Our Holiday in France, by Katie and Liss
*waves* Hello everyone, we're back! Rejoicing from everyone, I feel... This will be our supermegagiant holiday post, which I am sure you have all been anticipating with bated breath. But where to begin? for we have so much to say. So much, in fact, that we wrote a list in the car between Rennes and Le Havre. In the interests of making this all as straightforward as poss (incidentally, how cool is Strange?), we will use our wee list as headings...
(The list is slightly confuzzling after the fact. Hmmm. [K])
Moustache man
Walking down the street in Rennes, we came across a man with a heoooge giant twirly moustache. And this moustache was no accident, noo. It was a Deliberate Act of Moustache. We giggled, just a bit, and mourned that we could not take a photograph.
Mentoes
They are a wonder sweet. I (Liss) bought many, many tubes.
Liss's first aid kit
A particularly genius idea I had. Because I am a Guide-y person, y'see. I took my pot of Vicks, of course, as you do. And a sachet of lemsip. And in the bottom of my bag I found a remaining dextrose tablet. And then, (in my moment of genius), I realised that with my edelweiss bandana and a sanitary towel, I could construct a crude bandage. Yay me. Sadly I was not called upon to test this theory.
Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
Half way between the gite and Rennes papa Stone decided, in his infinite wisdom, that we would listen to Joseph on their mp3 player (and can I just take a moment here to mention the specialness of my mother when dealing with said mp3 player. She's not usually too bad with technology, but Oh. My. God. It caused much hilarity in the back seat and much tension in the front. Well, Liss and I enjoyed it.) Anyhoo, Joseph. Yus. Although neither of us had listened to it for 10-15 years we could sing (sing used in the very loosest sense of the world, of course. Goes without saying.) pretty much every word (got a bit confused on the colours of the coat, but you can't hod that against us) and all the dum dum dums and everything. Pure genius! [And may I just say, 'Could it be, could it be? Could it be , could it be? Could it possibly be Benjamin? Yes! Yes! Yes!' - L]
Brie
Brie was a bit of a theme. I believe we managed to eat almost a whole wheel between us in the 2 weeks. Us being me and Liss - the parentals didn't get much of a look in... [We did pretty much hog it all in our car picnics! - L] [And there were several car picnics, as is the way on the family holiday. One of them even in the pouring rain. - K]
General animalness
As the gite was on a mini farm type place there were lots of animals around. Which I loved but Liss was less pleased about for there were SHEEP. They weren't malevolent at all, but Liss wasn't convinced. [Damn right. There was one sheep that had a particularly suspicious baa-ing going on at strange times in the night. I mean, what was it up to? Other than calling the other sheep to prayer... - L] There was also a lovely puppy called Pepette who was very friendly and bouncy, and there were teeny tiny kittenses! Liss laughed at me because I got quite excited about them. But they were cute. There were fat baby bunnies and ducklings too. All in all, very cute. [Although it was a bit disturbing when Monsieur carted Mama Duck off by her neck and captured all the ducklings under a sort of industrial garde manger. Except the two that made a bid for freedom, of course, though I think Madame may have scuppered their plans... - L]
Giraffes
We noticed after a couple of days that there seemed to be rather a giraffal theme about the place. They were following us around! Everywhere we went there were giraffes - in one place there were even some net curtains with giraffes on them! (Or girafes if we're being French about it.) And there was obviously the fineness of Camille and her crepes - could there be a better book? We suspect Xanthe and Giraffe had rallied the troops and were spying on us...
