Ma Cousine

As most of you know, I have a cousin who travels.

My cousin, Amanda, studied abroad in Paris her third year at Stanford, and loved every minute of it. I was always eager to hear reports of her travels and life overseas during the year she was gone from her mother, who is my father's cousin.

She lived with a Count and Countess, had an incident with buying like 200 euro worth of fancy french underthings, and returned that following summer for a work type internship where she recounted many hilarious tales involving her spandex-pants wearing co-worker.

Since, she has been to China and back to Europe several times, including this Thanksgiving week! She was able to take time off from her "big girl" real life adult life, come to France, and see me in Aix.

We had a wonderful time doing what gals to best, eating, shopping and talking! We sat at cafes for hours, purchased fancy French raspberry Macaroons and walked in and out of stores like it was our job. We even stayed up until nearly 3am catching up on the family and what has been going on in the last year.

I took her to some of my favorite places, like Book In Bar- an English bookstore where we frequent for cafe au lait's (coffee with milk) and chocolat chaud (hot chocolate), and Paul- a fabulous bakery/patisserie, that has the best tomatoe motzerella sandwich in southern France for lunch.

It was wonderful to walk around town with someone who was on vacation, because they notice things that I see and take for granted as charming and unique and divinely provencial.