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Off to France
On the second Saturday in August, we were off to France. From
Sydney airport it was seven hours to Singapore. We didn't sleep during this flight and had just enough energy left for
a play at this kid-friendly airport. During the next leg, Emma managed to put in six hours of sleep, while Piet only got 5 and spent the rest of the flight
glued to the inflight entertainment system. When booking our flights, we had managed to avoid a bus connection between two Parisian airports and made sure our flight to Bordeaux departed from the airport our Singapore flight arrived. Nevertheless, on
Charles-de-Gaulle airport we ended up needing three bus rides and a long wait to get from the international terminal to our domestic flight. Unfortunately, the Air France staff who gave us our boarding pass had not realised that they should have entered our luggage tags into their systems, so our bags remained in Paris. The only consolation was that once we finally sat down in our rental car, thirty odd hours after leaving home, the kids fell asleep for the full two and a half hour drive to our cottage.
The cottage was very characteristic, renovated farm house with thick walls, a court yard and a beautiful garden. We were soon joined by Jan's sisters and their families. We collected white flowers - all purple flowers 'were for the bees' - and ate cake.
The next day, we started with some stamping - note the large fireplace - and went over to Annigje's campsite, were Piet played with Tiem and Elisabeth and Emma checked out the seesaw. Oma Bep arrived from the Netherlands and joined us for tea in our garden. We had bought a tennis game to entertain ourselves until most of our bags arrived, which happened that same night (i.e. with one day delay). Some very hot days followed (about 35 degrees Celcius), which inspired us to some waterplay.
A walk from our cottage
Friends from Zurich, who had rented a cottage nearby, came over for a 3km walk from our cottage. It's a distance Piet will easily walk on his own, while Emma will always seek attention by wanting to be carried part of the way, we carry a rucksack for this purpose. After meeting some horses and traversing a forest, we had our halfway
snack, we discovered endless blackberry bushes. Piet
shared the blackberries he got with his
sister. After a long stop, we
walked on.
Oma read her grandchildren a book in the hammock. Laure read her cousins a book in an armchair. Piet thoroughly enjoyed the Dutch books oma had brought, especially Pluk van de Petteflat. We had more water fun and rented ponies nearby from a grumpy lady. Emma enjoyed the ride, while Piet refused to ride his pony; he is still fairly hesitant about animals in general.
Laure came over for a sleep-over and helped Piet use a 'searchlight' to find pictures in a special book mum had bought for the long flight. In general, many books were read to the kids in general, although sometimes Emma would play with her cars in the background. Later, Bento came over for a sleep-over too. Piet wanted him to sleep in his room to feel less scared, and Bento happily obliged. They got on very well this holiday. We tried to make a group picture with all family present (like we did in July 2009), but this time is was more difficult to get the children to participate seriously. It proved easier to take pictures of oma and her children and the Zwolle family plus two. The next day, we drew a picture with oma.
