Blake and Deborah in Europe: Gonfaron

Sunday was our last full day in Gonfaron, and it proved to be another sunny one. Deborah and Simon and I took the twins for a long stroll out to Le Village Des Tortues (the Village of the Turtles) – a rescue sanctuary just outside town for injured, ill, abandoned, and otherwise needy reptiles of the turtle variety. It's a kind of turtle zoo dedicated to rehabilitating the ill and injured – sometimes by stitching or gluing their shells back together – with the goal of eventually returning them to the wild. There are also educational displays, including some models of giant prehistoric turtles. The twins didn't appear to distinguish between the big painted plastic turtles and the live ones; understandable since neither variety moved very much. There was an infirmary area that displayed some particularly sickly turtles in glass tanks with their specific malady indicated, be it a respiratory illness, a dog bite, injury from a car, etc. Upon our return to the house, Simon informed Jill that we saw a turtle with a cold. The twins informed their father that we also saw hippopotamuses. Somehow the rest of us failed to spot those.

John and Jill seemed happy with the progress Simon and I made in the attic renovation, although I know we could have done at lot more. And I'm certain they were delighted to have all the breaks from parental duty as Deborah looked after the girls for so many hours, not to mention all the help with cooking, cleaning, and of course hairdos. Deborah would have probably preferred to spend more time redecorating and reorganizing, but it just didn't work out that way, and she really did enjoy the twins, although she firmly reconfirmed her desire to remain childless.

Simon left Sunday evening on a night train to Toulouse. We left Monday morning by train to Marseilles, then flew to Barcelona, where we are now. We LOVE Barcelona, although our hotel's wi-fi is dysfunctional so near term blog entries may be more sparse.