old school

On Sunday morning we ventured out on a trip to Narboone, about an hour's drive west of Montpellier.
We were aiming for the covered market but we walked through this brilliant old fashioned bits & bobs market first.
Those slippers look as though they've been put out every weekend since the 70s!

kodak gold 200

potatoes • potatoes • potatoes

The weather has been so wet & grey here recently that we've been exploring the covered markets in our area. On Sunday mornings in France about the only places open are covered markets!
These shots are from Les halles in the old centre of Nîmes. It's a superb market, full of lots of old fashioned stalls. Something we'd not seen before were the potatoe, onion & garlic stalls. There were at least 3 of them in the market. We wondered if all French markets used to have such stalls?

What are your favourite market food stalls?

fuji pro400

au bon restaurant

These shots are from a test roll on a new 33mm pentax which I took with us on a short trip to Toulouse last week. They're disappointly dark but it was a pretty gloomy day & the slide film wasn't so fast.
Bon...
The Marché Victor Hugo is a covered market open each morning in the centre of the city. Above the market is a string of superb restaurants open for lunch. Toulouse is one of those places where you can't help but eat really well. You have no choice really :)

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le pain quotidien

Recently I was given a book called 'Good Bread is Back' (Le Retour du Bon Pain) by Steven Laurence Kaplan. It's a history of French bread and is completely fascinating. My current bread obsession is being satisfied by our local Saturday morning organic market - Le Marché des Arceaux and by one stall in particular. Reading this book I've discovered that all French bread was originally sour bread or le pain au levain. This bread is making a comeback with the return to traditional organic practices. It's a denser bread full of taste and goodness, which keeps fresh longer than bread made from brewers yeast.

The above bread is made by a local man who sells his loaves to a long line of faithful devotees. It takes quite some stamina to get this bread as he chats to each customer with his twinkling charm. He's a man very happy in his work. Each loaf is a different size and shape and is all traditional pain au levain.

vinçon

Vinçon is a huge design shop in Barcelona. It's housed in what looks like an art deco building on one of the main shopping streets. What's really clever about it, is that the furniture is displayed in rooms with all the original tiled & parquet flooring, wooden shutters and pannelling. You wander between rooms in such a way that it's almost like being in someone's (albeit very stylish) flat. Then there's the roof terrace, where you look out to the back of Gaudi's Casa Milà.

Spot the posing bird in the last image. I kept moving closer & closer to take a photo. He didn't fly off until I was practically touching him. I guess even the wildlife are laid back in Barcelona.

les halles de béziers

If you happen to find yourself in Bezier of a Sunday morning, the best thing to do is to head to the covered market. It's an old school wrought iron market, filled with cheese, fish, fruit & vege, meat and local produce stalls. We brought a fresh out of the oven pizza and took it to eat at the market bar - La Gargote des Halles.
In fact on the blackboard the staff have written a note to say they're happy to cook your market purchases for a small charge. A bit like charging corkage or BYO (bring your own - alcohol) a common occurance back in the day in New Zealand.

Les Halles de Béziers
Place Pierre Semard
34500 Béziers, France
+33 (0) 4 67 49 25 45

decorate

These little beauties are part of this years range of Christmas decorations at Ikea.
They're origami like, simple, not expensive and will be adorning our tree this year.
I'm beginning to feel festive, especailly as snow is forecast for Montpellier tomorrow

merci

Each time I go to Paris I have a list of places I want to explore. Merci a newly opened concept shop in the branché 3rd arrondisement, was one such place on my list. It's very stylish with lots of branded clothes labels. These brands however, are conceding their profit margin to give to charities in Madagascar. There's a florist, perfumerie, stationery shop and lots of home and kitchenware. The café is also a secondhand book shop with a NYC meets French chic feel about it.

skandium

Skandium is one of my favourite shops and it's on my regular list of places to visit when I'm in London. I walk around planning what I'd buy if I won the lottery!
On my last visit I found these little thorsten van elten door stoppers. They come in an array of colours and I came away very happy without having spent a fortune!
I've been looking for a clever design to stop the wind slamning the doors shut in our apartment. It's also much neater than the random piles of books we've used previously.
The story of this designer is over here.

la tropézienne

Last Sunday was Mother's Day in France and we went to a big family lunch in Aix-en-Provence. We contributed to lunch by bringing a pudding - a gateau to be exact.
A very flash cake called une tropézienne from St Tropez - a very impressive brioche sandwiched with whipped cream and in this instance, raspberries & strawberries.
Apparently it was named by Brigitte Bardot when she was in St Tropez filming 'And God Created Woman' in 1955. Authentic tropéziennes are filled with custard but I've seen more of the cream sort.

We ordered it from a superb patisserie, Gérard on the Cours Mirabeau. It's an old fashioned place where you choose your fancy, get a ticket and then pay at the counter manned by the owner, an elegant older lady. Rather naively I said it was for a lunch with 12 guests and so when we came to collect it, I was faced with 2 enormous boxes ie. 2 enormous gateaux! I was quite overwhelmed and didn't think to ask if we could take only one of them. So I paid the not unsubstantial amount and tottered out of the shop much to the amusement of the other customers.
We've been heroically eating one (possibly two pieces) each day. It's day 4 and the cream is still fresh but the brioch is slightly soggy, so I think we'll call it a day.

The first photo has been taken from Autour de Comptoir
(a blog devoted to photographing Comptoir des Cotonniers shops all over the world) as I forgot, in all the excitement, to take a shot of the shop facade.