Gite
The gite is a strange species. Often converted barns or bits of houses that aren't needed anymore, they tend to be furnished in a special way. For example, there may be 84,000 spoons and one knife because that's what they've managed to find. Our beds were following in this special vein. We decided after a few days of sleeping on them that they were camp beds sellotaped (slight exageration - there were actually screws involved...) to wooden heads and feet parts. They were rather creaky... Also, alas, there was no scope for proper showering. There was a pipe/showerhead affair but no thing to hook it onto and no shower curtain, so standing up would cause a slight flooding problem. Thus there was sitting in the bath having a shower going on. Bit spesh. [I had a bath. It seemed the best way forward. Also discovered that conditioner was not the necessity of life I had assumed it. Huh. - L]
Mills & Boon
There was actually a surprising amount of M&B reading going on, all things considered. There was a fine collection of French M&B paperbacks when we arrived, one of which was my first book of the holiday (ah, the wondrous mysterious Falcon Hall... Carmelita and her missing husband... Rosalind and Alex...). Then, in Aubeterre, we went in a little shop that had 5 M&B for one euro... a princely sum. Also bought a French book in a vain attempt to redeem myself, but since it was a translation of Biggles (about pirates - huzzah!), I fear this was not entirely successful. Anyway, yes. We both read a M&B or two.
Flies
There weren't particularly a lot of flies, except for one day (Thursday, I think it was) that Katie and I spent bopping around in our room (hmm, typed toom there initially, not really the impresssion I intended to give...) there was an ever increasing number of flies zooming around in a sort of holding pattern under the lamp. Most peculiar.
Sophie
Ah, Sophie. Comme je l'aime... Early on, I pur-chased Les Malheurs de Sophie (which I *think* am right in thinking was a book they read in the CS?), which is the Most Fabulous Book In The World. Il s'agit d'une petite fille, qui s'appelle Sophie. She is very naughty, though she usually makes a vague effort to be good. It never ends well. I should have sensed the general theme of the book in the first chapter, when she managed to totally destroy her new doll, each new disaster being caused by the best of intentions. Then, of course, she managed to kill her mother's goldfish (chopping them up for her dolls' tea party... then put them back in the fishbowl and hoped her mother would think they had chopped each other up... she's only four at this stage...). This was swiftly followed by the demise of the donkey. And the squirrel. And the cat and the bird. And then there was the tortoise... they didn't notice that one for a couple of days, only then it started to smell funny... Anyway. Yes. Everyone must read. Not that Katie probably needs to, as I was most considerate and kept everyone up-to-date with what Sophie was up to every time we sat down for a meal.
Lasagna and musicals
We made our famed courgette lasagne. Whilst listening (and, naturally, singing along) to Katie's musical playlist. And, strange fact, though we are both crap singers and have the world's smallest range, we both appear to have the same range as Sarah Michelle Gellar. Which means, o happy day, we can sing along quite happily to large swathes of Once More With Feeling without having to change key every other bar. Yayness.
Places we went
Obvs, we went lots of places. Pick of the bunch time, I think. Won't go through them all and bore you... We went to Pons and couldn't get into the Donjon because the person who would let us in was "en visite" for a suspiciously long time. We think s/he had taken a sneaky day off... Whilst wandering around the town, however, we did see a dry cleaners with a nun's habit in the window! We awarded ourselves a couple of nun points for that. Obviously nuns need to use such things as dry cleaners just like we do, but one doesn't really think about this as a general rule...
Bordeaux - Always nice. We went into a museum all about Jean Moulin and the Résistance and la Squeen saw her first real live swastika. Which is always an enriching experience. It was an excellent museum and recommended, should you be passing that way.
Jonzac - Had a very good tour of the chateau and the town by a nice woman from the office du tourisme. Lots of interesting info there. Some king or other stayed there on the way back from getting married. I'll leave Liss to tell you about the historical things. It seems best. [Louis XIV, Louis XIV!! Very exciting... - L]
Cognac - We visited here a few times. It was here we found Camille. I felt it should be mentioned.
Aubeterre - Very little place but has lots of nice stuff. A massive monolithic church that Liss went in and I didn't, a church with a pretty facade and a boring inside and signs to a Doll's Museum. THAT WAS NOT THERE. We were rather looking forward to going into the musée and walked up a big hill to it and found nothing. Which was rather rude, frankly. [The sign was a lie, a dastardly lie! The bastards! - L] And though it was a weeny place there had been TWO convents. Both founded by the same man. Whose father had also founded a convent elsewhere. Obviously a family obsession. [Also home to (i) the facade of Saint-Jacques, a much earlier church destroyed during the wars of Religion and (ii) the most *fabulous* monolithic church, hewn out of the cliff.]
