Au Revoir France!

Roscoff

The past week has been a chance to unwind and chill out a bit, with no mountains to hike!  Except for a couple of days out we relaxed by the pool, or on the balcony, or even just on the couch with a coffee while Amelia and Noah played outside.  I had a chance to practice some driving (God know’s how Maciek has managed so far – it feels so weird!), I did okay though as it was such a small quiet village with no traffic apart from the odd cyclist or tractor!



Sunflowers



Driving through the countryside on our way to Roscoff we passed acres of sunflower fields (we’d been seeing them all week and by this point Noah was pointing out ‘sunflower’ instead of ‘bin’, which made a change and a much nicer thing to look at!).  But on the day we finally managed to take a photo of them, it was overcast, so they all had their heads down!  So unfortunately this picture doesn't show the blankets of yellow we saw everyday.

Another funny thing about France and Europe in general is smoking.  Nearly everybody smokes.  And most of the time it’s men driving cars, riding bikes, working on a building site, unpacking fruit that’s just been delivered to a shop, all with a cigarette seemingly glued to their top lip.  Don’t know how it stays there.  It’s like a symbol of the continent.  Man in cap (not a baseball cap, you know the ones) pedaling an old rickety bike through the village with cigarette stuck to top lip like an overgrown fang.  It’s just like the mandatory accordion player in touristy spots in the city.  It wouldn’t be Europe without it!

Another stupidly long drive brought us to the port of Roscoff.  We left our cottage at 10am and arrived at the Hotel L’Angleterre at 6.45pm!  We stopped for about 25 minutes along the way and Noah slept for 2 hours and nobody was sick.  Our hotel had no parking, so we had to park in a public carpark down the road and around the corner, which would have been no problem if it wasn’t for the 4 huge suitcases and various other back packs and bags we had to carry in (only to carry back out again in the morning and reload the car!).  And not only that, there was no lift.  And not only that, the staircase has to be the narrowest windiest one ever made.  And not only that the place was like a maze of these staircases and corridors, and the doors to get from one corridor to another were about as wide as two vertical 4 by 2 planks of wood!  At one point I just looked at Maciek and burst out laughing and couldn’t stop!

The pizza place at the back

Toot toot!!

We braved the weather (it was freezing and raining) to walk into the village for some dinner, which was so quaint and pretty (it looked and felt just like an English seaside village), and we enjoyed a lovely pizza (even if we were sitting outside as we’re too scared to dine in with Noah the Menace).  There was also a little fair/fete set up so Amelia and Noah had a ride and then Maciek bought us not one but two massive waffles piled high with cream!  So much for my diet then….