Wedding Time – My 1st French Wedding

Just to update about the weather here in France I need to say that July has been wet! And not the kind where you swet wet. No no no. We are talking thunderstorms and simply non-stop rainy days. Not cold though, still summer.

So it was also raining last Saturday, when <3’s cousin got married. But talk about luck! It rained just before city hall, just before church (yes they did both) and every time we drove from one place to another. That means we had great photos taken outside with sunshine and the welcome drink in the evening was all outside. Basically it rained all day and in the evening and all night it took a break.

My first visit in the city hall of  the town Le Creuset. [lö krözå] 😉

This little girl is one of my favorite – schhhh yes I know you shouldn’t have favorites… But I’m not a parent and she is not mine 😛 This is G’s cousins child E.

This was our day:

1. City Hall – only family + witnesses
2. Church – all family and friends
3. Welcome drink – EVRYONE! Parents friends, neighbors etc etc
4. Dinner and rest of the eve – all family and closest friends – same as 2 I think 🙂

Interesting arrangement I must say. I mean I only have experience from Greek weddings and I’ve just seen and heard about others.
This way you can sort of invite everyone and at the same time not have the biggest wedding ever.

So the drinks and dinner was in Château de Santenay, yes in a castle. *yay*
The roof of this castle is typical in this region, Cote d’Or. As the one my sister and I visited.
It was quite a fancy welcoming. Champagne was flowing, BBQ, froglegs, snails, duck liver but also food that is eating by non-french such as salomon, and other more common food 🙂

Don’t we look good? Comments?? 😀
<3<3<3

I’m becoming more and more French as time goes!
This is not too hard to eat, it’s tasty.
Though me eating a snail!! Yes you heard right, I tried one. One is enough to feel the…texture… *goose bumps*. So the sauce is amazing! Loads of garlic! Simply yummie! Sorry can’t find the picture..

Time to take a seat. Just a tiny information, look at the chairs, love them!

In France it’s not common to have a wedding cake, not a birthday cake either. You can of course and people do! You see the litle cone-shaped thing in front of the groom? That’s what they have here! There is vanilla cream inside this crunchy fried (?) ball. I still prefer cake, but this is nice too!

And here is the “Broom Car” that arrives last sweeping away after everyone else. Another tradition here in France. 🙂

Here are some photos from the day after, when we returned for a brunch to the castle and left overs from the day before.

See those two trees? See that one of them is cracked open? Have a look further down and you’ll see what it looks like from the inside 😉

 

And FYI : in TWO, yes twoooo!, days we start our road trip to paradise!!

81% cocoa

And I’m blogging about last weeks big event.

Spontaneous camping

We had a look at Google Maps to try to find a spot to go camping, a spot not too far from us. A nice spot close to water and where we can bbq too. We found two spots, the second one showed up to be private land. We had another round with the car and found a great spot almost on the river 😛 as we had our own little shore.

Babe was the grillmaster for the evening

 

We had a great evening, no wind, not too hot, no mosquitos (!!), enjoyed the frogs singing (yes real ones, not the people) and simply a great break from the apartment life.
The next morning we had brekky, enjoyed the quiteness and took off.

Belgium for the weekend + WWI memorial visit in France

Meet Pablo!

And our friends in Belgium! Monday 14 June is the national day in France thus we had a long weekend last weekend. And we decided to visit an old friend of G’s. They live near Liège and so we stayed the weekend and they showed us around a little. When we stayed at home I was mostly playing with Pablito!! He’s adorable!
 
Here we are in Durbuy – which promotes itself as “the smallest town in the world”. Guess what? There are castles in Belgium too!
 
We walked around this beautiful town and of the shops was like the picture below. Decorated like a kitchen, in a kitchen, nice ey?

When you are in Belgium there are some things you need to do. Eat a Belgium waffle!! G is having a Liège-waffle, they are smaller and a little softer.

I had a Brussel-waffle, larger and much more crunchy!

This is taken from the inside of another cute old little shop.
We finished off by trying some of the bears, another must, that you can find only in the area and in Belgium. First one is from the town, second one is with peach flavour and third one is a weet beer.

Last night out we had a dinner at a brasserie where we could find a Belgium speciality.

Here we tasted two other bears. To the left is a weet bear and to the right a blonde.
We say thank you and good bye to the great and lovely couple! Aren’t they sweet? Hope to see you in France next time!

On our way back we drove into Douamont Ossuary. Here you can visit the memorial from the WWI where during 300 days, over a battlefield covering 20 square km, 700 000 men faught and about 230 000 men died. Here are the remains of the soldiers. It is hard to grasp that we still have wars going on right this moment, when you see this sight.

On the inside all the names of the soldiers are written on the walls and the ceiling. It is massive!

We also saw the fort of Verdun. Verdun is the closest city. As you can see the ground is not flat. When driving to the memorial this was the first thing we noticed. Here is a picture where we can see it clearly. In the forest, the ground looks exactly the same. How many bombs, I wonder?

Saturday – A family dinner that turned out to be my Surprise Party

The weekend we all stayed in Molinet as there was a family dinner on Saturday night.

G’s auntie invited us to come by for an aperitif at her place. We made a stop by the bridge for boats to show my parents, I’ve posted last summer about this bridge with water on it so no more 😛
I really like A’s place as it is just by the canal. On the second photo the canal is 3-4m in front of us.

So people started showing up in the evening. When I thought that everyone, all the family, was complete more cars start driving up. My love had invited all our friends to come too! And as it turned out it was not a family dinner party it was a party for my 30th. I cannot explain how greatful I am to everyone who showed up for me and how much I appreciate this gesture of throwing me a party. It was all G’s mum’s idea. And as they are a great bunch they have been planning the party and inviting people from January already!! Too sweet really! I was out of words – especially French ones!

