You could always take up pole dancing...

This is what our son said to me the other day when we were sitting outside having a leisurely  lunch and discussing what I could do with my free time. To add insult to injury he added "I am sure they have pole dancing for the elderly".!!!!

He has been here quite a bit lately to fix up his jeep so he can sell it. It means that hubby and son have been bonding doing serious men things and having a few runs up to Aladdin's cave or Supercheap Auto, which is the real name. I went along the first time and quickly realized that it was not my kind of shop at all. Well, except for the diamond studded gear stick, that looked pretty cool, and the pink floor mats, but otherwise it is just boring car stuff. Hubby was in seventh heaven though and bought some fun things, one of them a (flame) torch that I believe he is going to use to get rid of weeds. Is that legal?

Speaking of activities, I have started pool walking with my next door neighbour. It is exactly what it says, you walk in a pool. We walked for an hour and it was roughly one kilometre. The pool was heated so it was very pleasant and since we walked together time passed quickly. It was just that when I got out of the pool I almost fell to the ground. My legs were just so shaky. I must have looked like the Australian swimmer, Chloe McCardel,  who swam around Bermuda. She looked pretty bad when she got out of the water and even had to be taken to hospital while her crew of supporters had the celebration party. Admittedly she had been stung by jellyfish and was also suffering from sunburn which was not my case.

This will be just a short little entry to touch base.  Spring is here so I need to go out and plant the veggies that I bought yesterday.

Hope you are all well wherever you are.

Back in Australia

I have actually been back for a few days already and it has been great. Beautiful and sunny, nice to be back. I got out of the airport so quickly that hubby wasn't even there yet, he was still parking the car. This has never happened before. I usually end up behind someone who is asked to empty out all their bags and it takes forever. We went to our son's new place and had a nice catch up and breakfast and since then on it has been all go.

Prague seen from the boat ride I
went on

The daughter of some friends in Sweden came for a visit and she is just about to leave as we speak. She is doing the one year travel/work visa experience and every time you hear about someone doing it you wish you were twenty  again. Well, almost, I don't think I would be game to carry my own weight in a backpack on the back nor sleep in some of the backpacker hostels. They can be quite crowded and noisy I believe, but I like the idea. Here is a link if you, like me, like traveling!

I visited the Ravensbrück work 
camp and was lucky that a Swedish
school class was there at the same
time. I followed them around and
listened to the teacher who was
extremely interesting to listen to.
I wouldn't be surprised if she had
a personal reason to know so much.

One of the beautiful bridges in Prague
seen from the boat that I took

Church in Dresden

Anyway, my trip down to Grenoble and visit there was wonderful. I saw so many beautiful places on the way and then to catch up with friends was fantastic.

The last day we had a delicious meal together with all the neighbours,
and also a chance to admire the new deck.

Salmon and lots of fresh herbs and 

mango, yum!

I made it

Yessss, I made it. It was a very long drive and I have had to more or less walk around barefoot with a big bandage on my foot due to a blister that developed while driving but otherwise all is well.

Grenoble is beautiful and sunny. On my way driving into Grenoble I stopped to see friends from way back. Our sons went to play-school together.

Then I spent the first day and night with neighbours planning their upcoming trip to Australia. It sounds like they are going to see more of Australia in two months than we have seen so far in four years.

Right now I am up in the Vercors staying with some other dear friends.

We went for a drive to a place where we were supposed to see all the mountains around here including Mont Blanc but just as we arrived there was a cloud cover which just wouldn't go away. So all we could do was to look at the poster to see where the different summits were supposed to be and enjoying our sandwiches in the sun anyway.

Tomorrow it is time to get down from the mountain and meet the rest of the neighbours and have a meal with them. I am very much looking forward to that. I have such fantastic memories of years gone by when we always had a yearly barbecue. Sometimes I wonder if the planning of these barbecues were not the best part. I was always the one who was supposed to bring the ice cream. Maybe I wasn't quite trusted with the other important ingredients. Trust me to get even that wrong the first time. I really got into the ice-cream shopping and bought all sorts of delicious ice-cream, praline and cream, cookies and cream, coffee, strawberry etc but what my dear neighbours only wanted really was lime sorbet. Guess why? Well, that is the one you need to make a Coupe Colonel, which is lime sorbet with, in this case, a very generous helping of vodka over it. You should try it, it is a great summer dessert and it hardly gets any easier than that.

More to come! Much more!