bonjour.
here we are. in france. after months of prep, but what it really feels like is months of emails and dropping the little guy from google street-view into random french cities and having my stomach drop at how surreal the landscape seems. we spent a bit of time yesterday wandering around clermont-ferrand, the city we are staying in right now. it is really hard for me to wrap my head around the movie-set feel to this place. i’ll get to pictures in a second. here’s a quick recap of how this trip has gone down so far.
our flight was delayed at pearson for a couple hours, which was okay because it gave us a little bit of extra time to hang out with ma and fam and help my sister move her stuff back to college and it took a bit of the edge off. it’s funny doing things like cooking a burger in cobourg for lunch and then flying to paris at night. a real juxtapostion. next time i’m going to start building a birdhouse in the morning and then, leaving it unfinished and my hammer still out, head to the airport and fly. that will be good. it’ll help to eliminate travel anxiety. anyway, the flight was real smooth. we paid extra money to carry more weight on the plane (guitars, pedals, etc.) and this also gave us some extra perks. we got a sleeping package that had an inflatable neck thing, and eye patches, etc. and we also got a small bottle of champagne each, and then a small bottle of red wine each, and then a small bottle of cognac each. whoa. lights out!
it’s really worth it to buy into the “options plus” program on air transat as far as i’m concerned.
we were fortunate enough to sit beside a real sweet girl named anne on the plane. she took the above picture for us. she was flying to paris to look for a job and do some traveling. i really admire people that just pick up and move. basically flipping your whole life upside d0wn. find a job, find a place to live, etc. i tried to convince her to start a blog so we could follow her journeys. here’s hoping the people that interview her find her as charming as we did.
landed in paris and were met by damien from our label here in france. he is touring with us for the next two weeks. his band is called leopold skin. he has a new record coming out called “i see mountains” that is really beautiful and sylvie and i are excited to hear these songs in the next couple days.
here we are standing in front of volcanoes with a bag of wine, bread and cheese:
once we got to clermont we hit the hay for a bit to try un-jetlag. here’s our flat that the label has set us up with:
this is our view out our window. tada!
ate some cheese and bread and washed it down with cheap wine that tastes so good. walked around clermont-ferrand for awhile before meeting more people at a sidewalk cafe/bar for beers and cheers and learned new handshakes. got to meet alex from the label too! everyone is so nice and seems as excited to meet us as we are to meet them. here are a few pictures from our night:
that last photo is of a statue in the city’s centre of some battle dude who is pointing at the ground. kids in clermont-fd used to look at it from this angle, which gives one the perspective that the man has his privates exposed. needless to say, i had to get a picture of it from that angle. my immaturity seems to translate well in france i think.
just woke from a monster snooze and now we are going to go hike a volcano, meet some new people and hit up the bakery downstairs. i really want to order a pizza from one of the dudes on the mopeds buzzin’ around the city slingin’ ‘za, too.
for now we get to be tourists which is really refreshing. usually on tour we have a very structured day. wake up, drive, play music, sleep, wake up, drive, play music, etc….the time flies by and i really want to feel like i’m living here more than just visiting and flying through it all. it helps to have a family of sorts here with damien and the label folks.
have a great day.
we haven’t even gotten started yet.
jb
