Chocolate Menhir in Plouharnel

3 meters high, 200 kilos of chocolate for this chocolate menhir in Plouharnel - it was made at the Biscuiterie des Menhirs, Sunday April 17, on a polystyrene structure covered by 4 cm of chocolate. The biscuit shop announced that it would be on display all through the summer.

This photo is taken from Ouest France website

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Back from Brittany

We're back from a week in Brittany, in the land of menhirs, dolmens and crèpes! 

I'll start here by a few words about our trip to Belle Ile. This island is a 45 minutes boat trip from Quiberon. Belle Ile is gorgeous, it's rugged landscapes captivate the eyes. Our trip to Belle Ile was on the 21st of April, we reserved a ferry+bus tour through Les Cars Verts agency. Didier our guide was very friendly and told us a few stories about the island. The tour included a visit of a biscuit factory... that was tasteful! I'll talk about crèpes and biscuits in another post :)

Here are a few shots of "Les Aiguilles de Port Coton" which has inspired Claude Monet... and a map of Belle Ile.

Winter holidays, go!

Our kids are on holidays, yes in France it comes every six weeks or so. Anyway they are on "winter holidays" until February 28. France is divided in three zones for school holidays and we in Paris and Ile de France are in zone 3. Here's a map with the zones...
Having my transcription and translation business and working at home is very convenient when holidays come by... even when your kids are older (mine 16 and 19), they do appreciate to have someone to take care of them. So during my break, we took a little walk in our town... and found some new street art paintings...

A bit further we found a real cat on a wall...

Vacation planning

We are now trying to find out where we will go on vacation next summer. A couple of suggestions have been made Norway – which according to some members of our family is a great place for salmon - and also Thailand. One thing we’ll bear in mind though is that with all the uncertainties that we encounter today when we want to travel (volcano, strike, flood etc.), we would very much want to buy our plane tickets from regular airlines and make sure the dates of travel may be changed.

Two travel forum I personally like are TripAdvisor (the English forum) and Voyage Forum which is francophone.
 

There is yet some thinking to do: Where? When: even if no one is yet sure when their holidays will be but one thing is sure, in France we do have a lot of holidays! And we count on the sun of course!!!

 

From Paris to Mauritius, from snow to sun

As everyone has heard in the news, here in Paris we don't usually get snow during winter... we get maybe 1 or 2 centimeters during a couple of days, everything will go wild, people will fall, cars will skip and airports will close. But since last 2 years, snow is coming more than a 2 cm fall. On the 19^th of December my eldest daughter had to take her plane to Mauritius to visit the family. When we woke up, snow had fallen, the roads were not clear and my husband had to take us to the nearest RER train station in Paris instead of driving to the airport. Roads were slippery and we would not have been able to make it to the airport which is only a 45 minutes drive from our home south of Paris (Roissy being in the north of Paris).

Anyway I went to the airport with my daughter, waited and waited and listened to all the announcements of delayed and of cancelled flights. There were two flights for Mauritius and one was cancelled. Finally she went in and managed to take off at 11 PM instead of 4 PM. But she was real lucky. Our neighbor said she was due to leave from Roissy for a destination in Africa but since they had to land in Bruxelles first, well since the airport was closed, their flight was cancelled. I think that night maybe less than 5 flights could take off as all flights to Europe had been cancelled and most other countries involving a stop in Europe.

So here’s some photos of that morning, and one showing how it looked like in my parents’ neighborhood in Mauritius. Lucky girl had a temperature change of more than 30 degrees. She’s now suntanned and full of energy for the rest of winter.

Snow on Paris Roissy Airport, takeoff to Mauritius after several hours delay

Luckily on December 19th 2010, my daughter's plane could leave Roissy Airport in France for a very sunny destination. That lucky girl flew to Mauritius, her plane was due to leave Paris at 4 PM and it finally left after 11 PM. But she has now a beautiful suntan and brought back loads of photos.
Christmas and New Year is quite something in Mauritius, of course no snow but all that delicious food, the mangoes, litchis, and the sun!!!

You might be interested in Mauritius travel guides

Papaya Tree

Mango and watermelon fruit salad

Flowers and birds from Botanical Garden in Pamplemousses

 

Bougainvillea from Grandma's house in Pointe-aux-Sables

Flamboyant tree, large red flowers every December