L: 6 to 13 June - 1st Week in French Class

Ecole des Trois Ponts (Villa Beaulieu):

Our early start on Sunday (6 June) wasn't too much of a shock to the system and the "Terravision" bus to Ciampino airport in Rome was quicker than expected. The Easyjet flight to Lyon departed on time and then it was another bus into Lyon Part-Dieu. We bought our rail tickets to Roanne not without drama (why do French ticket machines not like foreign credit cards?. We had a nice lunch in the Irish (by name only) restaurant/bar in the station.

The TER train got us into Roanne where a taxi was waiting. We arrived at the Ecole des Trois Ponts spot at the earliest time for check-in. All other foreign words that were buzzing in our heads after our several weeks traveling had to be dismissed, from now on its only French. We had a very warm welcome and got to meet the 3 other students over dinner. There were only 5 students in total for the first week.

We had lessons in the morning and two pm sessions. Dinner is a 4 course affair with a brief introduction to the meal by the chef, and as the meal progressed, a mini-lecture on the different cheeses. Each day the cheeses were varied and quite different to the previous day.

We feel a bit spoilt and overindulged with all the good food but at least we are working our brains. We had one teacher all the week and she showed great patience in getting us speaking and amazingly there was noticeable progress at the end of the week.

We managed to get into Roanne a few times and take a few pics and visit the Museum. There was a pretty good exhibition of paintings by Antoine Barbier. On Wednesday a student from UK who had his car with him took us on a tour to the dams over the Loire and we took a little tourist train ride with commentary. There was a group of English people from Nuneaton which is twinned with Roanne and they were very interested in our presence.

On Saturday 12 June we picked up a hire car and headed north to St Leger sur Dheune in Burgundy. We stayed the night with friends from Oz who have a house there and did a bit of walking and sightseeing and of course eating in grand style. We paid an early visit to Chagny markets which are great tourist attraction, and set off after lunch to return to Roanne to greet the new students for the following week and to get ready for our cooking and French course.

The drive back was through beautiful countryside and very French villages and hamlets. The route chosen by our GPS would be hard to replicate by map reading. In fact we had no paper map.

So far so very good.

Roanne:

Paray-le-Monial
Cluny: