saturday by the sea

I've spent most of this week stuck at home with the flu (or the bubonic plague, more likely) and confined to the nest I have constructed in my sofa (blankets, iPad and a large cup of steaming hot tisane), but I guess I that I should nevertheless consider myself lucky to not to have gotten sick until after coming home from France.

Last Saturday P and I and spent a lovely day with a couple of friends visiting Trouville and Honfleur (I'll post some photos from there soon) on the coast of Normandie. In fact, so lovely that I somehow managed to get a sunburn on my back... Never mind that it wasn't even sunny. I'm Scandinavian.

We had moules marnière and rosé on a beachfront terrace in Trouville, and afterwards we walked around on the beach, listening to the seagulls and making funny footprints in the sand left wet and shapeable by the low tide. I wore a skirt for the first time in eons, and my perfect leather jacket, and all around us there were children (and their enthusiastic parents) playing with colourful kites, the tails of which were dancing beautifully in the wind, high above our heads.

Then, deciding that it was still too cold for afternoon ice cream, we drove through the endless sea of blossoming apple trees and picturesque tiny villages that is Normandie, inhabited by boldly patterned cows and the occasional donkey, to Honfleur, where we ate crêpes au nutella and verbena tisane under a strped marquee while admiring the mirror-like stillness of the port and listening to the rain falling in heavy drops from the clouded sky, telling us that it was time to return to Paris.

I wouldn't have liked to miss it for the world.