Congé <> vacances

Photo from Flickr/l r

In the part of France where I live, if you try to visit a restaurant or some museums or châteaux, you are likely to find a notice like the one above saying that the place is shut for "congés annuels".  If you are in Paris, you may very well see the same thing during August.  Sometimes they do say "vacances annuelles" and so I've always believed that the two words, congé and vacances, both meant holidays.

Well I was wrong, they aren't interchangeable.  There is quite an amount of overlap but  "vacances" means pleasurable holidays where "congé" is more of an official period of leave.

All that preamble is to say I am taking a congé, a week or so off blogging.  The house move has been less than smooth, there is so much to do that it's hard to concentrate on anything else, and now the heating has stopped - this is the coldest winter in the UK since the 1960s.  I think I am justified in not using "vacances" in this instance.