I spent the most recent half term break in southern France at a cottage style campsite near the town of Sommières . We drove over from London which took about two days with cake and coffee stops. It was a fairly relaxing week but the weather didn't really cooperate. I think heavy rain might not be that unusual there though. While we were visiting the town of Quissac, we found a graph of flooding painted on the side of a building. There is a river that flows through this town but even still, the flood waters must have been extreme. There was quite a lot of thunder and lightning which made hanging out by the pool unpleasant but it did give me a chance to do a lot of reading which I haven't done for ages. I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I wasn't thrilled by it but it was a good holiday book.

The main purpose for the trip was for Caroline's family to do some serious bird watching, her family's big favourite pastime. Bird watching isn't really Caroline's favourite pastime (except for birds of prey) so we were able to go shopping and tour around a bit. Her family frequently stopped and got the binoculars out to look at a bird in the distance. We didn't have any of our own so we just pretended. We did see some very nice birds though if you are into that kind of thing. We visited a flamingo reserve and saw about 100 flamingos, four types heron and a bee catcher and I think some storks on a nest but I don't remember now. There was also some birds with amusing names like the squako and hoopoe! Haha! While we were on the flamingo trip we drove to the Mediterranean. I had never seen the med before so it was nice to have a look around although it was a pretty bleak day.

The other natural wonders to be seen in the area are the wild white horses and the black bulls specific to that area. Bull fighting is still quite popular there. I thought that was mainly in Spain but not the case. There were posters up in many small towns giving details on the upcoming bull fights. When we visited the town of Arles we saw their bull fighting arena which is the 16th largest in Europe! What a statistic that is. Arles was more interesting to me though because it was the working town of Van Gogh. We ate at the Van Gogh cafe depicted in the painting Le Cafe Le Soir. There was also a large street market going on with antiques and various bits of lace and stuff like that. Here is someone else's photo that shows a comparison between the painting and the cafe as it stands today. The waiter at that cafe was absolutely crazy. He was the only person working the floor and the place was quite busy. He speed chopped a baguette for each table and barely seemed to watch as he was doing it. I kept expecting to see an ark of blood spraying out form the cutting board area. The food was delicious the whole time we were there. We estimate that as a group we consumed over 45 baguettes, three sticks of butter, a lot of pate and a great deal of cakes. I guess we had no choice because it was raining most of the time. Either that or we are all a bunch of pigs. It could be a bit of both. I found it hard to have a meal when I got home that didn't include a centimetre of butter, a pastry or a hot croissant. Here is a picture of some of the many delicious cakes I consumed. I will post some more pictures tomorrow. I really should be doing some work right now but I can't make myself. Tomorrow is the summer concert at school so I had better sort myself out. I am really looking forward to the school year being finished. It has been an exhausting one and I have learned a lot about the music program I started up this year. I think I will need the summer holidays to put new systems in place. But once the holidays start I may feel a bit less motivated to do it!