Salutations!!!

"Salutations de la France"! Ok that's a summary of my French. As you may know Jill and I exchanged our Palm Desert guest house for a house in the Vendee area of France. If, like us, you never heard of Vendee it is the vacation center of France located on the Atlantic coast. If you have tons of money, look good naked on the beach and can act arrogant, then you go to Nice and the Mediterranean. If you look normal (age wrinkles, cellulite, love handles, etc) but would like good wine, great food and miles of beautiful beaches you come to the Vendee.

When we arrived (after 20 hours flying/airports) we drove 3.5 hours to our place in St Benoist sur Mer (don't bother looking for it on the map as it only has 340 residents). It's 10 minutes from the beach. The first 2 days the weather was awesome. I napped next to our pool with my shirt off in perfect 75 degree weather. The two days following it was cold and rainy. We actually got snowed on briefly while driving through the Loire valley yesterday, a couple of hours north of Vendee.

Our place is very comfortable. It is a vacation rental owned by a couple in the UK. They own several places in the area. This region is very popular with the Brits for holidays. Our place sleeps about 12 people, has great wifi (pronounced wefee here), the bed is comfy, the pool is warm and life is good.

As always seems to happen, when we arrived we were inundated with work... fortunately it is light till 9 PM so even after spending most of the day working we are able to get out and about. Here's some of what we have seen so far.

Beautiful beaches

Empty beaches ...

Not entirely empty ... sorry couldn't help myself

Starting area for the famous Vendee race 

Les Sables d'Olonne is where the famous around the world single operator boat race called the Vendee Globe starts and finishes

Many of the beach houses are decorated with
 sea shell  mosaics

Food market 

Whether it's a sandwich...

... or salad it's all merveilleux!!!

Loire river 

Loire Valley lined with ancient castles much like the Rhine Valley
we explored last year with Kate ... we miss her.

The banks of the Loire are limestone
where for centuries people have
created cave residences, wineries,
churches etc.

Amazing tapestries help keep the castles warm

Back Patio

Fields around our place ... Dijon anyone?

More to come!