THE JOURNEY HOME OR SATURDAY

There is nothing more exciting than waiting to see if you will get your cash deposit on your holiday gite back on the morning you leave as it will be your petrol money. We passed muster, although the bill for a week’s worth of croissants and pain au raisins and baguettes was surprisingly high end.

Baguette or gold bar? I am not sure which ended up being cheaper.

9am – on the road, we decided that we would arc back via Caen, then shoot off to the North Normandy coast and town hop. This meant by the time I got home to Leigh on Sea I had been driving for 13 hours and a bit, but it was worth it.


We dropped in on the edge of Cabourg (a bit like Brighton but smaller), then into Houlgate (a Hove to Cabourg’s Brighton), Villers sur mer (dunno, but it was sweet), Blonville sur mer (gorgeously sweet), Deauville (Chigwell on Sea), Trouville (older than Deauville) and then in Honfleur for lunch. Guess what we had for lunch? Yeah, ha ha ha moules *twitches*.

Honfleur is basically a much bigger French version of Padstow, where incidentally Mrs M’s Grandfather was once harbormaster (that last bit of info is my gift to you all). The food was again of a high standard and, once again, remarkably cheap. The drink however was a slap in the face with an iron glove €6 for a Coke seems a little steep to me.

Really very lovely. If a little bit of a tourist pit of fleecing.

Back on the road we headed for The Bridge! Or Le Pont de Normandy. As a Kent born chap, married to an Essex born lady, we are very familiar with the Dartford crossing and the QE2 Bridge, which is essentially our version of Le Pont de Normandy, both straddling the large river that descends from our respective capital cities and spills our pollution into the sea. However, our bridge only costs £1.50 to cross (free at night) and even in the longest traffic jam only ever takes 20 mins to cross. Our French brethren like to charge €5 something and took us well over an hour to creep over. We were not impressed.



Equally unimpressive was the bloody minded Frenchman who turned us away at the Channel Crossing because we were 20mins too early. Or the incredibly inefficient way they seemed to be unable to get you through check in and customs. I was convinced I saw Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz in a car alongside us. When I got a proper look they turned out to be a couple who had more in common with Bert and Ernie. I was tired.

Daniel and Rachel

Bert and Ernie

We got home late. The kids went to bed, we went to bed. Breton was a triumph. But I think we will go back to Italy as soon as we can afford it again.

Where we live. I know, why would you go on holiday if you lived here?

Coming soon, Summer 2012, the Magill Family holiday on Romney Marshes.

THE POOL OR FRIDAY

This will be a short blog. We spent the day by the pool. Then we went to Francky’s. This was a tiny little typical roadside spit and sawdust French bar. Just how they manage to cook such excellent food for so little, where in the UK, for the similar amount of cash, you are lucky if you even get spit in your food, is beyond me.

Pool to the right, grass to the left. But you have probably worked that out for yourself.

We all tucked into Moules, mariniere and Provencal. Coquilles Saint-Jacques Breton style, Langoustines, steak hache (simply massive kids burgers) Roquefort and pear, Camembert and caramel, and more ice cream than we could collectively deal with. It was a stunning meal. We were all very happy with a touch of sadness that the holiday was coming to an end.

I doesn't look much from the outside and has more plastic
furniture than B&Q but it was quite special. Chez Francky's

I will only eat in restaurants that display their menu in this way
from now on. Le Gavroche had better sharpen their act. 

Curious (not French) things spotted today:

• The other people round the pool.

ELEPHANTS AND ICE CREAM OR THURSDAY

Hands up who remembers the Sultan’s Elephant that strolled around London a few years back – or perhaps the giant Spider in Liverpool? Well, the people who created them have a workshop in Nantes. My father warned me about Nantes, having spent many years visiting to the city as a ship builder, his words were not exactly, ‘the place is hole’, but the inference was there.


The journey into the city is stressful by car. Made even more stressful when using an incorrectly entered post code into Google maps that takes you right to the heart of one of the poorest looking council estates that Nantes has to offer. You know when you read stories of the odd sad-sac who has driven his lorry into a pond because his sat-nav told him to and all you can think is why? At what point did you realise that the pond on Bromley common was not the Loughborough Argos depot that you entered into your machine. I can honestly say that there comes a moment of desperation that takes over, you keep driving past more and more burning cars and children throwing rocks at you with your internal voice saying, ‘turn back now’ but your external voice overriding it with, ‘no, if we keep driving we will find it, how can the satellites circling our planet be wrong?’ We ended up following road signs and found Les Machines.

