Last weekend might as well have come from one of those cheesy, summer films. A good kind of cheesy though, in the way that camembert on bread as an afternoon snack is good. Between hot, hot days spent at the beach with picnics and late afternoon naps, I really can’t think of any other way I could have left France.
Can we talk about the power of the summer picnic, please? I mean, I’ve always been a fan. But now I’m more like the president of the fan club because if we’re talking ‘easy things to do with children’, that tops the list. There’s an acceptability to calling whatever food you happen to have in the house into your bag a picnic. Bags of chips, bread, a package of meat, pickles in a container, sliced fruit, water bottles. It’s like a 15 minute meal that you know will be eaten without a problem because you’re not at a table and it’s a picnic. Magical, that word.
Both Saturday and Sunday were spent packing dry sand into yellow plastic buckets and scooping water over it to keep it together before quickly flipping them over and pounding on the top to form slightly lopsided turrets. Shovels and hands scraped holes and water was poured in to create miniature lakes that had to be refilled as they drained away into the sand. When we got bored of that, the shovels and buckets were abandoned and everyone ran pell-mell into the water to rinse off and cool down, splashing and playing with the blow up toys before starting it all over again.
We built sandcastles like there was a contest and the prize money would pay for a round the world trip. I did build a killer castle with a moat and a drawbridge and everything, but I can’t show because even though I took a picture, my phone ate it. (A thing I didn’t realize until after we got back to the house, naturally.)
In the midst of all the sand playing and picnic eating and getting sunburnt (I looked after the children but no one looked after me and my back paid the consequences), I also had the task of fitting all my things back into my bags. Which, logically, shouldn’t be super difficult. If you have the same items (or a little less, maybe, potentially probably not) that you brought and have to repack, with the same bags, it should be fine. Except I had a different bag and a few different items and I was never really good at Tetris and packing has just always been difficult for me, which meant that I repacked three times before I figured it out. But figure it out I did and even with a burnt back, I maneuvered all three of those bags through train stations and bus terminals like I’d done it a few times.
Things I’m Loving:
+ This website – (I have a weakness for travel diaries.)
+ This dress – (Because it just screams ‘summer’ and ‘beach’.)
+ These quotes – (For anyone who likes sad words or has just gone through a breakup.)
+ This haircut – (Maybe for next time.)
Blue Eyed Sight 