Valentine's day for one s'il vous plaît...

Wow! Two blogs in a week! This is unusual for me. But I've had the nicest day I just felt I had to share it with you. So of course today is Valentine's Day in France as it is everywhere else but I have to admit it's a lot more tasteful here and you don't have loveheart helium balloons and Thorntons chocolate flung in your face everywhere you look.

I do not have a valentine (sob, sob) but have enjoyed a treat from me to me of an indulgent lunch at Le Select Café in Nantes. It's somewhere I've wanted to venture into since I arrived and my goodness was it delicious and in beautiful surroundings.

I sat by the window reading my book, watching the world go by and gazing at the various artifacts hung on the walls of the café including portraits, wedding photos, clocks, books...the list goes on.

I chose the Tartine du Jour which happened to be slices of bacon, chèvre cheese and a mint pesto served with salad which was beaut beyond belief. I also had a cheeky glass of white wine and a hot chocolate to follow (indulgent i know!) However, this chocolat chaud was not your ordinary Cadbury's highlights nor your standard chocolat chaud that are usually to die for in France. This was pure melted chocolate in a mug that even formed a skin on top if you didn't drink it fast enough- luckily I was up to the challenge!

Followed by a walk through the busy town, down the cobbled streets to work off however many guilt ridden calories I had consumed (although not feeling that guilty at all) I can safely say it's the best ever Valentine's day I've ever had.

I'll be sure to take any friends who visit me here in Nantes to this cute bistro and if you happened to pass through this city, make sure to stop off here.

Anyway back to packing! Home tomorrow!

help! i'm in cardiac arrest!

Check out the website to see what I mean about the cute interiors...

http://leselect.fr/

Le Select

Boire - Manger - Bruncher

14 rue du Château, 44000 Nantes

02 40 89 04 49

Times are a’ changing.

I’ve been out of touch recently partly because I felt I didn’t have anything worth blogging about but also because I was so busy I didn’t have time to blog about what I was up to. Catch 22 really.

I have now left Lyon for pastures further north. I’m obviously a northerner through and through. My time in Lyon has gone so quickly and it really was a great experience I’ll never forget.

Now I’m onto stage 2 of my year abroad. For any of you who read this and haven’t found out through means of Facebook, text, email or mama Wynn I have landed myself a sweet job presenting a radio show called English for Everyone on Eur@dio Nantes! (www.euradionantes.eu)

Having already spent 4 nights in my new apartment with a lack of Internet, a bout of sinusitis and more frustrating French bureaucracy to deal with, I can still safely say I’m enjoying it here. So if this is as bad as it can get I know I’m going to love it here.

Nantes really is a beautiful city; some even call it a ‘Petit Paris’.  It is indeed a lot more ‘petit’ than Paris but it has the culture, the old fashioned architecture and the good looking people (ha!) that Paris boasts. On Saturday, I visited the Château des Ducs de Bretagne (photos below), which was very interesting and is surrounded by some great antique shops and cafés. I then went to the cinema (alone: sob) to see ‘L’Amour Dure Trois Ans’ starring one of my favourite French actresses, Louise Bourgoin. This was definitely a good language test. I felt extremely smug when I understood the jokes and laughed along with everyone else (it is after all quite important to understand jokes when watching a Romantic Comedy). I also found myself ‘pretend laughing’ when I realised I was surrounded by raucous laughter and I was the only one sat straight-faced. Obviously there is still room for improvement!

I would say my French has improved over the past few weeks, particularly my telephone French. When looking for an apartment in Nantes, arranging visits, calling Internet companies, utility companies etc. I had a lot of practice in telephone French. It’s just the lack of face to lip read off along with bad phone lines and quietly spoken people that really make it difficult. However, I’m starting to lose that sense of intense fear when I see a French number calling my phone or the even more frightening ‘Blocked’ number calling. ‘*French number* calling’ doesn’t quite fill me with horror anymore but I do still get a wave of nausea when the dreaded ‘Blocked’ decides to drop me a call. I need to get over this phobia soon though. Hopefully I learnt my lesson the other day when I purposely missed a blocked call, waited for them to leave a message, and then found out it was someone trying to deliver me a parcel from Colissimo and had to wait the whole weekend before I could next pick it up. Doh!

Anyway I’ve got to go now and pick up said parcel but I’ve got a spring in my step as I’ve gained internet, dealt with the paperwork and got rid of the sinusitis. I’m also going home on Wednesday for just over a week to celebrate ‘birthday season’ (my whole family were born in the months of Feb-April) and my own 21^st birthday! I hope to enjoy some home comforts before I hop back over the channel to start my 9-5 or 9-7 it seems…so long student days!


P.S. I thought I'd add this link as this song has made Nantes famous, if only by name. 




bisous x