Why France Just Does it Better - the Christmas edition
Project 'Festive Immersion' across the Channel, with ten fave recs from Le Touquet
Note: This post contains a lot of pictures which means it may appear as clipped or truncated in an email. To see the entire thing just press VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE at the end of the email and you’ll see it in one. Or head to the online version.
Happy Friday my friends. It’s been a whole week since I last wrote to you, and that’s because this week has been mostly lost to a haze of sleep deprivation (not due to party season, you understand, but to an unshakeable toddler cough: poor bean) and some work elsewhere - but of course I’ve REALLY missed you, and wanted to share some photos and recommendations from our special little jaunt to France, to spread a little Christmas twinkle and inspiration, because what could be more joyful than a little taste of Noël?
This time last week we were just setting off on a mission dubbed ‘Project Festive Immersion’. Why did I need more festive immersion, after developing, shooting and writing my Christmas recipe bonanza for you right here, you might ask? Because while rustling up yummy Christmas food in my kitchen might begin to get the juices flowing, this time last year we took a trip to Le Touquet - an award-winning seaside town on France’s Opal Coast, and chanced upon the town’s Christmas celebrations, which are - without exaggeration - a sort of glorious amalgam of the best 80s Christmas films and my own wildest Francophile festive fantasies.
If you liked the piece I wrote back in October on Why France Just Does It Better, then this is basically the Christmas upgrade. We’d planned to take our daughter back for the Le Touquet festive experience, as she’s nearly two now, and so much more aware of everything that’s going on (even if, as you’ll read, this didn’t go quite as planned). We’d been bowled over last year by the huge efforts the town had gone to to make things feel festive, and we loved the idea of stocking up on delicious seasonal French produce and presents in time for Christmas. Luckily for us, Le Touquet is only around an hour’s drive south of Calais - meaning that, rather smugly, we can be there in time for moules/steak frites for lunch - but I’d argue that even if it’s much further than that for you, it’s still worth a pilgrimage and perfect for a weekend break.
This was our third time back to Le Touquet in the past two years, and while this is not an exhaustive guide (though I may well be writing a more in depth guide here at some point) I wanted to share some of my highlights and favourite places, and let you in on some of the best things we ate, drank, visited and enjoyed while we were there, all in one place, in case you’re heading down that way any time soon, or just to feed you your French festive fix.
Imagine a town where Christmas music (not just any Christmas music, French Christmas music, for god’s sake) is piped into speakers on the beautifully decorated streets, the windows of the chocolate shops glitter with sticky florentines and smoothly-moulded chocolate Saint Nichs, and every other shop door is flanked by displays of baubles and eucalyptus. Where fromageries proffer hand-churned butter, sliced from the slab with cheese wire, as truffled brie oozes from the shelf; piles of leafy clementines outside the green grocer burn neon into your retina, and trays of freshly-hauled scallops and oysters send a blast of iodine into your nostrils as you shuffle past the poissonnerie…
