I can spend hours and hours at vide-greniers (flea markets). Yes, I love them. During the summer holiday, after our tandem trip, we went to Île d’Oléron for the weekend. One morning, we went to a vide-grenier. Since I try to buy less at flea markets these days, I took pictures of things I wanted buy but resisted.
Not pictured are a few things I couldn’t resist and brought them home ; )
A view from the helicopter ride.
Oléron oysters. Many many of them went into my belly : )
Mattie and I are back from our a few days short of a month summer holiday. I arrived home with lots of energy, thinking of all the projects I would like to do. But instead, I’m struggling to shake off the holiday mood and get to work. This is usually the case after any trips because I work for myself at my cozy home. So today, I spent all day going through the holiday photos.
Every summer for the last seven or eight years except last summer, Mattie and I travel on our tandem bike and wild camp in nature (trip of 2014, 2015). We decided to return to the Dordogne region. We have biked here a few times already, and we also got married here last summer. Yes, if you still didn’t get it, it is our favorite region ; )
For seven days – we first biked northeast along Dordogne river, then we climbed a small mountain (but big enough for us on a tandem!) westward to meet the Vézère river which we had planned to follow, but we took a detour following the cutest Coly river which we found only by lucky chance till we met the Vézère again a day later, which led us to another bigger mountain we had to climb up to get to a festival in the middle of nowhere, then the following day, we biked to the place where we had our wedding last summer, had lunch under a tree, felt loved and fuzzy inside, and that was the end of our tandem trip.
Unknowingly we chose the hottest week of the summer for our bike trip.
Our tandem fully loaded – a front bag, two back bags, two sleeping bags and a tent, a triangle tool bag, a black camera bag, a small bag for stuff I collect on the way (attached behind the front saddle), three water bottles, swimming suits drying in the back, a fan we made on our first day in between sleeping bags. Oh and a fishing rod between two pedals : )
The Dordogne river
Magical Coly river where we stopped for breakfast.
The bestest walnut tart from the boulangerie in Condat-sur-Vézère. We ate it so fast that I only took a photo of the last bite before it happily went inside my tummy.
After climbing for hours, we finally got to the top. Here we also found a plum tree with sweetest plums. We each at two and kept the pits.
I found things like stones and fruits and kept them in this blue bag attached behind Mattie’s saddle. Sometimes, it carried some mint.
Our usual lunch
This is where we got married last summer : )
After the tandem trip, we took the train to Bordeaux, surfed and ate fougasse in Montalivet, ate oysters and flew on a helicopter in Oléron island, back in Bordeaux for a day, then finally back home in Paris. I said to Mattie – we need a holiday to recover from our holiday.
Going through some old photos in my computer, I came across film picture I took during our tandem summer trip in 2014. Mattie and I biked 10 days in French basque country in the sound of France. It was a tough ride since there were so many hills and mountains in this region (and tandem is a heavy bike with two people plus all the bags in the back), but that also comes with a beautiful landscape with amazing food.
A film camera makes you picky about the photos you take, so you photograph only those moments which are really special. Thanks to that each of these photos holds its stories and feelings which I still remember vividly. All the beautiful landscapes we biked through, animals we came across, picking fruits, swimming in the coldest but also the purest river in the world (or at least it felt that way that moment), cooking and eating in the nature, all the amazing camping spots we found, waking up in the tent…
Summer’s on its way, and I can’t wait for our next tandem adventure : )
I’m back as I promised from the last post. In fact, I just came back from Megève, a small town in the French Alps. Friends and I spent a week snowboarding, skiing and eating way too well. But the best part of it all was the snow! So much snow has fallen for a few days before we arrived that the whole village, streets, roofs, mountains, tree branches, cars, street lights, mailboxes, fences, leaves… were completely buried under impressive amount of white powder snow. And the view was stunning everywhere I looked.
