Canyoning in the Gorges du Verdon.

A few days ago I recieved some amazing news.... Miss Jennifer Phipps was coming to France and staying just an hour away from me! So yesterday Alice and I set off bright and early to Castellane to meet her there, unfortunately Jen had some 'van issues' so while we waited Alice and I had a little explore around the market.

Jen arrived and it was just fantastic to see her. 8 months is definitely TOO long!

We had a few hours to kill before we had our canyoning trip booked for so we headed down to the Gorge and found a lovely little pebble beach to chill on and pass the time in the sunshine.

At 2 we set off down to Jabron to meet our (rather attractive) guide for the afternoon, Francois. And walked in the baking sun for half an hour down into the Gorge kitted up with a wetsuit, harness and helmet. Fit.

Three hours were then spend in the Gorge jumping off stupidly high rocks, cramming ourselves through tight spaces, toboganning down natural slides, climbing slippery walls and abseiling down from a great height to be dropped into a freezing cold pool of water....

Unfortuantely we couldnt take a camera with us as the whole time was spent in water, but I do have photographs from the website of our trip to show you how brave we were. I PROMISE we actually did this....

Exhausted, we trundled back to the car and made our way towards St Andre les Alpes to where Jen was staying, stopping off briefly for a dip in the Lac de Castillion, before crashing in a restaurant to have a well deserved massive plate of steak and chips. Yum.

A really amazing day, made a billion times better by the fact I got to spend it with Jen.

Visitors and Grottes...

Well, it's been a busy few weeks and I have had a couple of wonderful visitors!

Firstly, completely randomly, dear old Maxwell Dennis managed to blag a holiday with the Cosgroves and wound up staying 5 minutes down the road from me! It was so fantastic to see him, John and Jude again and we spent a few days chilling in the sunshine, drinking wine, attending BBQs and showing our competitve sides becoming the dreamteam in a rather heated game of articulate....

A few days later I recieved a phone call from Martin who was due to be camping in the garden to tell me Matt had managed to get a puncture and could I go and rescue them.... The nutters were on a charity cycle from Rome to Home for Help for Heroes and we had scheduled them a chill out day to recover after nearly 600 miles of cycling! They then spent the day with us and more BBQ and more wine was consumed! Again, completely wonderful to see him again after 3 years!

With all the visitors gone, I was back to work and decied to take the girlies to the Grottes de Saint Cezaire.... These are underground caves where you can walk to 40 metres underground and explore the caves, the girls loved it.... and even more so the picnic we had afterwards!

Viva Espana!

Another delay in posting, only my excuse this time is that it took me this long to recover!

I have just returned from a fantastic ten days in Spain. I touched down at Barcelona aiport and make the trek with my overpacked rucksack to find Laura and together we headed down to Benicassim for the Festival Internactional de Benicassim.
AMAZINGLY, I had arranged to meet Katy there who I hadn't seen since our travel days in the states... a whole three years ago and so seeing her was just wonderful, especially as the day before she had just got engaged to the lovely Chris and so it was one huge dose of happiness.

Laura and I stayed with Kate and Chris. And their friends. And their friends of friends. And so we had a nice group of us, all of us on the same page. A definite bonus. The days were spent lounging in the beating sunshine on the beach and the nights with a 4 euro bottle of vodka and wonderful, wonderful music!

The festival itself was absolutely brilliant, there were the acts you were expecting to be amazing that were... The Strokes, The Arttic Monkeys... and the highlight, Arcade Fire and there were a few suprises... Plan B being the biggest suprise, he was incredible! Paolo Nutini was, as ever, insanely beautiful and just perfect!



All in all, the week there was so fantastic, despite the cold showers, a massive lack of sleep and having a permanent hangover I had the BEST time! I met some amazing people, saw some amazing music and just had an amazing week!

After Benicassim Laura and I said our emotional goodbyes, especially to Kate - three years was definitely too long, and the two of us headed back to Barcelona. Tired, hot and hungover we lugged our stuff to our hostel and managed to drag ourselves out to get some dinner and have a little wander... it didn't last long and before long we both need to crash.

After a good nights sleep, we awoke bright and early, grabbed our rather jam packed intinery and headed out to see the sights of the city.

The buildings, especially the Gaudi buildings were incredible, we spent the entire day with our map poached from Mcdonalds checking out the big sites... The Sagrada Familia, The Cathedral, The park full of Gaudi buildings... the lot!

It was a lovely few days in Barcelona, the views were spectacular, the weather was great and the food was fantastic!

Perfume.

Slacking again, I know. I apologise. Ashleigh even emailed me to ask when I was going to update and I was still alive? Well, thankfully I am.
Due to a slight lack of funds, days have been spent in the sunshine here (except for the odd thunderstorm) which has been great, as every cent I earn has gone straight into the Benicassim fund. Yes I am going to BENICASSIM. And super excited about it too. I will be meeting Laura in Barcelona next month for 9 wonderful days in Spain, before returning to France to spend a week with Aimee in Lacanau. Fabulous.

