Writing, fatshion, me: Trip to France

Ah, Thursday. What a mess it turned out to be. But we were fine, it really wasn't a big deal, but it was really annoying. I decided to book a night away for Lee and I because I thought it would be a nice break, but actually I wish I hadn't bothered really! But we did still have an okay time.

I wanted to go to Angouleme to go to Sephora, and Lee wanted to go as well, and my mum and Alison said they would go too, so we had planned it for the Thursday. We set off about 11.30 in two cars so that Lee and I could go straight away to our hotel after we had finished shopping, because it was only about half an hour south of Angouleme.

We went to a shopping mall outside of the city for lunch. It was raining pretty badly but we went to a coffee shop called La Croissanterie inside. We all had sandwiches and cake and drinks. Then we went into Yves Rocher in the mall and a couple of other shops. I love Yves Rocher and haven't been into one in years, but I restrained myself and just bought some hand soap.

We went in Alison's car into the city centre itself. I've been to Angouleme a few times - in 2017 with Bettie and Jen, when I was younger on the French exchange, and probably some other time too. It was raining really heavily though so we didn't linger too long outside. Sephora was much better than the one in the Trafford Centre so I got some bits for me and some presents. Lee bought a couple of bits too. By this time it was about 3pm and my mum was getting tired so we went to a different La Croissanterie in the city centre for coffee.

After we had finished shopping we went back to my mum's car at the mall and Lee and I hopped into it (still in pouring rain... this becomes a theme...) and said goodbye to my mum and Alison. They headed back to Alison's and Lee and I headed down to Montmoreau Saint Cybard. The hotel was a bed and breakfast and it was lovely. It was an old manor house set in pretty surroundings and it was decorated really beautifully inside. Plus they had decorated for Halloween so there were spooky bits everywhere!

We had a lovely room and we were able to check in at about 4.30. The place had a pool so at about 5pm we went down to it. It clearly had used to be an outdoor pool but they had put a glass house over it which helped us enormously because the weather was still wild and windy. The pool itself was warm so it was nice enough to bob about for an hour playing with the balls that were there.

We got out at 6pm and then disaster struck. Haha, I sound so dramatic. You see, Alison had advised us to book a restaurant for the evening instead of leaving it to chance on an October Thursday in rural France. So we had. Lee had found a restaurant only about twenty minutes away and we had emailed to book, and it was all fine. But then at 6.05pm they emailed Lee to tell us they weren't opening and couldn't accomadate us. Fine, we thought. We would find something. We both had showers and we headed out at just before 7pm.

Then we drove around for two hours looking for somewhere to eat. Everywhere was just closed or didn't have vegetarian options. We found an Italian restaurant and that was full, and they told us to try the one that was closed! Plus there was a closed road which meant we had to keep doing diversions for miles and miles, which was really annoying. If I had known that we wouldn't find anywhere, I would have gone into the supermarket at 7pm and just got bread and cheese and salad or something, and it would have been fine. I also could maybe have asked the owners of the hotel, but I didn't think about that until later. And then the supermarket was closed. And in rural France there aren't just corner shops open on rainy dark October Thursdays. So we were a bit stuck.

We ended up back in Montmoreau at a pizza shop, just before he closed at 9pm. We ordered two pizzas and two chocolate mousses and some drinks, and we headed back to the hotel. We didn't have any cutlery and the owners weren't about, so we had to take cutlery off the breakfast table in order to eat in our room. We ended up watching Schitt's Creek on Lee's tablet.

It was fine - nothing too drastic - and we did at least manage to get food eventually. But it was a bit annoying that we couldn't have a nice meal together!