Day Eight, Nine and Ten

The little rented house of Marieke's parents in Neuvic, was a perfect ending of a perfect French adventure. A place with just enough wind, just enough sunlight an warmth. With just enough silence and a simple kind of beauty.
The day after we arrived, we picked the hundrerd euro envelop and we prepared a generous , abundant and overwhelming French dinner for Marieke's parents, and us ourselves offcourse. The same day, we made a test-version of our game: Frans genieten and we've played it after the dinner. In this way, we and Marieke's parents got to know eauchother a little bit better and had lots of fun!

At night, we watched falling stars, one after another, in the French nonenlightened, clearly dark sky and amazed ourself about the grandness of the universe.
Apart from all this, we swam in the lake, chatted a bit, but  mostly we were too lazy to get off our spot on the coloured cloth in the shade.... :) We rested on the laurels of our well earned victory.

So here, in the shade of the grand trees, listnening to the wind, we let the movie of our adventures once again pass through . A movie we'd love to share with you. So all of you will be welcome on the 12th of August to enjoy a French dinner with us and or to listnen to the stories of these trhee heroes :) See you then!

The next day Frauke was the first one to wake up. She went to the livingroom, put her hand in her backback to take her towel out and grabbed right into the warm and soft skin of .... Indeed: the rat! It had chosen Frauke's clothes as its bed for the night, after we had expelled him from its territory...
This trip is one big therapy for all of us!

There's more to come, you'll just have to wait a little longer!

Day Six

A tour through the dungeons of the house to meet the ghost of the mill (which used to be a prison during some dark ages), a photosession during a walk through the 'pitoresque' little village of Beaugency.... this town and its mill had the effect on us of  'I can't smile any more! It's too pretty! I'm about to explode! Wow! Whoehoe!'

While we were enjoying another queensbreakfast, three generations of sporty women came back from an hour of fast walking! What an energy! Lucile, her mother and grandmother were unfortunately gone when we left, but we remember them as very elegant, beautiful and warmhearted.

Talkattive, sweet and incredibly kind Thierry brought us to Chambord. Here our eyes got more than their daily food: the second most beautiful castle of France, after Versaille. What a beauty!

Walking around the 'jardins' of the castle, we seemed to be famous, wearing our flowery dresses because everybody smiled to us. We thought it to be a 'bon idee' to ask some money for it, to give us some more financial space, after we had picked the envelope with three cents today! But after we wrote a golden board 'photo avec les fleurs' we talked to some Dutch people that seemed to find as rather poor than pretty and rather strange than funny. Also the other people that walked by looked at us as if to say: What are you doing? We decided to put the sign away and two minutes later, people started to ask us to be on their pictures with them, smiled again and when we left the castle, our pockets were still empty, but our hearts were filled.

Super-manager-directer Ludovic brought us to the next castle, in Chaverny. From here, Nicole, a funny and extraordanary lady from Paris, picked us up.

We couldn't seem to understand what the relation of the her and the woman in the seat next to her was. Until we reached the farm-house of the woman, which happened to be the seller of the car Nicole had came all the way from Paris for to buy. The two woman had picked us up in the middle of the testing ride! This meant that the deal still had to be made, the cheques to be written and the car to checked. All the time, we waited.
While Nicole signed the papers, we tasted the homemade wines of the family that sold the car and bought Nicole our favourite one; a soft 'Rosé' to thank her for taking a whole different route, especially for us.

In Bourges we were 'dipping'(the nonexisting verb of the Dutch noun 'dip'): we were hungry, moody, tired, blue. We wanted to go away, but we didn't... We wanted to be enthusiastic but we had a lack of energy. Then, on the street, we met 3 artstudents that took us to their house to let us stay for the night! The students were moving out the next day and their home was crowded, messy, artistic, smokey, and had a free atmosphere. There were other extravagant students walking in and out, some cats with ADHD were running around constantly and in the house there lived... a naked rat that rubbed his hairless body against you if you weren't paying attention. Frauke got crazy of the idea, while she has a still to overcome fear, even for mice, so we put the rat outside, put a vacumer against the door (that didn't close by itself) and slept a short night....

Day five

In the morning we taped our serenade video, waved goodbye to our second new grandmother and hitchhiked at normal speed. Normally we just have to blink our eyes and we have a lift. This time it took a little longer but then a gentleman brought us to a gas station at the highway. We at an icecream in the sun before meeting our new friend Cedric the policeman who brought us a bit further. We danced in the sun at the border of the road until a hyper modern car brought us to a landley gasstation in the middle of nowhere. In this nowhere a big truck stopped. We got in!

Marvelous! Superbe!

The driver was a young guy: Sebastian; only 25 and already driving an enormous truck! He took us along fields of gold! Breathless we watched the grain fields shining in the sun.

At the next stop life brought us some wonderful people: Lucille, Thierry et Marie-Anique, driving a silver (aluminium) jeep (the first car we asked for a ride, because it looked so super cool!). After some serious doubting time about the illegal number of people in the car because Thierry had already lost a lot of his driving licence points, they said Yes! Hop on our safari!
We started to talk about our adventure trip and they asked us where we would sleep. We told them that we didn't know yet. Then they asked us: Would you like to sleep in a mill? What? A mill? Thierry told us that his mother lived in a watermill of the twelved century in the tres beau village Beaugency.

We arrived and it was like a fairytale. We couldn't believe our eyes. We were in heaven. Grandmere number 3(Thierry's mum) was 86 but still full of life and walked towards us with her green rain boots with pink butterflies. So modern! We made dinner together and toasted to a good trip and new friends. The wine and the dinner were heavenly. Close your eyes and imagine a grande, beautiful French diner, with strawberries with whipped cream, abricots, home made cake and marmelade for dessert. Not even to mention the little firework we brought. The enthusiastic family even took us for a walk around the evening city streets. Sweeter it couldn't get. Before bed they promise us a tour down the mill. We can't wait.....

To be continued......