Hello Dublin Sunshine. Sunday 7th June 2009

Let’s go! Make hay while the sun shines they say. Who are ‘they’ anyway?

Straight on the Open Top Bus Tour to see all the major sights we had not already covered and back to the hotel by 2ish to get a cab to the airport. On the bus tour we got out at the Smithfield Horse Markets held once a month here in Dublin. A dramatic mixture of happy and sad sights were in front of us as we wandered around. Some of the horses had obviously had a hard life, their exposed ribs telling a little of their hardship. Others were a picture of health. I have heard these markets may be closed down. The main players are the youth trading and buying horses, often without the means to take care of them properly.

We were flying Ryan Air for the first time and had heard they were notorious for charging for every kilo your luggage was overweight. The worst thing is that their limit is only 15kg! Is a girl not to travel without shoes? We are quit ok with the usual 20kg limit and have mastered the art of living with a 20kg suitcase plus hand luggage, but 15 kg is impossible. We loaded our hand luggage to its limit and a bit more. If we stood at the check in desk without looking like our backs were breaking we may just get by without them noticing our heavy bags or our jacket pockets loaded with the shoes, books, computer leads, notebooks, etc we were concealing... we had become luggage mules! She didn’t give the hand luggage a sideways glance but our suitcases were 9kg over in total, she only charged us for six. Even that came to €105. We felt sneaky and proud that we had gotten off so lightly.

We arrived in Nantes on the West coast of France 20 minutes ahead of schedule. The cab pulled up outside out next home-exchange, please let it be clean my internal thoughts kept repeating. Dominiques parents were there to greet us with the French cheek sisses we had missed. We are all so happy to be back in France, it kind of feels like home in a funny way, even AJ feels the same.

We were given the induction of our new home for the next three weeks. It is lovely. A converted disco, there is a board showing the extensive renovation taken to convert the building into this beautiful home. The colours are bright and cheerful, the house is nice and clean and the polished concrete floors feel like glass under foot. The home is open plan with different pods to retire to. There is a fooz-ball table which I clean up on the first time I challenge AJ – go the Mumster!

The kitchen is all stainless steel, red and chrome, just lovely. You can tell a lot from a persons home, I imagine the family to be happy and loving, to appreciate culture, good food and the environment. The centre of the home is a big garden with rocks and sand, the water trickles all day and makes the home so relaxing. There are a few tiny fish swimming in the pond. Every evening the pond floats with smoke and in the morning a soft red light shines for a while.

Not long after we arrive a nearby neighbour is at the door to welcome us, he’s nice and invites us for dinner. We are smashed, so take a rain check for now. Our problem is that it is quite late on Sunday night and everything is closed, we have nothing for dinner. Before long our neighbour is gone and returns with a bag of onions, tomatoes, peaches, lettuce, bread and eggs – we will eat tonight.

I love our new home.