Papeteries
Some of you will be aware of Liss' stationery obsession. Well, it was out in force this hols and infected me slightly. [Well, I think it's a little mean to shift the blame onto me, frankly. But I will remain silent. - L] However the French also seem to be obsessed with stationery as there is a papeterie on every corner. Almost literally. Many coloured pens have been pur-chased. And Liss has a new notebook, the suggested use of which seems to be to carry it in your y-fronts. I suspect the picture is supposed to be the back pocket of a pair of jeans, but still, it is now called the y-front notebook and will stay that way.
Coloured pens
Continuing the stationery theme, there were Austria pens IN MINIATURE, in little wallets. They are fantastic. I bought some, and then Katie SWF'd me (it's like a hobby we both engage in) and bought some too. And then their big brothers, the proper sized felt-tip pens, were also pur-chased. There was much colour fun (though a little more on that later).
La musee des bandes-dessines
OK, not sure if that's what it's called, but it's the cartoon museum in Angouleme, which was great. They had one area where they'd sort of built a huge square with big buildings, that were just cardboard facades. That's not a very good explanation (Katie may do it better, we can hope...) but it was very cool. [They were like those things you get as a kid with the flat sheets of cardboard that you fold up into little houses or whatever with tab A and line B and all that. It was trez cool - K]
The Game
We have created a whole new game. Well, expanded rather than created. You may be familiar with the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" wherein you have to get from a given act-or to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less. It's surprisingly easy, actually. Well, one night when we were talking and slightly tired of Who Am I? I suggested a variation on this game that I'd played before where you think of the names of two act-ors and have to link them through mutual films, i.e. Nick Berry to Sylvester Stallone. Nick Berry was in Heartbeat with Derek Fowlds who was in Yes, Minister with Nigel Hawthorne who was in Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone. Easy! It has become a mania with us! But we were not content with this. Oh no. We have made this into a special game for special people. It is surprisingly difficult to think of two good names, so we pur-chased a tin (the Tin of the Game) and some paper (the Paper of the Game) and now have lots and lots of slips of paper in said tin with people's names on from which we play the Game. We also bought a large exercise book (the Book of the Game) and have begun to devote ourselves to chronicling the game for future generations including: the Rules of the Game, useful manoeuvres (for example the Toupée, which designates any move using the genius of William Shatner) and any new vocabulary we have created, our favourite currently being the verb "to Deschanel". We shall no doubt force you all to play the Game at some point in the near future. We shall expand on the rules and useful manoeuvres, should you wish it.
We were most put out on the ferry, though, as some people behind us were also playing the Game - how rude! It was some weirdy bastardised version, though, somehow involving sports personalities...
Specialness
I think it goes without saying that we were both a bit spesh. Well, really very spesh. But, there, we have said it. Just in case anyone randomly thought we might have behaved like rational adults, or anything like that. Personally, I kept getting stuck climbing in and out of the car. Or not so much stuck, as just covered in bits of crap that fell out...
[In other specialness news, the men who decided where everyone should park their cars on the ferry on the way home didn't seem to see the need to leave any space to walk between or get into the cars. This was fine on the way in as we were about the 5th car on and thus there was tonnes of space, but on the way out everyone was practically climbing over other people's bonnets. Faintly ridiculous, I feel... - K]
As we are pantsity-poo at remembering to take photos we have a grand total of about 12 to show you. And as you may remember from previous photo posts, our camera is not the best in the world...
The Spanish balconies of Aubeterre. Apparently.
