Wednesday Market

  One of the things that I love here are the markets. And I'm not talking about markets like Kroger, Safeway or Publix either. I am talking about the outdoor markets here in France that sell everything from fruits and vegetables to nail polish, pottery and mattresses. Most cities in France have different days designated where markets are exclusively food that day and then turns into a flea or other markets on other days. We have one about .5 mile from our place that runs every day (except Mondays) until noonish that sells mostly fruit and veggies but I always find myself really wanting to go on Mondays...don't know why. Well, last year during a bike ride at the beach, my friend Allyson and I literally stumbled upon one of the greatest markets I have seen over here. That last statement may seem bold but I am sticking to it. You know how I know it's great? When we talk to 'real' french people about it, they agree that it's awesome and give us their approval, so there. O.K., back to the market. Every Wednesday at Sanary sur Mer (sur mer means on the sea so you can imagine where it is located), hundreds of stalls pop up selling anything from the freshest fruits, vegetables, fish, meats to jewelry, pottery, scarves, and yes, even mattresses. It is amazing, pretty much a one stop shop. So we went today and enjoyed the sun, took some pics and walked along the ocean.

For those of you who are thinking, 'I am sure there are good markets in Atlanta too', I would agree. I am sure there are good ones, but the fact that I am in France at the market no further than 50 yards from the Mediterranean makes all the difference in the world. Last I heard, there was a great farmer's market in Decatur (just outside of Atlanta) and while I am sure it is nice, the Ludacris' lyrics in the song Saturday Oooh! Oooh! always pop in my head.... In Decatur, where they pack that heat...and rob neighbors in the night creep, creep...I'll see you later we'll be in them streets'. Now, I am not thinking by 'heat' Ludacris is referring to the beautifully greened jalapeno peppers the market is offering, are you!?! Yeah, didn't think so. Oh and we also found this pair of underwear.... didn't say the market only hit home runs.

Work of Art

{Purgatory Palace room in Au Vieux Panier}

     I am so bummed I didn't know about this before we went to Marseille. There is a hotel there called Au Vieux Panier which consists of only 6 rooms. But let me tell you, these 6 rooms pack a punch. After doing some research, I found that the hotel closes down every year for a short portion of time to change the decor of each room. Might not seem too out of the ordinary, right? Well, what makes it super cool is they bring in 6 different artists, graphic designers, etc.. to each design their own room. And on top of that, they have carte blanche, no rules to go by, no theme, just pure imagination. So they can do whatever they want....and they did. All 6 rooms have a completely different feel. Having spent a good bit on the hotel's  website and grabbing these pictures, I can tell you that the rooms are very reasonable for a big city like Marseille and also factoring in that you are pretty much sleeping in art. I don't really know what would of changed with our last trip if I had known of this before going. Maybe I would of tried to stop by for a peak inside some of the rooms, or maybe spent a sleepless night in the Panic Room, which is my personal favorite. You can get more details on the website for each room but it really is a cool concept. Oh well, guess I will have to take another trip to see this hotel ( oh, and maybe pick up those green heels I was undecided on... no longer undecided).

{Panic Room-half of the room is stark white, while the other half is completely covered in graffiti....and I mean everything is covered}

{Panic Room-alternate view}

  On the home front, Shaun and I made a new friend this weekend. Although, I am unsure how I feel about it. While lounging out in the backyard, we befriended a cat (or he befriended us, I don't know). Both Shaun and I are huge animal lovers, don't get us wrong, but there is something sneaky and flippant about a cat. Unlike all the other cats we see around, this one is very friendly and craves human contact, which leads me to believe he is not a stray. He walked straight up to us, rubbed all over our legs, then promptly rolled on his back pretty much blatantly asking for a belly rub. We indulged him for a bit then he meandered off to hit up some other houses for some random belly rubs...or so we thought. As I continued to read outside a few minutes later, I caught this dark shadow out of the corner of my eye going towards the house followed by Shaun's voice inside the house saying "uh no no, no no kitty you need to leave". Kitty was marching his way right into our house. Now, I have to give him or her credit for having the balls to try this but..... not happening. So today I see the kitty in the backyard again and in total cat fashion, he or she completely ignores me. Playing hard to get, ok, I see how it is.  2 can play this game....kitty.

