Tom and Susan's Blog - Entries from 2021 and 2022

This is a continuation of my blog updates from 2021 and 2022. I just moved these from the main blog page because it was getting a bit long. There is another page (which I will also link at the bottom of this page) for the blog entries from 2017 to 2020. **Please note** that the city entries that are normally on the right-hand side have been REMOVED from the older pages so if you are looking for the city list, go to the main blog page.

December 18th, 2022

Another holiday season, another Christmas Market. This time, we headed north to Oslo, Norway. This was Tom's first time in Norway and Susan's first time in more years than she wants to admit to. This was probably the COLDEST Christmas Market trip in actual temperature but not the most miserable weather .. that title goes to Lille, where we had sleet, freezing rain, and what seemed like tropical-storm-strength winds on the day we were going back to the airport. The Christmas market was a bit disappointing, but as you can see in my Oslo, Norway blog, the city itself was really nice! Hope you enjoy!

December 5th, 2022

It only took me another month, but I have all of the blogs ready for our trip to the Loire Valley. It is known for its wine, fruit orchards, historic towns, and château's. There are several well-known wines, which tend to exhibit a characteristic fruitiness with fresh, crisp flavors. There are over 300 château's in the area, dating back as far as the 10th century. We tried to have a good combination of château's, wine, and interesting towns/cities. Everything can be found in my Loire Valley blog.

November 5th, 2022

I continue to pinch myself when I say something like "we decided to go to Spain for the weekend". I realize that it was easy for us to go to South Carolina or Virginia for the weekend when we lived in Raleigh, and people living on the US borders can easily "pop" to Canada or Mexico. But popping to Spain for the weekend just doesn't have the same ring to it :-) But that is exactly what we did a few weeks ago with a few friends of ours. We rented a villa and spent the weekend a bit inland from the Mediterranean coast. It was a very relaxing Weekend trip in Spain, hanging out with friends, eating great food, and visiting the Monasterio de Sant Pere de Rodes.

November 1st, 2022

Every year in September, they have the European Heritage Days (in French, the Journées européennes du patrimoine). For 2 days, there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of different things to see and do. In some cases, you are able to visit buildings that are not normally open to the public. For example, the Elysée Palace (including the office of the President of France) can be visited if you are lucky enough to get one of the 20,000 spots available. For the buildings that are open to the public normally, there are guided visits and additional information. Here are a few that we visited recently: Palais Niel, which is now the home to the 11th brigade of parachutists, the Eglise Notre Dame du Taur, the Eglise Notre Dame de la Daurade, the Chapel of the Carmelites, and the Chapel of the Hôpital La Grave.

October 15th, 2022

The final part of my Bretagne 2022 blog is ready. More churches, chateaus, and various smaller villages.

September 28th, 2022

Part 3 of my Bretagne 2022 blog ready, with a couple chapels, a chateau, a few towns, and lots of beaches along the Atlantic coast. Even a re-creation of a traditional Breton wedding procession.

September 15th, 2022

A continuation of our summer vacation, I now have Part 2 of my Bretagne 2022 blog ready. This covers the rest of the first full week, with various places around Roscoff (on the English Channel) just until we left and headed West towards the Atlantic coast.

August 26th, 2022

It is that time of year again .... VACATION!! Yes, I know that most of you are now thinking that everyday is a vacation since we are retired ... good point. But we do still talk about taking vacations, and we tend to take a vacation with all of the others in France in the summer. This year, similar to last year, we came to Brittany to try to escape the heat in Toulouse. My blog will be a bit long, so I have broken it into several pieces. This allows those of you who actually read it (I hope someone does!) to not have so many pages to read at one time, and it gives me a bit of time to write them. So we will start with Part 1 of my Bretagne 2022 blog.

August 14th, 2022

A couple different updates today. First, it is summer in France, or what they call the "saison estival" (summer season). There are lots of things that happen during the summer while everyone is on vacation. I wrote up a little Summer in Toulouse blog to talk about some of the events that happen during the summer for the people who happen to stay in Toulouse. One of the things that we did was the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, which they had set up in the Bazacle (a a hydroelectric power station and temporary exhibit space).

July 30th, 2022

Each year, we try to get back to the US to visit friends and family. This year is no different, and we did the "Northern Swing", which included Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Missouri (yea, not really Northern but Susan's mom lives there). In my 2022 US Trip blog, you can see our visit to Boston, New York City, as well as the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library (in Independence, Missouri) and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library (in Boston).