Fancy church facade at Aubeterre
Us with Aubeterre in the background
Us at a weirdy fountain in Bourdeaux. It was on a Republican theme
Crazy flamingoes in the Place de l'Hotel de Ville in Le Havre
Liss with her fancy strawberry juice in Domme
An unidentified building in Rennes
Rennes Hotel de Ville
Me infront of another unidentified building in Rennes
15th century ramparts in Rennes
Me (looking terrible) on t'other side of the 15th century ramparts
Us with a weirdy wooden man in Aubeterre. It was a bit of a theme. There were at least 3 dotted about
(The list is slightly confuzzling after the fact. Hmmm. [K])
Moustache man
Walking down the street in Rennes, we came across a man with a heoooge giant twirly moustache. And this moustache was no accident, noo. It was a Deliberate Act of Moustache. We giggled, just a bit, and mourned that we could not take a photograph.
Mentoes
They are a wonder sweet. I (Liss) bought many, many tubes.
Liss's first aid kit
A particularly genius idea I had. Because I am a Guide-y person, y'see. I took my pot of Vicks, of course, as you do. And a sachet of lemsip. And in the bottom of my bag I found a remaining dextrose tablet. And then, (in my moment of genius), I realised that with my edelweiss bandana and a sanitary towel, I could construct a crude bandage. Yay me. Sadly I was not called upon to test this theory.
Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
Half way between the gite and Rennes papa Stone decided, in his infinite wisdom, that we would listen to Joseph on their mp3 player (and can I just take a moment here to mention the specialness of my mother when dealing with said mp3 player. She's not usually too bad with technology, but Oh. My. God. It caused much hilarity in the back seat and much tension in the front. Well, Liss and I enjoyed it.) Anyhoo, Joseph. Yus. Although neither of us had listened to it for 10-15 years we could sing (sing used in the very loosest sense of the world, of course. Goes without saying.) pretty much every word (got a bit confused on the colours of the coat, but you can't hod that against us) and all the dum dum dums and everything. Pure genius! [And may I just say, 'Could it be, could it be? Could it be , could it be? Could it possibly be Benjamin? Yes! Yes! Yes!' - L]
Brie
Brie was a bit of a theme. I believe we managed to eat almost a whole wheel between us in the 2 weeks. Us being me and Liss - the parentals didn't get much of a look in... [We did pretty much hog it all in our car picnics! - L] [And there were several car picnics, as is the way on the family holiday. One of them even in the pouring rain. - K]
General animalness
As the gite was on a mini farm type place there were lots of animals around. Which I loved but Liss was less pleased about for there were SHEEP. They weren't malevolent at all, but Liss wasn't convinced. [Damn right. There was one sheep that had a particularly suspicious baa-ing going on at strange times in the night. I mean, what was it up to? Other than calling the other sheep to prayer... - L] There was also a lovely puppy called Pepette who was very friendly and bouncy, and there were teeny tiny kittenses! Liss laughed at me because I got quite excited about them. But they were cute. There were fat baby bunnies and ducklings too. All in all, very cute. [Although it was a bit disturbing when Monsieur carted Mama Duck off by her neck and captured all the ducklings under a sort of industrial garde manger. Except the two that made a bid for freedom, of course, though I think Madame may have scuppered their plans... - L]
Giraffes
We noticed after a couple of days that there seemed to be rather a giraffal theme about the place. They were following us around! Everywhere we went there were giraffes - in one place there were even some net curtains with giraffes on them! (Or girafes if we're being French about it.) And there was obviously the fineness of Camille and her crepes - could there be a better book? We suspect Xanthe and Giraffe had rallied the troops and were spying on us...
Gite
The gite is a strange species. Often converted barns or bits of houses that aren't needed anymore, they tend to be furnished in a special way. For example, there may be 84,000 spoons and one knife because that's what they've managed to find. Our beds were following in this special vein. We decided after a few days of sleeping on them that they were camp beds sellotaped (slight exageration - there were actually screws involved...) to wooden heads and feet parts. They were rather creaky... Also, alas, there was no scope for proper showering. There was a pipe/showerhead affair but no thing to hook it onto and no shower curtain, so standing up would cause a slight flooding problem. Thus there was sitting in the bath having a shower going on. Bit spesh. [I had a bath. It seemed the best way forward. Also discovered that conditioner was not the necessity of life I had assumed it. Huh. - L]
Mills & Boon
There was actually a surprising amount of M&B reading going on, all things considered. There was a fine collection of French M&B paperbacks when we arrived, one of which was my first book of the holiday (ah, the wondrous mysterious Falcon Hall... Carmelita and her missing husband... Rosalind and Alex...). Then, in Aubeterre, we went in a little shop that had 5 M&B for one euro... a princely sum. Also bought a French book in a vain attempt to redeem myself, but since it was a translation of Biggles (about pirates - huzzah!), I fear this was not entirely successful. Anyway, yes. We both read a M&B or two.
