A New Arrival

This week there was a new arrival chez Berries. Juliet the cat. India has been asking for a cat for some time and she finally persuaded us with a convincing power point presentation and a promise to take full charge of the litter box! She used her Christmas money to pay the adoption fees, so Juliet really is India's cat but we have all fallen for this sweet, dainty, affectionate cat.

You may have noticed that it's been more that a week since my last Wish You Were Here... post but there's a good reason for that. My little personal project has exploded into a full grown collaboration with an amazing and talented group of photographers from all around the world!

At the end of last year I took two inspirational photography workshops taught by Deb Schwedhelm, Breaking the Mold and Continuing the Journey. They helped me focus on what I do and what I want to be as a photographer and she encouraged me to identify a personal project that would help me develop my photography. I came up with Wish You Were Here... and in an attempt to keep me motivated for the year, invited alumni from the Continuing the Journey workshop to join me. I expected one or two people to be interested. We are now a group of 23 with a waiting list!

We now have our own website, www.wishyouwerehereinayear.com, which I am curating and each week we will share virtual postcards from our lives. Please visit us and see how the year unfolds from Alaska all the way down to Australia.

Two Years

Two years ago last week, we came to Paris for our 'look see'. To look for a house to rent and to see what the school we had chosen and the new life we had committed to from the other side of the world would be like. We ended up choosing the very first house we were shown, although not before viewing quite a few more in ever decreasing states of repair! I wish I could say that I remember this rhododendron bush from that first visit. It must have been in full bloom, but I do know that we would have passed it as soon as we walked through the gates to explore this house's amazing garden.


This year it was at its most spectacular as we hosted a farewell party for three of the closest friends we have made in the past two years. The high price we pay for this expat life that we are so fortunate to live is the sad goodbyes we have to say every year as families are relocated somewhere else in the world.


I have found it much harder to deal with the farewells this year, partly I think, because after two years we have got to know the people who are leaving so much better and also because as each of the friends we are close to moves onto different and far flung parts of the world, I am realizing that it could be a very long time before we are able to see them all again in person. I am learning from experience, that it is even hard to keep in contact through emails and phone calls with all the friends we have around the world, so that is why I am so happy that two years ago I also started this blog. It is a way for me to remember the wonderful experiences we have had as well as sharing bits of our lives with everyone we know. Together with Instagram (you can follow me @growingberries) and Facebook there is a chance I will be able to keep all these wonderful people in my life.


We were originally moved to France for just two years, but I am pleased to say that we are now staying on for another year. We're not ready to go. We still haven't hung all our pictures, some of our belongings haven't made it out of the moving boxes and there is still so much to see and do in Paris. Not to mention Keith's work which of course is what really keeps us here, not luck or my desire to stay put. I've decided to start taking more photographs of this house I love so that when we finally do have to leave I will have created a portrait of it. So, from now on, every week or so I will share a little detail. Remind me if I forget!

Twins

There's a lot going on around here and not much time for blogging. I owe you another post about Rome, our road trip to the mountains, all sorts of sewing projects and what to do in France when you find your house has been broken into. Sigh.

I'm also busy improving my photography skills again with Nicole's Classes. I finally took the plunge and started using Photoshop. What a difference it makes. The awesome straightening tool might be worth the price alone. I have the worst time keeping my horizons straight however hard I try! I've said it before and I'll say it again (just because I love them, not because the pay me to) that Nicole's Classes are great and I'd highly recommend you check them out.

I spent ages this time last year looking for an online photography class, but stumbled upon a link to Nicole's Classes after Sandra from Raincoast Cottage left a comment on one of my Love the Place you Live posts. This year she is hosting a weekly photo project Foliophoto with Bedsidesign. The prompt this week was Twins. Not too much of a stretch in this house but it reminded me of these fun photos I took of Georgia and Savannah as an assignment for my Babies, Toddlers and Kids class last October. It was supposed to be a fashiony shoot and at first they were reluctant to participate (even though the outfits were all their own styling!) but after a while they relaxed into it and these are my favourite shots. A little glimpse into the slight differences in their personalities on the left and then exuberant twininess on the right. We don't know for sure if they are identical twins, but the older they get the more convinced we become that they must be. They are best friends and worst enemies, often in the same minute, but they can't explain what it's like to be a twin. They're just sisters who are twins if you ask them!

Hope you enjoy these Spring like photos. It's the closest I can get you to a Paris Spring right now, the weather has been nothing like it was last year. It snowed again this morning!