July 22nd, 2022

We took another weekend and headed North into England again to meet up with our friends Jenn and Joel, who we stayed with in London in May. This time, we split an apartment just outside the historical center of York, and took in the sights of York and a few of the towns around. The trip included planes, trains, automobiles, boats, and horses! Read all about it in our York, England blog.

June 28th, 2022

Finally had enough time to get Part 2 of our NE Spain trip done. Perhaps I write too much :-) You can find Part 2 of my NE Spains 2022 blog about 1/2-way down the page.

May 28th, 2022

We also did a quick weekend trip to the Pyrenees to check out some Cathar castles and a cave before it gets too far into the summer and the heat arrives. The details and some rather cloudy pictures in my Pyrenees 2022 blog.

May 20th, 2022

Even though England is not very far away, we actually haven't been there since we moved to France. But we rectified that situation recently, with a long weekend in London to visit with some friends. We didn't do many of the general "tourist" things, since we had been to London several times before. But we did go by quite a few places that we hadn't been to before, so I hope you enjoy our London 2022 blog.

May 15th, 2022

A rather long vacation this time ... North-Eastern Spain for about 10 days. We drove along the coast of the Mediterranean from the French border (after stopping at a puppy-friendly beach) as far as Valencia before turning back North and heading home. I'll start with Part 1 now and will post Part 2 when I get those blogs completed. Until then, you can read Part 1 of my NE Spains 2022 blog.

April 25th, 2022

As expected, Macron took the 2nd round and will be the President of France for another term. Here is my French Presidential Election - Part 3 blog with the final results.

April 13th, 2022

HAPPY EASTER! Since we have been here, we have talked about going to the Abbey at Moissac, which we had always heard good things about. Finally, we took out for a weekend and headed in that direction. Since the Abbey doesn't allow dogs, we ensured that we planned 2 nights in the same place so that we could leave Lucy sleeping one afternoon while we went to the Abbey. On the way up and back, we visited a set of other towns to check out the sights. You'll be able to get a peek at all of the interesting places and a little story about a car (and city) in Michigan in my Moissac and Castelsarrasin blog.

April 13th, 2022

The first round of the election is over, and the results were mostly as expected. We will have a rematch of the 2017 2nd round in a couple weeks, with President Macron going up against Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, which is a new name for the Front Nationale that was created by her father many years ago. I hope you enjoy my French Presidential Election - Part 2 blog. I'll add the Part 3 after the final results.

April 5th, 2022

We have now been in France for almost 5 years, and every 5 years, the French have a Presidential Election. It is a 2-round system with the first round of voting coming up soon on April 10th and the 2nd round taking place on the 24th of April. There are some specific peculiarities with the French voting system, so I decided to write up a little blog to explain the voting process, specifically for the first round of the Presidential election. I hope you enjoy my French Presidential Election - Part 1 blog. I'll add the Part 2 after the first round is done.

March 8th, 2022

If you have been following our blog for awhile, you know that we like to get away a couple times a year and have a "special" dinner. Normally, for our birthdays and Valentines day. Back in 2017, we went to the town of Valence for a special birthday dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant called Maison Pic. This year, we decided to go to the same restaurant for Valentines Day and also spend the night at the hotel (last time we stayed nearby). We also took a few more days to get there and back, and took the opportunity to visit a bunch of towns with Roman ruins that we had visited many years ago. You can see old Roman arenas, Roman theaters, quaint medieval towns, as well as our gourmet dinner in our Roman stuff and Valentines Day blog.

February 27th, 2022

You've seen several blogs with Lucy on the beach, which she loves. I've seen quite a few videos of Corgi's in the snow, so we decided to try to find if Lucy liked snow. Unlike Raleigh, we don't get any snow here during the winter, but we do have the Pyrénées only a couple hours South of us. You can read about our first try in our ski station at Ax-les-Thermes blog. It wasn't as successful as I would have liked, so we'll have to find another place ... maybe one that does cross-country skiing and snowshoes.

February 10th, 2022

Two updates this time ... first is the Chinese Lantern Festival 2022, which moved from Gaillac to Blagnac (a suburb of Toulouse) this year. We took the train to Gaillac to see it last time, but this time we drove over and found a place to park. The second update is for a quick little trip to Paris that we did in January. It was a bit chilly but less tourists, so we find January not a bad time to go.

