After hearing about them and viewing the photos, I was very excited to visit some of the love padlocks, or love-locks on one of the bridges in Paris. Some fear that the growing number of cadenas d'amour pose a threat to the city's cultural heritage. I snapped this photo when I saw the "Honey Bunny" lock (in green, a little to the left)… once upon a time, our daughter's beloved and thread-bare side-kick went by the same term of endearment!
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la bourde (boord)
: blunder, slip, mistake
The French definition for la bourde is "une erreur grossière" and a synonym is la bévue.
Audio File: Listen to Jean-Marc pronounce today's word, these expressions, and the example sentence below: Download MP3 file or Wav file
faire une bourde = to goof up
raconter des bourdes à quelqu'un = to lie to someone
Avez-vous entendu la bourde de Valérie Trierweiler sur Twitter?
Have you heard Valérie Trierweiler's slip on Twitter?
Note: This should read "Avez-vous entendu parler de…" or "Did you heard about…."
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A Day in a French Life… by Kristin Espinasse
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la vieille dame de Californie = the old woman in California
le faire-part = announcement (of birth or marriage or death)
Summer is here. Celebrate this with a glass of Rosé from our Rouge-Bleu vineyard !
Readers Diane and Gary visited us on Thursday. Fell in love with their sweet dogs!
Here's another photo of their dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. (Clyde is seated on Gary's lap.).
Our next wine-tasting is June 19th (and again on June 26th). If you can make it, leave a message in the comments box to reserve your seat beneath the old mulberry tree!
Smokey loves those love-locks, or cadenas d'amour in Paris, and he has a smokin' solution for the authorities who see them as a threat…. Get busy, Authorities! Dépêchez-vous!
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My wife and I journeyed to Europe (her first international trip!) together for our honeymoon (notre lune de miel) less than 2 years ago. I planned the whole thing and revealed each destination to her only as we were departing for it.
Before we started this adventure together, a friend told me about the Love Locks in Paris. I was SO excited to be a part of something like that, so I planned on bringing a simple lock to add to the thousands already clipped on le Pont des Arts. However, right before our adventure was to begin, I read that Paris was waging war against the love locks. They were cutting them off! Disappointed, I had to try think of something else to help memorialize and mark our adventure. And then it hit me. A love lock doesn’t have to be one of thousands… it can be one IN a thousand. In a special place, by itself, never to be touched.
I had 5 locks engraved (for each of the 5 locations we hit on our honeymoon) with our initials and the date when we would be in each location. When we arrived at the new destination, I would hand my wife the lock and tell her to clip it somewhere secret, but still visible, in her favorite spot of each place we visited. I am now proud to say that each lock has the potential to be part of these locations and these special spots (to us) for years and maybe even decades! Fingers crossed, we will hopefully be able to return to these places in the future, find the locks, and smile. For now, the keys to the locks rest on hooks with labels for each location and attached to a frame displaying my wife’s wedding vows to me on our wedding day (part of a gift she gave me on our first anniversary).
Thanks for posting about the Love Locks. The memories flooding my brain right now have made my day!
A bientot,
Mike
Do you suppose this Love Lock thing began with Chastity Belts … just wondering 🙂
Aloha, Bill
We saw these in Prague. The fence they are on is very near the John Lennon wall. We loved seeing both and reading several of the notes. The wall definitely took us back in time, since we were married in 1967 – our 44th anniversary is this Friday, June 15. It was all very romantic to see the wall and remember all the wonderful music and sayings given us during the 60s – and much of it still lives on. I’m hoping we can make it to Paris (and to see you Kristin) a year from now. We will definitely check out the locks on the Pont des Arts – and I loved the very romantic and very thoughtful thing that Mike did for his bride! I’d like to try to find their lock in Paris! and, I’m sure elsewhere!
I thought I was going to the ‘editing’ corner, but evidently I’m in the Comments Box.. going to go check out the ‘faire-part’ story now.
Hi dear Kristin,
As a fellow dog lover, I felt a special kinship with Diane,Gary,Bonnie and Clyde (just a I do with you and Smokey and Braise!)
Wonderful way to start the day!
The Love Locks just acptured my imagination!
THANK YOU!
Love, Natalia XO
Bonjour Kristin,
J’adore la photo des cadenas d’amour!
My boyfriend told me about them awhile back, and he wants to take me to Paris so that we can place our own love lock there! 🙂
Amicalement,
~ Dana
URGENT!!! Kristin please read and reply. it would mean so much to a great group of you fans!
We are in Paris and today we passed by the same bridge you featured in today’s post. We took photos and talked about the idea you brought up. When the students saw your word of the day and the photo when we returned to the hotel, they told me that they are now convinced that you and I read each others’ minds since there are so many coincidences between words I say in class and the next day’s word that you send out. Also we passed by Shakespeare and Company today and they all screamed out “Kristin était là!” They began to tell our guide all about your family and your books etc. They made me promise to email you tonight to tell you that we are going to be in Provence for two weeks! They want to meet you–now I realize this is impossible but a shout out in your blog would do the trick!
We follow you religiously!
Hi Kristin,
My husband and I are visiting France from Texas. We would enjoy coming to your wine tasting next tues. (19th)…if it would be possible.
It would be nice to meet you after reading your blog for years.
Please let me know.
Thank you, Vicki Ford
Mike P – I love your Love Lock story! How beautiful!
Quelle coincidence! I saw the locks last week while we were in Paris. Such a romantic idea.
Wow! Romance is indeed alive and well. What a sweet, sweet story! I just posted about the locks, too, and my 8th graders’ adventures on the Pont des Arts in March.
Hope to see you soon , Kristin! My BFF group of 8 will be in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon July 7-14. Will email!