Gaynor's Girl's Night

I wanted to introduce my lovely German girlfriends to our Texan Ladies. Cheryl and Donna Kay were able to come for the evening. Lori was hard at work entertaining the Mosaic Kids! So, here is Marianne, Cheryl and Donna Kay in our lounge room.

Christine and Eva came for the first time. Eva lives in Schopfheim. Also Laura in the picture.

My gorgeous friend Johanna who lives in Schopfheim with her husband Erik and son Juro. They take us to Church in their car each Sunday. We try to get together every now and then to lighten up and play a game. Erik is on holidays from teaching this week, so we plan to see them on Wednesday. They are very special friends, and sometimes we neglect them because we become so busy!!

TEXAN NIGHT 20 OCTOBER

Don't they look the part? Sue and Zipporah hamming it up! Great gals!

Johnny and Fritz

Go the line dancing! I think I have 2 left feet!

Juro looking the part! Looks like he's collecting Texan flags!

David and Tom doing a skit! So much fun and lots of laughs

Our Texan Night was a great success. We held it at Alte Kanzlei in Riehen. A fantastic venue which worked well for us all. Lots of laughter, information, Texan food and of course line dancing to finish the night off with a BANG! And yes, I think we all went home rather tired! I thought it would be great to do another one this coming Saturday - lots of people missed out on a great and happy evening.

A special visit this week

An email from my niece Bethany who is travelling with her husband Jeremy saw their arrival at our place on Wednesday evening around 7pm. I met them at Schopfheim Railway Station. What an absolute joy to see them and what a special, special time we had together. They are travelling all over Europe and other parts of the world for 4 months. Here they are in our kitchen.

The morning they left for Luzern (freezing outside and before we put our coats on!). Outside our home.

Here they are setting off down the street from our place.

Just about to arrive at the railway station. They are an amazing pair and it was just wonderful to see them both and have them in our little home for a couple of nights.

Closing thoughts on our holiday in France

This is long overdue, and if it was someone else, they would probably let it go as it is now 12 days since we came back from our holiday in France. But I want to share some thoughts with my lovely blogging friends and also readers of my blog.

• Helpful people we met on the train
• Complete strangers at the railway station on our arrival at 10.30pm who made a phone call on their mobile phone to order a taxi for the 6 of us.
• Helpful and friendly bus drivers (we took the bus a lot)
• A wonderful lady at the Tourist Office in Agde who suggested we visit Montpellier - a great piece of advice for us, which we took up!
• A friendly smile goes a long way and breaks down the language barrier!
• A nice young man at the railway station in Paris who gave us some help and a good map of Paris!
• Excitement on the way home in Paris when police boarded the carriage on the train in which we were standing, dragged five men out and lined them up against the wall (why does excitement follow us around?!!)
• A fabulous and smooth ride home.
• Being home is a wonderful thing, even though the weather has now had a drastic temperature drop (thank you God for heaters!!).

Since being home we have realized just how important holidays are and that we must take them and make the most of them. It is best for us to go somewhere and just relax, rather than being on the move all the time.

A day in Montpellier

The Observatory enclosed in a large park with a good view over the city.
















The Aquaduct - an amazing construction and of course very old!

















There's always time for a coffee and sit down! We were also entertained by someone playing an accordian. Very popular instrument in Europe.

















One of the delightful small streets in Montpellier. Here we pause for lunch (quiche) and beer!! Cheap meal.

















This picture Roger took does not do this building justice. It had been hand painted with people in the windows and scenes. Quite beautiful and breathtaking. We both just loved walking the streets of Montpellier and would love to visit again and stay there. But I don't think that is likely to happen. There's just too much else to see!

A Day in Sete (France) with Roger, Ilona and Sarah

Sete is famous for it's Wednesday markets. You know markets - sometimes a lot of 'rubbish' but the fruit, vegetable and fish market is fantastic.
Here are framed pictures of France. Very tempting, but not tempting enough!!


















One of the lovely streets in Sete. It was quite a nice day so there were many people sitting outside having coffee, etc.

















To see the fish was amazing (and rather smelly). We couldn't buy any as we were worried about carrying it around with us all day!


















We found a nice monument park, but it was rather a steep climb UP!!


















Here's one of the momunents at the top of the park.

HORRAH FOR HOLIDAYS - HORRAH FOR HOME ! ! !

Apologies to the faithful friends that check my blog regularly. The weeks 17-28 September were rather busy and time was not in my favour!

Roger and I went on holidays to the south of France to a place called Cap d'Agde for 10 days from 29 September. We went with friends Ilona and her 12 year old daughter Sarah. Ilona booked all the holiday, including travel, for us so we thought it was an opportunity too good to miss, plus we could share the costs.

We did have a bit of a stressful start, but that soon past!

Cap d'Agde is a Resort town on the Mediterranean Sea, so it was lovely for us to enjoy some warmer weather, though the sun didn't shine that much in the first week. It was cloudy, but not cool with temperatures around 22-25C each day. But we did not swim until the Sunday before we left, which was a great shame.

France is just beautiful, though the area in which we holidayed is best known for the lovely beaches, not the countryside, which was rather barren.

Our travel there involved 4 trains. We had to go into Paris and then were able to get a fast train from there to a place called Agde. As we didn't arrive at our destination until 10.30pm we had to get a taxi to the place where we were staying.

Just a few photo's to whet your appetite. More to follow soon

One day we took the bus into Adge which is a small town on one of many Canel's in the area.


















One of the lovely streets in Agde

















Many restaurants have a lunch special. We wanted seafood and decided to order the special of the day (having no idea what we were ordering!!)


















So...... here it is, a big bowl full of about 30 mussels which were slightly flavoured with garlic and some other spice!!

But you should have seen the look on our faces when the waitress brought the dishes to our table! We always seem to be having a good laugh about something.

It could have been worse! It could have been escargot!