Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Is it Sunday Already?
I was out like a light minutes after I hit the bed. I was oblivious to Erika putting the girls to bed that night, though I noticed in the morning that Annie had put her pink teddy bear beside me on the bed the following morning.

I was beginning to stir when Erika got back from her night out on the town in St. Tropez, sometime after 3am. She was happy and tired, and reeked of tobacco smoke. She told me that she had had a blast, and then went in for a much needed shower, as she couldn't stand the tobacco smell herself. I fell back asleep.

I woke up sometime after 8am, Erika somehow having got up at 7:30 for a ritual hour-long walk to the Mediterranean at the bottom of the hill and back with her Father and sister. I was pounced upon by the girls soon after, happy to have their Dad back, telling me excited about all the things they had seen and done -- much of them involving the pool, picking and eating grapes off the vine, feeding the goldfish in the ponds and so on.

Got dressed and corralled them downstairs for breakfast. Annie had some of the oatmeal porridge I had brought over for her, and Vanessa settled into the corn puff cereal she likes to have when we are here.

Having made it through the previous day without sleeping minimized my jet-lag, and a realized that today was in fact Sunday, and that the last time I had slept solidly was Thursday night, the day before I left.

Soon after, everyone returned from their long walk to the Med and back. Josef proposed that we all head down to a local flea market occurring that morning. This was probably the first time that I had to speak with one of the guests, Natalie, who was a Swiss viniculture student, looking at and assessing the grape crop. Through her passable English and much hand-gestures involving scratching, I discovered that the French phrase for "flea market" has exactly the same meaning in English, suggesting a common etymology (and entomology) for the word somewhere back in time.

We headed off down the twisty roads to Guillemot nearby, and soon arrived at the flea market. I was half-expecting something a bit more up market, but was pleasantly surprised that it was the French equivalent of any outdoor North American flea market. Much junk -- French junk -- abounded. Oodles of French books laid out in boxes or on sheets laid upon the ground, a mix of antiques alongside promo items from the nearby MacDonald's, to amateur paintings of the Riviera and its ladies (in various states of fashionable dress or equally fashionable undress). An electric old train set -- with the tattered remnants of a miniature village set that had spent a very long time in somebody's basement -- briefly fascinated Annie, and Vanessa was taken with a Chinese lacquered jewelry box (which at 30 Euros was too expensive for what it was, and vowed to find her the equivalent for the same price or less back home). The most interesting thing there for me was a vendor selling original(?) WWI propaganda posters, all basically urging the fight against the Bosch. Fascinating from a historical perspective, but the posters were huge (I think about 6' x 10') and I really didn't much fancy having a poster of defiant French tykes defying a demonized Bosch horde on our walls at home.

The only purchase we made there was a couple of mini-Barbies, which I think costs us a grand total of 50 Euro cents. This was easily the best 50 Euro cents spent on the whole of the trip, as the girls had a great time playing with them both for the rest of the vacation.

It being a sunny day we soon retreated to a small café and sat outside under some shade trees. The girls had Orangina, while the adults all had a round of an interesting alcoholic anise-flavoured drink of some sort - milky-looking, but strongly flavoured of anise. I was told the name but no longer remember it.

Returned to the Chateau and had a delicious meal of bread and various local cheeses. Yum!

"Uncle Gord" is very good to us, and offers to entertain the girls for a while, giving Erika and I the chance to get properly re-acquainted sans children. ;-)

The rest of day was relaxing and restful. This was good because I was still getting over my residual jet lag, and it being a Sunday there wasn't a lot that was open. I spent much of the afternoon with the girls, either helping them feed the fish or hanging out with everyone by the swimming pool.