Just the three of us

Time really flies when you don’t do much! Can you believe we have already been away for over two months?! We are now thinking of maybe staying away a little longer – Michael is enjoying unemployment and Lily wants a few more stamps in her passport and more so because we are really enjoying ourselves. We’ll see…..

Our stream of visitors has come to an end after six weeks of only having the place to ourselves for five days! Mum left this morning after coming back to us for a few days after tours of Scandanavia and Italy and we took her on a road trip to Avignon and St Remy de Provence this week.

Gorgeous little street in St Remy de Provence
Belinda, Vinh and Ollie left on Friday and it was great to spend the week with them after not seeing them for a few months. Ollie has really grown since we left and loves a chat and a sing song. The best part of their stay was that Ollie kept Lily entertained and of course Belinda and Vinh were good company as well. Vinh treated us to rice paper rolls…..mmmm. It has been so long since we’ve eaten them. I am now on a mini mission to find yum cha over here – I’ll let you know how I go.
There is a great coast drive along Cap de L’Esterel from St Raphael to Cannes. The scenery is really stunning with rust coloured hills rolling down into the water which is very different to the rest of the Cote D’Azur coastline. We go to the beach at Agay which is on this strip of coast as it is one of our closest beaches but I personally prefer Antibes.
While Belinda and Vinh were here we went to the fresh produce markets at Aix en Provence. I love going to the markets and I’ve even bought a wicker basket so I look more like a local although as soon as I open my mouth it’s pretty obvious that I am not but I’m sure I look very frenchy – me with my basket filled with fruit and veg and a couple of baguettes poking out walking along eating a croissant!

The fresh raspberries were sooo delicious especially dipped in my hot chocolate (which was literally a cup of pure hot chocolate…I had to order milk to have with it since even I couldn’t drink it straight. Alana would have loved it!).

Lily in Cannes

We had a lovely dinner in Cannes – a huge seafood platter, the ‘royale assortment’. Must admit Michael and Vinh ate most of it since I am not too keen on oysters or mussels ala naturale. I have a new found respect for Vinh – the way he manhandles a crab is really impressive and makes eating crab a much more enjoyable experience when you don’t have to do all of the hard work.

Went to the beach at Antibes over the weekend. Spotted the Arctic P anchored offshore – James must be in town for the rugby or the festival of hand run musical machines. Perfect timing for a visit since he was featured in the paper about his ‘disgraceful’ €10,000 donation to the Antibes council for his civil wedding ceremony. Apparently the cost of police escorts is very expensive.

We are now planning a big road trip next week to northern France to have lunch at Cap Gris Nez – it is an annual event for Channel swimmers and Lily and I will get to see where Michael landed.

Thanks to all of our visitors for taking back Lily’s 2008 winter collection.