Seyssel, which is located half in Savoie and half in Ain, had a boat festival which included art, entertainment, music, boat rides, demonstrations and any number of interesting things. We spent the day there but we suffered through 98 degree heat. We still managed to have a good time and here is a video of the festivities.

As promised, here is the video of the Flag Thowers at the Italian Festival in Bourget. The tradition goes back centuries and originates in Siena, Italy. While I call them Italian Flag Throwers, I actually don’t know if they were Italian or French. It’s possible that there is a French Association here that teaches the tradition and performs around France. We are near the Italian border so it’s hard to know exactly where they are from. Either way, they were fantastic to watch. While I’ve seen flag throwing before in Italy, I have never seen the ‘foot work’ of these talented young men.

If you read my blog regularly you know I’m a lover of Italy and all things Italian, so when an Italian Festival came to our area, I made a point of going. It was held at the small town of Bourget, which sits on the Bourget Lake, about 30 minutes from Chambery.  I took two videos of the event. This one is an overview video showing the yummy food and wine they were selling as well as some of the entertainment and demonstrations.  The next video will show you the amazing talents of the Flag Throwers.

Every year Vienne, a French town 30 minutes south of Lyon, holds an internationally-recognized jazz festival in its 2,000 year old Roman arena. The festival only lasts three weeks in late June and early July, but the talent featured is exceptional. This is the second year we’ve attended.  The two groups we saw were French:  Michel Portal & Manu Katché Michel .

You are not supposed to take photos or videos of the groups and we were surrounded by security guards to ensure that people didn’t do just that. As a result, I wasn’t able to video tape the first group but, once it got dark, I was able to sneak out my little camera and use the video function to film a bit of the second group (Manu).  Enjoy!

Incoming search terms for the article:

Every year on June 21st France has a Fete de la Musique. It’s held in every city in France (except very small ones). It started years ago as a venue for amateur musicians to share their talents on the streets. It’s grown to be quite an exciting event with exceptional musicians featured all over the country. Even Chambery hosted the Fete and we saw some decent talent. The only negative of the night was, before heading home, we stopped at a new bar to have a drink.  A group of 20-something year olds were in a heated argument with the security/bouncers at the bar right behind us. It escalated into a fist fight and one of the kids pulled out a knife and stabbed one of the security officers in the leg. We ended up right in the middle of it, given where our table was situated and as the fight moved our way. It was quite scary.

Anyway, here’s a sample of the music we saw. I’m sorry for the roughness of the video but I bought a new editing program to show off my high definition footage, but the program doesn’t seem to like my Vista operating system and I couldn’t get the title and scene transitions to work. Time to upgrade to Windows 7, I guess. Press the right lower symbol for a full screen view and then you can go back to the small screen by hitting ESC on your keyboard. Enjoy the music!

Incoming search terms for the article:

Terra Vinea is an old mine converted into a wine cave. It’s located in Portel des Corbieres, near Narbonne and Perpignan France in the Languedoc-Rousillon region. The mines closed in 1992 and the wine cave opened in 1999. I have a suspician that someone from the winery visited some of America’s attractions like Disneyland when they thought up the idea of Terra Vinea. The caves are filled with light and music shows, talking walls, representations of a Medieval dining room and Roman villa, and a mining cave. It was still interesting and entertaining. The wines however were not the best. We tasted several but only bought one bottle that we found to be of good quality and taste.

If you want to visit it yourself, check out their website at: www.terra-vinea.com

Here’s a video of the Terra Vinea wine cave experience.

Incoming search terms for the article:

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you’ll know that my Frenchman belongs to a Chorale in Chambery. They’re pretty darn good so this year they were invited to participate in an international competition in Verona, Italy. It was a very friendly competition with lots of categories. The sponsoring agency in Verona is Verona Chorale Groups Association at: http://www.agcverona.it

Here are a few videos of the performing groups:

This is my Frenchman’s Chorale, Viva Voce.

Incoming search terms for the article: