france

We had the most wonderful time at Kerbastard Farm last weekend and I was eager to share the memories with you. In celebration of France’s “Fête du Lait” (Milk Festival), local French farms hosted breakfasts on their premises to showcase their own dairy products. We chose to go to Kerbastard, a local Brittany farm renowned for producing one of France’s best butters.

I’ve been back to living in in Brittany for a year now. A year marked by exciting new adventures, making memories with old and new friends and indulging back into the French way of life that I missed so dearly. And of all the old routines I rekindled with, the one I perhaps love the most is going to my hometown farmers’ market every Sunday morning.

Two weeks ago I had the incredible “chance” to visit the medieval citadel of Carcassonne – almost empty amid the pandemic. A Unesco World Heritage Site, this fortified medieval cité in the region of Occitanie is one of France’s most iconic and touristic sites. I found this usually overly-crowded site all to my self, which made for the most memorable experience.

Don’t look for any restaurant recommendations in this article, as there will unfortunately be none. When I visited Toulouse last week, France had just lifted a national lockdown amid the covid-19 pandemic and kept some important restrictions in place: all restaurants and bars were shutdown, as were museums, cinemas and theatres.

After a few months hiatus, I’ve finally completed the third and final part of my Marseille Guide, following our stay in this beautiful city, just last year. After exploring the “cliché” of Marseille on the first day, and the not-so-cliché on the second day, our third day took us to the outskirts of town. We started our itinerary from the Old Port (all by foot) and made our way to the Plage des Catalans early in the morning… Do : La Plage des Catalans La Plage des Catalans is a well-known …

Early this December, as I was spending a few days in Paris, I yearned for a change of pace and booked an impromptu day-trip to Lille, in the Hauts-de-France region – a city I had always been fascinated with but never had a chance to visit. Located at the Northern tip of France, Lille is the fourth largest city in France (after Paris, Marseille and Lyon), the biggest city of the Hauts-de-France region, and the capital of French Flanders (near France’s border with Belgium).

Our next day in Marseille took us on a more “real” stroll through the city, in boroughs where locals live and gather, and where ethnic vibes are also more present. In this 2nd part of my Marseille Guide, I am sharing must-dos that don’t hold as much of a typical “Provencal Charm” or laid-back feel as in Part 1, but I feel there are just as essential if you want to see Marseille’s modern facets. And I have to admit, although I am more of a sucker for the cliché marvels …

They say Marseille is a city you either love, or hate. And for me, it was love at first sight. I fell hard for Marseille the first time I visited the city two years ago. And I have been bizarrely obsessed with it since then. Which, being a Brittany girl, was a bit against all odds – given how our two regions’ cultures, mentalities and lifestyles are so opposite (both on the French map and abstractly too). But somehow, for the past two years, there isn’t a day I haven’t …