Friday, May 1, 2015

"Long Weekend"--- St Guilhem le Desert

14/March/2015

Marcus booked our accommodation in the middle of the village. It was very atmospheric and just lovely being very closed to the monastery. Quiet, and nicely haunted. Energy was very soft and almost as if very subtly vibrating.

When we got to the village, as usual, we parked our little Fiat in the car park near the grave yard. Walked into the square, owners of our accommodation had a shop there, so popped into to get the key. He and his wife had a jewelly shop there and David (husband) kindly took us to his apartment. He seemed to be really nice bloke, his wife looked a bit grumpy. Later Marcus told me reason why she might've been grumpy. Apparently, when Marcus found them on line, It had a cheap deal on, but when he looked into David's site, it was even cheaper. So he cancelled it through the site and re-booked through David's site directly in order to get even cheaper deals. Later they realised they made a mistake on pricing on their site. However David kindly processed Marcus's order how he booked. 

That was our theory. But she just might be grumpy anyway or stressed on something else. Anyway, the apartment was the next to the little Tibetan shop in the village. It was very well done up. Here's some photos!


kitchen

kitchen



main bedroom

Main bedroom
Kitcthen

lounge with pretty lighting

open plan second bed room

pretty lighting and shadow on landing upstairs

main bedroom


 Very pretty and lots of nic-knacks in the house, was that why David was counting every single cutleries when we checked out? He told us to contact him before we checked out in order to return our deposit. Our flight back was early, so David turned up about 6:30am to check inventory. He counted and checked all nik-knacks, made sure toilet was working, or nothing taken. 

Then he asked us a question "where are two pigeons?" There were two pigeon ornaments made with iron, sitting on the top of electric box. After we were playing with them(there's a story to this, tell you later), we placed them on the top of cabinet. Obviously David didn't see them at that point. They were literally in front of him! When he saw them, he carefully placed back on the top of the electric box. And he gave us our deposit back. 

I thought he was very paranoid, did he really think we were taking those ornaments????  Anyway, we were probably more paranoid than him till then. Because we constantly had heating on, it was very warm, cosy and comfy inside the house. Never felt one second it was chilly and cold. Thought how much extra we had to pay for that....

He didn't check how much electric we used. 

Then made us wonder. He was more worried about little ornaments than how much more/extras his customer spent on electric. 

We would defo come back there again. No extra on heating. 

Thanks David! and his wife.

"Long Weekend"--- Going to St.Guilhem le Desert



14/March/  2015

Yey! I was waiting to go back to St. Guilhem le desert since last time. It was such a lovely village with fantastic walks, I couldn't wait to get there!

Only one thing in my head was the Orange Footpath, I wanted to see where it lead to. Where did we miss the turn? How long did it take? All those questions needed to be answered (in my head...).

Going to airport is always fun. We flew from Stansted airport (which has lot of low rating reviews on various sites) by Rynair. When we got to the airport, it was in the middle of doing it up, and messy! They changed round how shops were and now passengers have to go through duty free shops to get to gates. I wish airports had a health food shop, even Holland & Barret.... Those shops and cafes aren't very well catered for people who have special diets ie; gluten free, sugar free, vegetarians and vegans. Never mind, it will happen one day. 

We parked our car at the middle stay ( I think), Look this prat did (excuse my language!). We pay lot for this car park (unless with cheap deals on line), I wonder how much this prat paid for this space?


Naughty Parking!
Anyway, I couldn't hide my excitement getting on the airport bus to the airport... my heart was pumping, how many times experience getting to the airport, still, it's always fun.

This is me, putting some foreign money in to the box. The story goes: I bought a pair of shorts off eBay (which I'm wearing in this photo), and found some Tanzanian notes inside a pocket. I was wondering how much would be and googled it, and it was worth about £5. None of my local banks dealt with this currency, that was why I decided to take it to the airport for recycling.



Very Rare Tanzanian Money (to me)!


I love flying into France. It only takes just under 2 hours (more like 1.5 hour) to into Perpignan. We weren't really sure how cool/warm this part of France would be, although we checked with weather forecast, never really can't tell, till you get there. So, I wrapped myself up with my new outdoor tops and gilet, layered really well. I thought my layering system was great! and it was.

When we get to the other end, Perpignan, we were thrilled. Blue sky! It was just beautiful thing to see the blue sky, felt like we hadn't seen it for looong time, and it was.


Fantastic sky! No cloud.

Our hire car was Fiat 500 again. We had this car before somewhere....I'm sure it was last year when we went.... St Guilhem le Desert again, we flew into Carcassonne. We love this little car. Marcus tells me this little car has more leg space (on the front) than his Audi. That doesn't make sense, surely, large cars have more space... but reality is not.


Cute Fiat with Cheeky face!


Look at the number plate, how cute is that? "DAISY" 
Can you see?

Now, we were heading to ... beautiful St. Guilhem le Desert!