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  Day 3407 (Wednesday) 7th October 2026. This is Saint Paul de Vence and this is Beaulieu. It was grey and wet this morning and it stayed that way all day and we stayed at home. French Customs and Traditions: A Francophile’s Guide  by Andi Fisher French customs and traditions are the everyday rituals and unwritten rules that shape daily life in France, from greeting with la bise and gathering for l’apéro to the long, unhurried meal and the near-sacred August holiday. Some you will fall for instantly, and others will leave you politely baffled. Here is my personal collection, gathered over decades of loving France, marrying into it, and living there, along with the essentials you should know before you go. Culture is a tricky thing. You may fall in love with some of the surface aspects at first, but the more you keep digging, the more you realise what a bottomless pit of wonderment it can be. There are the obvious things, like food and holidays. And then, there are the things y...
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  Day 3406 (Tuesday) 6th October 2026. This is Roquebrune Cap Martin and this is Villefranche-sur-Mer. It was lovely and sunny today, after two days of high clouds so we went into Nice to enjoy our weekly kebab. There have been some protests around France and most of our park was cordoned off, I’m not sure what they are expecting from the protests but they are well prepared. (More on this later.) While we were eating Huw spotted a giant pineapple-type fruit growing on a tree palm tree and I looked it up when I got home and found this… Macrozamia moorei A true living fossil, the Macrozamia moorei is a robust cycad which has already been in existence for 300 million years. Neither a fern nor a palm, the Marozomia presents itself in two distinct and complementary states: in the male state, with a cone filled with pollen, or in the female state, with ovules. Etymology Macrozamia is a Neolatin term composed of the words “macro” (“largest”) and “Zamia”, derived from “Zamia nuces”, itself...
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  Day 3405 (Monday) 5th October 2026. This is Villefranche-sur-Mer and this is Saint Tropez   What’s happening in France this week Students blockade a lycee in Lille. (Photo by Sameer AL-DOUMY / AFP) The first round of the presidential primary for France’s left-wing parties gets under way, protests and strikes aplenty, and the curtain goes up on a major cinema festival. Monday Journalism – The 33rd edition of the prestigious Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie for war correspondents gets under way. Integration – The sixth annual Week of Integration for Newly Arrived Foreigners in France, organised by the Directorate General for Foreigners in France, gets under way with events planned across the country.   Sport – France’s senior men’s football team play Belgium at Stade de France in the fourth round of the Uefa Nations League. The match kicks off at 8.45pm and is broadcast live in France on TF1. More lycée protests? - Students at French high schools staged protests on Thursday...
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