Playful Rooted

Good morning, and happy Tuesday! I’ve just arrived home this morning from a fun long weekend in Carcassonne, a small medieval town about an hour and a half away from Montpellier. Ben and I went there in the fall and we both really loved it. We found out that they have an insane Bastille Day celebration there, so we’ve been planning our return trip for months! It was just a quick jaunt really, but we enjoyed almost everything about the weekend.

The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday back home, and this was my second time missing it (the first was when I studied abroad in college). I really hate missing all my favorite holiday things – barbecues with friends, potato salad and corn on the cob, playing with sparklers and relaxing outside.

Though imperfect, this was a pretty good replacement. Of course there were none of the typical vittles, but there was lots of nice relaxing outside.

Eventually, we even managed to score some watermelon! If spitting watermelon seeds doesn’t say independence, I don’t know what does.

Well, beer. Beer does.

I adore fireworks, so I was super excited about the show, and it turned out to be awesome. I was extremely surprised at how on top of things they were! The show was very well choreographed and exciting, and as always, I was bummed when it was over.

We took a very early train back home this morning, and we were thrilled to realize that today is Tuesday – our neighborhood’s market day. Ben and I pretty much starved all weekend. Carcassonne has a couple veggie-friendly restaurants, but they were both closed for the holiday weekend, so – apart from the watermelon – we subsisted on hotel room picnic food. Not the worst meals I’ve ever eaten, however it’s so disheartening when there are a jillion restaurants around but we can’t feasibly go to any of them. I don’t get it – everywhere else in Europe is totally smooth sailing on the vegan food front. France has got to get it together. Here’s hoping!

Overall, I’m thrilled that we got the chance to celebrate the holiday in such a fun way. But you can bet that the next time I travel for a fireworks show, there will be potato salad present.

A lot of it.

French expression of the day
Avoir une faim de loup – to be ravenous, famished (literally: to have a wolf’s hunger)