Quoi de neuf ?*

* What's new?


This week, I met another blogger friend for real. Virginia and her friend Mary came to visit and we spent the afternoon in picturesque Marly le Roi where we found this vieille maison. Watch out for lots more photographs from the charming streets of Marly on Virginia's blog Paris Through my Lens.


I signed Florence up for Maternelle (French Kindergarten) which she will start in September. I had expected to have to deal with a mile of French red tape, especially as we don't have some of the required documents on the registration form - no Carnet de Santé or Livret de Famille, but my substitutions were deemed perfectly acceptable and the whole registration process took me less time than it took to buy our evening baguette. I can't help feeling that was too easy - we will see when I attend the compulsory parents meeting in June! I hope she likes it. She could do with a break from looking after her family of seven!


Sacré Coeur seen from the fifth floor of Le Marché Saint-Pierre
I had a wonderful day out all by myself shopping in the fabric markets of Montmartre and somehow managed to stumble into an excellent French bistro for lunch in a sea of tourist traps at the foot of Sacré Coeur.

I needed fabric for a dress I'm making for my niece's christening. Whilst searching the web for design inspiration I stumbled across this film at Baby Dior. Le sigh...

Not sure how long that link will last so here's another film for the Paris lovers. Check out the girl in black. Her dress. Her hair. Turns out India wasn't so far from a Dior outfit at THAT Bar Mitzvah after all!



And last but not least, I am thrilled that Jillian over at Jillian in Italy interviewed me for her A Kid's Life series. I found her gorgeous blog one time when we both linked up to Love the Place you Live at Design Mom. It turns out that as well as loving where we live, we also have a love of sewing, photography and twin girls in common! It was such a pleasure and very thought provoking to answer her questions so hop on over to see what I had to say about our life in France. You might find out something you didn't already know.

Bon Weekend!

Montpellier Marathon

Back in August when we were on holiday in Spain an email popped into my inbox from Aidan of Conjugating Irregular Verbs inviting me to a Blogapalooza in Montpellier. I had enviously read about these ex-pat gatherings before thinking how fun it would be to meet some of my favourite bloggers in person so I jumped at the chance to attend. I waited nervously to see if Aidan would choose the weekend I was available in October which she did, and then waited a bit more while Keith heroically adjusted his business travel so that he could be back in France to look after the kids. I booked a train ticket and a hotel room, arranged sleepovers for the big girls and childcare for Florence and packed my bags.


On the Friday morning that I was due to leave for my weekend away, Florence woke up with a temperature and my jaunt to the South of France seemed doomed. All was not lost however as my mother's sixth sense had caused me to book the more expensive train ticket, changeable right up to the minute of departure and I had followed Kirsty's advice to book the hotel through Bookings.com which also allows free last minute cancellations. Half an hour on the computer and I had rearranged my trip to start on the 8:06 out of Gare de Lyon on Saturday morning when Daddy would be home all day to look after the girls.


It's an easy three and a half hours on the train from Paris to Montpellier so I was there in plenty of time for lunch at Chez Boris where I was reunited with Kirsty and Jennifer who I've met before in real life and met Aidan, Karen, Julie, Sarah, Heather, Jennifer, Abby, Meredith and Colleen for the first time. With Florence continuing to be sick all last week, I'm late to the party in posting about the lunch, but Kirsty captured the event perfectly and her photos came out much better than mine! Suffice to say I had a wonderful time and four hours never passed so quickly. It was such a treat to have been included and it was a pleasure to meet so many lovely ladies and hear about all their different yet similar experiences of living in France.


That evening after everyone else had gone home I went out by myself to find dinner. Montpellier is a university town and has a lively nightlife. I wasn't entirely comfortable being out on my own (which made me glad I hadn't also spent Friday night there alone as originally planned) and after a simple dinner I headed off for an early night.


I stayed in the Hotel Eurociel which just opened this year and was well reviewed as a place to stay for lone travellers. It was clean and comfortable and just a few minutes walk from Place de la Comédie, Montpellier's centre. Each floor was named after a different European country. I was on the Greek floor in the Kos bedroom. The next morning as I checked out I noticed that in addition to London, Cardiff and a few other well known British cities one of the rooms on the British floor was named Jersey. If I ever go back I will have to request that room and I'm sure I'll feel right at home!


At the lunch, Kirsty had tried to persuade me to get up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to make the most of the light to better photograph historic Montpellier. Having had to get up before sunrise the day before to make my early train, I didn't quite fancy another pre-dawn alarm, but I did get going quite early to explore the city by day. I set out to the sounds of church bells ringing for morning mass.

