Laura Bradbury's Blog, page 4

Fave Photos of Paris in the Snow

It snowed in Paris a few weeks ago, and holy moly was it ever magical. My Grape Paris, the next book in my GRAPE series, was with my copy-editor and I was gearing up to start my next book - a romantic (bien sûr) fiction. Admiring the Parisian snow photos was a wonderful source of inspiration / procrastination.  

Here are my top three (and, trust me, the sheer number of photos viewed was considerable). 

I found this incredible photo of La Mère de Famille shop (I'll be reviewing the Mère de Famille cookbook soon in my newsletter) on the fantastic Instagram account of @sliceofpai . 

The next photo is from one of the most stunning Instagram accounts around, @local_milk. It shows a woman sitting in an almost deserted, snow-white Places des Vosges in the heart of the Marais. 

My final fave is a photo of the Eiffel Tower. Of course there needs to be a snow photo of la grande dame. I found this on the an IG account I just started following  @when_en_france. 

As you can tell, Paris has been ever-present in my thoughts these days. I am so impatient to get My Grape Paris in front of your eyes. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 

PSC - The Worst & The Best Thing

I wrote this blog post to honour PSC Awareness week. This is my PSC & liver transplant story (so far). I hope sharing it will give other people hope and raise awareness for this rare disease. If you're mainly here for the francophile stuff you may want to skip this one. It is proof that life can get messy at times, but that sometimes those are the most revelatory times of all.     

 

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I'm not a big believer in the theory that thoughts manifest a person's reality. The main reason for this is that I never heard of PSC - the disease that completely turned my life on its head five and a half years ago - before I was diagnosed with it. 

It was absurd.

My husband and I had applied for extended disability insurance because we'd made an international move from France to Canada, had a third daughter, and were feeling incredibly healthy. We were juicing our own garden-grown kale and running 10K races.

A nurse employed by the insurance company came to weigh us, take our blood and all that jazz. The thought that anything could be wrong with my liver never even entered my mind. 

Yet something was wrong. Something seriously wrong.

A woman from the insurance company called me back. "You're being turned down for your insurance request. You need to make an appointment with your doctor as soon as possible."

I started imaging all sorts of horrible scenarios, but not once did I consider my liver. 

Cut to many appointments, many tubes of blood taken out of my arm, an MRI, and finally a liver biopsy (just about as fun as it sounds) later. On May 1, 2012 I sat down at my GI's office and he gently said to me, "it looks like you have PSC."

PSC had been mentioned as one of the outliers they might find in my biospy results, but everyone doubted it - it was so rare and I was female. PSC usually affected men (although now I wonder about this as I know so many fellow women PSCers).

But there it was. PSC. And PSC that had been percolating for a long time according to the MRI results. 

"Is there a cure?" I asked my doctor.

"No."

"What's the treatment?" I said. 

"Unfortunately there is no treatment right now. The only 'treatment' if you can call it that, is a liver transplant."

I sat there, stunned. No cure? No treatment? My world pivoted on its axis in that split-second. I had no idea how to cope in this newly altered reality.

The next five years were filled with so many moments of terror, hope, despair, relief, revelations, pain, and tenacity, that they deserve a book all to themselves. They will get one too, as I'm an author and writing is how I process big events in my life. 

Á few things though...

So many people said to me "I couldn't cope with something like that."

Yes. You could and you would. The secret, as I learned myself, is there is no off-ramp when dealing with this kind of life crisis. You just have to live with your altered reality. And you will. There is no other choice. 

For people who tell you that your illness and suffering are all part of God's plan or part of your journey...it is completely normal that you want to punch them, even if they mean well.  

I concluded that, for me, even I do not believe life-changing events, such as my PSC diagnosis, have inherent meaning (i.e. that they were destined to be) it was up to me to give them meaning. 

Also, as an aside, I highly recommend Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search For Meaning" to every human, not just every PSCer.

All my life I wanted to write and be an author. I was always held back by the typical things - fear of failure and rejection, fearing it was too indulgent to spend my time doing something so impractical, fear, fear, fear...

