Contributor blog post by Jemma: Vous devez croire! Ah, oui, vous devez absolument croire! Sabine says across the lunch table. Her rich, tenor voice is insistent. She spreads her bejeweled fingers wide. You have to believe! You. Absolutely. Have. To. Believe! The LIFE machine will revolutionize my, well, life. Or …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: A muscular and handsome powerboat swooshes Philippe, Lolo and me, and a week’s worth of luggage, toward the 80-some-meter megayacht that awaits us off the north shore of Sardinia. Perched on the craft’s leather seats, we slice through the salty waves of the Med, our …

Contributor blog post by Jemma @French Lessons Blog: I was 10 years working in my office job – real, salaried employment! Jo says, pausing with me on the terrasse before organizing her day here at Bellevue. She shakes her head. But I was let go on la veille de Noël …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: “Isn’t that incredible??” Philippe called out of the family room last week. “These are DOGS. I can get a hair appointment for myself tomorrow!” He’d just rung the two salons de toilettage recommended by a friend in nearby Cannes. They were full up. The first …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: It has been a bizarre summer. Security problems, and all their cultural complications, have meant that the Summer of 2016 in the Cote d’Azur has been more than a little off. Bookings and revenues have plunged 10-15% across the region since the Nice attacks in …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: In the final days before my family and I shifted our luggage and lives to France this summer – at the very time our Toronto home was a packing pigsty, and as we trod heartily into our 10-day, do-or-die window for Yoko’s persnickety paperwork – …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: “Just borrow a dog for a few hours,” a Toronto friend once told me as I contemplated future stories for this blog. It was a sure-fire way to dig more deeply here, as I do for this site (which – bonjour, New Subscribers! – aims …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: This Saturday the roads in France are meant to be black. That’s what Bison Futé forecasts, anyway, in its annual summer traffic forecast, Le Panorama de l’été 2016. Saturday, July 30 – Saturday, August 6, too – are the summits of a French summer season …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: If it’s not the WIFI, it’s la climatisation. This summer when we arrived at Bellevue, our home in Antibes, I clicked my heels when the little green checkmark appeared on my iPhone beside the name of our WIFI network. It worked! The WIFI actually worked …

Contributor blog post by Jemma: The cover of our local newspaper tells the story of Paradise Lost: The artist Mesia puts it even more touchingly: Such a bleu-blanc-rouge waves outside Bellevue, too. The flag is an ever-present sentry at the tip of a quay jutting into the Mediterranean bay. …Continue reading …