I was excited to snowboard in the French Alps, which is several folds grander than Mountain High or Big Bear (mountains near LA where I used to snowboard when I was still living in LA). However I was also slightly apprehensive since I haven’t boarded for several years prior to this trip, plus I was never great at it to begin with. But as soon as I got on my dozen-year-old board, I was happy as a kid.
We usually rode off the tracks, looking for virgin powder and adventure in between the trees. I fell often and had to crawl my way out of heavy pile of snow. It was awesome : )
I just finished making a director’s cut of the films I’ve directed for V&D in Amsterdam, Dutch department store all over the Netherlands. The work was loads of fun as it was full of DIY, gift wraps and holiday cosiness, but also intense since we had to realize two TV commercials and three online tutorial films in just a few weeks. You can see the complete credit list on my portfolio site.
So here are the final online tutorials. Hope you get inspired by these tutorials and turn your gift wrapping to an art form this holiday season ; )
And here is one of the TV commercials for the Sinterklaas season.
I just returned home to Paris after a month long of holiday.
A month of traveling, biking, swimming, eating well (and a lot), living in nature, being carefree left me with a pair of worn-out espadrilles and a bad tan on top of my feet which makes me smile.
How was your holiday?
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By the way, the self-watering system I’ve set up for my plants before going on holiday failed this time. Bigger plants survived, but the smaller ones didn’t. I’m especially saddened by my tomato plants : _ (
Mattie and I are getting ready for the tandem trip, which we will depart tomorrow. This will be our fourth trip on our handsome tandem. Our previous trips were around Dordogne in southwestern France. This time we are planning out trip in Pays basque (French Basque Country). I hear it is beautiful down there, but also mountainy. We shall see : )
The trip will be about 10 days long. We don’t really plan much about our path. All I know is that we will bike, enjoy the nature, pick fruits and vegetables, swim naked in the river, take naps under the trees, visit stunning villages and camp in the wild.
I won’t be able to post here while I’m on the trip, but I’ll update on Instagram from time to time so follow our trip there : )
Montalivet has the biggest and the liveliest market around this area, which opens everyday throughout the summer. Especially around the holiday season, it is overcrowded with vacationers. There are two stands I must stop by whenever I come to this market. First is the oyster stand.
The second is the fougasse stand. These breads are fresh out of the oven and are amazing.
This one is with sun dried tomato, basil and feta.. the second one is with chorizo and emmental.. the third is with goat cheese and honey.. Mmmmm
Visiting Mattie’s family in their summer home in Montalivet is filled with a lot of good food, a lot of play time with the little ones (Mattie has three very little awesome siblings), a bit of surfing and a lot of handstand trials at the beach (my recent obsession is to do a handstand which I am completely bad at).
While I’m here, I’m detached from anything electronic and often forget to take photos. But I managed to grab these two photos from one dinner – a super tasty paella and a Mattie’s grandma’s homemade pear liquor with a whole pear inside the bottle.
And here are two questions for you:
1. How come paellas never have enough chorizo? (I don’t have the answer to this)
2. How did Mattie’s grandma put the whole pear in the bottle? (I have the answer to this)
Hope you also have some time away from electronics.
Mattie and I took a 6am train down to Bordeaux. We will be here and around for a month to spend time with Mattie’s family, go on a tandem/wild camping trip and go to Corsica with friends.
Before we left home, this is our shower situation. We set up a homemade self-watering system for the plants. I didn’t realize we housed these many plants until we gathered them together in our little shower. I was proud and also worried at the same time since we will be gone for a month. We’ve already tried this self-watering system before when we were away for 10 days, and it was successful, and I hope that it will work its magic again this time for a month.
If you are curious how this works, on the left out of the frame, there are two big buckets filled with water. One end of each string is submerged in water and the other end is buried in soil of each pot.
and how are you.
I'm Jin Angdoo.
This is what I do. But here is a little more personal and casual place where I hope to share and meet like-minded people.
Welcome. Hope you stay awhile.
If you'd like to know a bit more about me and the blog, please read my very first post : )
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