Yep you read right, Fred, Jill, Alex, Ben, Jason, Cara and Garfield the orange cat are off to Virginia. They left at 5am heading toward Barcelona to catch their flight at noon. They found a rental van that had to be returned to Barcelona and paid 1 EURO (about $1.25) plus gas to drive it. Ding ding ding, maybe this is how we can explore without adding a ton of miles to their cars or buying one ourselves while we are here?
So we woke up to just us and a quiet house. The house went from 10 humans to 4 overnight. Now what, a light panic started settling in my mind. What’s for Breakfast? What are we going to do today? What’s for lunch AND dinner? What are the cheapest times of the day to do laundry, run the AC, wash dishes? When do the stores close and reopen? When do we open the shades? So many thoughts running through my head.
Randy and Mazie walked to the boulangerie (0.4miles away) and picked up chocolate croissants and a couple of baguettes. Zach headed off on his bike to the SPAR (mini market beside the boulangerie) for a soda. I decided to go for a swim in the above ground pool in our backyard.
WARNING: No animals or pools (FRED) were harmed! I was swimming with a really cool snorkel mask, which allowed me to swim and not take breaths above the water. Fantastic! Clueless to the world around me was Cody, carefully watching every move I made. He has never seen nor experienced water deeper than 10 inches and that was in a creek at Poor Farm Park. The next thing I know, something was scratching my leg while I was swimming. Yep Cody somehow had leaped or carefully climbed up and down the ladder into the pool to “rescue” me while I was happily swimming along. Simultaneously, I realized Cody was in the pool and he didn’t really know how to swim! Yes, he is a golden retriever, but you still have to show them how to swim initially. So at this point, I am now carrying a 72 lb pup in the water and helping him navigate the ladder. Because we lived in a ranch style house in VA, Cody just learned how to climb more than 3 steps while living in France for 7 days. Don’t you wish you were here to have witnessed this comedy? Success happened all around that morning, I was rescued, Cody was rescued, the pool was not scratched in the process, and everyone arrived back home from the village shops.
We spent the remaining part of the day picking out bedrooms and unpacking the 10 pieces of luggage we brought and the 3 Randy brought. Finally after 4 days, I had found my packing cube of shorts and socks! Randy worked on computers for all of us and we enjoyed the day. Lunch consisted of sandwiches and dinner was left over pizza from the park picnic the night before.
Lees in France 