Thursday 31 July 2014

What did I get up to on my holiday.....week 1

It's that time of year again, holiday time!! I absolutely love going away on holiday, I love everything from the packing to setting off early  morning knowing you are off work for a couple of weeks and heading somewhere well away from home for some well deserved r&r. 

This year we have had an early holiday and since Alfie is only 2 we are fortunate that we can go well out of season and take advantage of some much more reasonable prices (I am not looking forward to when we have to go in the school holidays!). 

We started our journey off at around 7am (ish!) and made our way down to Dover to catch the ferry and meet our friends (our other set of friends flew), we had an overnight stop booked at Evreux roughly around 3 hours into France. Having two toddlers between us we were naturally conscious that we didn't want to push it too much on our first leg of the journey. We stayed at the local Kyriad hotel and luckily we were able to put the little one's to bed and have the monitors outside while we enjoyed the start of our holiday with some vino in a rather unconventional way.....see below!


We decided months ago to head back to the Dordogne, South of France which is one of my very favourite places in the world and it holds some very special memories for me seeing as it is where my (now) husband proposed. 

So this year we decided to head back there with some of our friends and their children meaning we could get a really nice place to stay and share the cost between us. On our recommendation we booked with Gites Lacombe, having stayed in a couple of their other gites over the past few years we knew that we were getting immaculate, well presented and clean accommodation in an ideal position for chilling and exploring. The gite we stayed in on this occasion was called Les Bousquies, sleeping 8 and with a private pool of generous size we were more than happy when we arrived.

http://www.giteslacombe-perigord.com/

http://www.giteslacombe-perigord.com/

We had a lovely first week mainly relaxing and spending time by the pool, most days it was pretty hot! Alfie absolutely loved being by the pool and even more so in the water, he became such a water baby while we were away and was always asking for Daddy to take him in the pool. We got some brilliant underwater pictures using our Sony phones which are waterproof. 



We visited La Foret des Singes (The Monkey Forest) which we've been to a couple of times previously and it's a lovely couple of hours out, housing over 150 Macaques that are allowed to roam free throughout the forest. You get a little handful of popcorn that you can feed to the Monkey's which is a lovely thing to do and  they're so gentle when they take it too! It's a really pleasant way to spend the morning, not only is it nice to see the monkey's, the forest itself is very nice to walk around and extremely well maintained. 






We visited beautiful little towns such as Domme which is a bastide town (fortified Medieval town) and is such a pretty little place to have a stroll around, every time we visit the area I like to visit Domme not only for the magnificent views but just because I like it there! As you can see in the picture below the views are simply stunning, you can see for miles and take in the beauty that this area of France has to offer, I just love it. Domme is quite often full of artists and photographers and you can clearly see why.




We enjoyed lunches with the boys, absorbed ourselves in the culture and ate enough French food and cakes and naturally drank enough French wine to sink a ship.......and this was only the first week, we had a whole other week to go to continue to do the same ....... I could sense a detox coming on!

We visited the beautiful town of Sarlat where we all enjoyed some ice creams, some of us got a little messy!!! So this.........



Then led to this......!


I think it's fair to say that three little toddlers covered in ice cream, high on sugar and  running around in these fountains (in an attempt to clean them!) created quite a spectacle with people stopping to stare and laugh at them! It was quite a sight!

The trio of troublemakers!





Enjoying the sunshine around the pool.




We were really hoping that we could take the boys canoeing down the Dordogne which is a lot of fun. Sadly they are just a little too young at the moment so we settled for a little picnic by the river instead which was a lovely relaxing way to spend a few hours, we will have to return when they are a little older!



Seeing as we were away with friends we all agreed that it would be lovely if we could all get out for some couple time, particularly a meal out in the evening. We managed to get out for two lovely meals as a couple, one in the first week and one in the second,  it felt like such a treat! 



So that's pretty much our first week summed up, writing about it now gives me serious holiday blues! 

One set of our friends left on the Friday so it was just ourselves, our other friends and their little boy so we had a couple of things planned to do and the rest of the time we planned to spend more time by the pool and relax!

I hope you've enjoyed reading all about our first week, I will be writing about our second week at some point so hang tight!

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4 comments:

  1. Firstly... you look fab!! Secondly, it looks like you had a brilliant time too. Oof the size of that ice cream by the way... nom!
    Carsonsmummy.blogspot.co.uk x

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    1. Thanks Jo that's very kind of you! The ice creams are pretty epic :-) x

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  2. Aww it looks like you had a jam packed time but lots of fun. Wow that ice cream looks amazing

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    1. Thanks for the comment Michelle, the ice creams are delicious! x

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