À Bientôt, Poitiers

Poitiers' impressive town hall

I’m sitting in La Rochelle airport as I write this, waiting for my flight home to Southampton, still in shock that my ERASMUS year is now officially over. While it doesn’t quite feel like it was only yesterday that I pitched up in Poitiers and dealt with a flooded flat within the first week, it certainly doesn’t feel like it was nine months ago!

The river that meanders alongside Poitiers

In between packing and avoiding the May showers, I took some photos so that you could all see where I’ve been living. I’m going to miss the fantastic markets when it comes to finding good, and cheap, produce but I won’t miss the cobble stones around town when they're slick with rain. 

Tortellini and Parmesan from Italy

If you ever visit Poitiers then take grippy shoes and prepare to eat some excellent food. Chez Michel, Les Archives and Columbus are among my favourite places for a meal and sports bar Wallaby’s is an excellent place to spend an evening socialising around a pool table (it might sound like a dive but is in fact anything but), if you don’t like that idea then there are plenty of terraces for a spot of people watching.

Notre Dame church, Poitiers, presiding over a ceramics market

Further afield but still in France, I’ve had some fun visits to Paris and La Rochelle but my plans to travel more were foiled by a lack of funds and too many distractions. However, I have recently enjoyed food-filled trips to the Emilia-Romana region of Italy and Andalusia in southern Spain. Upon our arrival at the airport at the end of the 4 days in Italy, mum and I discovered that we had doubled our suitcase weight with our spending sprees in the food shops of Bologna, Parma and Modena!

I love gelato, look how yellow the vanilla scoop is

Unfortunately all of this amazing food has caused me to put on a bit of weight so my goals over this long summer holiday (16 weeks until freshers) is to lose the podge and get fit while I’m at it. Hopefully I will be working in catering again this summer and while dad thinks I should cycle to work (a form of exercise I’ve successfully avoided for the past 4 years) I prefer a gym membership. How do you like to keep fit?

The view from our hotel room in Spain (Molino del Santo hotel)

I also plan to complete at least half of my nutritional coursework before I have actual coursework to do again so you can look forward to interesting nuggets of information such as the fact that peanuts are, by weight, about half fat and cashew nuts are even worse.

Poitiers from the viewing platform

Check back soon for new recipes and let me know what your summer plans/goals are!

A terrace in Poitiers