Hi everyone! Well sorry that my provence entry has taken so long. I've been working a lot in the couple of weeks. I realised today that I haven't had a whole day off, ie. nannying or working in the bar every day for a month - since I went to the London dungeon with Jack and Debbie! But its not so bad really, like today I only worked for Laura for 3 hours until lunch time and on the weekends I get the days off and just work in the evening... So France, technically I'm not there now but lets pretend I am for the sake of the website, then it looks like I've been to more places! Tee hee So we went 2 weeks ago on Monday the 29th may and that day was mainly spent travelling on the train - its about 7 hours or so from London. We got the Eurostar to Lille then the TGV to Avignon and then Hal's mum Carine picked us up from the station. If you go to the photo albums you can see what the area looked like. And it was like that from the station to the house which was about a 25 minute drive. It was much greener than I expected to be honest, I had pictured it drier like in Manon des Sources (Caty you'll know what I mean). The house was beautiful, 18th century renovated place. Probably originally a peasants farmhouse once upon a time but it was very big. They had completely redone the inside so it was all lovely. The weather wasn't quite what we had hoped... it was warm but really windy for the first 4 days or so of our week there! And a freezing wind too, nothing like I had experienced. They call it "Le mistral" because it comes from Russia or something! But then the last couple of days were really nice, and the day we left the weather was perfect. typical! So I did manage to sneak in a bit of lying by the pool and picked up a bit of a tan - sneakily extended with the help of one of those gradual tanning moisturisers! So basically the daily routine was breakfast at 8ish, clear away and tidy, hang around til lunch, relaxing and playing with the kids. Lunch was the big meal of the day, often prepared by Jacqueline - the lady that comes to clean and do the washing and some cooking. One day we had roast chicken, another fish baked with onions and tomatoes (and yes family I ate it, and liked it!), we also had paella one day. Then in the afternoon we just hung around again. I did some swimming with Louis, although it wasn't very warm in the pool at all. I found myself reverting back to the things we would do in the pool, Mel and Mad - like sitting on the bottom of the pool, seeing how long I could hold my breath etc, to entertain Louis! Also went for a few walks with Louis to the farm across the road. Played lots of snakes and ladders, ludo and hide and seek. Then supper and bath time for the kids at 6 ish. After they went to sleep, we would have supper ourselves, often a green salad and nice cheeses and some wine. I ate the best food for a week, it was amazing! Even just French butter is so good, I spreaded it so thickly on my bread.. oops. And the best thing was these delicious French yoghurts with chestnut puree at the bottom, oh so yummy - but you can't get them here, dammit. On Friday afternoon, Carine dropped me into the nearby town St-Remy-De-Provence. I had been there earlier in the week with her to do some shopping in the market, and had to use my French buying fruit and veg! The town is really pretty with one big road circling the older part of town and filled with narrow cobbled streets as you can see from the pictures. So on Friday, they dropped me off so I could have a wander by myself. I spent about an hour walking around and looking in shops, notably the biscuit shop "le petit Duc" and the chocolate shop "Joel Durand Chocolatier". (Actually I probably spent about half an hour walking around and half an hour deciding which chocolates and biscuits I was going to buy!) I ended up buying a few samples of things to take home - which were all consumed by my first day back in London! Some really light and airy almond type biscuits, almond, melon coconut squares with the texture of marzipan and some crystallized lavender sweets. From the chocolate shop, a tablet of praline milk chocolate, a mini tablet of lavender dark chocolate. I know it sounds weird, and Pa I can see you grimacing in disgust but it was surprisingly delicious and not as sweet as it sounds. They have this 'chocolate alphabet' which are small chocolates all with different fillings. So all the letters of the alphabet stand for different fillings. They have all these unusual flavours like earl grey, rosemary, cardamon, violet, and tiramisu. I bought chestnut ones and caramel and fresh verbena ones! Delicious... they were gone by the end of the day. We also went out for dinner one night for pizza. And then icecream - had coconut, so the best I've had! Ended up seeing some movies I had wanted to see. At night, we watched Walk the Line one night and Brokeback Mountain another night. Both excellent, but I was bawling by the end of Brokeback, god so sad. And then we came back on Monday. It was lovely to come home, back to my house. It was strange driving though notting hill, and feeling like I was coming home. Next week I'm going to Paris on the train to meet Sarah and Walter for a couple of days! Should be fantastic, can't wait! Lots of love xx