Grocery Shopping

Dear Friends,

After allowing ourselves the luxury of sleep yesterday, we were very hungry by the time we were ready to leave our flat.  It was 12:30 pm and since we had yet to buy groceries, we had nothing to eat or even coffee to drink.  So we prepared to go in search of lunch before grocery shopping.

It was raining quite hard as it did almost constantly all day yesterday.  Since the town is built on a very steep hill, there is a considerable amount of runoff from the rain.  The runoff is funneled into pathways for the water that quickly become rapidly flowing rivers.  It is quite a sight and gets the water to the sea very efficiently and without causing any problems.

We donned our rain jackets and hats and grabbed our umbrellas and ventured out to find a place to eat.  The trick to walking the hills in this town is to find the stairs so you do not have to walk along the roads which have very small if any sidewalks.  The runoff paths for the water often parallel the stairs so it is a great adventure.  We found some stairs that led us to La Belle Epoch, one of the restaurants recommended by the notebook in the flat.  We started with coffee.  My large espresso was fantastic and very welcome as I had not had any coffee the day before either.  Jane ordered rigatoni and I ordered spaghetti carbonara.  Why is that we are in France and for two lunches in a row have had Italian food?  We finished our very leisurly lunch with more coffee.  Later in the afternoon I felt the jittery effects of that extra caffeine, but it tasted really good at the time.

It was now after 3:00 pm so most of the stores were beginning to open again after the very civilized two to four hour break for lunch.  We had accumulated quite a long shopping list and knew that we would need to visit several stores to get everything we were looking for.  Based on prior experiences we also were prepared with our own shopping bags.  We had three large nylon bags, and we each had a backpack.  We were ready to shop.

We went first to the Villefranche Primeurs, a small shop with wonderful fresh produce of all kinds as well as the essentials of life - wine and cheese.  Not coincidentally the patisserie/boulangerie was next door.  We did not buy anything since it would be on our way home, and we did not want to carry the wine any further than necessary.  The next stop was the pharmacy for qtips and hand lotion.  We really did not need the hand lotion as just a few hours of exposure to the wonderful, humid, salt air was already curing our dry, cold Minnesota winter cracked skin.

We continued on in search of the Petit Casino (apparently a chain of small grocery stores).  Along the way we passed a very uninviting store front that was set back from the street.  Since we are on an adventure we went in anyway and were amazed at what we found.  The store was called Picard Surgeles (deep frozen food).  The interior was brand new and spotless.  The room contained freezer after freezer of food of all sorts - fruits, vegetables (even avocado), meats, fish, chicken, pastries, ice cream, etc.  We checked it out but did not buy anything again because it would be on our way home.

A short walk later we found the Petit Casino.  It had all the essentials in a very small space, and we quickly filled our three nylon bags.  We then returned to the other stores to complete our list.  By now our three nylon bags and two backpacks were full and getting heavier by the minute as we trudged up the hill to our flat.

After such an adventure, we needed to relax.  I tried to read Le Monde online but I really could not understand much at all.  We also watched some television -  BBC World News and CNN.  Of course we should have been watching a French station but they were speaking very fast, and we could not understand.   Our fear that we will never master French is growing along with our anxiety about going back to school.

We made our fist dinner in our flat, and it was a big success.

That is cheese pasta with mustard/yogurt sauce, hard salami, haricot vert, bread, water and white wine.

After dinner we discovered that Netflix and Xfinity were not available in France, so we were thwarted  in our attempt to continue to catch up on Foyle's War.

Sleep did not come easy as the combination of jet lag and anxiety about school and the test on Monday conspired to keep us awake.  The jet lag will resolve itself over the next few days and the school anxiety will either decrease or increase as we start school.

Today the rain has stopped, and it is trying to clear.  We need to locate the school which will probably only increase our anxiety.  Wish us luck.

More later,

Jane and the Unabashed Liberal