spillings, babbles & tales on the fly

We’re baaaaaack! And we had a blast!  

Unlike earlier this year when we went to Cannes (southern France), this time we stuck to northern France, travelling eastward to Besançon and Mulhouse(close to Switzerland and Germany) and westward to Rennes (by the English channel). We stayed in a beautiful chateau in Chavenay for two days (about 40 minutes outside of Paris) and took a trip to Paris on our day off.  

Driving from city to city really puts into perspective how big that country is!  Put it this way, our drive from Rennes to Besançon took almost 9 hours. 

When it came to food I had already been to Cannes earlier this year, so I had prepared myself for head scratching when asking for a salad without meat, but when asking for it without CHEESE as well? I’d almost forgotten how wrong it was — it’s sacrilege!  Needless to say, being vegan in France proved to be challenging, never mind raw vegan and trying to go out to enjoy time with the band.  I sucked it up and eat some cooked food…it was good, it was fine.  And I did try some compté cheese from Besançon.  The whole winter/summer cheese thing is fascinating — basically the cheese is different in the winter versus the summer based on what the cows are eating.  Wine, of course, was plentiful and goooood!  Wine went with everything.  Lunch, dinner, nightcaps — had to wean myself out of that in coming home.  

Our first show in Rennes was massive!  I felt like a superstar leading up with all these interviews.  I was nervous about speaking french, cause I hadn’t in such a long while and my best french line was “Je parle français un petit peu” translation “I speak french a little bit.”  Anyhow, by the time we’d finished the show, there had to be about 2500 people out in the hall.  I headed to the merch table and was met with flashing cameras and a lineup of people wanting my autograph!  

Our second show in Besançon was cool too, it was more intimate, but still impactful.  I jumped off the stage in my 5 inch heels to get a dude in the audience to ‘Bang It Back’ — and he did.  There was an awesome group from London sharing the bill with us called Murkage — HIGH FUCKING ENERGY!

Our last — and my favourite — show in France was in Mulhouse (mul-hooooose).  When we got to the venue for the show, we were met with a frozen bottle of ABSOLUT vodka (photo courtesy of Hill Kourkoutis) — all good cause it made for a fucking high energy show under the red light of the Noumatrouff.  And that’s where we saw Brigitte as well — sexy, sexy french sisters singing.

And then we left for London — stopped at Vimy Ridge on the way, at Rob’s insistence.  Besides the heavy, dark, creepy, gloomy feeling we got driving down the road to the monument, we were all pretty moved by being there.  And it made us damn proud to be Canadian!

London received us ravenously hungry, helplessly lost (no thanks to our GPS lady….recalculating) and getting accustomed to driving on the other side of the road.  We were staying in this cool loft apartment in East London (Hoxton/Hackney area).  I got to know the area by running almost every morning and getting lost — best way to get to know a city, right?

Our first show in London was at this cool multidisciplinary venue called RichMix — they had an exhibit happening in the basement and I heard they do dance performances there.  We shared the stage with our fellow Canadian sister, Maylee Todd — she was great, as per usual.

Show number two was in Brixton and I was really looking forward to that, cause I kept hearing about Brixton being a cool part of town, where all the black people, namely West Indians resided.  We ate some West Indian food because we were in the region to do so and rawked Windmill Brixton.  The other band backed out, I guess they’d heard us coming. hah.  Later that night we happened upon an open mic that was around the corner from our flat — band was tight and the good singers could really sing…shit!

I’ve been dying to go to this raw/vegan food restaurant called Saf and I’d been literally running by it every morning, not even realizing.  Had dinner there and it was nice.  The cocktails and their mixologists(I call them that, because they were more than bartenders, they were on some Tom Cruise ‘Cocktails’ type shit!)  were the stars of the show for us.  So much so, we went back as the whole band and got a little tipsy on some expensive organic cocktails and ended the night in a gentlemen’s club — tame and a little lame, but a fun family outing.

Our last show was more acoustic, Hill and Donna played guitars and Rob played his sousaphone — that was the first time we’d done a show like that and it was really different.  Different in a good way.  We ate some awful Indian food beforehand, which was NOT a good idea, but hunger sometimes makes you do stupid things and regret it later.

All in all, it was awesome.  I loved it. Can’t wait to go back.

peace, love & butterflies,

sbt

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