I am so exhausted I will be surprised if I make it to the end of this entry.
We are back in the camper van, the children are asleep, Mark is making coffee to try and inspire me to enough wakefulness to finish writing to you, and I am sitting in bed, aching with weariness and adventures and memories.
There are so many memories that if I don’t write them down I will lose them. The glorious fresh smell of the hotel lobby, it is actually scented not just a fortuitous chance of fate. The hotel waiters who are quite justifiably snooty, because they are proficient in five or six languages as well as knowledgeable about wine. Oliver chasing a balloon up and down the glorious, perfect hotel lobby and laughing just because of the pleasure of it, and other grown-ups laughing with him, because it is so nice to see people being happy.
Then there was the food, oh goodness, the food.
Lucy carefully peeling enormous prawns out of their shells. Oliver thoughtfully examining the buffet, and finally deciding on marshmallows and chocolate sauce as his favourite combination for pudding. Huge breakfasts of French fried, smoked bacon, wafer thin and crisp, and laid carefully on top of perfectly cooked superb scrambled eggs, and tiny spicy sausages.
I love the beauty of the place, love the rich colour. Huge log fires with giant squashy sofas and velvet-upholstered armchairs. We all went in to the cocktail bar this evening, wallpapered with sheets of music, with soft lights and walnut tables and quiet, unobtrusive staff. Oliver had a special beginner’s cocktail, and Mark and Lucy had hot chocolate with mountains of whipped cream and a spoon made out of biscuit. Mark had liqueur in his, and I had a lovely fruit cocktail called Rouge et Noir that made me feel a bit giggly and light headed.
We sat in the beautiful room in the beautiful hotel, and listened to the barman teaching a little girl how to shake cocktails. We tasted one another’s drinks, and the waiter brought olives for me and Mark, and Doritos for the children, and a man played Frank Sinatra songs on the grand piano just outside the entrance, and we remembered the best bits of the day, and marvelled at the nicest things and were astounded by our own unbelievable good fortune in life.
We have walked and swum and stared at things and ridden on things. We have played endless games waiting in queues, poking one another and shrieking with laughter, and beating the children up and being the worst-behaved family in every line. Our hotel gave us a special pass, so sometimes we just strolled smugly past the queue and waved our passes at the people on the gate, who politely let us take our places at the front.
We chased Oliver round and round the maze, He escaped at the very beginning, and kept appearing over the top of hedges or waving tantalisingly from the tower, and squeaked and dashed off every time anybody got within snatching distance of him, until we were all breathless and laughing and lost.
We bought presents for ourselves and everybody else, and Oliver and Lucy wanted candy floss, which is called Barbe Papa in French, which means Father’s Beard, and we made beards with it so then everybody had to have a wash.
The very last thing we did before we staggered back to our van was to watch the firework show again, which was magnificent. I mean really magnificent. The castle shimmered and changed from one stunning colour to another, and the fountains danced and the sky burst into brilliant explosions of gold.
Finally, finally we collapsed into the dear, homely camper, and the long journey home is just about to begin. Tomorrow morning we will be away from here, but it has been glorious.
We have been all together, and we have been somewhere beautiful. We have eaten and drunk the nicest things, we have swum in a beautiful pool and played until we were too exhausted to play any more.
It could not have been lovelier. We are beyond fortunate.
Life is wonderful.