You have to see it up close to believe it.
There are elephants and then there is is this elephant.

Les Machines occupy the now more or less defunct L’île de Nantes ship building section of the city, breathing a new very South Bank style life into the town. Simply put, Les Machines are a triumph of French (Victorian?) imagination and design, creating working machines that are fused with the natural world. We were all overwhelmed by Bernard the Crab Motorbike, the Giant Squid, Flying Fish, Sea-Horses and, most impressive of all is the Elephant. We watched it, we were in awe of it and then we rode it. It was quite slow.

A motorbike that is a crab. A motorcrab? A Crabberbike?
No. It is called Bernard.

The rest of Nantes is a bit of a schlep from Les Machines. We eschewed the Jules Verne Museum, basically because it was in the opposite direction to the rest of the city. Something I suspect he overlooked when growing up. I mean, honestly, if you are going to be the founding father of science fiction, at least grow up near the centre of the city so that the completely knackered parents of children who have no interest in your writing can visit.


Ginger and Blondie started flagging 20mins into the walk towards the castle at the other end of Nantes, we promised them ice creams. It was a dangly carrot that worked very well. We reached the castle, didn’t find the cathedral, looked in a dodgy little church where the girls dipped their fingers into the font and made the sign of the cross on their foreheads because the lady before them did. Hmmm…. who are we to say anything…..


Getting out of Nantes was interesting, I hate crossing tram lines or train tracks, I have a similar phobia to Michael Palin’s character in GBH who couldn’t cross water. Except maybe it isn’t an actual phobia, I just don’t like it. I tense up, sometimes I close my eyes (never advisable when driving), but this was a zigzagging over railway/tramway lines of epic proportions, I shudder to recall the journey.

For Sartre it was other people. For me it is this.

Curious French things spotted today:

• Why do the French close a bar at lunchtime? It is lunchtime, a high traffic moment for them surely.
• Likewise, why shut down a carousel over lunchtime and dinner time? These are the moments that there are families just dying to waste €3 per child for 3 minutes and 17 seconds of circular fun. Instead you leave us with kids upset and not comprehending that ‘the man’ likes a long break.
• Posters in France are inexplicably cheaper than a tiny tin of toffees. Why?
• C&A still exists in France.

I loved C&A

We had a BBQ with our holiday neighbors. The law and because I am reasonably nice prevent me from writing about it. I will say one thing though. I am glad that I do not earn a living from the desperate state of others. I will say another thing. I may have accused one of the people at the BBQ of being a Nazi, I drank too much, I tried to correct all their far right opinions. I feel I failed.

SALT AND SLOW SERVICE OR TUESDAY

Another scorching day in Sud Breton. So what better way to spend it than drying out in the same place that is hot enough to grow fields of salt. That is correct. Field upon field of salt. It makes Maldon look like a comical Sunday afternoon attempt at grow your own crystals, as this place, Guérande, is so good at it they needed to build a wall around their town. Which has a slight flaw as the fields are outside the town walls, so surely if you were a salt thirsty siege-minded nation you could just help yourself from the fields and sod the buggers inside the town wall? The poor salties not only defended their salt badly, they were also taxed on it in the ‘olden days’ thus giving rise to the saying, ‘there are only two things certain in life, death and salt taxes.’ OK I 'may' have added the salt bit, but I bet all of the medieval salties uttered this.



To you this is just salt, but to the good people of Guérande
it is... erm well probably salt as well.


The town is a delight. Three churches, three high streets and three hours to wait for a bloody coffee. Mrs M winged about this at the time, we had sat down in the traditional café frontage on the main market square for approximately 20 mins, a couple of trips inside had been made to order only to be swatted back outside to utilise the waitress service. Nothing. I responded to Mrs M’s blatant impatience that we needed to slow down a go with the pace of the land only to be met with the same snarling response that Woodstock used to give when angry with Snoopy. I admit now that the wait was too long, and my meek acceptance to get up and view the church with our fervently religious eldest daughter was my compliance in Mrs M’s mini impatient rage.

Spookily Mrs M even has the same colour hair. Imagine this with
squinty eyes and little anger lines flying around. That is Mrs M with no
coffee (or wine)*.