Flies
There weren't particularly a lot of flies, except for one day (Thursday, I think it was) that Katie and I spent bopping around in our room (hmm, typed toom there initially, not really the impresssion I intended to give...) there was an ever increasing number of flies zooming around in a sort of holding pattern under the lamp. Most peculiar.
Sophie
Ah, Sophie. Comme je l'aime... Early on, I pur-chased Les Malheurs de Sophie (which I *think* am right in thinking was a book they read in the CS?), which is the Most Fabulous Book In The World. Il s'agit d'une petite fille, qui s'appelle Sophie. She is very naughty, though she usually makes a vague effort to be good. It never ends well. I should have sensed the general theme of the book in the first chapter, when she managed to totally destroy her new doll, each new disaster being caused by the best of intentions. Then, of course, she managed to kill her mother's goldfish (chopping them up for her dolls' tea party... then put them back in the fishbowl and hoped her mother would think they had chopped each other up... she's only four at this stage...). This was swiftly followed by the demise of the donkey. And the squirrel. And the cat and the bird. And then there was the tortoise... they didn't notice that one for a couple of days, only then it started to smell funny... Anyway. Yes. Everyone must read. Not that Katie probably needs to, as I was most considerate and kept everyone up-to-date with what Sophie was up to every time we sat down for a meal.
Lasagna and musicals
We made our famed courgette lasagne. Whilst listening (and, naturally, singing along) to Katie's musical playlist. And, strange fact, though we are both crap singers and have the world's smallest range, we both appear to have the same range as Sarah Michelle Gellar. Which means, o happy day, we can sing along quite happily to large swathes of Once More With Feeling without having to change key every other bar. Yayness.
Places we went
Obvs, we went lots of places. Pick of the bunch time, I think. Won't go through them all and bore you... We went to Pons and couldn't get into the Donjon because the person who would let us in was "en visite" for a suspiciously long time. We think s/he had taken a sneaky day off... Whilst wandering around the town, however, we did see a dry cleaners with a nun's habit in the window! We awarded ourselves a couple of nun points for that. Obviously nuns need to use such things as dry cleaners just like we do, but one doesn't really think about this as a general rule...
Bordeaux - Always nice. We went into a museum all about Jean Moulin and the Résistance and la Squeen saw her first real live swastika. Which is always an enriching experience. It was an excellent museum and recommended, should you be passing that way.
Jonzac - Had a very good tour of the chateau and the town by a nice woman from the office du tourisme. Lots of interesting info there. Some king or other stayed there on the way back from getting married. I'll leave Liss to tell you about the historical things. It seems best. [Louis XIV, Louis XIV!! Very exciting... - L]
Cognac - We visited here a few times. It was here we found Camille. I felt it should be mentioned.
Aubeterre - Very little place but has lots of nice stuff. A massive monolithic church that Liss went in and I didn't, a church with a pretty facade and a boring inside and signs to a Doll's Museum. THAT WAS NOT THERE. We were rather looking forward to going into the musée and walked up a big hill to it and found nothing. Which was rather rude, frankly. [The sign was a lie, a dastardly lie! The bastards! - L] And though it was a weeny place there had been TWO convents. Both founded by the same man. Whose father had also founded a convent elsewhere. Obviously a family obsession. [Also home to (i) the facade of Saint-Jacques, a much earlier church destroyed during the wars of Religion and (ii) the most *fabulous* monolithic church, hewn out of the cliff.]
