Today it is raining, somewhat surprisingly, as it has barely rained in 7 weeks.
Still the rain is good as the streets are flowing with black water for it hasn’t rained in a while, Hopefully the black water will take some of the multicoloured dog poo with it (the things you notice when you have been painting all day).

We are having a home day today as we had planned another bike ride to some lovely town, with a lovely view, on a lovely hill…. but Mick got lost jogging yesterday and was barely walking when he returned. We have put our home day to good use, having finally booked tickets to Geneva to get us home.

You would think that getting from Lyon to Geneva should be a cinch, but it has been a comedy of errors. First we were informed that there are track works, so no trains from 7am till 2pm. So we tried the bus, of which there is one. This we could not book as they would not accept ours or in fact anybody’s that we asked’s credit cards and, although you can buy the tickets at some travel agencies, none around here sell them and the bus line doesn’t reply to emails asking where I could get them. So I looked into hiring a couple of cars. We are too big big for just one car. Two quotes, one 30 euro per car and one 300 euro per car, which made me a bit doubtful about the 30 euro price, so we went back to the trains and now have booked tix for 6.30 am, which gives us pretty much a full day to kill in Geneva. I am tired just thinking about it.

This afternoon, I will dedicate to painting, but before I do I will extract some info from emails I have been sending to random peopleto fill in those of you who missed the small dramas of the last few weeks……

France……

In mid March we travelled by train to Winterthur in Switzerland from St Martin de Belleville, travelling via Moutiers, Chambery, Geneve, and Zurich. We anticipated arriving sometime mid-to late May…. but in reality it only took about 11 hours.

We left Frenchy behind with her exchange sister, M and her family, the K’s. As usual she was calm and mature about being away from us. There was only a minor crack in her ‘whatever!’ teenage facade: Twice in one conversation she said “But they will only speak French!!”

We have just had a wonderful week with the K’s, generous hosts and we left exclaiming that we now have new friends. One doesn’t often make brand new friends in the space of a week, at our post-anything goes age. M did tell us when she was in Melbourne that I was like her Mum; dont wear enough make-up, don’t drink much (?), like galleries, don’t go to church, makes her eat her veges (sounds like all of the Northcote mums I know). But we didn’t realise how much until S and I both got a cramp between the same two ribs when doing a forward bend in Yoga. Freaky!

Not only were we treated like very special guests, with nightly Savoie traditional dishes served up by S, but we were the first guests in their newly built chalet. Last time we spoke with S she said she hoped the stairs would arrive before we did.

We also had a great week skiing. The girls improved out of sight (particularly Lala who came from behind to nearly match Frenchy in speed). The man and I gave up trying to keep up, but travelled together nicely. It was very “looking forward to retirement’ to spend so much time together ‘exercising’ at the old peoples’ pace. M had just had a week of competitive skiing and a heavy cold but still wizzed down at about four times our speed. The Man and I fell over a few times but no broken ribs this year (not clear on that point, there were grumblings for weeks afterwards). Frenchy said the highlight of the week was watching me fall over (this one I did put on facebbok – if you cant beat ’em, join ’em – be my guest).

If you wish to see the village you can google St Martin de Belleville. We were actually in a tiny village 1km away called Villarabout, but I think it is more of a locality, as it has town square and Chapel but no shops. There was a regular if somewhat random bus shuttle which we took to the slopes, that usually got us to where we wanted to go, though sometimes we ended up where we started before getting home. Not quite Swiss but lots of fun.

AND THEN TO SWITZERLAND….