Hello, everybody. Oliver G. here from the Eiffel Tower and Christmas is fast approaching and guess what?

For the first time in my, I don't know, 10 plus years in France, I'm staying here in France for Christmas.

Not in Paris though. I'm down in province in a town called Lille-Soula-Sog, which the locals call the Venice

of the South, the Venice du Sud, because there's so many beautiful canals running through it,

and I call it the Pearl of Provence. You maybe have heard me talk about it before. I've been here

a couple of times. I love this place. And I'll tell you this, Christmas here is on a whole different planet. It's just to give you a sort of idea before we get into the topic, there's Christmas lights through. So the river that runs through it is more sort of like a

large stream and they've got Christmas lights all the way along it running across it

they've got Christmas music playing from speakers in all of the streets Christmas lights

everywhere and I don't know the difference with Paris if you want to go see the

Christmas lights in Paris,

you'll take you a whole night or two, whereas everything here is probably within, I don't know,

15 minutes walk. So Christmas is being done very well, but I'm thinking, on Christmas Day itself,

I'll surely be doing my own family traditions, whether they're Australian or Swedish

or a mix of both. But what about the food? What are French people eat on Christmas Day? I have no

idea. So I figured I'd take my microphone and go off around this lovely little town to ask some people in the know what the French eat for

Christmas. So that's the topic of this episode. You'll hear a lot from Natale who works at Mison

Muga, which is sort of a delight for anyone who likes, I guess, specialty food, cheese, wine and

hams, especially cheese. We talk a lot about cheese. And then I went on to a very lovely bakery,

La Maison Jouvo, not far away at all, and got into the topic of French desserts for Christmas, but especially Provence desserts.

There's also quite a bit of chat with these locals here about Life in Provence and Christmas

in Provence as well. But mostly the topic is what the French eat at Christmas. The next thing

you hear after the music is Natalie and me sitting upstairs at her lovely shop. But first, a huge thank you to everyone who is a supporter of this show, whether it's on Patreon or Substac. I would have given this up an age ago if it wasn't for you guys.

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