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After 567km's we arrived at Veules Les Roses - the prettiest village in Normandy that officially has a 2 flower rating and the highest that can be given in France is 3.
We had a wonderful warm welcome from Stephane, Sarah and family, the sun was shinning and we were glad to be off the highways, its amazing how you can whizz along at 130km and clock up the kilometers in France, sometimes a little scary there are so many trucks on the road and of course the usual idiots just like home.
Easter weekend started with a hunt for the kids, with rules and ready, set, go. It was great fun to watch and secretly help them discover all the eggs around the garden. A walk through the local village and out to the beach, the fishing boats come in straight off the beach, empty their nets and sell their catch. There were, oysters, scallops & fish - mainly Sole & Sea Bass. Stephane told us the french would que for an hour just to get a fresh Sea Bass, he decided to stand in line - watching as they slowly dwindled. The woman in front of him bought the last 3, he was gutted. How could she be so rude to buy them all he told us - its just not done. We watched from above and found this very amusing, his face said it all.
All was not lost as we had wonderful fresh scallops. Do you know that there are two camps when it comes to scallops in France I was to learn, while having lunch I asked where is the orange piece don't you eat this?? I was told oh we don't talk about this, we don't eat it, they laughed, told us lucky both Stephane & Sarah were on the same side - no scallop roe for this family.
The other lesson we had was never replace the baguette up side down on the table, it is disrespecting the bread - not sure whether is was myself or Rod but it was quickly flipped the right way up, so two mistakes in one lunch..... mmmm will we get to stay another night?
We had a wonderful weekend, Stephane's mum, his sister & her son where here so we had to practice our french, just when we thought we were doing well with all the words we had learnt via Duolingo - they didn't understand our pronunciation!!!! - why didn't they understand us Dulolingo does!!
It was the Cress Festival in the village this weekend and WOW do they grow watercress, its very different to NZ watercress, ours is peppery, here it is much bigger leaves and very mild, we had Cress soup that was made with a little potato and creme fresh, delicious and a very delicate flavour.
We were sad to bit them farewell on Easter Monday as they headed back to London and left us alone in their huge 8 bedroom 3 story house. A weird feeling, once again Rod & I looked at each other and said how did we get here and laughed, life certainly is an adventure.
All alone we headed to St Valery-en-Caux a seaside village to have a look, it was a beautiful blue skied day and freezing, the wind felt like it was coming straight from the North Pole, I thought my face was going to crack. We stumbled across a agricultural show, there were loads of cows, horses, ponies, sheep & goats, Rod was very excited. The animals were old breads and quite different to what we have at home. I loved the french flag bow in the horses tail. This is the magic of France you never know what you are going to stumble across.
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