Ready & waiting

The bags are packed, weight checked & ready to go. Just last minute things now, so we can indulge in a restful  weekend. Theo is going to be our taxi to the airport hotel. We are staying there overnight to make the early morning flight more acceptable. Tues will be a long enough day without getting up in the middle of the night to get down to Toulouse.

Preparing to go

In a week’s time we will be off again, this time it the USA.  Anyone who is acquainted with us will realise that this is Doug’s choice, but I know of course that we will have a great time. We have begun to think about packing but once again we will be facing several climate changes in one trip. The suitcases will come out tomorrow & we will start the serious business of  selecting from the wardrobe. All this is made slightly  less easy by the very unpleasant wet & stormy weather that we are currently experiencing. We have a busy week ahead before we depart but no doubt everything will fall into place once we leave home. We have few commitments next weekend making the packing less onerous once all the choices have been made. 

Music is the theme of the holiday, & we will actually get to travel a part of Route 66. We will also be catching up with friends & family old & new, adding a spice of excitment to everything. Graceland beckons at some stage & for a girl who was/is an avid Cliff fan this seems a bit like treason! It will be great to have the inside track on things in NY, Chicago & St. Louis & we are looking forward to a first time meeting with Crispin & Cecile—from Doug’s mother’s side of the family. A Japanese friend, last seen over 13yrs ago, has invited us to meet her husband, children & even parents in NY & friends from the village here who live in St. Louis are promising an interesting night out.

Watch this space for further developments.

Musings

We are back home now & had a great night’s sleep. We went St. Antonin market this morning. It was very quiet but we caught up everyone & had a coffee together. Incidentally, I will no longer mock the summer tourists who take pictures of fruit & veg—I am guilty of doing the self-same thing in India. I suppose I just didn’t expect to see such good quality produce in India but it is everywhere, from the smallest village to the big cities.
I just want to post a couple of pictures that I took from the plane. Our route took us over both Pakistan & Afghanistan & looking out of the window for well over an hour, all that you could see were snow covered mountains. They stretched as far as the eye could see & it begs the question of how do you govern a terrain like that?
We may still post a few things this week so keep looking if it interests you.

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