I might be allergic to France.

Those of you who know me may remember that V and I got food poisoning when I visited him last October. Let me tell you, there is no better way for a couple to grow closer than to have a 24 hour bout of food poisoning (sorry for serving us that leftover chicken, V) in a small apartment with one bathroom. There was more than one occasion when one of us knocked on the door saying "honey, will you be out soon...?" Luckily, the episode occurred on a national holiday and thus a day off for V, and concluded about 6 hours before I was due to board a transatlantic flight home.

Moving on to present day... It has been an absolutely glorious day in Finistere (the fancy name for coastal, western Brittany, translating roughly to "end of the earth"). It's 29 degrees, which I think means about 85 degrees in weather language I can understand; sunny without a cloud in the sky. It's again some kind of national holiday - there are so many I can't keep track - so V has the day off. We slept in, as I'm still recovering from a bit of jet lag. And then partook of our favorite sunny day eating activity, lunch at the vivier. A vivier is an oyster farm that serves as a seafood restaurant as well. We had a delightful lunch on a deck situated over the sea, with two dozen oysters, a slab of smoked trout, and an araignee - spider crab.

Here is the view from the vivier:

And here is V, about to dig into a tasty araignee:

He doesn't usually look so crazy...

All was good. We had a lovely bottle of Muscadet to accompany the meal, then headed off to the beach. High tide came quickly and we had to change location more than once... and our beach blanket got covered in sand. Otherwise it was lovely - and then I started to get stomach cramps.

One of you little jerks did this to me:

Our lovely day at the beach was abbreviated as we tried to make it home as quickly as possible. For the time being I will reserve judgment as to whether I am actually allergic to France. Fingers crossed that this is not the case; that would be a real drag.

Also, rather than leaving you with the mental image of me running to the toilette, I'll leave you with a much happier image from today:

A selfie in front of the super cool suspension bridge on the road to the Crozon Peninsula.

Au revoir for now, friends, I'll talk to you tomorrow!