Profonde is going into its fourth year with no plans to change much of anything.

Un grand merci to all of my readers for your comments and support!

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday 41

Happy Holidays!

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.