So East it's Ouest

Italy is green, Provence is lavender, Basque Country is red, and Gascony is...woad.  This is my color of blue y'all.  Gorgeous.  I noticed right away a difference in he blue around here especially the shutters and when I found out that it was a natural dye it all made sense.  Cause I'm a natural girl in her own natural world. What is woad?  Woad is actually a plant that has yellow flowers but when it is made into a dye it turns blue.  They used to think that the women who dyed with woad were witches because they would dip fabric into a blue bath and when it was raised out of the water it would turn yellow, it was the invisible marker of its time.  The buildings around here have their own beauty, usually a sandy yellow or plaster white with bricks with white borders around the windows and woad blue shutters, they mix stone and brick.  Most buildings are old like small fortified cities old, remember how people call this the Tuscany of France?   If any region around me is beautifu

|Not having a car| The impossible is possible here in France although I won't say it's easy.  Try thinking about how you would live one week with out your car.  Now how do you get groceries, go to work, bring home that landscaping you wanted to get, get home after dinner with friends at 10:00?  You start to realize how dependent we are on our cars especially in the US.  When I came home the last time I realized just how odd you look if you don't have a car, just seeing someone walking along the side of the road is weird if not creepy.  Unlike the US however in France not having a car is  do-able.  You can take a train or a bus, ride your bike or simply walk 20 minutes to get your groceries, making sure you make several small trips a week so as not to look like you're working on the chain gang with a large sack slung over your shoulder on your way home.  Might I say by not having a car over here not only do a save money and the hassle of paper work but my legs get a pret

Bathroom.  Bedroom.  Stove top .  Heat.  Or not.... The joys of house hunting in France.  I have now realized that in the US we take many things for granted.  We assume that an apartment or house will have a toilet and bathing facility of some kind, we assume that a furnished kitchen includes a stove top if not a complete stove top oven, we assume that the building will have central heat. Well if you assume anything about France it's not to ever assume anything.  Furnished , check.  Sink, check. Floors, check.  Oven, nope.  Bed, nope.  Fridge, nope.  Washing machine, nope.  Table, nope.  Couch that is counted as a bed, check.  TV, are you kidding?  The joys of searching for and acquiring housing in France.   Let's start with the search.  Why are there so many restaurants in France, you only need to look at some real estate ads to understand why.  A kitchen consists of a stove top and a sink.  No oven, no fridge, no counter tops, and definitely no dish washer.  When I Face