Papeteries
Some of you will be aware of Liss' stationery obsession. Well, it was out in force this hols and infected me slightly. [Well, I think it's a little mean to shift the blame onto me, frankly. But I will remain silent. - L] However the French also seem to be obsessed with stationery as there is a papeterie on every corner. Almost literally. Many coloured pens have been pur-chased. And Liss has a new notebook, the suggested use of which seems to be to carry it in your y-fronts. I suspect the picture is supposed to be the back pocket of a pair of jeans, but still, it is now called the y-front notebook and will stay that way.
Coloured pens
Continuing the stationery theme, there were Austria pens IN MINIATURE, in little wallets. They are fantastic. I bought some, and then Katie SWF'd me (it's like a hobby we both engage in) and bought some too. And then their big brothers, the proper sized felt-tip pens, were also pur-chased. There was much colour fun (though a little more on that later).
La musee des bandes-dessines
OK, not sure if that's what it's called, but it's the cartoon museum in Angouleme, which was great. They had one area where they'd sort of built a huge square with big buildings, that were just cardboard facades. That's not a very good explanation (Katie may do it better, we can hope...) but it was very cool. [They were like those things you get as a kid with the flat sheets of cardboard that you fold up into little houses or whatever with tab A and line B and all that. It was trez cool - K]
The Game
We have created a whole new game. Well, expanded rather than created. You may be familiar with the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" wherein you have to get from a given act-or to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less. It's surprisingly easy, actually. Well, one night when we were talking and slightly tired of Who Am I? I suggested a variation on this game that I'd played before where you think of the names of two act-ors and have to link them through mutual films, i.e. Nick Berry to Sylvester Stallone. Nick Berry was in Heartbeat with Derek Fowlds who was in Yes, Minister with Nigel Hawthorne who was in Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone. Easy! It has become a mania with us! But we were not content with this. Oh no. We have made this into a special game for special people. It is surprisingly difficult to think of two good names, so we pur-chased a tin (the Tin of the Game) and some paper (the Paper of the Game) and now have lots and lots of slips of paper in said tin with people's names on from which we play the Game. We also bought a large exercise book (the Book of the Game) and have begun to devote ourselves to chronicling the game for future generations including: the Rules of the Game, useful manoeuvres (for example the Toupée, which designates any move using the genius of William Shatner) and any new vocabulary we have created, our favourite currently being the verb "to Deschanel". We shall no doubt force you all to play the Game at some point in the near future. We shall expand on the rules and useful manoeuvres, should you wish it.
We were most put out on the ferry, though, as some people behind us were also playing the Game - how rude! It was some weirdy bastardised version, though, somehow involving sports personalities...
Specialness
I think it goes without saying that we were both a bit spesh. Well, really very spesh. But, there, we have said it. Just in case anyone randomly thought we might have behaved like rational adults, or anything like that. Personally, I kept getting stuck climbing in and out of the car. Or not so much stuck, as just covered in bits of crap that fell out...
[In other specialness news, the men who decided where everyone should park their cars on the ferry on the way home didn't seem to see the need to leave any space to walk between or get into the cars. This was fine on the way in as we were about the 5th car on and thus there was tonnes of space, but on the way out everyone was practically climbing over other people's bonnets. Faintly ridiculous, I feel... - K]
As we are pantsity-poo at remembering to take photos we have a grand total of about 12 to show you. And as you may remember from previous photo posts, our camera is not the best in the world...
The Spanish balconies of Aubeterre. Apparently.
Fancy church facade at Aubeterre
Us with Aubeterre in the background
Us at a weirdy fountain in Bourdeaux. It was on a Republican theme
Crazy flamingoes in the Place de l'Hotel de Ville in Le Havre
Liss with her fancy strawberry juice in Domme
An unidentified building in Rennes
Rennes Hotel de Ville
Me infront of another unidentified building in Rennes
15th century ramparts in Rennes
Me (looking terrible) on t'other side of the 15th century ramparts
Us with a weirdy wooden man in Aubeterre. It was a bit of a theme. There were at least 3 dotted about