However, the morning after I was diagnosed with PSC (so on May 2, 2012) I woke up, walked downstairs, and flipped open my laptop. There was a pad of post-its notes beside my computer and on one of them I scribbled "F--- you! I'm not dead yet." and I began writing. 

All of a sudden the fear of dying with my words still inside me became far scarier than being rejected because people didn't like what I wrote.

About ten months later I published my first book, My Grape Escape, and it became a bestseller. I decided I would donate 10% of my after-tax royalties to PSC Partners for the incredible work they do. I wanted every word on the page not only to be the expression of my lifelong dream, but also to be raising money for this phenomenal organization. There is was...meaning.  

So many irrational fears melted away in the face of my PSC - flying, elevators, failure, and what people thought of me, just to name a few.

My focus shifted to spending time with my three daughters and my husband, enjoying my friends and family, going outside to watch sunsets or savour the smell of a fresh mug of coffee and, of course, writing as much as I possibly could and sharing what I'd written.  

Money didn't matter nearly as much as I believed it did before my diagnosis. I couldn't care less about the image I projected. I embraced who I truly was - a Star Wars geek, a francophile, a bookworm, an over-thinker, a hippy lover of crystals and magic. Life was just too precarious and short, I realized, to try to be anything but myself.

This clarity is one of the gifts that PSC gave me.

The past five years have been hard. At times they felt almost impossible. With the help of PSC Partners I had to fight to find the best possible care for my PSC. As it turned out this was in a different province.

I passed out on the street from cholangitis induced sepsis in 2013, and since then had to have a constant rotation of oral and IV antibiotics to control the infection which had settled in my bile ducts and liver. I spent way too much time in the hospital. 

There were weeks I suffered from so much pain and nausea I could barely get off the couch.

One morning I came downstairs and my darling husband informed me I was so yellow I looked like a Star Trek extra. There were so many times when I thought I could not go one hour, one minute, one second more. But I did. PSC taught me that my well of tenacity was far deeper than I ever imaged.  

Even though I feel incredible gratitude to the universal healthcare in Canada that covered every dime of my care, tests, and eventual transplant, I still had to fight to get one.

As all of us PSCers know, not all of us are lucky enough to remain healthy enough to qualify for a transplant, or to be considered sick enough to warrant one. It's a tricky balancing act, and even though I felt so ill, I had to advocate for myself every step of the way.  

I was so glad that I had fought previously to assemble a wonderful care team around me - my GI in Victoria, my PSC specialist in Calgary, and the Edmonton Transplant Centre. PSC Partners and my fellow PSCers were instrumental in guiding me through this process. 

The doctors were honest with me, often brutally so.

A specialist told me at my first appointment with him, "You'll be dead before you'll ever qualify for a deceased organ Laura. With the type of PSC you have and your constant cholangitis and sepsis your labwork will never show how sick you truly are. You need to start working now at finding a living donor."

Here comes the most important lesson that PSC taught me.

After spinning my DNA my specialist believed that my type of PSC was largely genetic in origin. Indeed, my father's first cousin also has PSC / UC like I did. For this reason my doc did not want anyone who shared DNA with me to donate. This eliminated blood relatives (usually the most common donor category). My husband and brother in laws were all the wrong blood type. 

I had to appeal to friends to donate 60-70% of their liver to save my life. This, as you can imagine, is no simple thing. At least that's what I thought.

First, one of my oldest and best friends from school came forward, even though we had been living in different cities for years. His commitment and determination to be my donor changed my heart forever. I honestly didn't know if I would react like him if the roles were reversed. All I could do was watch in amazement as he fought to put his life on the line and undergo major surgery for me.  

Ultimately this dear friend was told at the last minute he had a tiny extra bile duct that would increase complications for me. We were both devastated. I wondered how many other people like him could possibly be out there? Probably not many.

I was wrong.

Next another friend went through the inconvenient and at times intimidating approval process. Ultimately her husband, who was suffering some unresolved trauma of his own, asked her to back out. She agreed reluctantly and I understood completely, but the fact she was willing to go through all of that for me touched me deeply. 

When donor #2 fell through Nyssa came forward. She was a mother of two and we'd become friends when she had been my daughter's Sparks leader. We shared ties to the same Gulf Island and the same caustic sense of humour. Her desire to donate was equally unshakable. She was assessed in March.

