Sevilia in October was wonderful. Still magnificently hot - it reached 30 degrees one day but was still not quite warm enough to make good use of the swimming pool on our terrace! We also visited Cordoba which we loved and Jerez which was disappointing. Nina attended her first ever football match - which delivered 7 goals, so they must have done it on purpose for her.

Pictures are all out of order here. Blogger is a nuisance with this and I don't have the patience to do irt over and over beacuse I am already late an have other things to blog!

Plaza de l'Espana

Cordoba

The Isla Magica

Aforementioned pool

Many people have now seen this in various locations, but I adore it so much I wish to save it for posterity here on this blog.

Nasty lesson learnt.
They say always keep one clip attached for a reason.


































We were all very, very lucky that E was able to leave hospital after one night.

Gymnastics with a nautical flavour
Nina's commitment to gymnastics has taken her as far as 'Agrés 2' - in other words a competition preparation group in which many of the members are significantly older than her.

The actual competition will come later in the year (and as I have moaned before, involves supporting parents sitting in a gym during the hottest days of summer). This link, though, shows the just-for-fun performance that the group put on as part of a spectacle organised by all the sports groups in the village. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhydhRjTA4

The camera follows Nina most of the time so you should make her out - she has a red bandana and, at times, carries a pistol. She is also one of the smallest girls performing!

P.S. The franglais title 'Battle des Pirates' was chosen by the gymnasts and is not an error!

This year N did take part in the Escalade race. She reports that it was shorter than she imagined - and next year she will sprint earlier. She came somehwere in the middle ( I think it was 235) of 500 particpants in her age group. Can you spot her in the pack with her blue hat on?
You go girl!

Junior sibling has found her own sport. It's a lot of fun but requires seriously posing.

NINA'S HOLIDAY BLOG
We went to Brittany for our summer holiday.The weather wasn't perfect but it was O.K. We went on a boat down the river,


we went swimming in the lake (and we found a crayfish.) ,



we went to the market (sorry we don't have any pictures of the things after this because Mummy's camera ran out) we also swam in the sea and climbed on BIG,BIG,BIG rocks and we went to a zoo and we watched a bird show. We stayed in Nonna's and Papad's nice new little cottage. ( Yay! Mummy's camera is working again!)





and we had vegetables from their nice new little garden. MIAM,MIAM!


So our holiday wasn't as bad as our holiday in Ireland

Very happy with my veggie garden. We have had a lovely crop of strawberries and are now enjoying courgettes while the tomatoes ripen and the aubergines , cucumbers and peppers start to form. Particularly pleased with the cucumbers which I successfully grew from seed, having understood them to be a bit temperamental. I did also cheat and put in some baby lettuces which have continued to thrive and give us excellent fresh salads. We jazz these up with nasturtium flowers from Ella's flower patch at the end of the vegetable strip. I have learnt that I have planted just about everything too close together and will probably have to rotivate a larger plot for next year, but the ideal conditions this spring have been very kind to a first timer and I am further motivated.
These pictures were actually taken about three weeks ago. Everything is even bigger now!

Now featuring new pictures!!
N took part in her first formal gym competition on Sunday. She looked wonderful as she took part in tests in floorwork, rings, bar and jumping with trampette. Although she was disappointed not to be 'placed' she did pass her year and will now go on to the 'Agré 2' section. Mummy and Baka felt saintly for spending a whole sunny Sunday afternoon in a stinky, hot gym cheering her on.

It was high time we had those cousins back. Just a few days. Enough time to take in an evening cruise with stomach stretching fondue, a couple of days of lovely spring weather to wander Geneva and a perilous assualt into the leafy canopy.

Mauritius!I know - its an outrageous time to go on a family holiday to the Indian Ocean, at the beginning of a major recession. But we really missed the sun last summer, and we did have the excuse of celebrating our tenth anniversary last November.

Squeezing ten days out of a half term holiday, which isn't bad, we arrived just after a cyclone had passed. What we didn't realise was that the tail of the cyclone can be worse that the body. The second and third day the winds picked up to almost 90km/h and the sea was churning wildly. The temparature was still 30 degrees, though, so we sat, jet lagged, on the beach and let the waves knock us over and push us through the sand.

We were staying on the North of the island, at Pointe aux Canonniers, near Grand Baie, in a wonderful villa with a lush garden with steps down to the beach. When the weather calmed down it was a little paradise.

There is no such thing as a private beach in Mauritius - which is a good thing - but our little beach was fairly secluded, being cut off from the rest of the coastline at high tide.
The snorkelling was really good just there, too, because of the rocks. We tried some other beaches, which had more to offer in terms of huges expanses of white sand:

but I honestly think we liked our own little beach best. There were other villas in a sort of small neighbourhood, but we rarely saw anyone else. In fact I think we were quite disorientated when we went into the capital, Port Louis (I keep on wanting to write Saint Louis!) for a day.
Apart from this and snorkelling and pottering on the beach we also spent a day on the Isla Mauritia, a beautiful yacht dating from 1852. We sailed to the other end of the island,giving us a chance to see our house from the sea! This was a fantastic day, with a wonderful friendly crew looking after us.

We also visited the amazing Black Gorge River Park in the South of the island and a nature reserve featuring some very amiable animals and the amazing Sacred Lake, where preparations were underway for a huge festival in honour of Shiva. It's a testament to the genuinely open nature of Hinduism that there was no ban on tourists wandering around.

On the way to the Sacred Lake we also passed the crater of one of Mauritius' dormant volcanoes - after 7,000 years so long dormant that the insistent verdure of Mauritius has taken over again in huge style, making it quite unlike other dormant volcanoes. And yet it is not classed extinct... there is life down there.


Possibly the most exciting thing of all was taking a mini submarine down to 35m around the coral reefs. Of course, without specialist equipment we can't really share what we saw down there - but it was spectacular. And enhanced by commentary from the lovely Jonathon. The surgeon fish is so called because of the scalpel shape near its tail. It's big and blue! But then you will notice that even Nina and Sinisa are looking blue. Most colour frequencies are filtered out by the water at this depth.

We loved Mauritius. Even the cyclonic weather was exciting, a new experience. The history and culture of the place is a revelation, the people delightful. Let's hear it for winter sun!