* this makes her sound like an alcoholic. She is not. I feel I should make that clear.

Addendum: This happened again that evening in a Tabac. The same ***$*££@@*** Woodstock style snarl was raised after our drinks were order and never materialised. Once again I called for calm and patience. Turned out the bar owner had forgotten our order. Oh well, without Mrs M’s presence I would die of thirst. This is fact.

We went to a beach this day as well. It was a fine beach. (why am I writing like EM Forster all of a sudden? I know you are now thing, 'Forster? he wishes!') Ginger and Blondie made friends with a girl from Leeds. We all buried ourselves in the sand and made huge boobies on our sandy chests. Ginger did a spot of open water swimming. Mrs M didn’t see this at the time, it was actually me accidentally taking her out of her depth on my back and forcing her to swim back on a wave. Fortunately she enjoyed it.

Aah happy times.

I got sun burn, Blondie got the hump because we took her away from her new beach friend, all was as it should be. Got back, went for another bike ride into Deliverance country, and survived.


Curious French things spotted today:
• French wasps appear out of thin air when you open a sugar filled drink.
• No French women went topless on this beach, this was something I always noticed as a child when holidaying in France. Although I did see a 60+ woman’s leathery old boob when she accidentally pulled her swimming costume down to her waist for no real reason.
• Parking so far has been free everywhere. On this occasion we parked about 20 footsteps from the beach.

We had a little meal consisting of moules, fish, duck and plum tart (separately and collectively). The meal was excellent, and they virtually paid us to eat the moules. Our girls love moules. We ended the evening watching the sunset over the port at the insistence of Ginger. She is the most romantic seven year old in our family.

I won't make a flippant comment, as this is a fabulous sunset.

Another glorious day.

SPECTACLE D'OISEAU OR MONDAY

The test of every holiday with younglings is the zoo/fun park. I have done Festyland in Normandy, it was a crock of utter dolt, so the French benchmark is approximately at my ankles.

However, dutifully we set off for Branféré. OMG and all the other teen abbreviations. This place is brilliant. Not only are there continual island after island of monkeys from capuchin to some other kind of mini Sasquatch primate – but there was the Spectacle d'Oiseau . Now, call me a cynic, but I have seen ‘so called’ bird shows before in the UK and the consisted of a couple of rabid looking owls and a kestrel with alopecia. This show started with great promise. Any Gallic bird handler who has the sheer cojones to open his act with the soundtrack to Braveheart gets my attention immediately. First out of the trap was an owl. Hmm thinketh I…. an owl…. But this is swiftly followed by two eagles, a plethora of parrots, kestrels, cranes, more eagles, more parrots, parakeets, cockatoos, storks, flamingos, a freakin vulture! pelicans and then finally a dodo! OK the last one was a lie, but still, if one had waddled out and pecked at my face you would not have seen surprise in my eyebrows. At one moment we were showered with dead mice bits in order to attract the vulture to fly over to us (note over to us, not over us). The Spectacle d'Oiseau  lived up to every syllable in its title, a feast of feather, a beauty of beaks, a tumultuous tirade of tails.

I had no idea just how big these birds are. Seriously, it looked at me
with a real hunger in its eyes then moved to the fat French guy next to me about
 to have a heart attack. Wowsers.

Then we wandered of to be attacked by goats, deer, wallabies, hippos, giraffes, and so on and so on. Then to the grand finale of the park, the official fun bit. The netting strung way above the ground, from tree to tree, for you and the kids to climb along.

Me and Blondie silhouetted against the early morning sun.

This is one of the ‘test of a parent’ moments. I hate heights. I cannot climb a ladder without the use of a tena lady. I really really really hate heights. But I had to go with our kids up this extremely fragile looking bit of netting stung at least 60’ above the ground. I hated every second of it. Obviously Ginger and Blondie loved every second of it, including the moment when we passed the man mending the netting as we walked over it. Kids eh? Ha. (weirdoes).

This. Is. Not. Fun. Look at it.

The day was a good day, with plenty of sun and a brief sighting of the most tasteful 1950s style circus we have ever seen (think Tim Burton’s Big Fish) . Curious French things spotted today are:

• The French have an odd sense of priority when it comes to child health and safety. All swimming pools require a gate however they will let their infants dangle on precariously thin netting 60’ above the ground DURING A MAINTENANCE SESSION!
• The French are kings of Bird Spectaculars. They have proved this irrefutably
• The croissant cannot be replicated to the same standard outside of French territory.