On March 15th, the last day of her assessment, the phone rang. 

"Hey, it's me," she said. "I just wanted to know, do you have any plans for next Wednesday?"

"I don't think so," I said, confused. 

"Oh good. Then can you meet me in Edmonton and I'll give you the right lobe of my liver?"  

Much screaming ensued and much rushing around was required to get ready to fly to Edmonton four days later. 

I'll never forget how, even though she was scared, Nyssa never wavered. I was waiting in the holding pen of the OR's after having said good-bye to Franck and all I could think was, "Where's Nyssa? I need to see Nyssa before we're rolled in."

Just then they rolled her stretcher beside mine. We both were wearing our ridiculous surgical hair caps and had both been hooked up to IVs. She was crying. I was crying. I reached over and grasped her hand. "You don't have to do this if you don't want. I understand."

She sniffed. "I'm terrified," she admitted. "But we're doing this. We are going to ROCK this."

We squeezed each other's hands, giving each other strength, and cried at the enormity of what we were about to go through. Finally a transplant fellow came over to us and said to me gently, "You're going to have to let go of Nyssa's hand now Laura. We have to take you to your OR."

"But where is Nyssa going?"

"She's going to the OR right beside yours in just a minute. You'll be side by side."

Nyssa let go of my hand. "We're going to do this Laura. We're doing this."  

"Thank you," I kept shouting to her as they rolled me away. "No matter what happens thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou." 

Turns out Nyssa donated her entire right liver lobe to me, which was attached to my body with donated vessels from an anonymous deceased donor. I also received five pints of donated blood to keep me alive during the surgery. When I think of the number of people who donated their time, skill, and body parts so that I am here today I am truly humbled - and not just in the cliché way. 

It's almost six months now since we had our transplant. Nyssa did amazingly well like the superhero she is and was back home in Victoria in just after two weeks. 

Post - tx rejection. Turns out our antibodies needed some thymo and steroids to play nicely together. 

I had an initial bout of acute rejection (because as it turns out strong women have strong antibodies that don't always play nicely together) but since then have been recovering in leaps and bounds. 

I know complications can arise and I know the PSC can come back, but I'm choosing to live like they won't. I'm not going to waste one single day of renewed health.  

Living with PSC was brutal sometimes. More than anything I want people newly diagnosed to hear from their doctor, "You have PSC, but there are effective treatments." Better yet, I'd like them to hear, "You have PSC, but we have a cure for that." 

All PSCers need to sign up for the registry. It is our best method of getting life-saving research done quickly and efficiently. It is crucial that every single one of us is on there, no matter what stage of the disease we are at. 

Use the PSC Facebook forums. They have proven an invaluable support group for me. These people have become my family and have helped me every step of the way.

Go to a PSC Partners Conference if you can. This is where I actually met that family, learned tons of information, and found exactly how to find the best people for my medical team. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to be in a room full of people who just "get it" - no explanations required. 

Find ways to donate to PSC Partners and encouraged people who love you to help too. This is how we are going to find treatments and a cure. 

And even though I hate you PSC, I thank you for:

1. Emboldening me to realize my dream of being a writer (almost ready to publish Book #5).

2. Opening up my eyes to the fact that loving hard and being loved is really the only thing that counts in the end.

3. Making spending time with my family and friends a priority. As I always say, "Even on the crappiest days, being around to parent my kids is ultimately a good day." 

4. Giving me a new family in my fellow PSCers. I cannot express how much I admire and love these people. 

5. Teaching me that humans are capable of being braver and more selfless than anything I ever thought possible

6. Showing me that superheros live among us

7. Showing me that we are all in this life together, and we are put here to support and help each other

8. Teaching me that there is no such thing as us and them. There is only us.   

PSC was the grit in the oyster of my life. I'm realizing now, though, that the PSC grit keeps supplying me with pearls. So, PSC, even though one of my life's missions is to obliterate you forever, I do owe you thanks for that. 

Me and my own personal wonderwoman rocking our scars. 

My and my eldest up at the Lake this summer, enjoying family time. 

