Okay, this post doesn’t have a whole lot to do with apple cake, other than the fact that mummy made apple cake last night, and that’s what we’re having for dinner.
We’ve had a rather dramatic end to the constant rains from last week, as Tuesday saw such rough seas that the seafront promenade in Nice was flooded and closed for a full day because of all the rocks thrown up on the road, and the seaside road in Antibes was closed for a couple of days because of debris. Waterfront restaurants were smashed, and Marineland had to deploy emergency measures to save their facilities and sea life.
We’d also found out that one of our favourite Italian towns, Vernazza, in Cinque Terre park, was destroyed a couple of weeks ago by a giant mudslide that left the entire town under 4 metres of mud and debris, following their massive storms. The locals are working hard to see if the town can be saved… and I hope it can because it’s an absolute gem, and we’ve so many memories from visits there. I hope that Liam can see it one day.
But other than the weather, it’s been a pretty good week, except that Sir Liam has been waking in the middle of the night frequently, and he and mummy have seen the wrong side of 3 a.m. far too many times. Which made mummy kind of… you know…. grouchy.
Liam has been a ball of fun though, even if his sleep is off. He’s recently discovered that his toybox has wheels, and makes for a good car…. so he piles himself in and calls out ‘car!’ until one of us pushes him around the apartment for a bit.
Liam has also become a bit obsessed with our neighborhood garbage truck. It usually comes by around 11pm, and often wakes him up (and probably scares him). But Friday night it came early, so we took Liam out to the terrace so he could watch the garbage truck come rumbling down the street, pick up the garbage bins, shake them into the truck and plunk them down again. Since then Liam’s been running about saying ‘shake, shake, shake’ and mimicking the garbage truck picking up the bin. Last week he was obsessing about the water draining out of the tub, and was running around saying ‘down, down, down the drain, down the pipe, and outside!’. Smart little fella.
We took Liam out for a lovely walk at the Col D’Eze yesterday. It’s not the first time we’ve taken him, but this time we took the long trail that circles the plateau. Liam was full of energy and walked way further than we thought he would, although he did stumble a couple of time near the end as it was way past naptime and he was undoubtedly tired. The temperature up on the Col d’Eze was much cooler than it was at sea level, but still brisk and sunny! And on the north side of the trail you get lovely views out to the Alps (which are already snow-capped), and on the south side the sunlight was sparkling off the sea. It’s a great place for a walk.
Today we took Liam up to Susan and Emeil’s house in Peymeinade, very close to Grasse (about 45 minutes from us). Susan is Canadian too, from the same area that Deb is from. They’ve got little Tess, who is just a few months younger than Liam. We’ve been trying to get together with them for ages, but because Emeil captains a cruise ship, they travel so frequently and we’ve not been able to get our schedules to gel. But the kids played so well together that we’ll make more of an effort to see them before they have to leave for the ship again in the new year. The weather was sunny and warm, and Susan made an absolutely delicious meal of pulled pork sandwiches and coleslaw… and we brought (can you guess?)… Apple cake!
Looking forward to what this coming week brings!
