Week 49 – New Year’s Eve far from celebrations

I came back from Italy the day after Christmas (Week 48 – Christmas in Italy ) and went to work only for one day (because of a shortage in available holidays) before being finally able to properly rest during a long week-end far from the maddening crowd and New Year’s Eve celebrations.

As I was approaching the 31st of December I was more and more eager to have some time to rest before starting 2018. I have had lots of holidays in 2017 of course, but I was never able to properly rest, as I was mostly traveling to attend weddings, hence see family and friends, spend time with them and so on.

I knew that these few days I was going to have at the end of the year would be only for myself. Everybody is busy with its own family and no party is compulsory because nobody knows where they are celebrating New Year’s Eve until the very last moment.

I knew I wanted to be as far as possible from the crowd so early in December I decided with my SO that we would spend the last week-end of the year in Normandy, watching Netflix, reading, eating, going to the casino maybe and walking on the beach. I was so eager to do that the fact that we were later told that there would be no hot water during our stay didn’t change our mind.

But before going there we had to do one last thing with our friends: attend the All Star Basket Ball Game in Paris Bercy on the 30th of December.

“Since 2002, the National Basketball League’s All Star Game held at the AccorHotels Arena has become a must with twelve consecutive sell-outs! Featuring top players from France and further afield, the All Star Game offers a four hours show with lots of entertainment and surprises!”

I have never watched a Basket Ball game but I must say that they learned very well from their Americans peers how to create a very exciting show!

The next day we left for Normandy, and while it seemed that we found excuses every 30km to take a break, eat, shop, we finally arrived under a grey sky followed soon after by a heavy rain. A perfect day to stay inside and watch movies!

The next day we managed to go to the beach, lose some money at the casino and cook dinner for our New Year’s eve dinner: a chicken filled with foie gras, mushrooms and bacon (as we were only two we got to eat it again until the 8th of January). It was so delicious that, as we were writing down our resolutions for 2018, we put down that for next year’s Thanksgiving we would do a “Turducken”. Obviously nobody has ever heard of it in France, in fact it is an American dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, further stuffed into a deboned turkey (hence the word turducken which is a combination of turkey, duck, and chicken. Outside of the United States and Canada, it is known as a three bird roast apparently. The thoracic cavity of the chicken/game hen and the rest of the gaps are stuffed, sometimes with a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird.

Our second resolution was to have a great party next year in this same house and then, on the 1st of January 2019, have a dip all together in the North Sea at noon. This year we arrived just in time to see the bathers coming out of the water surrounded by cheering people and getting offered a warm breakfast. And that’s when I decided that this would be us next year!