A cheval! A cheval! My kingdom for a cheval!

Why the long face? There are these whites horses along the road in our town. I stopped with my camera and they came right over to me. We had a pleasant chat.

Christmas Eve

Joyeux Noel everyone. Last night was Christmas eve and we took a walk into town after our traditional fish dinner which my wife did an excellent job on. I brought my camera and tried to do some night shots. This morning (Christmas day) we walked down to church and on the way back we found a market that was open we bought some peppers and clementines and then we found a bakery that was open and we bought a couple of croissants, a baguette and a little buche de noel. It's a traditional Christmas cake shaped like a yule log. It's a beautiful morning here. Merry Christmas everyone.

Palavas Les Flots

The tower at Palavas. this is the next town (about 8 minutes) from us. We were walking during the day and went for a ride to the top. It revolves one turn per hour (I think.) The lower level is a bar and the upper level is a restaurant . I want to go there for the novelty of it. The locals curl their nose at the cuisine but say the view is worth it. I want to go for dinner some time.

Roofing in France

There are a lot of carpenters in my family. This one is for them. I have been intrigued with the tile roofs since I got here so when they were roofing on the lot next to my house I had to take advantage. They don't seem to leak and they're very sturdy.

Annoying Habits

I collect things. I have to bring something back from all my vacations. When I was first married it was little statues. I brought back tiki statues from Hawaii , Inca statues from Mexico etc. etc. I had them on my shelf in my den. My wife is not a big fan of bric-a-brac but she tolerated this character flaw. One day I realized I had too many statues when I was trying get the dust off them ("they're your statues, you dust them.") So I shifted to baseball caps. This too became cumbersome by the sheer volume of it. ("you have so many damn hats there's no place to hang my coat.") When I came to France I realized that before I started down any path I had better think it through. What I came up with is town stickers. Every town we went to has these coat of arms town stickers. They're actually post cards but the coat of arms peals off. This is great. I can scan them and post them before my pictures in my blog and even if we visit 500 towns in two years I can bring them home in a Kleenex box. Problem solved!