Date night first

It is almost embarrassing to admit but in the 2+ years of living in France, I have never been to the movie theater! Back in the states I really enjoy going to the movies. I know it's expensive but the experience of seeing it on the big screen with a fountain diet coke and movie theater popcorn is the best!!!

Not long ago someone told us that the movie theater in our town plays the original version of some movies once or twice a week. We decided to look into it and quickly discovered that "The Butler" was playing and we decided to end this drought!

The movie was shown on a Monday night at 10:05p.m. That's rough when I had to wake up at 5:45a.m. the following morning, but I was up for the challenge!
We decided to go for a little stroll on our way to the theater.

The lady selling tickets was super friendly and had to tell us all about her daughters spending time in the US over the summer and how much they loved it (don't blame them)!

After browsing the small selection of snacks and refreshments (which does NOT include even a tenth of the selection in an average American theater), Our theater was open so we made our way in.

James and I were placing bets as to whether we would have the entire theater to ourselves. We ended up being 2 of the 4 people in attendance for the movie! I wanted to high 5 the others as it felt like we had some connection by being there watching a movie in English!
Here we are all settled in and ready to enjoy!

We both enjoyed the movie and it ended up having subtitles too, which was helpful for James as some of the accents were quite strong.
I hope to be able to have a date night like this again sometime soon!

***sorry for the low quality pics, the Iphone is all we had with to document this event :)

Dinner for two, the name…

On many occasions when James and I have been walking around the city he has pointed out a restaurant that he really enjoys. It’s an Indian restaurant, Le Mughal, and it is suppose to have great food. I have only had Indian food a few times in my life and can’t even recall what exactly I have tried.

One evening James and I were going to have a date night and decided to go to dinner here. To our disappointment it was closed for their summer holidays. Since then, I had told myself that I needed to plan a dinner here for the two of us.

At work one recent Friday I tried to locate the restaurant and wasn’t sure if this was the exact one that we had walked by many times. I texted my brother-in-law to verify what the name of the restaurant was and then proceed to figure out if reservations were needed. With the help of a co-worker we called the restaurant and was told that they had 2 seatings, 7:15pm or 9:15pm. I knew that the first time wasn’t an option and wasn’t sure if it was too late to wait for the second. I thought for a while and then decided that the 2nd seating would be fine as we could go have a drink first somewhere.
Once I made the decision to take a reservation I gathered all my courage to call and attempt to make the reservation (in French). No one was answering the phone in the late afternoon but I was finally able to reach them on my way home from work. The gentleman that answered the phone seemed to quickly understand that my French was limited and attempted to respond to me in English a little too. I made the reservation and told him our name. Trying my best to use the correct pronunciation of the French alphabet I gave him our name. I was certain that he wrote a name down but was more certain that the spelling of our name was going to be WAY off.

That evening James and I shared a drink at a local restaurant and then I proceeded to take him to the restaurant for dinner. I was using my Google gps to try and locate the restaurant without him knowing. While trying to figure out which direction to walk he tried to help with looking at the map. Within a second he was giggling and knew where we were going. I said “you know where we are going by just knowing the name of the street?” He said “yeah, we are going to the Indian restaurant!”

We arrived at the restaurant and James gave them our name, to my surprise it was close enough to whatever they had written down during our phone call and proceeded to seat us at our table. We enjoyed some amazing food! Everything was truly delicious. From my other experiences eating Indian food I remembered having naan, but I don’t think that I had ever seen naan with cheese in it. Maybe that is an added specialty for the French palate.

Our appetizers

My dinner, butter chicken

James dinner, lamb

At one point James asked who I had make the reservation for me. He guessed that I had a friend or co-worker do it or that I completed the reservation online. I told him that I had made the reservation and that I was sure that the restaurant was expecting 2 people for 9:15pm under the name Lazer, so not our last name, really not even close. However it all worked out and I was pretty proud to surprise him for a date night at a place he truly enjoys.

A million dollar smile! I am one lucky wife!

Date Night with the Husband

This past weekend was a great one as I got to spend it alone with James. It may seem strange that this is a big deal but while we are still staying with family, alone time is hot commodity.

There was no big event over the weekend but all of the little things we did together were great. One evening we made dinner together and James thought it was time that I try escargot (snails). A common Christmas meal here in France includes escargot, salmon, oysters, and other seafood. So he thought it would be nice for me to try the escargot before the big family Christmas gathering (I thought one of the foods he had me try last spring was snails, it wasn’t). So we made dinner and for the appetizer had escargot and wine.   

The escargot with some herbs and butter

The wine portion of the evening

Oysters and escargot (neither of which I have tried) are some of James’ favorite foods. So while he would be happy that I find them tasty he is equally happy if I don’t as that means more for him.

Can you tell he is happy to be eating them?

I gave the escargot a try but before doing so made sure that he wasn’t going to be totally offended if I ended up spitting it out. He said, “no, just go for it!”

Proof that I tried them

While I didn’t find them disgusting, I am not really sure what the hype is all about. I mean when I hear someone say that are having escargot it sounds like a big fancy deal (remember the Pretty Woman scene?)!  James said that these were just average ones and wait until I try some REALLY good ones. Okay, I guess I will try some "really good ones" sometime down the line. Until then I am fine with him eating them all and I will just drink the wine!

I think I will stick with the wine, it's always good