January 18th, 2022

Finally catching up from a last-minute rush of things that we did at the end of the year! As some of you know, our birthdays are close to each other and we tend to only celebrate once. We try (not always succeeding) to find a special place to go, normally a high-end restaurant. This past year was no different and we headed over to the little village of Eugenie-les-Bains for a gastronomic celebration at the Pres d'Eugenie. On the way over, we hit a couple Christmas Markets and visited a couple churches in the villages of Lescar and Geaune, one of them had 12th century mosaics!

Also, there was a special exhibit of 16th century tapestries entitled The Lady and the Unicorn in Toulouse. It is normally in the Cluny museum in Paris but there is some work going on and the tapestries made a little trip around to a few other museums while the work was done. We had seen them before when they were in the Cluny but having them just around the corner was quite nice as well.

January 10th, 2022

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Bonne Année!! A little before the holidays, we made a quick trip out to the Mediterranean, visiting the city of Narbonne and the village of Gruissan including some beach time and a visit to the salt beds. Unfortunately, the guided visits to the salt beds had finished for the season, and so we'll have to go back again this year.

December 27th, 2021

There were a number of new golf courses added to our membership this year and we hadn't gotten around to visiting any of them. So we decided that we had to visit at least one of them before the year was up! We booked a little B&B and headed out towards Bordeaux. We found a few beaches for Lucy and got to see a few more remnants of the World War II "Atlantic Wall". A few rounds of golf and some wine tasting rounded out the short trip! You can see an old machine gun and an amazing sunset on my Bordeaux Golf trip blog.

December 20th, 2021

It took a bit longer than I had anticipated, but I have finally finished my Brittany 2021 Part 2 blog today. This covers the final 2 weeks, within the department of Morbihan.

October 4th, 2021

The Part 2 of our Brittany blog is coming along, but in the meantime, I wanted to put up my USA 2021 trip blog. We spent 3 weeks in the US visiting friends and family, and eating lots of BBQ and Mexican tacos!

September 7th, 2021

I try not to post while I'm on vacation very much, which is why I haven't done anything here in a month. We spent the month of August in Brittany, escaping the heat of Southern France for awhile. We relaxed, did lots of walks/hikes, allowing Lucy to play on a few beaches along the way. We also visited a bunch of villages and ate LOTS of galettes (basically, a savory crêpe made from buckwheat flour) with apple cider (slightly alcoholic). I'm posting my Brittany 2021 Part 1 blog today, and I'll post Part 2 in a little bit.

July 25th, 2021

Lucy has had a busy month ... playing with puppies ... forest walks ... swimming ... and after all that ... sleeping! Cute pictures and videos on the latest updates to the Lucy Blog!

July 23rd, 2021

Parts 3 and 4 in our Grenoble-Turin blog are ready now. This is the final update on our trip to the French Alps and NW Italy ... which takes us through the Mont Blanc tunnel from the French Alps into the Italian Alps, then down through NW Italy (stopping to taste some Barolo wines), and then back across the Provence area of France and back home.

July 11th, 2021

We headed out on a 10-day (or so) vacation that took us across France to the Alps, through the Alps near Mont Blanc, down into Italy, and back across France. This was our first trip with our new car and our first time in the Alps. I have separated it into 4 parts and I have the first 2 parts ready now in our Grenoble-Turin blog. I promise to have the other parts completed soon!

June 28th, 2021

I have two fairly short blog entries today. The first one was for a walk in the area of Fronton, which is a short drive from Toulouse. Then, we did a long-weekend at the beach with some friends. We rented a house and had a great time just relaxing, eating, and being with great friends. Lucy also had a great time as she got to play with her buddy, Elmo, all weekend!!

June 14th, 2021

As promised, here is a short blog entry on our new Volkswagen Tiguan.

