French supermarket

Reminising about my French holiday, I remembered some photos I took in the Supermarket we visited.

Ah, it is SO lovely to see MULTIPLE varieties of fruit and vegetables available loose! In the UK, moreoften than not, in the supermarket, if you are lucky enough to find something unpacked, there is only the one option. But in this supermarket, there were multiple tomato varieties, multiple plums, multiple beans and I even spy various carrots!

All those tomatoes!

Oh to have a choice of plums and greengages!

And even French beans!

Alas, I got sucked in my the bargain section...which involved some plastic!

Oh, and if you are wondering, this is my favourite purchase ever. A 300g bag of cheesy puffs- the equivalent of Wotsits. The most enormous bag of crisps I've ever seen. Of course I bought them! And ate them all! Over about 2 weeks.

xx

Holiday outfits

 I love dressing for a holiday!!! Dresses and skirts and pretty tops and light things. But I always like to have an option for covering up in the sun as I don't want to expose my skin too much, plus sun cream application is tedious plus I have moles on my back, arms that I am always a bit cautious of,

But, I thought it would be fun to document some of my holiday outfits.

Remember my £5 white, rayon, embroidered dress from the charity shop? I saved this for the day we were going to go to Saint Tropez but in the end, decided not to go- I wore the dress anyway.  I picked some flowers from the bush to try and trick my Balinese gamelan group into thinking I was in Bali! Worn with Belgian-bought belt and a pair of Primark flipflops bought from the charity shop for £1 the day before we went away!

Another photo to trick the gamelan group (the day bed was purchased in Bali from the house owner...who owns a house in Bali too! Lucky man!)

The outfit features the Monstera print linen dress I bought in Leigh when my trouser elastic went.  I added a white broderie anglaise button down blouse from Miss Selfridge for sun protection.

We visited Cannes one day (too hot for a city day!) even one by a beach. I wore a white cotton top from Next (charity shopped) which has some lace trims on. Along with that I wore this blue water patterned silk skirt from Monsoon (also charity shopped). I've had this as long as I've known CBC, bar one year! I wore it with my Saltwater floral sandals (second hand via Depop). Worn with silver Rieker sandals.

One evening we went to a local restaurant called The Two Pines. Here's what I wore. My royal blue cotton jersey Grecian dress from ASOS (bought in 2011) and I bought a lovely blue-patterned rayon blouse/cardie from a shop in Langue, a town we had visited that day. It was made in Bali, I think everything in that shop was made in Bali and it made me remember the smell in lovely shops in Bali. You can see my Rieker lattice Mary Jane shoes poking out. They are very old and extremely faded and not at all stylish but I love them for holidays and Summer. One of the lattices was broken and the local shoe mender patched it for me. Possibly my favourite outfit!

On the Tuesday of our holiday, CBC went off to Nice to do a big cycle ride on a hire bike. The rest of us visited Frejus, by the coast.  I wore my Phool soft cotton button down dress  (charityshopped) in red/pink.  I teamed it with the Topshop hat that Vix sent me as a present plus a Liberty paisley silk scarf from TK Maxx and my Seasalt sandals.  There was also a Per Una white cotton shirt I covered up with which wasn't in this photo! My hair got very windy here!

Another day, we had gone for a trek in the woods (with a HORRIBLE down-hill, scrambly bit!) as it was a cooler, rainy day. I was wearing a different outfit (see the Fromagery below) when we visited a village called Langue but had brought clothes to change into if we went on a trek.

Here you can see:

1970's cheesecloth blouse- this was a hand-me down from my Mum. This was my absolute favourite blouse that I wore all the time in Indonesia when I lived there. I teamed it with a Seasalt buff, worn as a headband (a present from my friend Ellie) and sand-coloured pin stripe linen shorts from Lidl middle aisles...plus my hiking shoes from Hitek!

Excuse the bad acting. This massive plant was in our garden at the house and we pretended it was some sort of Doctor Who monster!

The dress was a charity shopped viscose (I think) Ikat dress, loose fitting with a crocheted front- it had no labels so I don't know where it was from originally. This is what I wore in Nice.  You can see my Rieker shoes showing in this photo!

Ha! Here's my 2 piece swim suit.  This is from Speedo and I bought it at the Olympic pool in Stratford back in 2014 when we went to swim there and stupidly, I had forgotten my swimming stuff!!!  I like it very much because it has proper shorts (I do not like high cut swimsuits!) and a long top meaning a lumpy mole on my midriff is covered up!

Do you have a favourite?

xx

France- Sacre Couer, Nice

 We travelled to France on Saturday 13th August.  We stayed at CBC's brother's flat the night before as there was a train strike so it would have been impossible to get there from home. As it was, luckily, the DLR, Elizabeth line and Circle lines were running so we were able to get there from his. We met CBC's mum at St Pancras for breakfast.  The queues to get into the Eurostar terminal were massive but well-organised and moved quickly.   It left on time, at around 10.20am and the journey went quickly.

We arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris and quickly joined the taxi queue to take us to Paris Gare de Lyon where we were to join our TGV train. Luckily the queue moved quickly and we were soon in a taxi. It cost around 14 Euros.  We didn't get the Metro as CBC's mum struggles to walk far, particularly with luggage. I was also glad as my soft bag on wheel had already got a slight rip at the seams and some small holes in the base which I would prefer not to stress too much. This meant I am rather over protective of anyone else picking it up as if it is picked up not evenly, the rips would get worse.

As it happened,the taxi man picked it up before I could stop him...and caused another rip in another place!AR HGHGHGHGA!!! CBC and his mum kept mocking me and making fun for being so overprotective of my bag but it wasn't them that had to cope with it!