Wine consumption by this point is high to average.

THE HOLIDAY BEGINS OR SUNDAY

After the kind of rain that would have Noah redesigning a bigger boat, a fog descended on us. I hate fog. Fog says horror and ghost sailors knocking at your door and ripping you asunder with their ghost sailor fish hooks. The fog lifted and I felt better. At an early hour I set out on my bike to explore the area. I basically went the wrong way. All I found were fields upon fields of cows, and little farmsteads on isolated sections of road. I was convinced I would stumble upon a hideously malformed inbred boy play dueling banjos whilst his two older brothers jumped out of the woods, knocked me off my bike and pinned me to a tree shrieking, ‘Squeal little piggy, squeal!’ This didn’t happen. Thankfully.

Some of my morning riding countryside. Beautiful yet full of menace.
Well, menacing if you are me and are a wuss in the extreme.

La Famille Magill enjoyed the book market at La Roche Bernard, a touch lost on us, given that the books were French and no matter how cool we may think it looks to have French books on your shelves, it is equally pretentious and doubly pathetic if you can’t read French. Then headed off to the beach at Pénestin. Curious things spotted today were:
• French men will stop and piss anywhere. They care not who can see, what building, field or car they are washing with their aqua vitae. They just piss when they need to. This is illegal if you are a French lady, unless you are pregnant. We didn't spot a pregnant French lady squatting anywhere so assume they are the gender with better bladder control.
• French families arrive on a beach for around 30 mins. Do their thing and go. English families build fortifications around themselves, the sand castle is not just pleasure in creation it is the Englishman’s way of spraying his territory on the beach, little turrets of boundary demarcation are erected to tell all other beach users what the acceptable parameters of proximity are.
• Petrol stations don’t like English credit cards and are unmanned. This results in you driving for miles to find one that does thus wasting the petrol you hope to buy.
• The stereotype of French public toilets being hideous continues to be proven true. Not only do they not have toilet paper, they don’t have seats either. This is not pleasant for a 6 and 7 year old. We are using up our antibacterial baby wipes very quickly.
• The French are also nice people and generous people. They topped up Mrs M’s wine on a no-charge refill basis (little did they know how much Mrs M could actually consume)

I think the bar owner's folly was not using a smaller glass for Mrs M.

We have worn the kids out. They played in the sea and in the pool. Every now and then I get the crunching sensation of sand in my mouth and the shower has been turned down just a fraction on the heat, a sure sign of the early days of tan. Today has been a very lovely day.

JOURNEYVILLE 2 OR THE REST OF SATURDAY

Another rain soaked car journey, where the following curious French things were noted:


• Toll roads show no greater evidence of the toll money being spent on them than the non-toll roads.
• French drivers clearly have no part of their driving test that includes knowing and respecting breaking distances.
• When you stop in a French council estate and use their E.Leclerc, or Intermarché or Carrefour and your wife and eldest go shopping leaving you and the youngest in a deserted underground car park, you really do feel like you are in Mesrine or District 19, especially when silhouetted at the entrance to the car park is a steadily growing group of youths. I point out that none of this middle-class foreign shopping terror was called for or had any grounding in actuality, but still, that was how I felt at that moment in time.
• French radio. Why is French radio still so determined to anchor itself in the late 80s UK charts. This is the play list; Eurythmics, The Police and/or Sting, Phil Collins or U2. Also, did you know that Robbie Williams sings in French over here? For example, L’Amour Supreme. He doesn’t belt out the chorus as well as he does in English, but hey, he gives it a good shot in French. On the subject of French radio, much the same as Italian radio, swear words in English do not bother them, so they play them. Biggest example being Bruno Mars, Millionaire. Over here, he wants it ‘So Fucking bad’, I liked it when it was just a ‘freakin’ requirement.

Remember Dave Stewart? The French will never be able to forget him.
Incidentally, I look a bit like him, apparently.

We arrived at our house for the next 7 days. It is gorgeous, it has a pool, it has more rooms than we number in our family, so we can all row and sleep in separate beds if need be. It rained over the first night so much it kept us awake. We ordered croissants and French bread and the next morning it arrived in a cute bag hung on our front door.

