We're doing nothing on this vacation. And it's wonderful.
Well, not "nothing". The garçon is taking a morning tennis lesson every day this week (and maybe next as well).
Georges celebrated a birthday yesterday so we made a nice little party (where he cooked the dinner because he wanted magret de canard) with champagne, a light but rich cake made with merengue and an almond praline cream, and a few little gifts.
We go to the beach for at least a couple of hours in the afternoons, but it's been pretty hot so we've been going at the end of the day, after 4pm.
This is a typical day: We sleep as long as we can (tennis lessons are cutting into that a little on the weekdays), eat breakfast, hang around the house doing nothing much, eat lunch, take a siesta, then go to the beach, then eat dinner. Then if we have any energy, we watch a couple of episodes of "Mad Men" (we finally discovered it a few weeks ago and we're totally hooked; just started Season 4 so DON'T TELL US ANYTHING.)
There is a lot of pastis. This is Provence, you know.
A lot of our time is spent thinking about, talking about, planning for, shopping for, preparing and eating lunches and dinners. Not that we're doing such elaborate meals but a lot of French culture does revolve around the pleasure of food. We had a nice lunch out today at a place we haven't tried before, right on a beach one town over in Fréjus, and at the end of it we all got ice cream, but Georges and I chose "adult" ice cream (meaning it comes with booze): I had one that was a very good quality lemon sorbet marinated in limoncello, and Georges had the ice cream version of a Mojito that was so strong I thought it was going to knock him over. We managed to get out onto the beach for a nap after that; it's been a cloudy day but that's no reason not to go to the beach. If it's not actually raining, it's a beach day.
And did I mention sleeping? Yeah, we're doing as much of that as we can stand. In fact if it wasn't already 7:15pm I'd go take a nap right now. Except we're going to eat pizza soon for dinner because we're all too tired from the big lunch and the booze in the ice cream to care about cooking anything tonight.
So, to recap: we eat and we talk and we swim and we sleep. And one of us plays tennis. That's about it.
I love this vacation.
