France 01

So, as many of you know, we have headed off to France for a couple of months, we eased into the holiday spirit with a week in Darwin ahead of our departure to France and had a wonderful but busy time there. We stayed with our Putty & Sarah again, in their lovely Nightcliff home and the highlight of the week was the festival of Lance – the celebration of our friend Lance’s 70th birthday. We started with a dinner with Lance & Cheryl and a couple of their friends we have met previously, and then a lunch at Saffron Restrauant which was the official birthday lunch, followed by an informal dinner and evening at their daughter’s house.

A second highlight was a lunch with some of our closest friends, as well as Putty & Sarah, we had Chris & Bid up from Melbourne, Lance and Cheryl again, and Marco & Deb with their kids, Sammy & Amalia. I chefed it up for the day and turned on my dry cured mackerel, fish with potato gratin, a couple of kilos of tiger prawns on the barbie with a mango salsa and grilled kangaroo.

Monday saw us off to the airport and our first flight bound for Singapore, we flew out early afternoon and had a not very full plane so we were able to both get a row of seats and have a snooze on the way. After about 6 hours in Singapore we had a flight on an A380-800 to Dubai, it was nearly empty with only about 100 passengers! Again we, and everyone else, had a full row of seats to themselves!! This flight was thru the night so being able to lie down and sleep was a huge bonus. We got into Dubai before dawn and had a few hours in the Emirates lounge before the plane to Lyon, so we had a nice shower and some yummy breakfast and a couple of drinks before departing for Lyon. This plane was full, but it was a comfortable enough flight and we arrived in Lyon after lunch.

Edit – What a joy it was arriving in France compared to Australia, straight off the plane, show passport at non-euro desk, out to baggage claim to wait for the bags to come off the plane, walk straight out of the airport. No forms to fill in, no questions from immigration, no customs checks, just a friendly welcome. We could learn a lot about how to do this from the Europeans.

Dominique and Arne picked us up from the airport and took us back to their stunning house which is about an hour south of Lyon. I think the timing of the trip was perfect, we were pretty exhausted, but forced ourselves to stay up until after dinner, then went to bed and had a great sleep before waking up with no sign of jetlag the next day!

For those not familiar with the connection, Dominique and Arne have a catamaran that they were sailing from Darwin to Gove on their way to the East Coast when they suffered some damage to the boat. We met them, lent them a mooring and a car and helped them organise repairs. They ended up having to leave their boat, Manuka in Gove and return to France and we looked after it for those months. On their return we spent more time with them and when they left for Queensland they told us that they were empty nesters with a big house in France and told us we were welcome to come and visit sometime, so here we are!

We have also been fortunate to arrive with very pleasant weather, low 30’s and sunny, clear blue days. That definitely helps!! Dominique & Arne’s house is stunning, an old farmhouse, typical of the region, made of pisé mud brick. They have done a marvellous job of renovating and creating stunning gardens. We have already enjoyed many meals on the large patio area.

The property has lots of beautiful walks, through the adjacent forests and villages, one of the walks of about 6km has sculptures by local artists every couple of hundred metres. To the SE are the chalky ranges that run South from Grenoble and to the NE we can see the Alps.

Yesterday we went and visited friends of Dominique & Arne’s, Gigi & Jean Claude, who have had a couple of times sailing on Manuka in Thailand & Australia, they have a lovely home about 15m away and a beautiful swimming pool so we enjoyed an afternoon of pooltime and drinks with them, we then all came back here and I bbq’d some very good scotch fillet we found at the local butcher.

Today Arne and I will drive back up to Lyon and I will pick up the car we have leased, so I think that gets us pretty well up to date on our French adventure!

(dont forget you can click on the ‘i’ for info on the images in the galleries.)