A Delicious Use for Cherries, FREE books, and a new french playlist

Everybody Clafoutis!

Right now is cherry season in our neck of the woods and it probably is in your corner of the world too. 

The French have the easiest and most delicious thing they do with cherries. Better yet, when you serve this recipe - clafoutis - to dinner guests or take it to a summer picnic, everyone will think you have been slaving over something complicated and exotic. I adore shortcuts like that, and French cuisine is full of them. 

So, here is Franck's family recipe for homemade cherry clafoutis. I write about eating clafoutis often in my books because, quite simply, I ADORE it. So does everyone else. 

Even though this is an extremely french recipe, it consists of ingredients you can find just as easily in North America or Britain as in France. 

So…êtes-vous prêts de Clafoutis aussi?

Chez Germain Clafoutis aux Cerises (for 6-8 people)

Ingredients:

– 500 grams (3 cups) of black or sour cherries (freshly picked is best)

– 4 eggs

– 125 grams (2/3 cup) of white sugar

– a pinch of salt

– 80 grams (3/4 cup) of white flour 

– 1/4 of a liter of milk

– 60 grams (1/4 cup) of butter

– 1 small package or one soup spoon of vanilla sugar (optional)

 

Instructions: 

–  Melt 30 grams (2 tablespoons) of the butter in microwave or small casserole.  Set aside.  

–   Mix eggs together in medium sized bowl with fork.  Add the salt, sugar and mix well.

–  Pour in flour and mix again until there are no “lumps’ left. Don't overmix.

–  Add the 30 grams (2 tablespoons) of melted butter and the milk.  Mix again until smooth. 

– Wash and remove the pits from the cherries if desired (Franck's mom does this, but I don''t Franck’s grandmother was firmly rooted in the “do not remove the pits’ camp – you can read about this ongoing war in My Grape Village) . Spread evenly on a well-buttered 9 x 13 baking dish (glass or porcelein preferable), a round dish, an oval dish, or basically the prettiest dish you have kicking around. 

– Pour the liquid mixture over the cherries and then dot with the rest of the butter. 

– Put in a 220 degree Celsius (425 Fahrenheit) oven for around 35-45 minutes, keeping an eye on it that it doesn’t start to burn. 

– When you remove it from oven, sprinkle with package of vanilla sugar if available, otherwise your regular favorite sugar is A-OK.  Serve at room temperature. 

Clafoutis, like much of French cuisine, is a seasonal dish and made mainly in the summer to celebrate the bounty of cherry season. It can be made substituting other fruit, although that is less traditional than cerises.  Apricots and pears work particularly well, but go wild and use your imagination.  

Dégustez! Enjoy! 

TWEET IT: A french clafoutis recipe from @Author_LB - make the most of all those cherries .























New French Playlist 

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I've been busy concocting a second French playlist. This one isn't related directly to any of my books, but celebrates my favorite female french singers / musicians. I truly love it and have taken to listening to it when writing. 

I have just made it public on Spotify. 

TWEET IT: Listen to @Author_LB 's newest French playlist composed of amazing female french singers.

My Grape Year Free Download

My Grape Year is free for download until tomorrow evening. If you haven't grabbed a copy yet just click here to do so. 

TWEET IT: Only a few hours left to get FREE copy of My Grape Year - the first book in the yummy GRAPE series















































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We have a Gagnant!

Yesterday was our 20th wedding anniversary. In keeping with tradition Franck and I promptly forgot all about it until around noon when a thoughtful vacation rental guest emailed us from France to wish us a happy day.  

The photo above was snapped just outside the exquisite wee Roman church in the village of Marey-les-Fussey, completely surrounded by vineyards. If you want to read the crazy tale of the monumental crises and cultural clashes leading up to the moment we emerged from the church as man and wife, grab a copy of My Grape Wedding.  

Even though we temporarily forgot our anniversary we did do our draw for the winner at any one of our four vacation rentals in the vineyards of Burgundy. The contest-bot spat out the name of BRAD WILSON!

Brad has been notified and is over the moon. He and his wife went to Beaune many years ago and have been dreaming of returning. My guess is he is going to pick Le Relais du Vieux Beaune.