{Our new backyard fixture...wouldn't even look at the camera}

Marseille

{Notre-Dame de la Garde overlooking the Vieux Port of Marseille}

  We decided to take advantage of the sunshine and take a 'little' road trip to Marseille. I say 'little' because it is only 35 minutes away but for some reason, it feels like more of a trek than it really is. I am thinking the traffic, tunnels and just overall congestion has something to do with it. For being so close, we certainly don't go to Marseille enough and I can't really put my finger on why...maybe the above reasons have something to do with that as well. Or maybe because it seems a little large and spread out for a French city. Or maybe...I could go on forever with this. So today, we threw all excuses aside and made the trek. The weather has been great with constant sunshine so we ate outside in the Vieux Port under the watchful eye of the Notre-Dame de la Garde Cathedral on the hill above. After what seemed like a two hour lunch, (not getting any complaints from us, come on, what's better than wine, sun and a goat cheese salad?), we walked the streets and did some shopping. As usual, I found 2 pairs of shoes, which brought my total this week up to 3. And, hidden under a tiny mound of sarcasm, I also found a little comment that sounded a lot like Shaun's voice saying 'we are gonna need another suitcase just for your shoes'. Not sure I heard right but I knew better than to try to find the source. Some things are better left alone. And Shaun found...nada.  He is not liking the skinny jeans with pointy shoes thing they got going on over here so he is electing to wait until we get back to the land of 'non-ball hugging' jeans and what he likes to describe as 'normal' shoes..his call. I tend to agree with him since personally I'd rather not see what someone is working with through their pants, but some girls do and that's ok. All the power to them.  After eating and shopping a bit, we drove up to the top of the hill  that houses the Notre-Dame de la Garde cathedral to have a look around and see the view. Both the cathedral and view were amazing. So now after 2 years, we can finally check that off our list....moving on, what's next??

{Chevre salad with figs and apples...so freaking good}

{Watch out KFC...you have competition}

{Shaun is getting better at this taking photos thingie...although it looks a lot like I am in this boat behind me, which I'm not}

{The cathedral}

{Close up view}



{What you see when exiting the cathedral}

{View of Chateau d'If}



{View of...Shaun Fein}

{Shaun is a master of taking the one arm photos}



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}

Weekend

{Shaun's masterpiece}

     We had a pretty low key weekend, which mostly consisted of icing (not much you can do for a torn hamstring), watching college basketball, and playing some games (old and new). The weather has been nice but we found ourselves wanting to stay in and relax instead of getting out. (Actually as I type this, we have sunny skies but 100km/h winds.) When we lived up north, we used to feel that urgency to take advantage of the good weather when we had it since it never lasted long and you never knew when it would be nice again. That resulted in lots of 'forced outings'.  But here, the weather has been nice and I know (hopefully) it will stay for good so we can be a little more choosy on what we want to do.  In other words, we are not at the mercy of the weather gods (as much-we still live in France after all). So we relaxed, which was a nice change of pace and very much needed for Shaun. After weeks of hamstring pain, b.s. tests and being given the 'ok' to play many times, he finally got himself a good MRI which showed a 10cm/4 inch tear in his hamstring.  So, he is resting, which is usually not in his vocabulary but seeing that he has no choice, it will be now. Fortunately for us, there were some great games on t.v. so Shaun could get his fill of basketball with out actually playing. We also dusted off the old Wii, which inevitably ends in trash talking and one of us being pissed because the other mentioned our name and loser in the same sentence. Like I said before, we never said we were mature. AND, we also discovered the Draw Something app, which we spent many hours playing against each other and against our friends here in France. It is a drawing game kind of like pictionary but you play it on the iphone/ipod or ipad which obviously makes it a lot harder. Thank God they give you the letters below because with some of the pictures we have drawn, you would wonder if we were a 6 year old drawing. It is very entertaining to say the least and I saved a few of my favorites to show off our 'mad' drawing skills, haha.