So last weekend, the hostfamily and I headed up to Val d'Allos in the Alps for the long weekend as they have a chalet there. It was beautiful. Although not as warm as down here on the coast!

The days were spent hiking up the mountains and on one of the days we hiked right to the top to see the Lac d'Allos - Europes largest, natural, high altitude lake. A bit of a trek but well worth it.
The evenings were spent in front of an open fire with a mug of hot chocolate and a film. Perfection.

Anyway, back to home... Last Friday I felt inspired by the words of my late next door neighbour, Christian Dior (yes, it's true)

"A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting"

I am a huge fan of perfume, I love the stuff. And living in the perfume capital of the world, it seemed wrong to not drive the 20 minutes down the road to the museums and factories in Grasse. And so Lotte and I went, and it was fantastic.
The highlight? A sensory room with large screens with moving images of distinctive smelling things... lavender, melon, the sea, a field of flowers... lying on beanbags, you watching the film and the entire room filled with the accompanying smell.

It was so wonderful that I took my girlies this weekend to see it, and they loved it just as much.
We had a day of perfume followed by an evening of bowling and nutella crepes. Girly heaven.

Festival de Cannes....

I figured, that as I live just down the road from Cannes I should join the masses and check out the film festival. And so bright and early yesterday morning, I grabbed Lotte (a fellow au pair) and we jumped in Pierre (my little blue Megane) and braved the traffic. The roads were mental and a 20 minute drive took twice as long, but we made it, parked up and headed on down to the port.

On a regular day Cannes is pretty damn chic, but the festival, 100 times more so.

Paparazzi lined the port, armed with huge cameras and step ladders attached to fences so they could just get a few inches or so on each other. The yachts that filled the port were magnificent. Pretty amazing, and I was informed afterwards by my host dad, that the average price of some of the bigger yachts is around 55 miliion. Insane.

So, in the hope of sharing some pavement with Brad Pitt or Jude Law we headed into the action. Some how managing to slip past a security guard or two we mananged to get into the main area, red carpet and all! Not a lot was going on and it seemed relatively small, we decided that the action must be else where, and so we left here. Big mistake. Could we get back in without a pass?? Hell no.
And so our dreams of rubbing shoulders with the stars were shattered.

All was not lost though, we spent the remainder of the day sunning ourselves on the beach.
We did see the odd French celeb being chased around by cameras, but no one to write home about.

C'est le week-end!

I have been slacking on the photo front, so to document the weekend I will use less words and more photos...

This weekend Louise was in England and Ian had a 'golfing Saturday' So I agreed to have the girls....

Saturday I took them kayaking on the lake;

And although the lake was bloody freezing the girls still insisted on swimming. After an ice cream we headed back to get an early night ready for the horse show...

On Sunday we did just that. We headed over to Frejus for the day to watch the horse shows, they were incredible... There was western displays, gymnastics on horses and chariot racing. Unfortunately, I was slack and didn't take a lot of photos. In fact, I took one. When I say 'I', I mean one of the girlies did.
I promise to improve.

Wednesday?

I have been so used to my Wednesday being filled with nappy changing, trips to the park, making chocolate crispy cakes, painting pretty pictures, playdoh..... and so on and so on.

Well Wednesdays here are slightly different.

Please remember that my children here are almost teenagers and so today was almost surreal. Childcare??

I began my day by taking the girls out shoe shopping.... Slightly enjoyable. Then the rest of the day consisted of watching 'Confessions of a Shopaholic', discussing if Chris Brown really hit Rhianna and why he did it, contemplating whats better - leg waxing or hair removal cream, deciding on hair removal cream being the better option and putting this into practice and then a manicure to round off the day.

And inevitably, there were a few full blown arguements between sisters. Complete with the oh so familiar phrase 'You don't understand me', 'It's my life' and a door slam or two for good measure.

The scariest part? I remember being exactly that way. And as I settled down with my reflective cup of tea at the end of the day and I felt a little sorry for my poor Mother, who was put through all that hecticness..... by me. Sorry Mum. Never will I slam a door again.

Don't get me wrong, I had a lovely day, I absolutely adore the girls, it was just a MASSIVE change from the Wednesdays I am used too.

And now I prepare for tomorrow - Lesson one of my new French class. Lets hope I can remember a word or two....

For Rosie.

This is a 'supportive-friend' post for my dear friend Rosie, the rest of you need not feel obliged to read it!

Dear Rosie,

I recieved your wonderful, wonderful letter this morning and was a little sad to read that you have given up on your running abilities and so I write to you here as I know the French post is a little sloooow and you may have given up before you recieve my next mailing from France. I will of course write in pen form also.