June 7th, 2021

Another month has quickly gone by! We were happy to have some restaurants and cafes reopen with outdoor seating only last month and we are looking forward to indoor dining opening this week! A few of our favorite places don't have outdoor seating and so we have had to wait until this week. But it is great to be able to take Lucy for a walk through downtown Toulouse and stop for a coffee or glass of wine. The weather was rainy the first few days of outdoor dining but it has turned quite nice and, at times, a little warm. I've gotten new flowers planted on our balcony and one of our neighbors commented on how nice they look from her apartment, which is katty-corner from ours. We also spent a great long-weekend with some friends down near the Atlantic coast. There were 5 of us and 2 dogs that went together, staying at a house with a pool and yard. The dogs had a great time running and playing in the yard and we were able to kick back around the pool (a bit chilly to jump in), have BBQs, and drink some great wine and Armagnac. We also visited a couple of nearby towns during the day, ate fresh oysters, and walked along a huge beach just a short 10-minute walk from the house. Once we came back, things also got busy as our new car that we *thought* would be delivered at the end of July came in early. So then we had to quickly get our car ready to trade-in, get the money transferred from the US to France, and get the insurance changed over to the new car. The most difficult one was the money, which was not what we expected. We didn't think Brexit would impact us, but our normal currency exchange company is based in the UK and so, things ended up changing. We found out the hard-way that our US bank has really good fraud-detection! But after a couple days of going back and forth, everything is now ready for our new car delivery tomorrow! I'll post pics and details shortly!

May 8th, 2021

A little late, but finally found some time to get up Lucy's 21-month moiniversaire blog. A few pictures that are just cuteness, plus more videos of agility class and her puppy play. Enjoy!

April 27th, 2021

I know, it has been 2 months since my last post, but there hasn't been that much to talk about. France is back into a 3rd lock-down with essential stores closed, restaurants/cafes and gyms remain closed, and a new 10km travel limit was implemented. There aren't that many places to go within a 10km radius of our house, and with most things closed, it isn't even like it would be enjoyable to go find a town within that radius. The week before the lockdown, we did get out of town and headed towards the Pyrénées. We had scheduled a private French class with an instructor near Tarbes and they also had a chambre d'hôte and table d'hôte, so we could stay there and get 3 meals a day (we tended to only get 2 as breakfast and dinner were so big and they always provided munchies during the morning class. It was a private class so it could be tailored to the areas that we needed to work most on. Each afternoon, we took Lucy for a walk somewhere ... sometimes around a lake or field, sometimes through one of the many little villages nearby. I did a blog that has the various towns, as well as pictures of Lucy playing with Izzy and Eva, the 2 dogs at the chambre d'hôte.

February 21st, 2021

Happy 20-month moiniversaire! We still haven't really gone many places due to the curfew and restaurants being closed, but I do have an update to Lucy's Blog for this month and the direct link is here (since I'm not adding much to her main page). In addition to meeting up with several of her friends throughout the month, we also have taken her to agility classes and the puppy recreation each week. We also went to a lake about an hour south of Toulouse one day to give her a little change of scenery.

February 19th, 2021

Wow, almost a month has gone by since my last post and we haven't really had much to say! I do have an update today ... somewhat of a Public Service Announcement for people living in France and just hopefully interesting for everyone else. Every Spring, there is a problem here with a specific type of caterpillar that lives in pine trees, mostly in Southern Europe but lately they have been moving a bit north as well. The first couple of years here, we never thought about them even though we probably saw them. But now, we know a lot about them and are on the lookout for them when Spring rolls around, because they are very dangerous to dogs (some people say they could be fatal). Wonder what they are? Then head on over to my La chenille processionnaire du pin blog entry. I will have another update in the next couple days for Lucy's 20-month birthday.

January 24th, 2021

A short update to Lucy's Blog for Lucy's 19th-month-birthday. If you want to go directly (since I'm creating a new page for each one due to the size of the original blog page, you can go here. Somewhat uneventful but several really cute videos of Lucy playing with others, as well as a couple pictures from her Agility class. Things may get really boring as there are rumors of a 3rd lockdown in France ... boo .... Let's keep our fingers crossed that anything that happens doesn't impact Lucy's play-time!

January 5th, 2021

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope everyone reading my blog had a safe and happy holiday season. I am hopeful that 2021 is better than 2020 was. I had written before about our Carte Vitale and getting into the French Health System. I recently had a couple appointments with my new Primary Care doctor and decided to give a little update about how the appointment went and some cost comparisons between the French system and the US system. Mind you, everyone's costs in the US are different but I just gave a couple examples of my last few appointments with my primary care doctor in the US that I ended up paying out-of-pocket because I was working through my deductible. If you are interested, the information is on my First Carte Vitale Doctor Visit blog.

You can continue going back-in-time with the blog entries from 2017 to 2020. **Please note** that the city entries that are normally on the right-hand side have been REMOVED from the older pages so if you are looking for the city list, go to the main blog page.