A different flavour #moving #packing #sayinggoodbye

Now that the holiday is over (or at least the first part of it), it's time to get on with the business of packing.

So we started by packing the kids off to Brest (see what I did there?):

Saying goodbye to daddy and his scooter

Small Fry and Fingerling have gone to Brest with Moon for the week

while mummy and daddy pack

And crevette helps

Just kidding. We quickly realised that packing is not for 18-month olds, and Oma has been taking her out every day all day in order to keep her out the way and to say goodbye to the sights of Paris.

It hasn't all been work of course. It's very very important to say goodbye to your friends too. Usually over dinner in nice places. 

Appointment in Apt #Moyalfamilyholiday #southoffrance

It's been 7 months and 7 days since we last saw our dear friends the Moyals. Within a few weeks of the birth of Elliott they had their visas, a new address in Houston, a new house, had rented out their old one and living the life of Riley, or of convenience at least. And now that I'm in the middle of packing boxes, I have no idea how they did it all so fast.

They are back in Europe for the summer and invited us to Olivier's family home in the south of France, about an hour from Avignon. That cost us 2 hours and 40 minutes of our time and €36 for an adult ticket to travel the 700km from Paris. Gotta love France.

And love it we do, even more so after 4 days with such a lovely family in their beautiful (huge) house:

Could be worse, right?

With a pool, terraces and house like that, there was actually no need to leave the place at all. So a lot of the time we didn't. 

In the hammock

But we did squeeze in 3 excursions; one to the market, one to the local Cedar forest, and another to The Fontaine de Vaucluse, which is a natural karst spring (an upwelling of underground water) and the largest in France by flow and fifth largest in the world. The spring is the only exit point of about 1,100 square kms of underground basin, capturing water from Mont Ventoux and the Vaucluse mountains. Above the spring are limestone cliffs about 230m high which act as a reservoir and aquifer.

Downstream:

And upstream near the source, which has pretty much now been cut off, presumably due to the dangers of getting too close to the cave where the water bubbles up:

The cedar forest was a wonderful place of dappled shade and fresh pine cone smells and plenty and plenty of sticks to find and build shelters with.

And then this was market day:

All too soon it was time to say goodbye (again). Some great memories made. We'll miss you Moyals!

But seeing as it's us, and our kids love train travel so much, there were still plenty of opportunities for taking photos left

Arriving back at Gare de Lyon. Still a stunning station.

Football fan #extratime

Small Fry and his besties (Noham and Henri) spent 3 years at the jardin d'enfants together and become part of a great group of friends, which has managed to survive a year apart at different schools.

So today they met up for a final football match (they are forever playing football) and to say goodbye.

At least by keeping our same French numbers, there's a fighting change we'll be able to keep in touch with these guys in the future.

La Sainte Chapelle #Michèle

A thousand thanks must also go to our long-suffering friend Michèle. She has repeatedly taken Small Fry and Fingerling out for the day, and calls it fun!

She even managed to squeeze in a final trip before the holidays, this time taking them to La Sainte Chapelle in order to see the beautiful roof and stained glass windows. From there they spent the rest of the afternoon at the Jardins des Luxembourg and came home all sticky (from lollipops), tired and happy. All the things we love Michèle for :)

It's a kind of magic #OperaGarnier

Last night, my wonderful French friend Eva took me to the Opera to see a modern ballet choreographed by Mats Ek, a Swedish dancer and choreographer. To be fair, not really my kind of dance (I'm more a classic girl), but it was amazing to see (original moves and interpretation, incredible Opera house), the music was phenomenal, and it was a wonderful, wonderful gift by her to our time together.

She wrote some beautiful words, and they would have been enough, but the ballet was the icing on the cake (champagne before and at the interval, one movement that opened the full opera stage including the back door so you could see all the wings and backstage, then exiting to an ad-hoc Tango dance practise on the Opera steps, and finally being served by an actual dancer at our favourite bar in the 17th at around midnight on a balmy evening).

Absolutely perfect. And whatever I gave her I got back many times over, and not least because she is actually French. An actual French friend. And do you know how hard those are to find and keep? ;-) I'm kidding, but she was my first and I can't wait to keep in touch and see how our journey continues. 

From my heart, thank you Eva for everything!