Resting, eating, and doing laundry

Day 8 France 2012

This was our lazy day.  We slept late and decided to just stay home, do laundry, read, and regroup from our busy week.  We had bought sausage and eggs at the market last night, so Leon made a pot of coffee, I made a pot of tea, and we cooked sausage and eggs for breakfast. We had bought milk and juice, and had a good American breakfast.  Milk is hard to come by in France.  They eat yogurt and cheese, but don’t drink much milk.  It was interesting trying to choose which of the bottles contained milk.  Once when we were in France with Jason and Cara, we thought we were getting milk, but bought a nice bottle of cream.

Doing laundry with a French washer and dryer is an experience, too.  Our landlady had set the dials on the washer so that we would just have to put detergent in and turn it on.  The real problem came when it was time to do load 2 because the dials reset at the end of the cycle.  We know that water came in and clothes swished around and then the spin cycle came on, so we assume that the clothes got washed.  We bought detergent yesterday when we bought groceries.  Did you know that the market did not have Tide or Cheer?  There are so many American products on the shelves here (Kellog’s, Oreos, and even Pringles) but there were no American brands of detergent at all.  We bought a box of something that had a picture of clothes on the box and just hoped for the best.   The washer is on the second floor and the dryer is in the garage next door.  The dryer is not a vented dryer, and the water from the clothes collects in a plastic tub that has to be emptied after each load of clothes.

We had bought a roasted chicken at the market yesterday.  The house has an oven that looks like a microwave, but no microwave.  We heated up the chicken and some of the vegetables from last night’s dinner, sliced some good French bread, and feasted.  There was also leftover sticky toffee pudding, so we had that.  Leon is now watching BBC news while he samples some of the calvados we bought earlier in the trip.

After dinner, we took another orientation walking tour of the town.  Down by the river there is a huge plot that appears to be a community garden. 

We saw another house with roses over the door like our house has.

 

  Down by the Square de la Republique there is another huge plane tree.  The park is from 1789, and I think that maybe the tree was planted about then.  The closest street is called Rue de Martyrs. 

  Tomorrow is another national holiday, so most of the shops will be closed. We plan to see some of the surrounding area.