21 June 2012

Happy Summer Solstice!  Unfortunately, no one saw the sunrise here this morning.  It's a very wet day!  No puffins :-(  No castles (specifically Warwick and Kenilworth) :-(  Housework has moved to the top of the list :-(  What a bummer!

I broke out the new jeans my daughter sent me--in a size SMALLER!--and they fit great!  Yippee!!  So I'm doing a load of laundry and washing the pair that I was having trouble keeping up, so I can toss them in the charity bag.  What a great feeling!  So even though I'm sitting on a little plateau right now, I'm still pretty motivated.

Even though it's pouring down rain this morning, I went in to town and got the new Carlos Ruiz Zafon--Prisoner of Heaven--at Waterstones.  It's the sequel to Shadow of the Wind, one of my all time favorite books.  And of course, I can never just get the book I came for, so I had a prowl and picked up The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris, a book on perfectly tossed salads and another book on picnic foods.  So now I'm in a quandry:  I was going to start Crucible, but then Advent looked interesting and now I have Prsoner of Heaven.  So many books...  So little time...

I got our self-catering cottage booked for the 1st week in August; a little place that looks equi-distant to Cherbourg and Bayeux.  I was looking at the Poole or Portsmouth ferries to Cherbourg but those are almost L500!  Sheesh!  And really poor sailing times!  The Chunnel is only about L177 and has a much better choice of departure times, but then there's a lot of driving once we get to France.  I still have time to decide what to do but I'm on a roll with the planning and I just want to get it all booked.  Maybe we'll split the difference and take the ferry to Cherbourg and the Chunnel back.  We head home on Friday, so that wonderful little cheese shop in Calais (La Maison du Vin et Fromage) will be open...

I was really getting worried when I started looking for self-catering cottages in Normandy because it was looking like there was no availability in August, but as I worked thru the list, it started to open up.  It almost looks like people were starting at the top of the list and just booking the first thing that met their requirements, so as I got deeper into the list, dates started to become available.  I'm looking forward to this trip because we have a lot of relaxing planned!