2025 Paris in July -- deuxième partie

Hosted by Emma @ Words and Peace

I had so much fun at the beginning of the month trying to figure out what French-ish things I could do, I am excited to keep things going. If you missed my first post, check it out here.

1. My husband and I started watching "Transatlantic" on Netflix. It is set in Vichy France just after the Germans took over Paris in WWII. The series is filmed in Marseille.

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2. I created another Spotify list for 2025 Paris in July. This one is of famous Classical French Composers. It is quite a playlist. I think you will recognize a lot of the pieces. Enjoy.

2025 Paris in July -- French Classical Composers Playlist

   I included a lot of greats: Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Offenbach, and Bezit, to name a few. I also included one piece by Chopin. Chopin was Polish but moved to France later in his career and composed much of his music there, including this piece, Fantasie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor. Even if you don't consider yourself to be a classical music fan, listen to a few moments of these pieces and you'll recognize many numbers and be blown away by the talent of these French composers.

 Prefer something more modern? Here is my first 2025 Paris in July playlist made up of French musicians, or musicians singing in French.

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3. I attempted to read a middle grade novel, Le Petit Nicolas, en français. I have forgotten a lot of the French I learned in high school. I ended up concentrating on just one chapter, "Les Cow-boys". I read each paragraph looking for words or phrases I recognized before I ran it through a translator. I was pretty proud of myself for essentially reading the whole first sentence without help.

J'ai invité les copains à venir à la maison cet après-midi pour jouer aux cow-boys.

My translation: I invited some companions to come to the house in the afternoon to play cowboys. 😁

And then a few lines later: [One of Nicolas' friends] Alceste has a tomahawk and is wearing a headdress that makes him look like a chicken. Not bad, huh?

I have to confess I am enjoying the illustrations the most. Writer Rene Goscinny and illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempe were a great team.

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4. Tour de France - Stage 12 (out of 21), the Pyrenees. A Slovenian racer, Tadej Pogacar, dominated his rival, Jonas Vingegaard, and won the stage by more than two minutes. He is now ahead in the tour by three and half minutes. "Pas de suspense." I learned a new word: "peloton." I thought it was just a company name, but I got it backwards. The company took the word, which means "the main group of riders that stay together in a pack for energy-saving and aerodynamics." The breakaways are those riders who leave the peloton and surge ahead.

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5. Strawberry-Rhubarb Galette (Galette fraise et rhubarbe)

I made this recipe before, using Ina Garten's "Raspberry Rhubarb Crostata" recipe (in Cooking for Jeffrey cookbook.) When I showed my effort to my daughter she called it a "galette". Apparently crostatas and galettes are essentially the same thing, a rustic free-form tart. Crostata is the word in Italian and galette is used in French. So I made it again this week after renaming it. I used strawberries instead of raspberries. Yum!

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7. More book related endeavors:

• I placed a hold on the audiobook Candide by Voltaire. The library tells me I will need to wait 12 weeks for it. They only have one copy and five people are ahead of me in line.
• I've started the book Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico. The main character is British and she is traveling to Paris for just a day. I am not fully committed to finishing this novella but I'll carry on for a few more days and see if it catches my imagination. So far I haven't gotten very far and I am worried I won't be able to finish it before we leave for vacation next week.
• Earlier this month I placed a hold on a copy of Le Petit Prince en français from the library. I canceled that hold today. After my experience attempting to read Le Petit Nicolas, I decided I need to back up and read children's book first. Something way simpler. Plus, as I said before, we are leaving for a 10-day vacation next week and I wouldn't be able to pick it up if it came in when we were gone. Perhaps next July!?

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8. One last musical treat: I listened to at least part of all the songs of "Les Miserables", my favorite musical, en français. Here is the playlist on Spotify. If you listen to only one song, listen to the finale "C'est pour demain." Or for a little more fun, try "Maître Thénardier" it is the comic relief in the play and it is perfect in its original language.

Passe une bonne journée!

-Anne