Bonjour tout le monde!
As I’m sending this to you – the sun is shining and the sky is a wonderful blue – and after several weeks of daily rain it’s such a relief to have the summer arrive enfin in the north of France.
First of all I’d like to say thank you so much for signing up to the newsletter – I see that there are lots of new people this month – hello, welcome and lovely to meet you!
We’re super excited to be partnering up with Paris Chanson, a London based French radio station which plays non-stop French golden oldies. We’ll be sponsoring their weekend show and featuring a variety of music related features with the help of Paris Chanson who will be telling us about their favourite artists and music. Check them out on our website, there’s a button on the right hand side of our pages now – click and play, you can read the best on line magazine about France whilst listening to the best French music – all the classics!
As if that’s not enough we’re also partnering with Untapped Cities – Untapped Paris – a great website which promotes quirky and unusual snippets of news – and of course we love to write about the more quaint and unusual side of life as seen from the view of an expat in France!
The last few weeks have all been about the Tour de France in French newspapers and it seems that the whole of France is devoted to watching the awesome feats of these men who push themselves to the limit on the world’s longest bike race.
The rain we’ve had didn’t totally dampened spirits here in our part of France although the effect on the garden has been awful – lots of vegetables and fruit struggling and my chickens, geese and even the ducks were getting fed up with it. This hasn’t stopped us getting out and about as usual and you can read about our trip to Le Touquet, Montreuil-sur-Mer with its amazing antiques fair, and fabulous St Valery-sur-Somme in Picardy where we discovered a medieval town and … a steam train!
Bastille Day has been and gone accompanied by lots of food and wine and fireworks – if you’re wanting a good French recipe – check out our gastronomy section
We’ve had some great guest posts including from Madeline, a California based artist who sent us her memoires of Paris
If you’re coming to France on holiday – check out our regional pages – we hope that you’ll find them informative as we’ve picked out our favourite things to do and see in the regions and we’d love to have any tips from you via our contact form – don’t forget our monthly events list to get the most from the area you’re visiting…
For those in the UK who can take a ferry or train to Calais or Dunkirk – you can get away from all the Olympics hullabaloo and spend a tranquil day, weekend or week in Nord Pas-de-Calais – we’re becoming one of the biggest and best on the web for finding out what to do in this region. Did you know that although this region is one of the smallest in France – it has more museums and art galleries than any region in the whole of France? We’ve featured all the main cultural centres and all the smaller ones that we rate as recommended so – even if it’s raining, if you love art you’ll still have a great visit and stay dry!
There are hundreds of pages in our on line magazine – things to do, daily life, daily blog, readers real-life experiences, recipes, style and tons more – we love to feature people who have a business, live in France, know somewhere wonderful in France or just want to share a French memory – contact us if you’d like to be featured.
In the meantime, I am off to Agincourt for the annual festival, a red currant fete and tonight – its the local straw sculpture competition – tell you about them later!
A bientôt Janine
