I wish anyone who stops by my blog a Merry Christmas, God Jul et Buon Natale!!

Christmas songs

Cleaning the house has been actually fun to do today (!) when listning to Ella Fitzgerald singing Jingle bells. I tried out whether Pandora had the usual christmas carols and they did so now I'm all around the house singing along :-) So if you have no Christmas cd then try out the pandora!

Does this post sound like an advert or what? Hahahaha... nevermind! The christmas feeling is coming to me, finally. The thought of going home on monday does help a little too!!

Arrrg

I've been waiting for the water to come back since I got out of bed but I guess I will have to brush my teeth with bottled water and the morning shower will have to wait...

ARRRRRG... are they not supposed to tell you about a week in advance before they cut your water supply? I'd settled for knowing it yesterday evening!

Note to self: always find the positive side... positive... positive... positive...

THERE ARE NO POSITIVE SIDE OF NOT BEING ABLE TO HAVE MY SHOWER!

O holy night ... a different version...

I was just over at Betsy's blog where she directed her readers to the best Christmas song ever! My tummy muscles are aching from laughing... listen to O Holy Night here!

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Broken hearts

It's about 6 months ago since I started kayaking and I really enjoy it. Apart from loving the sea and being so close to nature, I thought it would be a good occasion to meet new people. I was surprised to find that the average age was a lot higher than what I would expect from a kayak club as it's quite hard paddling through tough winds and waves... Anyway, my "best" friend there, R, he's 71 years old and is one of the most active person I've ever met (also considering the age here). He's cycling 20 km or more every day, he's doing the rowing machine at home, in the summer he's swimming and then he's kayaking all year around.

It's been a while since I've seen him, so today we were catching up on the latest gossip and news. I told him that we've bought a house etc. He congratulates me and then says that he's selling his house because him and his wife are divorcing after 42 years of marriage. After 42 years of marriage!! It made me so sad - what chance do the rest of us stand then? You should think that if you've made it that far you'd be pretty well settled in your ways, and happy for it to stay that way?!
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People Making You Feel Stupid & Sweet Revenge

Every thursday there's Jazz Night at La Vague (bar & restaurant) in Six fours les plages. It's really nice there as it's situated on the beach and sometimes we go there to have a beer listening to the local jazz artists. Just a minute ago I passed by to book a table for thurday night and of course I met the usual bartender. I spoke to him in french saying I would have liked to book a table for 4 on thursday night. Shouldn't be too difficult to understand... He looks at me, bends forward and then says - HUH?!

So after the annoying HUH?! I answered even more clearly than my previous question - Réservation. Table. Quattre. Personnes. Jeudi * He did look embarrassed after that which made me smile and think - Got you!! Twat!!

The problem is that we keep on repeating this pattern over and over again! When we're there he never understands what I'm saying or what L's saying. It's a bar so the likelihood that we would be ordering something to drink while there is quite high. And if he's alone in the bar and reception area in daytime he would also need to take reservations. The vocabulary for the 2 functions are limited. Beer. Reservation. Then yes, elaborate on the drinks, gin, pastis, whiskey you name it... Must be very very difficult! And nope, no music to disturb his hearing either today!

*reservation. table. four. people. thursday.

Jobs and cover letters

There's no easy way to write a cover letter... I wish it would have been OK just to change the the addresses and send the same one to all the companies - but it just doesn't work that way. I'm now twisting my mind around to write well in French, like it's not difficult enough in my own language.

Luckily I have some Quality Street chocolate to feed to my braincells!

The Christmas Feeling

Yesterday it was dark and it poured down all day, and I couldn't have been happier. Finally I was getting in the Christmas mood (which is not at all easy here in the south of France where the sun is always shining and you can't avoid seeing palm trees all around you (my brother will kill me if reading this. It has been raining non-stop in Bergen for 40 days :-) And for sure is not helping when, in the lack of fur trees, they import them to decorate the streets and roundabouts...

Anyway, I was so feeling happy and couldn't resist not buying a Christmas tree! Even though I'm going to Norway over the holidays I need to feel and see it's Christmas even in our tiny flat.
OK OK, it's a plastic tree and not at all smelling like it should but it sure looks good for a total of 16.30 euros. I didn't want to spend much considering last year's Christmas tree & decorations are in a box in Milan still.

