My Life in the Charente: Cats

Showing posts with label Cats. Show all posts

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Wishing everyone happy holidays and all the best for 2015!

We will be away in a few days time to celebrate Christmas in England with my father-in-law. As we are flying, our computers will be staying at home; only the Nexus will be with us for emails, and maybe the odd single photo on the photodiary. I find that blogging on this tablet is beyond me, so I will resume early in the New Year!

I have reviewed my diary photos for 2014 and picked a favourite for each month, for this post. All photos, except a couple which are taken nearby, were taken in our garden.

18/01/14 Mrs Blackbird taking a bath.

17/02/14 Snowdrops.

08/03/14 Early lamb

12/04/14 La Rochefoucauld château and its reflection in the river.

12/05/14 Iris.

01/06/14 Humming bird hawk moth.

15/07/14 Common swallowtail.

17/08/14 Cat sitting for our neighbour

17/09/14 Black kite.

26/10/14 Cotoneaster and spider web.

11/11/14 Peacock butterfly

08/12/14 Great tit at the window asking for food!

Happy Christmas

Gesëende Kersfees

Nginifisela inhlanhla ne mpumelelo e nyakeni

Nadolig Llawen

Nollaig Shona Dhuit

Nollaig Chridheil agus Bliadhna Mhath Ur

Buone Feste Natalizie

Feliz Natal

Feliz Navidad!

God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt Ar

Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan

Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun

Kung Ho Hsin Hsi. Ching Chi Shen Tan

Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto

Sawadee Pee Mai

Gajan Kristnaskon

Froehliche Weihnachten

Kala Christouyenna!

Mo'adim Lesimkha. Chena tova.

Keep well everyone and I will be back in 2015!

Also see my daily diary HERE

and My Life Before Charente (updated 30 October 2014)

Friday, 1 February 2013

Christmas in Casablanca Part 4 and Final

Apologies for the length of this post, but I decided that it was time to close on Casablanca after 4 parts and return to real life once more!! There were many photos that I did not want to leave out, so this post grew longer than planned! As we were exploring mostly on foot, the daily life of the city centre unfolded in front of us!

Perched on the corner selling Moroccan bread. Vendor's dilemma: either to be visible to potential customers or chance of being run over!

I want one of these :-)

Casablanca's own Twin Towers. Home to an hotel, offices, shops and supermarket.

A smaller and older mosque than the new Hassan II building shown in Part 1, but you can see the intricate decoration on this one as well.

Loved this photo of the two cats enjoying the warmth of the bonnet below, heated by the engine, and the sun from on top!

View across the large Park of the Arab League (sadly rather neglected,with a number of broken and dry fountains) of the Cathedrale Sacre Coeur in the background. See part 1 for more information on the Cathedral.

Lunch time snooze; guess this is as good as it gets in the park!

In Place Mohammed V near the Post Office, I think this was the only fountain we saw in working order. Presumably this is where all the pigeons hang out for water and crumbs, as the birds were everywhere!

The stylish main post office.

The map of the new tramway, which opened only days before we arrived. The route (at present) is 30km long, with 49 stops.

In the centre of Casablanca, there are men at every road crossing, with whistles and flags stopping the traffic and pedestrians, so the tram can run through intersections, stopping only at designated stops.

One of the "space-age" trams running down the centre of an existing roadway. The fares seemed reasonable, and any success in clearing the masses of clogged motor traffic would be a big benefit!

and this is the Place of the United Nations, near the port and market; the centre of this area appears to be a main gathering and waiting point.

Restaurant Imilchil, where we had our Christmas luncheon. Lavish decoration in an otherwise very plain and run-down street!

A very Moroccan interior.

The Harissa soup was highly recommended, so we had to try it out, and yes it was certainly a 5 star!

Nigel had lamb cooked with prunes and almonds, which he said was delicious while I had fish (no photo!). We were surprisingly full afterwards, so ordered fresh fruit for dessert. We accompanied our meal with an excellent Moroccan Cabernet red wine, which we had not expected to be available. Many restaurants are Muslim owned or influenced, therefore there is often no alcohol on the menu.

Our last meal in Casablanca was at the Casablanca Cafe. We had eaten there earlier in our stay and discovered they had a good set menu, economically priced. Of course, Casablanca could not be visited without finding some signs of Bogart and Bergman around, and the cafe did not disappoint us! The famous 1942 film was based on Rick's Cafe, but apparently all filmed in California!!; the name carries on, in a building very near the fishing port. It had very good write ups but the menu wasn't cheap, we thought.

