Bouzigues Boat Trip

One of the associations in Sète arranged for a day trip to Bouzigues!

We met at the royal canal, and took a boat across the étang - the timing was perfect! The "turntable" bridge was turned, and the two drawbridges were up!

This bridge is  rotated to let boats pass; it rotates back to let cars drive (right/left). Beyond it, you can see one of the drawbridges raised.

We stopped at an oyster bed for a demonstration and lecture on the cultivation of oysters in the étang. All along the grid above the water, cords full of oysters hang down in the water. On the far left, you can see oysters on the cord that our guide pullled up for us.  On the right, the cord is full of competitors - our guide pulled off the large sponge (in the middle of the photo), as well as other non-oyster cord-dwellers. On the top far right, there is a string of plastic plates that are used to capture the oyster larvae, starting the process of growing these delectable morsels.

Once we landed in Bouzigues, we went in seach of lunch - notice please the one called Chez Julie...

We went on to "Le 29," where they served Café Richard, so my small family is well represented in the town :-)

I ordered from the carte, not the set menu, and had an enormous platter of oysters, mussels, and razor clams, all cooked gratiné - sooo rich!

After lunch, we meandered around - walked along the shore for a while, then up into centre-ville, saw the church, and noticed that Saint Jaques is the patron of Bouzigues

After a little more wandering, we had a nice beer on the patio of a restaurant, looking out over the étang.

At 5:00, we went back out on the pier to take our boat to Sète. On the way, we motored over the hot springs that give the name to Balaruc-les-Bains (the baths)

Shopping on a Sunday

I finally did it - I went shopping for groceries on a Sunday morning...

Most grocery stores in France are closed on Sundays, that day being a traditional "family togetherness" day. Well, our local grocery store recently got permission to open (year-round!) on Sunday mornings, and I finally had an excuse to try it out. By excuse, I mean that I actually needed some foodstuffs.

I don't think this Sunday shopping thing has caught on yet. I had a very short list, and approximately *half* of the things I needed were *not* stocked :-( The good news is that my cart going home was significantly lighter than it could have been. The bad news is that I had to go back out on Monday.

One interesting thing I noticed - scattered among the shoppers were a good half-dozen fathers with their roughly-8-year-old children, grabbing "miam-y" things off the shelves. It's a different sort of family togetherness. :-)

Hazy?

It's a little hazy.

But is that a purple haze?

Flowers!

Or a rainy haze?

Rain!

Or...

Wine!

We splurged on two bottles of Côtes du Rhône wine - after a quick taste of each, we decided we preferred the one on the right :-)

Someone Gets to Drive!

*Someone* Gets to Drive! That would be Rick...

Look what came in the mail today - Rick's French driver's license! Well, no, this isn't the license - there would be too much info to black out for that, but this is part of the letter that came with it :-)

His timeline (just to give you an idea of how things work here):
- late October, submitted the request for an exchange of his Florida license for a French license. This included a translated copy of the Florida license, a bunch of other official documents, and... Rick added a letter, in French, explaining his many years of licensed driving. The new rules meant he had to mail it (registered letter, of course)
- late March (yep, 5 months of complete and total silence), Rick gets an email (!!!), asking a few questions about his original license (aka, his very first one). Several emails later, they want some kind of proof that he lived in that state when he got his original license! If you are American, you very likely got your license as a teenager - how in the world do you find a proof of address for that age (and a few decades ago)? More, how do you find proof that is acceptable to the French administrative body (they like bills and rental contracts)? Well, some thinking, spurred on by desperation, served him well - he contacted his high school, and asked for his transcripts! It took a couple of days, but they got them off the microfilm and emailed them :-) Rick sent them on (with a little bit of an explanation) to the driver's license fellow. And he held his breath...
- first week of April, Rick's récépissé came in the mail! This basically said that he was approved, assuming that the real, to-be-exchanged license matched the copy he had sent them. Also, now was the time to mail the real one (registered post again, of course). The récépissé and copy of his license would let him drive until the new license came. BUT!!! It seems that this would only be valid in France (according to many people on the interwebs, but so far not supported by anything official). Not knowing how long the card could take, we started worrying about our vacation plans...
- end of May, he got an email saying that his driver's license was getting printed, and that it would come by post, signature required. By this time, all sorts of people were giving an expected timeframe of 6 months to a year to get your license. The printing alone can take several weeks.
- June 8, today, the postman rang!

And now Rick can drive! Me? I'm still waiting...

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Related posts:
http://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2017/10/french-drivers-license.html
http://slowtravelin.blogspot.com/2018/03/drivers-license-update.html

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Updated to hopefully remove confusion about an "original" license :-\