Quite a contrast to the sounds of busy nightlife that had accompanied my walk home the night before. Now the bustling, slightly seedy neighbourhood of my hotel was shuttered and quiet.


In the daylight I could relax and admire it's faded charm and gorgeous details.


I arrived in Place de la Comédie just in time for the start of the Montpellier marathon.

Once all the runners were on their way I found myself a café in the main square.


And sat down for breakfast and a spot of people watching.

Fortified by my café au lait, croissant and baguette slathered in Nutella I was ready to spend the rest of the morning exploring the maze of streets and alleys in Montpellier's old town.



A place where people grow oranges on their balconies.

Ironwork...

...and lace.

The streets were deserted except for this man in a top hat carrying a bunch of pink balloons! Qu'est-ce qui se passe?


All the shops were shut which certainly saved me some money, but I wish I had found this lovely little mercerie 'Before & After' on Saturday.


Look at those gorgeous buttons!

As I had my nose pressed to the window of the fabric store I could hear the strains of organ music coming from the church of Saint Roch.


Sunday morning mass was nearly over in this nineteenth century church built along the route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

French friends leaving church.

I spent the rest of the morning wandering the streets getting to know Montpellier and really starting to like it.

Stumbled across some fun street art. Maybe it was a sign as when I got home I discovered that Keith had spent the weekend buying Georgia & Savannah new bikes. Impressive on his own with four kids in tow!

More by luck than planning I arrived back in Place de la Comédie just as the first runners finished the marathon. Three hours pounding the streets of Montpellier and I didn't even break a sweat!

After my marathon photography session, it was time to find my way back to the train station and leave the tropical south for rainy Paris. I feel so lucky to have had this weekend away. Thanks so much to Aidan for inviting me to her gorgeous home town and to Keith for holding the fort back home.

Paris Perspectives

My friends Virginia and Genie of the two very popular Paris photo blogs Paris Through My Lens and Paris and Beyond have both very kindly featured Growing Berries on their blogs this week and I've been thrilled to receive lots of new Francophile visitors. To welcome all my new guests, I thought I'd better put away the laundry and get out some pictures of Paris.


Luckily I've joined a Paris walking tour this year and every other Friday while Florence is at Halte Garderie, I get to spend the day in Paris with my friends discovering the sites from a new perspective, courtesy of our incredibly knowledgable French guide, Jacques. Last Friday we enjoyed a walk in the last of the summer sunshine through Paris' Latin Quarter. We started at the famous Sorbonne, but quickly started ducking down alleys and side streets to discover a world you would never know existed behind the busy Boulevards Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel.


Apparently Jacques is not afraid to have his tour groups step past the occasional privé sign. This building is now part of the University of Paris Descartes campus.

Some of my friends on the tour take copious notes. I take photos and don't always listen properly so I can't quite remember what makes this building special. I do know it is much older than the rest of the nineteenth century campus, possibly once a nunnery and definitely used as a meeting place by the early leaders of the French Revolution.


Cross the Rue des Écoles and you arrive here.


One of the last remaining medieval buildings in Paris (if you don't count the churches) and now the Musée de Cluny.


Cross some more streets, turn a few corners and you end up here. Rue Saint André des Arts. If you look left you're just a few steps from the hustle and bustle of Boulevard Saint-Michel but turn right and you head down a quiet street full of must try restaurants.

Le Christine on Rue Christine. Need to find out if the food here tastes as good as the restaurant looks!


Also found on Rue Christine. Nope. Can't remember the significance. So much for the History degree!


Figs in Paris? You can find them in the Passage Dauphine.

And can you believe these steps are in Paris too? They would look more at home on a Provence post.


They're part of the Cour de Rohan a private residential courtyard which also happens to be a public passageway off the Cours du Commerce Saint-André.

Parisians, and I suppose visitors, have the right to walk through the passage and it's a photographer and historian's paradise. I definitely need to go back and spend some more time there.


You can find this in the Cour de Rohan too. Bonus Berry points if you know what it's for.

I hope you enjoyed this walk through Paris as much as I did. I'm linking up with Design Mom's Love the Place you Live. It's not always easy living here but when you get the chance to see all this in a morning you can't really complain!

Oh, and after all that walking we certainly deserved a Paris Lunch. We ate at Le Petit Pontoise and it was one of the best meals I've had since we've lived here. How can I not love the place I live?