September 7th and 8th - Birthday One , Saskia & Will

Thursday the 7th of September was my birthday. It had been such a fraught and busy time leading up to arriving in France, we'd not even thought about our two birthdays. We started the morning off with a lie-in, some unpacking, then had ourselves a nice birthday menu du jour (menu of the day) at Can Jordi restaurant. The rest of the day was unfortunately spent cleaning, unpacking and tidying.

Friday we had to get up reasonably early to take the car down to Citroen for its aircon gas. Right next door was Ceret's LIDL supermarket, known for its cheap wine and odd selection of one-off specials. We filled a couple of bags and a box with a full selection of groceries. We were staggered yet again at the low prices. Entire French cheeses for 1.39E, 3 peppers for 99 centimes. It really made us realise how expensive New Zealand has become. As we packed away our haul back in the apartment, I did a quick totting up of what the shopping trip might have cost in NZ, and guessed our 75 Euros (NZD125) might have cost $280 back in NZ. Ouch! It seems mad that we have to pay $13/kg for "tasty" but in fact rather ordinary cheddar in NZ, whereas we can get a Comte or Cantal for much less here, and even the French king of blue cheeses, Roquefort, was just $20/kg.

A small selection of the cheeses available at the superette.

Our 75E haul

Anyway by lunchtime we had the house in good condition, the beds ready, the car prepped for tripping, the fridge full of goodies, and everything in full readiness for Saskia and Will's arrival. It was lovely to see them around midday, and to sit and share an excellent lunch of fresh local produce. They were enroute to drop off their van in Frankfurt before flying to India for several months. They needed to do a lot of arranging of flight, transport, visas and accommodation, so it was upstairs for them onto our laptops and four screens for the rest of the day.

Many moons ago we'd arranged to meet Andrew and Marijke for a birthday dinner in the evening. We chose to try a new restaurant, Le Jardin, which had replaced Le Percheron. It turned out to be excellent. Service was slow, which suited us fine as we caught up with our friends' lives. Sadly, they were moving to a new house in Montpellier on Tuesday (2hrs away by motorway). We will no doubt catch up with them again, but it is a pity that they won't be quite so close by.

More of the same the next day, though we did find time to go out to the patisserie where we let Will and Sask choose a pastry each. The choice is of course superb. Saturday was internet research and washing for Sask and Will, not a lot for us.