I am already concocting our new contest which we will be drawing for in a few months, coinciding with the release of My Grape Paris. I am going to try to make it something très Parisian and I have a few incredible ideas. Everyone currently subscribed to our mailing list will be automatically entered, so bonne chance for next time (except for Brad, can't be greedy now...).

Edits of My Grape Paris are chugging along, although as my fellow writers know it's always a challenge to get writing done when it's gorgeous outside and the kids are at home. Don't even get me started on how amazing it is to enjoy all the benefits of a shiny new liver! 

I'm tenacious though (just ask Franck, who will roll his eyes and let out a long-suffering sigh at my epic stubbornness) so I'm still aiming for a publication date in September. 

In the meantime, I will be offering My Grape Year (the book to start with in the GRAPE series) for FREE starting this Friday for five days to help readers catch up on the series before My Grape Paris' grand arrival.

Also, as you can probably tell by now, I just really enjoy giving out free stuff. I'll send out a quick reminder on Thursday evening if you wanted to pick up a copy or share the joy. I just may have another surprise in store then too...

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A New Moi & Much News

Where has she been? Why hasn't she posted a blog in months? 

I have a truly stellar excuse.

On March 22nd I received a life-saving liver transplant at the U of A hospital in Edmonton thanks to my badass friend and hero Nyssa Temmel. She donated the entire right lobe of her liver to me (and oui, she is still alive and in fact back to normal life and healthy as a horse). 

My transplant surgery lasted twelve hours. In the end I received Nyssa's right lobe, a deceased donor's vessels to reconnect it to me, and several pints of donated blood.

I knew a transplant was coming down the pipeline for me for the past five years since I was diagnosed with PSC - it is what motivated me to get serious about writing and publishing, but that's another blog post! 

I am grateful beyond words and preparing to head back home to Victoria from Edmonton and hopefully back to Burgundy soon. 

In the meantime, bienvenue to my many new subscribers and welcome back to my loyal ones. I have a few pieces of exciting news to share. 

My Grape Paris

I got back to my writing one month to the day of my transplant. The surgery delayed the publication of My Grape Paris (the fifth book in the GRAPE series) slightly but I am determined to have it out by early September. 

Win a Free Week in Burgundy, France

Our next draw for a week at any one of our four vacation rentals in Burgundy will be on July 5th. This is the same day as Franck's and my 20th Wedding Anniversary. What better way to celebrate than share our love of Burgundy with others? You can view all of our properties here and make your selection. Also, my subscribers exclusively (this means you if you received this in your in-box) can get bonus entries to the draw by writing reviews for any of my published books. 1 review = 1 draw entry. Simply write the review, email me to let me know, and voilà! My email is plastered all over my website. 

Free Playlists

People have been asking for two things from me for a long time (besides more books, of course) - playlists to accompany my memoirs and a cookbook. Still working on the latter but my first playlist has just gone live on Spotify. It is for my first book in my four book (soon five!) GRAPE series - My Grape Year.  It was incredibly nostalgic to put together - lots of laughs and a few tears as well. I will have several more playlists coming out in the nest few weeks. French ambiance guaranteed!

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MY GRAPE ESCAPE is FREE for download

Just wanted to give you a quick head's up that My Grape Escape - book #3 in my GRAPE series was included in a huge Bookbub promotion and is still currently free for download for the next thirty-six hours. Just click here. 

The cellar door to La Maison des Deux Clochers - our rambling, Burgundian village house that dates back to 1789 and which is at the heart of the story in My Grape Escape. 

The riotous grapevine that grows up the staircase to La Maison des Deux Clochers

I'm working hard on editing My Grape Paris which I plan to release in late April. It will be a big, chunky book that recounts the pivotal year in Franck's and my relationship when we lived in Paris' Latin Quarter while I studied at the Sorbonne. 

The GRAPE series books are as follows (in suggested reading order) - just click on links to read synopses, reviews, and to purchase either in digital or paperback format:

My Grape Year

My Grape Wedding 

My Grape Escape (currently FREE for download)

My Grape Village

Clémentine and her Papy taking their daily constititional around the vineyards of the Mont Saint Victor. 

