Paisleys Abroad

Today, we started our weekly “croissants and pastries” breakfast at our neighbourhood boulangerie. Our daily adventure - cycling the 10km bike path along the river up to the Montpellier Zoo. It was longer than we planned, but we made it, practiced our French with the bears, giraffes, and zebras, and finished off the day with gelato on our way home. This is the story that the blog format would have you believe - sounds great, eh? Here’s what it really looked like... we had planned to go out for pastries, but were so long getting out of the house (because of all the complaining about biking today), that we ended up outside the boulangerie on a busy street, standing up beside our bikes and unceremoniously shoving Nutella beignets in our mouths. The “bike” route was a perfect cycling route, if you don’t mind frequently joining long stretches of narrow, busy streets with unforgiving two-way traffic. About half-way, Geoff got a flat, and had to take a tram back home to get it fixed. Exactly 30 seconds after he left, Dale had a major wipe-out in the gravel - screaming, tears, bloody skinned knees. Lots of fruit juice, emergency baguette, candies and a game of cards later, we were back on our way! It was especially fun to watch my two oldest children jockey for the honour of going first in our long line of five, in the middle of traffic. At the very end, the zoo is, of course, at the top of a huge hill, not suited to our heavy rental bikes. Two and a half hours later, we arrived! I could go on, but you get the picture... We are having fun, AND life with family in Montpellier looks a lot like it does in Ottawa!Read more