At Gare De Lyon, we went to a Pret to get something to eat (they did. I just got a drink).

When the platform showed for our Nice train, we had to get moving. We had 10 minutes to go and of course, it was the most far away platform and our carriage was right at the end of a really, really, long Double-decker train!!! It was SUCH a walk and we only had about 2 minutes before our train left.

The train was due to take 5 hours but the journey seemed to go really quickly. We all had a bit of a sleep and we read books and ate snacks. I had bought cucumber, carrot sticks and tomatoes plus some fruit, crisps, chocolate and some M&S sandwiches.

The view from the train is brilliant once you reach the coast- it really is picturesque so I recommend it.

The journey was mainly pleasant and relaxed except for 2 incidents...one, where we happened to be staring out the window and saw some children by the rail tracks who threw rocks at the train!! The massive bang when they hit was really scary.  There was also a massive argument between two men...one who we think was really rude to his children!

We arrived to Nice at around 9.30pm at night and despite our hotel being only 800m away, CBC's mum insisted on getting a taxi...it cost 20 euros for 800m essentially! RIP OFF!

The hotel was very pleasant but we had to cart the luggage up a winding staircase.

We were too tired to go out for dinner so we went to sleep after a cup of tea with CBC's mum in our room.

The next morning, after a very pleasant breakfast in the hotel, we headed out to look around Nice. It was scorching hot but luckily, there were regular benches with white canvas canopies so you could sit and enjoy the sun without getting burnt.

I briefly paddled in the sea.

We headed to a lovely restaurant in Nice La Femme du Boulanger where we had a very pleasant 2 course menu with actual vegetables!!

We continued wandering  and came across the church,Sacre Couer.

It was a beautiful,modern church which had some lovely art works and windows of various kinds.

I took some photos to share some of them.

The outside.

The fotn was flanked by a beautiful mosaic.

Here there were coloured ribbons tied for prayers.

Various pulpits had mosaics too.

The main window, which had a banner saying, Dieu est Amour (God is love) was really striking.

The area behind the altar had more mosaics.

The altar was carved stone and there were more traditional stained glass windows.

As with many French catholic churches, there are various altars around the sides. Perhaps stations of the cross?

Here are some close ups of the main stained glass window.

After a while, it was time to meet CBC's brother, sister and her husband who had come to France by plane (we were the eco-friendly contingent!)

They picked us up in the hire car (sadly necessary for the location of our house for the week) and we headed off to La Motte, near Draguinan, an hour or so away from Nice where we met the host of our house but more of the house another day.

xx

Circumnavigating the UK- Honfleur- butterflies!

As mentioned a few weeks ago, I felt I should really finish writing about my last Summer's travels.  If you recall, I was on a 12 day cruise circumnavigating the UK.  Our final day's stop was to be the pretty town of Honfleur in Northern France.  Mum and I had no particular fixed idea about what we wanted to do and decided to walk around, find some brochures and then make a decision.

The town was really attractive, particularly this busy section around the river.

This old-fashioned merry-go-round reminds me of Amelie!

We decided to walk to a Butterfly House we'd seen on a map as both Mum and I adore butterflies.

I have tried to identify butterflies in retrospect as best I can but whilst I know my British butterflies, these Tropical ones are a bit of a guessing game comparing pictures.

Here is a Malachite.

The place was really warm but it was delightful to be surrounded by so many beautiful, huge tropical butterflies. However, it was extremely hard to get them to land and pose prettily for a photo.  Most of them were extremely flighty though, and just fluttered tantalisingly out of reach most of the time.

I was after this blue-tipped one for ages. Could this one be a Blue Morpho? I'm not sure.

This looks most like a Common Crow, but I am not sure if my identification is correct!

We soon discovered that the butterflies weren't alone and there were a whole host of other creatures within the tropical gardens.

A very strange low-pitched moaning attracted my attention and I caught this strange fellow lurking on top of a doorway.

I always love how much like eyes these outer wings seem.

Trying to photograph this beautiful turquoise prettily shaped one was a futile venture!

These pretty curved orange and spotty ones were positively docile by comparison. They look like a Golden Longwing

A wonderful opportunity suddenly presented itself when I spied this pair of Giant Swallowtail butterflies alongside a Blue Morpho one but I had to stand on one leg, leaning over a pond to take it at full zoom!

At long last! A Green Swallowtail!

This pretty marbled fellow sat on a leaf for a while but his wings were constantly on the go- this is the least-blurred of a myriad photos! I think he's called a  Paper Kite or a Rice Paper but then again, he resembles a Wood Nymph too!

This one below looks like a Tailed Jay.

I think this is called a Tiger Longwing.

This strange and detailed one really reminded me of a cat! I think it may be called a Clipper.

More watching eyes...Apparently this is called an Owl Butterfly.  How wonderfully appropriate!

This one looks also like a Blue Morpho  (ventral) from the outside.

A variety of a Lacewing here.

Hello Giant Swallowtail!

This resembles a Gap-banded swallowtail.

This one looks like a Lacewing.

What I failed to capture on film is the moment a butterfly landed on my hand! My camera had died by this point.

Afterwards, I had a yearning to visit the beach so we made an extremely lengthly and tiresome trudge to a beach which appeared much nearer on the map.  The tide was right out and the beach, to be honest, was rather yucky.  I regret dragging Mum all that way in my haste and causing her to be tired.

After this, we headed back to town to look for somewhere for something to drink.

With a little perusal of shops, we eventually made our way back to the ship.

Honfleur was undoubtedly pretty and we were glad to have made its acquaintance, even if all our photos were of the butterflies!

Do you like visiting Butterfly houses?
xx