Chez Magill for the rest of our holiday. If you imagine a river running
by the front door and cloud as low as the chimney, that is how it greeted us. 

THE FRENCH DON'T HELP YOU WITH YOUR FRENCH OR FRIDAY INTO SATURDAY

The Hotel Pavillon de Gouffern was an old hunting lodge. A superbly positioned place on the the very skirts of the forest Gouffern. Stately yet understated, and and old haunt of Renoir’s, the Pavillon was the very essence of European wealthy horse owning aristocracy, and a handful of nouveau riche Brits, and us of course, occupying the moral, cultural and smug high ground of the new bohemian class of Essex.

The French don’t help you with your french. As we checked in, I say we, but I never check in, I always leave the general admin of life to Mrs M and skulk in the background like some lame pretend childminder saying things like, ‘I’ll just keep the girls happy whilst you do everything that involves talking to strangers.’

Whilst skulking I was able to eavesdrop on the cruel manner of the hotel maitre d. Mrs Magill, who has fair to middling French vocabulary, was forced to strain at the very limits of her knowledge, dredging every phrase from 1989 just to be eloquent enough to tell evil French maitre d our name and that we had booked. After several conversational false starts, a couple of verbal cul-de-sacs and one very  firm interdit, the seemingly non-English speaking evil hotel woman (and there is no reason why she should speak English, I am fine with that) chirps up in a very South London brogue, ‘your room, Mrs Magill, is room 4 and here are your keys.’ Pah!

The room was excellent. The pool ‘simply devine’ according to Ginger, we settled down for a couple of beers and the first vin of la bonne vacance whilst our tadpoles swam away. Instant relaxation. The girls dried off – we continued to drink… I suggested they go to the paddock yonder (that is right, I use wanky words and phrasing when on holiday). Then I hear a squeal from Ginger. ‘Daddy the fence is really funny when you touch it , it clicks and is making Blondie jump in the air.’

Essex Girl hits the pool.

‘DON’T TOUCH THE FENCE’ we shout in tandem, leaping to our feet and racing to the clicking fence to see our children indulging in some electro-masochism, shocking themselves repeatedly on the the whopping great electric bands enclosing the horses. Having removed Ginger and Blondie from this cruel new game they had discovered, we opted for a promenade in the forest.

This was truly a magical family moment that brought the wonder of nature to our children and the perverse cruelty of man to us parents. We discovered so many different varieties of toadstool and mushroom, all of which were the minuscule citadels of faeries.

The faeries who live here are a bit mouthy.

The faeries who live here are all about the rude gestures.

We also fell upon a pair of young deer, who froze, engaged us with their skittish gaze then skipped off into the dense foliage. On the way back, however, Ginger uncovered a ghoulish collection of discarded rusted unused rifle bullets, something a little like 2.2s. This brought home to us that were staying in a house of death. Built for the sole purpose of killing animals for pleasure, then, as we delved into to recent history of the the area, a house or lodge that had bee occupied by the Nazis as a munitions depot, an then overrun by the allied forces in a push to trap and subsequently massacre German troops. Apparently the surrounding area of Orne was littered with the dead bodies of the retreating Germans, shot and left to rot where they fell. Chilling, beautiful, and magical all in one short walk.

All lightness aside. No father want to be prise old potentially
 dangerous bullets from his 7 year old daughter's hands. 

Mrs M can’t quite reconcile herself with the history and purpose of the hunting lodge, but is now perversely attracted to it.

The meal we had that night was extraordinary though. For a restaurant that is essentially in the arse of nowhere, the quality of food was simply astounding. This would be the equivalent of strolling into your local half decent family favourite restaurant and being served Michelin quality food.

The kids alone were offered an amuse bouche of a circle of tuna with a tomato relish, followed by une plat du charcuterie (three hams, a traditional herb encrusted ham carved from the bone and two cured hams, one verging on a speck, the other more of a parma, with the plate completed by a pan fried fois gras. Their main course, Blondie had a burger, succulent, rare, and from a minced steak, not the usual British restaurant fayre of minced cow lip and penis. This was accompanied by frites, we all know frites only taste properly wonderful in France. Ginger had a turkey escalope, which for those, like me, who instantly conjure up the rancid thrice died turkey meat of their school dinners at the sound of this, it most certainly was not. Again succulent, tender, glazed in cheese sauce, a little like a creamed mascarpone tinged with a deeper darker flavoured mature Langres. The final course for our cherubs was a trio of ice creams, one vanilla, one lemon sorbet and one strawberry sorbet. All of this was €8.

