Wednesday 9th October 2024

Lay day today. Sleep in, pack, a snack at 12.00 and meet the Lads around 3.30 pm for a few drinks. Snacks at a tourist Italian joint. Luckily they have Champagne and CP cracks a bottle. Interesting fact, we have drunk all the stock of Jack Daniels in the Pestana Hotel bars at Potro and Lisbon, They have not re-ordered either. Absolutely pathetic!

Thursday 10th October 2024

Travel day. Up at 4.00 am to head to the airport for the 1.5 hrs to Bilbao. Lisbon is a very busy airport and TAP has a lot of aeroplanes. Seamless flight on a full plane and the taxi into  town was easy.

Bilbao is busy and our accommodation is in the old town, so no cars and a short walk to the Air BnB apartment. The pilgrims don’t arrive by car from Santiago de Compostela until late in the day, so Flashy finds a little café, stores the bags and has a bit if admin time, coffee and croissant.

We all meet for a dinner at a nearby restaurant which at 7.00 pm is still half full, which is a surprise. A nice dinner with Lady P and Alice and a comfy bed, early night.

Friday 11th October 2024

The drive to Bordeaux was uneventful, following the coast road to drop off our lease car and pick up a hire car for 10 days. The little Renault has gears and Lady P got the hang of it fairly easily. Flashy gave encouraging comments such as CLUTCH! Or “you do have another gear, dear.” 

We made it home to St Jean d Angeley for shopping, back to LPR which survived our month away and a soothing gin and tonic with a delightful, fresh and healthy chicken Caesar salad. 

Flashy is so over the standard Spanish and Portuguese foods. Top end is wonderful, Particularly if the chef is French or French trained. The national dishes are, quite frankly, under seasoned and follow a very narrow taste profile. Salad or vegetables? What are they signor?

Saturday 12 October 2024

Colder weather now.  Open fire is lit. Washing started. There will be many loads! A nostalgic trip to St J d’A market for fruit, vegetables, cheese and bread and a stop at E. Leclerc supermarket – remembering to say oui and bon journey not si and adios, is a challenge, as we are tired. So good to be a) back in France and b) back at LPR. The lawn is bright green, the sunflowers dead and ready for harvest.  The corn/maize brown and being harvested and the trees starting to turn their autumn colours. Roasted fillet of veal and veges for dinner. The veal here is magnificent, plentiful and pink. Who’d be a bloody vegan?

Oh, and when walking out the door tonight, Lady P discovered a small, one foot, thin as a pencil snake. French snakes are, of course, not like Australian snakes and this little fella was, we think, a grass snake. The 12g was not available and probably not appropriate. The shovel was hanging up in it's place in the shed. Ah, so the broom was brought to the party. Now, I'm not saying we killed the snake. You can't do that can you? Those that know Flashy know what happened next. No admission, no pack drill.

Our little manual hire car
Chicken Caesar.
A small snake. Still alive at this stage.
Roasted veal and vegetables.

Comments

  1. Anonymous12 October 2024 at 18:38

    I've removed France from my list of holiday destinations...the Major

    ReplyDelete

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