A lovely sleep, lie-in, amble around one of our usual loop walks to check out to see if any blackberries were still available for harvesting, coffee and a chat, then lunch. Not many blackberries as it turned out. A nice lazy time. Most of the afternoon was spent working on draft plans for the villa in Tuscany.
Bella and family arrived by their undersized hire car at 8:30pm, so the kids were bundled into bed after a quick dinner. We had a more leisurely one with the adults. It was nice to catch up again.
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| Rosie and Violet check out the evening dining in our square |
Rising early (no surprises there with 3 kiddies around), we were out the door by 9am and on the road to Collioure, the gorgeous small town on the coast. It was market day, so car parking was a little tight, but we made it. A very enjoyable hour or so was spent with the kids paddling in the water. Bella found it pretty cold, Nic not so much, but John and I spent quite some time swimming around the perimeter of buoys. The water seemed incredibly salty. There were plenty of fish around, even in the shallow water, so easily seen by the kiddies. It was seriously enjoyable.
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| Market day at Collioure |
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| Collioure waterfront |
By 12:30pm it was time to make tracks to get the kids home for lunch and bed, after stopping for a supermarket shop.
The day was warm and sunny, but by 4pm it had clouded over. The rain promised by the weather forecast was threatening. An easy few hours, dinner for the kids, then a delicious home-cooked meal of tiny sweet French mussels for the adults. Cooked with just onion and garlic, the 2kg of Buchot mussels went down a treat.
19 September (Thursday)
Another great day-trip. This time we headed to Spain, to the northern coast at L'Escala. It was fun to show Bella and family the town, complete with the brilliant sculpture of a Sardanes band, the liquor shop with a complete window display of whiskies, and a very enjoyable coffee. We have definitely been disappointed (again) with the French coffees after the consistently rich ones in Italy, and Spanish coffees are also consistently better than French.
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| The men check out the whisky store |
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| Violet checked she is still carrying Nic's new watch |
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| Violet checks John's coffee is up to scratch |
Picking up a pastry to see us through the hour we planned to be on the beach at Sant Marti, the kids had a wonderful time playing in the sand, building sandcastles and going down the slides on pedal boats conveniently pulled up on the beach nearby. The water felt a little cold for any of us to be tempted. John and Bella wandered a fair distance along the coastal track to view the old Roman and Greek ruins from earlier settlements on this peninsula. It truly is an amazing place for history. Right on the waterfront there is still an ancient Greek wharf.
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| Still happy, even after face-planting in the sand. |
By 1pm we thought we could tackle a Spanish lunch so wandered the short distance to the tapas restaurants at Sant Marti. An array of different tapas dishes, mostly extremely tasty seafood dishes really hit the spot. With a drink apiece, and tapas for 4 adults and 2 kiddies, the total bill only came to E54 (NZ$90ish). It was delicious. On the way home we stopped at the Spanish border where Bella and Nic nipped into the huge Nike and Mango outlet stores and bought a selection of gear at ridiculously low prices. We didn't get home until 4pm, and it was still 30 degrees. The forecast was for the weather to break and be raining and cooler for the next 3 days. We thought we would enjoy it - it had been a long time coming.
However the rain didn't come and it stayed pretty sticky. We all rolled into bed pretty early.
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