Rosie, my darling. I have complete faith in you. So much so, I have decided that if you enter this half marathon that you want to do, I will also enter and come home and do it with you. I am due for a visit anyway and October sounds good! So enter. And I will too. Because if I - the chocolate craving, pasta loving, carb-addicted eating machine that I am can do it, any one can.

And so, as promised I have started to do your training regime. I started this morning. Forgetting that I hadn't excercised in 3 months and instead I had sat around eating bread and cheese and consuming vino, I saw that you had got up to 3 miles and figured I could match it. Apparently not.
Stupidly I didn't consider that I live on the top of a hill and in 20 degree heat and off I set.....

Half way, I was near dying. Thankfully I had the wonderful compliation of Aerosmith, Shakira and The Bieber to get me through it.... Nope, not even Paris could make me 'cool'.....

Eventually, I gave up and walked the hill back up and came home and instead completed my 'Pilates for Dummies' DVD. Because if I can't run again just yet, I can at least 'strengthen my core'.

Rosie, we can do this.

I'll keep trying and keep you updated, on here and in our preferred contact method of snail mail.

And get Shannon involved, we do GREAT things when the three of us are together. Quite the role models.

I love a good sunset.

The view that makes washing up in the evening that little bit more bareable.

Cote d'Azur on a rainy day...

This weekend I had a visit from Maggie and Ashleigh.... And unfortunately, a visit from the rain too.
The girls had used the Easter Holiday as an excuse to have a bit of a travel around Italy and on the way back popped in to see me for a couple of days.

Their train arrived into Cannes so I met them there for a stroll along the promenade and then headed back home to get some dinner and an early night ready for a jammed packed Saturday.

6am Saturday morning, we were up and ready to go. A short drive to the train station and we jumped on a train to Monaco.

We walked around the marina looking at the fantastic yachts, wandered up to the castle to check out the views and strolled along the beautiful, narrow, winding streets along the rows and rows of coloured terrace homes.

We grabbed lunch in Moanco and then hopped on a train to Nice to meet Charlotte (another au pair from Paris), as luck would have it, all four of us happened to be in the South at the same time!

Nice was also beautiful. And all four of us being a sucker for a good view, trekked up a mountain with hundreds of stepsin torrential rain to visit the ancient chateau and see the breathtaking views of the entire bay.

Next stop, Antibes. We stopped for a walk but decided that the rain was too damn heavy so we sheltered in a cafe in one of the squares then headed home to the warm and dry!

Sunday, thankfully the sun shone and so a day of sun bathing, swimming and generally chilling out was had.

Although the weather was completely shocking, I had a great weekend and I hope the girls did too. It was wonderful to see them.... And I'll see them in a month when we all head to Disneyland for Maggies' birthday.

The new pad....

Some of you have asked me (the Mother in particular) what my new home looks like..... So, here it is....

 The house.

 The terrace/pool.

 The stables.

Ma chambre.

And the Easter holidays begin....

Last Wednesday I finally rolled up at Cannes train station to meet my new host family.... And they are wonderful!
I am living in the countryside just 15 minutes away from Cannes. I am living in a beautiful house in the forest right next to the lake (I will take some photos of the house soon, I promise!). Here I am au pairing for three girls aged 10, 11 and 12, two horses, two dogs and two cats. And so far it's great!

I have been introduced to the whole family and attended a family BBQ on Friday evening and have been launched straight into family life! I have a separate living area which is superbly quiet, my own car to make exploring the area easy and a fantastic new host family! I think I'll be quite happy here!!

The Easter holidays began today and I was thrown right in at the deep end and I have the girls for the whole day, and today was a busy one!

The girls were up and ready to go at 8 am, so I made a picnic, we packed a rucksack and headed down to the lake....

The view from the path from the house to the lake. Lush.

More lovely views....

My girlies!

So off we set down to the lake, and of course the girls wanted to go straight in. Trying to stay on the side and watch was out of the question and so I too was dragged in. It was bloody freezing. But I managed.

After half an hour in the freezing cold water I was finally allowed out and we all settled down to a little picnic to dry off and warm up in the sunshine....

After reaching a group decision that the lake was a tad chilly we decided to trek back to the house and go in the heated pool at home!
And so we did. In a bid to make the girls eat fruit, we cracked the blender out and made some raspberry smoothies avec a sparkly straw. Glitter apparently makes fruit and veg more enjoyable and they were a huge success!

After an afternoon spent in the pool, we headed inside to get a little shade. The evening was spent being incredibly girly.... We baked cupcakes (with edible glitter.... goes without saying...), painted nails and braided hair.

It has been a busy, but really good day! It's so nice to have older children again who are self sufficent. The little darlings even helped to cook dinner!

Tomorrow, another fun filled day.... Tennis in the morning, followed by arts, crafts and more baking in the afternoon!