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Everything you always wanted to know about France - from France |
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What's for Afters ? By Rob Thorne of Southernfrance.com Fourteen years ago, Liz and I and our two small children moved out to Valros, a village just outside Pezenas. There we had bought a large property and we started doing seasonal lets. As we lived down here, we would be asked about outings, beaches, shops, markets, wine and retaurants, and we would help as best we could. All this advice went down extremely well with those who came to stay, including our suggestions for a good Sunday lunch. Between Valros and St Thibery is the large village of Montblanc and there is a chateau, which, when we first arrived was home to a restaurant run by a couple from Paris. The food was always excellent, specially if you liked duck, and from the quacking in the castle yard it was evident that the ducks misguidedly liked the Paris couple. Sunday lunchtime, eating at a shaded table in their formal park, with our small children running round the bushes safe but lightly distant, was always a great pleasure. We recommended the Chateau roundly and fully to all and sundry. As happens, although recommending it, we found ourselves engaged in other pursuits on Sundays - maybe older children made river island barbecues etc a pleasanter alternative, maybe it was the arrival of our two younger children. However, we carried on recommending the Chateau for many years, and when we asked our guests if they had visited the Chateau and what they had thought of it, we heard nothing but good. One day, on discussing the Chateau with a French friend, we discovered that it had changed and that the Sunday lunch time delight that we had been heartily and fully recommending had, for the last 7 years, been and become a ’boite changiste’ - a wife swapping club - with food, lewd posters, suggestive menus, rooms by the hour and all the trimmings. What our guests thought of us, or thought that we thought of them, who knows? "They kiss you twice in France, three times in Paris, and you’ll never believe what they do in the Languedoc........" ? Rob Thorne of Southern France Ltd the southern France rentals experts. Southernfrance.com Moving-To-France.com There are over 2,000 features and articles on this site about French life and living in France. You can search from the search box above. Do browse through our website and please use the advertising links, they help pay for the site. I do try to reply to all mail - Contact Me - most is about property or living in France. I publish comments in this newsletter which I believe are of interest and may help find answers for people wanting to come to France. I hope readers will go to the adverts which help support our overheads. |
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