Our meal, for a mere extra €20 each consisted of the same amuse bouche. Mrs M indulged in pan fois gras with an apple jelly and slice of  wind cured (dried to us) apple. For my sins I ordered the black pudding wrapped in filo pastry, also accompanied by apple disc, and set within a jusjus, joined by twin parcels of ratatouille encased in filo. I opted for the lamb cutlets, rare, which arrived on the end of three separate bowed bones, enveloped in (look up membrane) a lightly peppered assortment of finely chopped sweet vegetables. For the sweet course Mrs M devoured a strawberry soup and I struggled valiantly through an assortment of 6 cheeses. Each creamier and rammed with richer flavour than the previous one. I worked clockwise around the plate. Food heaven. And the wine of shangri-la was a local muscadet, its gentle fizz soothing and yet aggressive and cleansing. We went to bed very satiated and happy and had nightmares about retreating Germans being shot.

A BRITON EN BRETON OR FRIDAY

Who doesn’t enjoy the excitement of getting up at 5am to head off on their bonne vacance? No? I imagine that my wife is quite alone in this habit. The early rising, panic syndrome that covers all eventualities from asteroid storm to a proletariat uprising on the A13. On this occasion, unlike the ‘6 hours early for a flight’ occasion that happens every single time we fly anywhere, I was glad of the spare hours (I lie, minutes) that I had available to mince about.

First hiccup, getting my bike onto the car. This took a frustrating amount of time, fumbling in the dark. I don’t think I need continue with the analogy, but I think you will know the sense of relief when that task is complete.

Second hiccup, getting the car to change gear. An automatic, it decided not to change gear for a whole 7 miles. That was petrol well burnt.

If only cars could run on burning money. Oh they do!



Third hiccup, the brake light fell out of its housing. I had spares. The spares did not fit. I bought an assortment of universal fitting lights from the AA shop at the Channel Tunnel check in village. I say village as that is what it is. The most expensive village on the planet. A place for holiday makers to panic buy shit that they really didn’t need to panic about, handing over their holiday ‘spends’ before their holiday has even started to grinning villagers (shop managers) on a commission.

Fourth hiccup, wasn’t really a hiccup because it was both uncovered and covered by the purchase of the universal fittings bulb set. The rear night light had also decided France was not somewhere it cared for and gave up its little tungsten life.

All this before 9am. For a generally incapable male, especially around les voitures (see what I did there?) this was quite a series of mini obstacles, a bit like a pre-holiday steeple chase.

An opportunity to show small dogs doing a steeple chase. This has nothing to do with anything.



We can skip the travel under the channel as that was remarkably brief due to my exertions on the rear nearside of my car (I know! I didn’t know I knew that either!).

Other side. Weather shitter than a bad year at Glastonbury. I have never driven through such rain in my life. Ever.

This wasn't us. But at times we thought it could have been.
I may be exaggerating a little here. I might not be. What a conundrum eh?!



Thanks to the culinary travels of Messieurs Stein, Floyd, Oliver, Carluccio, Genaro and Harriot, well perhaps not the last one….. where was I? Oh yes, thanks to their beguiling programmes taunting us with haute cuisine from every European roadside, when you pull into a Shell garage with the French equivalent to a Wild Bean Café (Le Bean de Wilde Café) you somehow expect the baguette with local ham, fromage du motorway and tomate des gasoline to taste exquisite. Alas no. As we sat in our car, the pissing rain dribbling down our faces from the mad dash to the loo, we munched on bolognaise flavoured crisps as we pulled lengths of ham fat from our baguettes long and strong enough to lasso an entire herd of bison. The glamour of the holiday had not quite engaged at this moment. Oh and by the way, we moan about petrol prices in the UK, my God the French are being punished a la voiture.

France is also ‘big country’ that or my wife/me is/are woeful at judging distance. I will not touch upon this or her map reading again as this will only smack of chauvinism, bitterness, and quite frankly a dull occurrence between couples the globe over.

 

We arrived at our first stop. The hotel Pavillon de Gouffern.