As always, it's an honor to open the door on life in the Burgundian wine country for all of my readers, old and new. 

A Skeptic's Pilgrimage to Lourdes

When I was diagnosed with a rare and untreatable auto-immune liver disease five years ago called PSC I had no idea how to cope. My family has always had horse-shoes shoved up their rears as far as health went. Nobody in my family had ever, as I have come to call it, "lost their medical virginity" i.e. been diagnosed with a disease that could prove fatal. 

I had no road map to follow. Franck, however, did.

He had several family members who had dealt with life-threatening diagnoses and, as French Catholics, an incontournable part of their treatment was always to make a pilgrimage to the town of Lourdes in the French Pyrenées. 

Lourdes is one of the world's most important pilgrimage sites for Catholics. It is where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared several times in front of a local peasant girl named Bernadette in the mid 1800s.

That's Bernadette above being visited by the Virgin Mary and a bunch of, it appears, angels and other Holy Things.

Since the day I was diagnosed Franck insisted that he needed to take me to Lourdes to drink the Holy Waters and recruit the Virgin Mary for my support squad. 

So one summer morning in Burgundy we left La Maison des Chaumes in Villers-la-Faye at the ghastly hour of 4:00am, stopped for lunch at the market in Toulouse (delicious - rocamadour cheese drizzled with honey on a salad) and arrived in Lourdes mid-afternoon. 

Here I am, wondering how my agnostic / wannabe Buddhist self ended up here - as one of thousands of Catholic pilgrims at the world-famous Lourdes basilica. 

Nuns were everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. Nuns, for reasons I have never dared explore in depth, have always made me uneasy.

I was quickly reassured, however, by this Italian nun who lounged on the curb smoking, gossiping, and calling "BAMBINO!" at all the cute babies so they would be brought over for her to gush over. I wanted the Italian nun for my grandmother. 

There were also lots and lots and lots of sick people being ferried around on little blue carts by volunteers called les brancardiers. Franck was a brancardier at Lourdes during many summers of his youth with Villers-la-Faye's church group. He loved feeling like he was helping the pilgrims and those young brancardiers partied hard in the evening once they had put their charges to bed. 

The Catholics, it appeared, saw nothing at all abnormal about this unique cocktail of solemnity, reverence, and carousing. The Lourdes experience could, and did, encompass all of that.  

Even though I was definitely sick with my PSC (that "tan" I sport in the photo of me above isn't because I've been vacationing in St. Bart's - it's jaundice) it dawned on me that I wasn't really sick in the context of Lourdes. I was able to walk. I was able to eat. I wasn't hooked up to an IV. Really, I was more healthy than ill.

I realized I needed to give thanks for this as well as asking the Virgin Mary's good vibes for the future which, if I was one of the lucky ones, would include a life-saving liver transplant.  

After we checked into our hotel right beside the basilica, Franck hurried us back down to the river that flowed with of Holy Water right through the pilgrimage site. We had to participate in the evening prayer procession that looped around the basilica grounds.

As luck would have it (or maybe heavenly intervention seeing as we were in Lourdes after all) we found a group from the Diocèse of Dijon and joined them, walking behind the statue of the Virgin Mary they had brought from Dijon. We were each given a lit candle surrounded by a paper which had the Ava Maria and other prayers we needed to know written on the outside.  

The ceremony was incredibly moving - not because I had suddenly converted to Catholicism, but because I was, for the first time, made truly aware that I was not alone in being humbled by the random arrow of sickness.

I was not the only one who had to come to terms with the new reality that to possibly survive my diagnosis I would need the help of so many other people - my doctors, my nurses, my friends, and family, and in my case a heroic liver donor. It was impossible to walk this path on my own. If the Virgin Mary wanted to help too, she was more than welcome.

I may have cried a little. 

The evening ended in the cave (la grotte) where the Virgin made her first apparition to Bernadette and created a spring of fresh water that exploded from the dry earth, still supplying the holy water of Lourdes that pilgrims drink while they are there and carry home with them in countless bottles.  

I lined up with all the other pilgrims and circimambulated the walls of the grotte, trailing my hand over the rock surface which was smooth and shiny from all the pilgrims that passed before me.

