French fancies

Phew - busy weeks are hopefully past us. Matt flew back from Goa on Wednesday 4th April - he landed at 10.30pm and we were on the road to France at 10am the following morning. Had a nightmare journey - it took 10 hours to get to Folkestone (!) - and consequently we missed our crossing. We were then booked onto the 12.20am crossing (original crossing was 6.20pm) but we didn't get onto the train until 1.20 and we finally arrived at the hotel at 3 am. Anya wouldn't then go back to sleep and lay kicking me until 4.40!!! I was not a happy person :-(

Anyway it was lovely to finally see Matt's sister's house which is about 3 1/2 hours south of Paris. As you drive into the village you are greeted by the sight of the river and the canal merging in a marina type area - it's beautiful but my attempts to describe it are horrendous!! The location and the house itself were well worth the traveling time.

Obviously being me I manged to fit in a few trips to the local brocante (which translates as second hand trade) It was like heaven on earth for me - nothing upmarket - just a glorious junk shop full to the brim of stuff!! I restrained myself and only bought a few postcards which I am hoping to turn into notecards with humorous captions. Here's a few pictures of them.

This little one is from the selection at the top of the page - he doesn't look too happy in that knitted outfit does he?

It took me ages to work out what the woman in the postcard on the right was doing - I first thought that she was cuddling a chicken! I think she is spinning wool though - I had to have it! My favourite postcard though is this one below - sooooo cute!


In the brocante I did spot the most wonderful little calender that was a burgundy coloured dog with a holder for little plastic bits with the names of the days of the week etc that you turned over to change the date. It was 1 euro and I didn't buy it!!! How daft am I? I then tried to go back but the owner has a mind of his own and varies the opening times on a daily basis and whenever we went back he was closed. Luckily (my husband disagrees!) my sister- in- law saw the calender and will try to buy it for me when she goes back to the house in May. I hope she can get it - I've been kicking myself for not buying it there and then.

We also managed to get to another brocante in another town but this was obviously the creme de la creme of brocantes. It was more like a traditional antiques fair and it was very pricey. One print that Matt looked at of the local area (thinking it might make a nice present for his sister) was 300 euros! We left that stall pretty quickly. We did find one reasonably priced stall and I bought the cutest buttons from him - just got to figure out what to do with them now!