Fin de la Semaine

The word "weekend" is, if it isn't obvious, an English word. Yet here in France, for many a moon, it has become the French word too for Saturday and Sunday. 25 years ago in French One I even learned how to say "week END", with my rising inflection on the 2nd word, so as to sound more French. The irony is that the Quebecois, so mocked by the French for their accent, have in many ways a language which is more representative of "true" French. Thus in Quebec they still say "Fin de la semaine" - literally end of the week. I can vouch for this from when I lived in Quebec 9 years ago and was tickled to find all the Quebecois around me saying it. They do not say "faire du shopping" like in France, but rather, "magasiner" - to go to the stores. The list goes on.
That said, we had a great "weekend", our first Saturday and Sunday with no trips, no visitors, and no working in Monaco for Thomas, since early June. It felt luxurious, decadent, endless, delightful.
Here are some highlights:
To celebrate Thomas' first Saturday morning sleeping in (faisant la grasse matinée - this means literally having a "fat" morning, or, as the brits would say "to have a lie in"), Estelle and I slinked downstairs to the bakery in our bldg in our pyjamas, and Estelle had her first mini-croissant, hot off the press.
One great thing about living in a city is that you're a 10 minute walk away when the circus comes to town. This morning a famous circus troup offered 2 euro admission to watch them rehearsing, and then you could visit the animals. Estelle was speechless and very attentive of the tigers and ponies and their tricks.

yep, that is an ostrich. Why the pacifer, you may ask? It is not a fear of the animals. Poor Estelle has a molar the size of Mount Helen erupting in her right cheek, thus making her prone to the need for anything to soothe her, the poor thing.

It was a weekend of cooking and baking. I have, miraculously after 6 years of searching, found something resembling Crisco. My baking prayers are answered. I made chocolate chip cookies for a birthday party of a little boy we went to, and they were ALMOST like normal. I attribute the differences to: having to chop up bars of chocolate because I couldn't find any chocolate chips in the stores (do you HEAR my pain over here? I mean, the BASICS, chocolate chips for the love of pete), and no light brown sugar - only dark. Having said that, I also forked out All-Bran muffins, my mother's fave, and a bacon prune loaf (sounds gross, but man was it tasty), Here is Thomas' contribution: leek and goat cheese quiche:

Another perk of where we live is the Port - boats, boats and more boats. Great chance to get your sea legs on today with the municipality sponsoring a regatta of antique large-size sailboats, dating from the end of the 1800's to the 1920's. This was all part of "Jour de la Patrimoine", which is the annual National Heritage Day. This means free entry into historical buildings, many of which are not open to the public normally, stuff like that. So today in Nice, for this regatta, there were free boat rides out into the sea to see all the sailboats in the competition. Off we went, after the post-circus nap. The sun was blazing, and the city had the kindness to hand out hilarious bright red hats to everyone. Here are photos from that hour-long excursion out on this passenger tour boat.





It's all fun and games until now, as we await the next rugby game in the Rugby World Cup, France is playing Nambia, let's hope they win.....