I was just one of so many fellow humans suffering and far from alone in asking for a miracle.  

The next day we wandered around the inside and outside of the basicilica and marveled at the opulent design and detail of it all. 

Then we filled up numerous bottles of water to take back for ourselves, to Franck's family and some of our Catholic friends.

Last but not least, we hit the shops, where there is Virgin Mary EVERYTHING and kitsch is de rigeur. I found the stores a hilarious counterpoint to the intensity and emotion of the night before. 

Franck and I left Lourdes and enjoyed the afternoon driving around the Pyrenées before heading back to Burgundy, our car weighed down by rosaries, Virgin Mary statues adorned with glitter, and many, many, many bottles of holy water.

Since our pilgrimage, Franck feels that I am protected by Mary. You know what? As I hold one of the tiny bottles of Lourdes holy water that sits in my meditation corner, maybe I feel some peace in that too.    

Does This Post Make You Sing "Hallelujah?"

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10 Reasons to Fall in Love with a French Person

1. They speak French (tu aimes ça, non?).

2. They never let you become intellectually lazy and will force you to watch obscure foreign movies complete with depressing endings and subtitles in Norwegian. 

3. Pretty much guaranteed that they will be able to out-cook you by a lightyear and one of their main ways of expressing love is to cook delicious things for the people they care about i.e you. 

4.  They drive fast and will get you from Point A to Point B in less time than you thought humanly possible. 

5. They like to break the rules and make you realize that breaking the rules can be trés amusant.

6. If you don't like the mood they're in just wait five minutes - it will change completely.

7. Their philosophy books scattered around the house will make everyone think you belong to MENSA.

8. They like to debate everything but if you get tired you can just tune out and they can debate all by themselves. 

9. They know how to uncork a wine bottle and elegantly pop the cork off a bottle of champagne.

10. You will be introduced to swearing in French which is one of the funnest activities in existence. 

My Grape Wedding - FREE from February 10-14th

In honor of my cheri's birthday, Valentine's Day, and the fact that we all need a brief mental break from the news these days MY GRAPE WEDDING will be available for free download from February 10-14th. I wish you all beaucoup d'amour this weekend.

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A Beaune Morning

I have been slowly going through my photos taken over the past five years of our summers in Burgundy with the girls. I'm posting some here some of my favorites taken during one sunny August market morning in Beaune.

Above is a shot of of the roof on the Hospices de Beaune. Our brother-in-law works there so we can always get in quickly, especially once everyone else has left for the day. It is pretty much a not-to-be-missed spot when visiting Beaune. The stunning courtyard set off by the bright, patterned traditional Burgundian roof tiles never fails to amaze.  

Of course with Clémentine we always have to stop to do a minimum of three rides on the manège on the Place Carnot that has been there since my first year in Burgundy in 1990-91 and probably long before that. 

After the merry-go-round we headed to the market for a bit. I snapped this photo of Clémentine following a local nun as though hypnotized. She was thrilled to see a "real, live nun" and we had to stalk the bonne soeur until Clémentine watched her buy a baguette and a bag of nougats.

I've always liked this photo taken of the reflection of the market action in the window of Beaune's oldest (and one of its most picturesque) wine stores. 

I adore the little red storefront of "Sensation Vin", right near the Nôtre-Dame basilica. We recommend this spot to our guests at our Burgundy vacation rentals for a good introduction to the local winetasting scene - they offer a wide variety of courses in varying lengths and depths.  

Then Franck snapped this photo of the window of a classic Beaune restaurant on the Place Carnot - you'll see this "wine by the glass" phrase A LOT in Beaune. 

This is the fabulous boulangerie on the Place Docteur Jorrot (best pain aux raisins in Beaune according to Franck) just steps from the door of our 18 Century rental apartment - Le Relais du Vieux Beaune - in the heart of medieval Beaune.  Right beside it is most conveniently yet another wine store. 

Last but not least I stumbled upon these gorgeous old cars as I walked up the street from the boulangerie. In this town, you never know what beaune chose is going to reveal itself around the next (cobblestoned) corner. 

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