Today we basically did nothing. I’m going to surprise the reading audience with this one. I woke up and I made myself a really good cup of coffee. Then I emptied the dishwasher, made myself breakfast, and had another cup of coffee. That describes the last five days of my life. Coffee was good. The breakfast was fine. And then the coffee was good. You can tell by the tenor of this paragraph that not a whole hell of a lot happened today.
We did hop in the hot tub pretty early. That was nice. Just to set the stage a little bit more, today is our fifth full day at the cottage. As I’m sure you are aware, assuming you’ve read the previous days, we went skiing the first four days of the trip. It was supposed to rain today, a forecast that turned out to be incorrect. But after four days we had all packed enough of the limited terrain and moderately OK conditions. So day five was basically a rest day. We planned on not really doing much.
After the hot tub we went into town to pick up a few things at the food store. We got a few things that will bring back to Jersey with us and a couple of candy bars and such to give us presents. Handful of things you can get here and not in the states. I mean you probably can but not at the usual food stores. Just little things to hand out here and there.
We also brought the recycling to the store for the deposits.
When we got back it was time for lunch. Almost 12 o’clock on the dot. We had a meat pie and some other stuff which I don’t exactly remember. It was fine. It was good to just have a lazy day to be honest. My left knee and my right heel are getting a little bit of the overuse thing going on from the skiing. I’m sure I would’ve been fine but it was also good to take a day off.
After lunch we just did stuff around the house. For me that was starting the afternoon with another cup of coffee. It was good, as expected. Probably not as good as the morning cup however. That’s also to be expected. I laid on the couch. Very important piece of my day. We did some stuff around the house but nothing worth making any mention of.
I took some time and revamped my stretching routine. I have done a bunch of reading and reviewing of the stretching sites and have focused my latest routine on hips and lower back. This combination of areas is what gives me the most trouble. I have been good for a while but then all the trail maintenance of last week put me into a bad state. Going skiing actually didn’t make it too bad but my left hip and upper back started becoming a problem again. That’s been a recurring thing over the past few years but recently it had been better. Until last week. So I did a much more comprehensive and proper stretch routine which will now take a bit over 30 minutes. At this age it’s worth it.
D then made some Halle Ballin. That’s not really how it’s spelled. It’s supposed to be oliebollen which is a Dutch donut dessert type thing. It is a New Year’s tradition and we have it every year when we’re up here. I’m not gonna pretend it’s even a little bit healthy. Because it’s not. But it’s really good, especially if you eat it very fresh. We ate them very fresh, as none of them lasted more than five minutes after they came out of the deep fryer.
The next step of the day was dinner. Oma made one of the favorites for all of us which is the curry pasta seafood thing. I’m sure it has a proper name but I have no idea what it is. Perhaps the proper name is Bert. Or Ernie. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called. It’s delicious. It is one of my favorite things up here. So we had that and some peach cake for dessert. The rest of the day was filled with games and hanging out.
The kids played games all day so that was nothing really new for them. I think all three of them are a little tired from the week. They had much less enthusiasm for pretty much everything. I guess you could say that about all of us. We’re both ready to head home as well. It’s been a good trip and we’ve been here almost a week but it’s time to hit the road tomorrow. I’ll be happy to sleep in my own bed where there is no dog involved. He takes up a lot of room even if we do have a king size bed here. The skiing was good but not great. And not having our friends come up to visit for the back into the trip just change the dynamic of everything.
This will likely be my last post of the trip. In the end it will have been a seven day trip but two of the days are for travel and honestly driving is not a very interesting topic. So that pretty much wraps up our 2023 Christmas break. It was supposed to be a bit of a longer trip with a ski days and some friends and a different vibe but the weather didn’t cooperate. So we’re gonna head home and just have dinner with them Friday. We don’t have to be in Canada to hang out with them we’ll just hang out with him wherever we are.
As some hippie one said, wherever you go there you are.
Traveling Normandy 