Being a tourist in your own city...

{The blue skies of Bandol}

      At this point, Shaun and I don't really know which city is 'our city'. Is it where we grew up? Is it where we have our house together? Or is it where we spend most of our time during the year?  Each of these questions leads us to different answers so we stopped asking. We came to a realization a few years ago, we live in France and visit America. It was a tough pill to swallow at first. Don't get me wrong, we love France and Shaun does have dual citezenship, but it is really hard to shake that 'we are still american' feelings at times (that feeling mostly rears it's ugly head when we deal with customer service in France...and driving).  Wherever we are, we always feel like we are just visiting. Would I love to be able to paint our walls in the house we have here and make it more 'our style'? Yes, but the fact that we continuously get to experience new things makes up for that, big time.  For obvious reasons, France always keeps us on our toes as we are constantly discovering new things. For example, the english movie theater that we only discovered a month ago. We've been here for over a year and we just found it?!? I blame myself for that because I am the researcher of the 'Shaun and Nikki' duo. Then, when we head home for the summer to Atlanta, we discover a whole new city all over again.  It reminds me of the goldfish story my mom always says about the goldfish swimming around the bowl and each time it sees the treasure chest, its a suprise, as if it is seeing it for the first time. So, we are like the goldfish, only without the treasure chest...oh, and things really do change....so really, we are nothing like that but oh well. Back to Atlanta, a few years back, we left in August and returned home in early June to an IKEA, an entire outdoor shopping mall and a SUPER TARGET about 1 mile from our house. Can you tell I was EXCITED!?! If it wasn't so damn hot and humid (and dangerous, it's still Atlanta), I would walk every day down there to shop. Pretty sure, Shaun is happy I don't. We have lived in our house for 11 years but each time we return from France, it's like discovering a new city all over again, it's like we are tourists. We try new restaurants with friends, take drives down Peachtree to see what's new and soak up as much as we can in the 2 months we're home because by the time we are back in Atlanta again, things will be different.  The constant change of lifestyle may be some people's definition of a nightmare, but it's a dream come true for me. So go be a tourist in your own city, it's more fun than you might think and you never know what you might find. 

  Here's a few pictures of us being tourists in our neighbor city Bandol we took from an afternoon walk and ice cream stop today.

{An intense game of 'Petanque'}

{Small colorful boats in the port}

{Calm waters}

{Beautiful church on the boardwalk facing the sea}