Family photo!

So now that everyone was here I had some presents to open.

The reason why I am in a state of shock? My present from everyone there is that I will go SKYDIVE!!!! Yes I know, I feel my heart beating a little faster too when I think about it. THAAANK YOU ALL!!!!! I’m so excited!!

Time to eat, 25 people took there seats and we were served Boeuf Bourgignon! Oh my I say! I have never tasted this before but it is delicious. It takes 3 days (!) to prepare and the meat is tender as, well I don’t know a good English expression, but it melts almost before you put it on your tongue!

Time for dessert!! And hallelujah there were desserts! So we had a princesstårta from yesterday for people to try. But they had a surprise cake too, choooocolaaaaate 🙂 And not only that! The neighbor had made her own iiiiiiice creeeeeaaaaaam! The first photo is the ice cream! The ice cream guys was with caramel and almond and just perfectly crunchy! YUM!

Also today my little helper was there. And as there were a bunch of candles and cakes I did need her help.
        Merci mon cheri pour une journée fantastique! ❤

There where some truths written on the chocolate cake:

Gluttony starts when we are not hungry anymore                            

Η λαιμαργία αρχίζει όταν δεν είμαστε πεινασμένοι πια

And:     9 out of 10 people love chocolate, the 10th lie                

   9 στους 10 αγαπούν την σοκολάτα, ο 10ος λέει ψέματα

 

I am truly greatful to have found an amazing boyfriend with an amazing family! Thanks to them I had a great day and one of the best things was that my parents were there with me. They got to meet everyone, friends and family.
Merci encore mon amour! ❤

27 June

And so I turned 30. So? I don’t know why so many people out there have anxiety and a million thoughts in their heads about some age-thing. I don’t get it anyway. So now it is just the answer that differs – I’m 30.

I made a request before my parents left Sweden. To prepare them for what was coming. We had our Greek evening with some of the “best of ” from Greece and as I am a summer child I thought I would like some Swedish summer specialties. Well one is for summer but both are Swedish. So my mum made a smörgåstårta and my dad made a princesstårta (or two then). So the first one is a cold sandwich cake and the second one is a sweet normal birthday cake “princess cake”.

The morning was spent in our place and in the afternoon we had invited G’s twin brother to come to his parents place 😛 Yes I know, but it’s nicer to celebrate in a house with a garden then in a small apartment. I could so I did invite them to someone elses place 🙂

The cake was marvellous! Μπράβο μαμά!!
Of course no one than us “Swedes” had tasted one before and so everyone was happy to try something new, light and fresh. No we didn’t tell them it’s not as light as it looks 😛

 

My babe and me ❤

The “in laws” 

For those who don’t understand – the twins. Mine is the better looking one! 😀

After dinner comes cake. And here we introduced a Swedish national favorite made by dad. Μπράβο μπαμπά!!

I had a little helper with me to blow out the candles.

I had a great day with my closest here. I thank everyone who thought of me and contacted me at my birthday to give me their wishes. I also thank those who thought of me and maybe had no idea how to contact me or just simply forgot to 🙂

Ευχαριστώ αγαπητοί μου γονείς που είσασταν κοντά μου αυτή τη μέρα!

Requested post

So yes, we did some shopping. I found a few things and it’s not like I was looking for them but they sort of showed up there with their tags 70% , 40% and etc.

I put in my sandals too, though I found them before the sales started 🙂 put them there to make the pic more colorful :p though the little black puff is new.

And to answer your q L, yes it is Vichy water as you know the bottled water, the Vichy products, creams etc.

Thursday and a visit to Vichy and some castles on the way of course :)

I have never visited Vichy and I’ve heard the city is nice. As always there is a lot to see but you can’t visit everything. So we did the city centre and went through the parc where the well of Vichy water is.

Along the way we passed the Donjon castle, I have put pictures of it before, the red brick one and its sheeps.

The second one is in the town Lapalisse, the same town where I bought my car. We made a short stop to have a look at the castles and their surroundings.

Here is the Vichy spring. Well one of them. Situated in a parc just close to the city centre.

Personally I must say that I don’t like this water. It is interesting how the water is carbonated straight from the spring, but not enough from my taste. Simply not my kind of water.

I don’t have the most unique name in this world but it’s not the most common either. Here it is though, beautiful on the wall and a true Theodora straight under it!

Vichy was a nice and simple city, the centre I’m talking about. We brought souvenirs from different stores and had a nice lunch and a coffee over there too. Everybody shopped something for themselves and those grandchildren of theirs.

 

After a days walking around we finished up with beers in Molinet and then went back home.

Great day!

Wednesday 25th – remember the date

Summer sale is here! It always starts the 25 June if you want to go shopping in France. In big cities you have to be ready with your elbows though…
We revisited Montceau and the few stores there are and we found some things to take with us home, both on sale and not.

Paray-le-Monial
In the afternoon we left dad in bed to get better from his cold. Mum and I went to Paray-le-Monial to continue some shopping and visit the beautiful town and it’s church, basilica, Sacre Coeur.
Below is the city hall, which is always named Hotel de Ville in France. The façade is beautiful and when we passed, right after town closed and it was all quite, we saw a lady in the window who started to sing opera or some classic piece. It was remarkable.

Tuesday

 

In the morning we went by a close village where we can find a castle. Unfortunately it was only open on weekends so we will come back. Did take some photos though as we were there.
The bulls on the way are not the biggest to find in this area. The biggest bulls, yes natural can weigh up to a ton! These ones are smaller 😛

 

And in the evening we had the greek evening at our place – that I posted 2 weeks ago 😛