Inside the period interior of the Casablanca cafe.

Nigel and myself proving that we were there!

Loved these large green eyes. The pavements everywhere have seen better days!

Our return to France and winter weather came as a big shock after sunny Morocco! Here we are driving home over the Pont d'Aquitaine suspension bridge spanning the Garonne River in Bordeaux.

Morocco was altogether a different and most interesting winter holiday break and the dry and sunny weather a pleasant relief from the never-ending rain at home!

See also - My Life Before Charente Updated 01/02/2013

and my daily photo diary at http://photodiarydps.blogspot.fr/

Sunday, 14 October 2012

Le Hameau de Pirelonge

Last month we went on a coach ride, organised by our leisure group, to Le Hameau (hamlet) de Pirelonge in Charente-Maritime, about 2 hours drive away towards the coast. The hamlet is owned by the Brillouet family and an appointment is necessary to visit, as they give you a guided tour, of which more later! They have a winery, perfumery, a printing museum, some craft work, a shop and a restaurant. This post is longer than my usual ones, but I did not feel that splitting it into two was a good idea!

We were so looking forward to the trip, but sadly there was much of Pirelonge that we did not get to see and we spent many hours sitting on hard wooden benches, listening to French commentary that we found almost impossible to follow. Not only a foreign language for us, but the speech was much too fast. It appeared that much of it was about tracing the history of the hameau over the centuries and how the place worked. They showed us the beautiful cognac stills and explained (in French of course) how the distillery operates. The son, Jean-Marc did speak English well, but there was so much to get through that we did not have the opportunity to talk to him, and he seemed to be speaking extra-fast to cram in everything he wanted to say! There were only 4 English speaking people on the coach and although 2 of them speak reasonable French, the lengthy monologues were even too fast for them! Nevertheless, we did take many photos and I think they are worthy of going into this post.

Above and below - the old shop and sign where the barrels used to be made

Above and below, some of their products for sale in the shop, pineau, cognac and lavender bags.

Jean-Marc gave us all a tasting of each of his 5 pineau vintages, of which he is rightly very proud! Not good for the head at 11 in the morning!

In 1987, he planted lavender, and 1989, he organized his first Festival with the stills and old crafts.

Jean-Marc talking about some of the stills that you can see behind him.

There were barns and barns of different types of stills, all museum pieces, but I need to limit the amount of photos I took to a few interesting ones. These mobile stills below were pulled around to the various vineyards, where alcohol would be brewed on the spot from the farmer's own grapes!!

This was obviously not part of the museum pieces, but I was fascinated by the fact it was partly hidden under a pile of empty boxes! For you car fans, this French classic appears to be a Rosengart LR4 N2, manufactured I think in the 30's by French engineer Lucien Rosengart. The marque ceased production during WW2 due to the Nazi invasion of France, and post-war models failed to sell, leading to its demise. There are better preserved examples in car museums around France and elsewhere!

Then there was a break in the talking for lunch, where of course, language did not deter us from enjoying the event, and event it was! In a large barn converted to a restaurant is a stunning stained glass window, the work of a cousin Brillouet, master glassmaker.

I managed to catch this photo first, before it was taken over by the hungry crowd!

First were the starters, to which we helped ourselves

Once these were cleared away, through a curtained opening in one of the walls, a selection of our French male friends appeared, all dressed in frilly can-can clothes, carrying a pig on a large platter, shoulder-high. The beast had been cooking all morning on a spit in the hallway. There was much laughter and camera flashing, as they walked the full circuit of the room. Sadly most of my photos were not good, but here is one of their entry, lit by a spotlight.

and another, having placed it on the table for flaming with cognac and carving

the mandatory cheese course followed and then this delicious apple tart

Then one of the family members arrived to play us some tunes on her accordion and the result you can see here went down well, especially after the earlier pineau tasting and limitless wine with the meal!

After the meal there was yet another long talk on the making of perfume from the lavender; we skipped this one, as we felt that we could not take in any more high-speed French in one day! Needless to say, we did join up again with the group to attend the printing lecture (more sitting on benches!); this museum had many interesting presses, and I gather that most of the wine labels used to be printed here, as well many historic articles on both wine and viticulture.