Back home...... to winter

Kite surfer, Frejus, Saturday

Well we are back....... and to the worst April weather for many years.  We feel very sorry for our exchange partners Agathe, Fabrice and their lovely children.  They must think it's always this cold and wet - it's not honestly, please come back and find out!
Our last night in France was again at the Hotel Cap Riviera near Frejus.  We decided to look for simple fare and pizza seemed to fit the bill, especially as my diet starts again on Monday and pizza will be out of the question.  So we drove into Frejus and headed for the port/beach area.  It was strangely quiet for a Saturday night.  We parked up and explored the area on foot, plenty of people wandering around, but all the eateries were either empty or not serving pizza and we didn't want a rich, three course dinner.  We eventually found a place with plenty of people and which proclaimed pizza on the menu.  We went in and were welcomed with an aperitif on the house.  So far, so good, but then we waited and waited for a menu to be brought to the table.  Looking around we realised that barely anyone had any food in front of them, and people didn't look happy.  We gave it five, then ten minutes, but still no menu had been offered.  The only waitress seemed dippy and not at all organised.  We couldn't catch her eye to ask for a menu.   Amazingly it was the bearded one who cracked first, "come on let's go, I'm fed up of this" he said.  I agreed so off we went.

Back towards the hotel thinking we might end up going to bed without any dinner (no bad thing given the amount we've eaten this last week), but we happened across a basic pizzeria within 5 minutes of the hotel.  They had a wood oven, some free tables and a warm welcome.  We ate great pizza, Four Seasons and Brazillian (actually chorizo and chilli, so not what you might be thinking!).  Washed down with Belgian beer, all in all rather a departure from the fare of the rest of the week.  But very good and we agreed a fine end to a splendid holiday.
This morning we had a leisurely start, breakfast of croissants, pain au chocolat and bread with jam, washed down with Twinnings Earl Grey for me and strong coffee for the bearded one.  A cheery 'au revoir' from the hotel proprietor and we were off by 8am for the 40 minute drive to the airport.  With Easy Jet 'Speedy Boarding' we were very near the front of the queue to get on the plane, and this had a fanstastic plus point as we were able to finally 'meet' our exchange partners in person as they came off the plane.  OK, so we were separated by a rope, but we exchanged a few words and more importantly were able to swap keys, so no worries about the post!  The flight was a little bumpy and the weather in the UK made us very glad to have missed it for the last week.  On our return home we discovered lunch waiting for us in the fridge, along with a Gromit cookie cutter and some fabulous Scrabble mugs with our initials and an original piece of 'Maxence' art on the fridge.  Thank you very much Agathe, Fabrice, Amelie, Maxence and Celestin.  We loved your corner of Provence, enjoyed looking after Leo the cat and can't wait to meet up properly.   Oh and the sun's out now!