Okay, so a little word of warning to anyone thinking of uprooting your only child from all of her family and friends and making her travel Europe with you for a year – you will feel guilty, especially on holidays, and you will overcompensate. Like, A LOT. So much so that you’ll turn a small American holiday like Halloween into a week-long Hallowpalooza.
And that’s just what we did this year. We Halloweened like it was no one’s business. From cookies to carving pumpkins, we started celebrating a week out. Side note – do you know how hard it is to finding a carving pumpkin in France?!?
We took the weekend of Halloween seriously over here in France. Nora picked all of our costumes. After a month of saying she was just going to be Elsa again (an idea I loved seeing how we actually packed a princess Elsa dress all the way from Texas), she last minute decided she wanted to be a witch and we were to accompany her….as a cat and a….broom!
On Friday we all got dressed up, per Nora’s demand and headed to Chateau Bridorie. I think I’ve written about this place before, but it really is one of my favorite places in our region. They were holding a big Halloween scavenger hunt inside the chateau. One small hiccup – it was all in French! Thank goodness for Google Translate. We had fun running all around the chateau, which they had decorated in true spooky fashion, solving riddles and collecting “ingredients for the witches stew.”
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| All French. |
After finishing, Nora was awarded a diploma from witches school. We did a few games outside, but it started to rain, so we headed home.
As an aside – we stopped to eat in Eyemet for a little bite and drink and found a tiny little restaurant, Pacifico, serving margaritas and nachos. Please note, margaritas in France cannot be trusted and those “nachos” are made of Doritos.
Finally, it was actually Halloween Day. I’m almost embarrassed to type this…we hopped back into our Halloween costumes (yes, they were in desperate need of washing at this point) for some local trick-or-treating. Okay, here is something you should know: trick-or-treating is really not a thing in France. But, like I said earlier, when parents feel guilty, there are no lengths we won’t go to to overcompensate for said guilt, including buying bags of chocolate and getting our friend to distribute them to the villagers with an explanation of this crazy American tradition of trick-or-treating. It was a big surprise for Nora to get to go door-to-door collecting candy. We even stopped in the village cemetery for some Halloween photos. After that, I went above and beyond, if I do say so myself, with a homemade scavenger hunt around the house. I mean, who am I?!? I do not do crafty things. But again, with the guilt.
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