{My work}

{Shaun}

{Shaun's best work to date}

{More of my work, at least they have lipstick on.}

Cirque

  As I had mentioned before, we decided to treat ourselves to tickets to Cirque du Soleil for Valentine's Day. Well, our Valentine's Day was last night as we got all gussied up and went to our favorite little Chinese restaurant for dinner then headed over to the Zenith to see Cirque. But let me backtrack a bit here...there has been a lot of build-up to see Cirque du Soleil in our household, like 10 years of build-up. Long story short, I had seen Cirque in Vegas many moons ago and saw they were coming to Atlanta so I mentioned something to Shaun. Well being the romantic he is ( I italicized that right?) he wanted to surprise me by doing everything himself and arranging a night for us to go, it was all out of my hands. Well, when Cirque comes to Atlanta (as with most cities besides Vegas), it is a temporary show, as in maybe 2 weeks of running time. Pretty sure Shaun didn't know that, since by the time he had figured out when he wanted to go, it was all but packed up and gone. Which I am thinking he realized this because of two things: 1-me telling him this in a louder than normal voice on the last day of the sold out show and 2-the next day seeing the yellow and blue tent being deflated and packed up since they perform about 1 mile from our house in Atlanta. Fast forward to 10 years later and many eye rolls at the mention of Cirque and we made it!!! While it was a different show than I had seen in Vegas (Mystere), it was incredible. Some of the acrobatic moves these people did were mind-blowing. There were two contortionists who were so entwined together, you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began (or which way they were bending for that matter). Made me feel like an idiot for being so happy that I could finally touch my toes when stretching. The only thing that I didn't remember was all the clapping.... don't know if they do that in the States or it is just my memory fading but it seemed like the French wanted to turn it into a real 'circus' with clapping and hollering.  All in all, I am so happy that we got to go. Shaun likes to think of us finally going as re-writing history, and I agree. Yeah, it might have been 10 years in the making, but it was worth every eye-roll and sigh given. Now, off to stretch...

{Contortionists}

{This girl was mesmerizing with her ribbon..although when she first came out and ran across the stage, both Shaun and I couldn't help but think of Frank Ricard in Old School.}

{The core strength to do this...unreal.}

{He would straighten his arm then bend it all the while holding his body weight.}

Spring, is that you?

{Mimosa tree, which is in bloom right now}

       I know I am breaking a cardinal rule here and talking about something that we don't want to jinx but the weather has been great.  Yeah, we had some rare snow a few weeks ago, but aside from that, our winter has been a very mild one.  It seems like the weather everywhere is a little random with record highs or lows but I will take what we are getting here any day.  It has been sunny and in the high 60's (low 70's if you're directly in the sun) for the last week or so and it seems like it is here to stay (damn meteo, you better be right).  I know I know, by just saying it out loud I risk losing this warm weather all together, but it is just too good not to acknowledge.  France is still a beautiful country when it is grey and gloomy outside, so you can imagine what it is like sunny and warm.  That proves especially true down here on the coast.  Much of the culture here thrives on warm weather ie.. walking to the markets, outdoor dining/shopping, and nature in general so I am thrilled to be able to enjoy that again.  We always laugh because as soon as it is warm, little restaurants and cafes that you never knew existed or even forgot where there, spill out into the squares and come alive again. 
     While I am not ready to pack away all my winter clothes just yet ( I have learned my lesson before), all heavy clothes and boots are slowly moving their way to the back of the closet and even Shaun has retired his beanie.  Here's hoping I won't be fooled.... again (and that beanie doesn't make a re-appearance).

{Even our sunsets have been great..}