I just love Christmas!!

Toulon skipped the Autumn

Where did the autumn go? I look at the beautiful view from our balcony in Six fours les plages and I see only evergreen trees like palms and pine trees. And even the trees whose leaves are flying away with the wind are all green! No beautiful orange, red or yellow colours... summer turned to winter keeping the autumn away.

These pictures I took in Lavagna (Italy) a couple of weekends ago. We walked up to the hill and church of Santa Giulia and the pictures were taken on the path down. The hill is covered in olive farms and quiet small farm houses. Even though Lavagna is on the same coastline as the Cote d'Azur it's outside the borderlines of the micro-climate you find here. The colours were beautiful...

My reward

The other day when I was about to leave the cat refuge one of our "free" cats came running after me all the way down to the car park like as to say "hey you, cuddle, cuuuddle want some cuddle...". After some caressing on the side of the road I got into my car. But Tigerboy wasn't quite finished with me yet and so, with his 6 kilos he jumped into my car, on my lap, rolling onto his back ready to be scratched on his tummy too... Those moments are priceless to me and make it all worth it!

The London tourist

London was great! We arrived Friday evening and I had already done my research on where to find the closest wagamama restaurant, even printed the city map with all the addresses. So that was the first thing we did - eat. We've really missed the lovely noodle dishes but I've just discovered that the food chain has made a cookbook available on amazon. I've been a good girl this year so I can't see why Santa shouldn't put it under my Christmas tree. The problem will probably be where to find the ingredients and eh... being able to cook (minor details...). After dinner we went to a typical English pub and had a pint of beer, followed by yet another one in a place they played live music. Low quality, a lot of sound but they really rocked!

Saturday morning we jumped on a double-decker bus taking us all around London. It's a great way to see the city - it was however quite chilly so that's why I ended up wearing an onion-hat by evening. Around lunch time we did some shopping at Oxford street followed by a nice noodle soup in Wagamama. No, I wasn't kidding, we really like those noodles!! =) In the evening some of my friends and some of L's friends (from our time at university) came to meet us in Covent garden for dinner (Indian restaurant this time). Dinner was followed by drinks and we came back to the hotel late. The Sunday morning wake-up was less pleasant but nothing that a cup of coffee couldn't fix.

We had a great time and felt so lucky to have lovely friends that came from all around London just see us.

With Ryanair to London

Ryanair is a curious company... I'm not going to criticize them as their ticket prices can make me tolerate just about anything. However I'm just going to point out a few curious details...

1: You'd like to go to Milan and you think you'd land close to the city centre but no, you end up in another city called Bergamo 1,5 hours away (if the traffic allows it - between Milan and Brescia the traffic is very busy and always clogged up with accidents) Or you want to go to St. Tropez? Well you'll land in Hyères. You want to go to Oslo, you'll land in Sandefjord.

2: They advertise with great prices 0,02 euro to London return per person. Great-- you think, knowing that they'll of course add the taxes to it. So including the taxes you're up 25 euros return (50 euros for 2). Great! I continue the online booking process and I'm asked - How many suitcases/bags will you bring? I thought it was a little odd but I put in the number of 1 - and automatically another 7 euro 50 centimes was added to the total. As we are only going away for the weekend one baggage will be enough, and I added zero for L. Then we were still charged 6 eurs 50 centimes... for what, showing his face in the airplane? I can't now remember the other charges but we bought London return for 2 = 75 euros. Can't beat that but wouldn't it better to just advertise more accurate prices - it's still going to be cheaper than any other company!

3: I read in La Provence a couple of days ago about a few Ryanair customers who had bought tickets to go to Morocco However Ryanair didn't yet have the authorisation to fly there and didn't manage to get it either. Result: A lot of angry customers being refunded.
(Apparently Air France is setting up it's own low-cost company and this should have been the reason for Ryanair not obtaining the flight authorisation from the french government.)

This is not the first time I hear about similar problems. Easy Jet wanted to start flying between Milan and Olbia (Sardinia), advertised and sold tickets but was not given the permission because it was "better" that Meridiana kept the monopoly on that stretch.

I guess it's all about commercial strategy... but it's the customers paying for it.

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Have a great weekend!