Summer holiday 2006
le Cap D´Agde − France
Monday, 24th July
Catamaran at the Marina.
We pass all kind of shops that sell clothes, accessories, food and what ever you can think off that you need, and even more stuff that you don’t need. We pass the shop of the traiteur, the delicacy specialist with the super large cooking pots containing paella with fish ore paella with chicken. Smells wonderful again and I buy half a kilo for my evening dinner.
Main street at le Cap D´Agde.
A little further we pass a small shop where they sell ice drinks. These are made with water and fruit syrup for the flavour. The ice is kept in one of these transparent containers with a continuously rotating screw like device that prevents the ice from becoming one solid mass. Instead the water turns into an ice granulate. The drink that we option for is made from plane water ice granulate without any flavour added. The flavours added are from the chunks of fresh fruit that are put in a blender together with the ice granulate and grinded into a smooth delicious cold fruit drink; no sugar added (the latter is optional by the way). I choose for orange and kiwi, which proves to be a tasty and refreshing drink.
Back at the apartment we decide to write an email for the home front. At the bar they have a WIFI facility that costs € 5,00 for 30 minutes, not very cheap I have to say. Although the bar is not very far away from the apartment I cannot find any wireless network here. We finish the email message in a word processor, save it to disc, pickup the notebook and walk to the bar. I buy an admission code that will grant me 30 minutes of internet access and start up the notebook. In the bar I find the wireless connection without any problem. I open the web browser and the login page from Odalys pops up. Here I enter the code that I got at the bar and off I go.
I open my hotmail account, copy and paste the pre-written email message in the message body and away it is! As it turns out, we have received an email from the home front; the family livestock (a guinea pig, a rabbit and some guppy fish) are all in good health and if we are enjoying ourselves? We learn that the temperatures in the northern parts of Europe are also quit high. I close up the notebook and return to the apartment. Al together I have used up 10 minutes and we still have 20 minutes to go!
Blue sky and green pines.
It is about 15:00 PM when my son asks me if I would like to accompany him for a walk on the beach. I agree and we leave for the Plage de la Roquille, which is only a five minute walk away. Arrived there we look for a place to put our things down. Since it is the holiday season for the French as well, the beach is totally crowded. Especially near the shoreline. So we look for a place higher up the beach away from the shoreline. Under the dunes we finely put down our towels. We then spend the next three quarters of an hour in the near warm seawater, in a desperate attempt to cool down from the blistering heat of the sun. Twenty meters offshore I spot some colourful fish swimming in front of me, just above the seafloor on just two arms length. Beautiful!
Having finished our swimming adventure and having cooled down sufficiently, we return to the apartment for dinner. Swimming has made us hungry, and I still have some Paella waiting for me. The rest of the gang settles for some French fries.
