Ah, the joys of travel!

Our road to Nice and Cinque Terre was a little bumpy at first...but the second honeymoon we ended up getting was more than worth it! The morning we were all packed and ready to leave on our trip (first Barcelona, Spain, then onto Nice, France then lastly Cinque Terre, Italy and back home again) my sweet dear husband offered to get us, and our host, some pain de chocolat and get a little cash for the road. My husband returned, white as a ghost and sweating already at six am. It seems that the bank had thought that our spending overseas seemed a bit unusual and the $300 + we had spent online on train tickets put our account and card on hold. So, when Alex went to get cash at the ATM a notice came up saying that they were "capturing" the card and it would soon be destroyed, it's vital to know that it is impossible to get your train tickets without the card you bought them with. Super. Naturally, the Brantome bank and our bank back home were both closed. When the Brantome bank opened we convinced them to take our card out of the ATM and hold it for us, quite literally, the bank manager was holding it in front of us gesturing with it. I can't tell you how strong the urge was to snatch it from his hands and run for the border...logic outweighed that instinct.

After hours on the phone with U.S. after hours help, to no avail, we decided to drive the hour + to Bordeaux and pray that they would let us board the train that we were just in time to catch.

Of course they wouldn't let us. So, we had lunch and a little tour of Bordeaux to make it slightly less depressing and went back to Brantome to re-group. Alex remembered that if we canceled our train tickets ahead of time they will reimburse you, thankfully we were able to do that for a portion of the money. We decided to leave the next morning, bright and early for Nice and just skip the Barcelona part. We left very, very, very early and were off. After a long, long, long, train ride we arrived to our hotel I had booked online at five am just before leaving, and despite the beginning of the adventure the hotel actually ended up being adorable and gorgeous!

Et plus...

I'm going to start doing my posts more frequently because it's already hard to remember what I did five days ago! In my defense I wasn't "back to normal" (whatever that means) with sleep until yesterday I think.

On Saturday I got le grand tour of the house and shop, although to be fair

I don't think it was until last night that I actually saw all of the house, I swear Kim has revealed a new room or wing of the house and shop each day! It's so beautiful here. The house is very long with a cellar and attic as well as full workshop with loft, the boutique, unrenovated wing with extra bathroom, storage, living room and bedroom as well as a garage with loft! There's also a huge garden with well, old

outhouse, outdoor sink where people used to do laundry, an area to dry clothes and lots of flowers.

Last Saturday I mostly caught up (or attempted at least) on my sleep and had the big adventure of walking into town to the atm and boulangerie all by myself!

Sunday was so much fun, we went to the Viet Garnier (which is like a nicer flea market) where I bought some treasures to bring back for Mignonne. We went out to lunch, I had French fries (in France!) and a tartine which is a piece of toast with (what I chose) atrichoke, bell pepper and chicken on it. My host thought it was a little too soy saucy, but I don't think my taste buds had woken up yet either! We finished with ice cream and a nice canoe ride! It had been raining off

and on all day, but we had some nice breaks in the weather.

I started the windows on Monday, slept twelve hours and started to actually feel human again. On Tuesday, I drove to the Super Marche all by myself and it went pretty well, there was a slight misunderstanding when I tried to leave the store with the store's basket, oops! That night we went out to Indian food, it was amazing, and I even ordered dinner almost by myself!

Wednesday we went to this store that is similar to Goodwill or Salvation Army (Emmouse) and I bought Alex a vintage Tin Tin and a few more items for Mignonne. I also accidentally left a

bag there with some other things for Mignonne and some really cute vintage mismatched glasses that I'm praying they won't have re-distributed by the time we can get a hold of them. Oh! We also got the most parfait black vintage vello (bike) there too, we bought another one but someone else accidentally took it (that's still up in the air) and to make it up to us they pulled out this other one they were saving for a sale and gave it to us instead! I love this one so much more and it's just tres parfait for my fantasy French adventure, pictures soon to come!

Today I finished the windows and I'm going to do a seperate post for them. Kim made another amazing feast out of an impressive four

ingredients and I saw one of the largest spiders of my life, some bugs are surprinsingly large here! A bientot!

Wordless Wednesday: I leave TOMORROW!!!

Passport love

Oh passport, you are my ticket to freedom and yet another chance for a self-esteem reducing heinous picture! Government issued photos and I have gotten along in the past, but since last year and the DMV's new "Bone Recognition Software" we no longer care for each other.

When Alex and I got married I had a license picture that was cute, I was sixteen and elated to have just passed my drivers test and you can see it in my smile. It wasn't a model worthy pic or anything, but cute none the less. That ID carried me all the way until Alex and I got married and I had to get a new one, I don't know if it was the post-honeymoon glow or what, but I was very, very, very lucky. My picture was beautiful, simple as that. Then, last summer I discovered that sadly my beautiful newlywed license did not renew my license, it had only replaced the one from when I was 16.

That's when I really got humbled (as if the PCT, which we had just come off of, hadn't done that enough!) when the typically "kind" woman at the DMV told me that since I got my last ID they now have "Bone Recognition Software". What is that you may ask? Well, that means you have to be zoomed up on at horrific closeness and then they'll tell you to "look here" which will result in you looking droopy eyed and under the influence of one substance or another and that the scarf that you will have chosen to "brighten your face" will only further the look of your detached head and possibly drunken demeanor. Ugh. I still haven't shown some members of my family, it's that bad.

Also since getting married I now need a new passport because my last name has changed, so yet again I have to go from having a relatively cute passport picture (I was 21 and my grandma was taking me to Mexico, so I was again excited and happy) to...the one I have now. One fabulous feature of today's modern world is that you can now take a passport photo at home, that fits certain restrictions, and use that as your passport picture. Being as how I'm on a time constraint I had to take my picture during the time that I was having an allergic reaction to nail polish (my eyes had bright pink rings around them up to my eyebrows and they were peeling, very attractive) that I apparently had suddenly developed. Miraculously I had come up with a somewhat decent picture.

They rejected it. At this time, I had about five weeks before I left to France and it's supposed to take 4-6 weeks to get your new passport! I had to bite the bullet and go to Wallgreen's asap to have them take a picture that wouldn't get rejected.

I walked into the store looking for their photo department and the little screen I would step in front of for my picture. I couldn't find it so I asked for help and the attendant pulled down a screen that was above the chips and gets a digital camera out to take my picture. She then informs me that she recently had someone come back saying that their photo had been rejected because they were smiling. Okay, no smile. And because their ears weren't showing. WHAT?!

So not only did I not have a chance for a shower that day but I then add on no smiling and making sure my ears are especially visible!

Compared to my license (which, no, I won't post) this looks like a professional photo shoot! But, who cares when the end result is traveling the world! But it could always be worse....

Totally unrelated, here's Alex's passport picture: he was trying to "bulk up" for the trail at the time ;)....