Alexandra's Review

As it is a quite long drive from us (Fermary) to the house, we included two stop overs and did not come back here until 2 days ago. First we'd picked off my parents and then drove to Orléans, where we spend the night in the beautiful Hotel de l'Abeille ( www.hoteldelabeille.com ) that I recommend if you evere get the chance to visit the city of Orléans.

The hotel is right in the city, so you can spend a lovely evening in the old town. The next day we hit the road off to Soulomès. After quite a cold start in western France (Alsace, Lorraine, Burgundy etc.) the weather soon became nicer and sunnier. We arrived in the late afternoon and found the house in the lovely country spot right away thanks to your good description.

Shortly after our arrival, the neighbour stopped by to say hi and offer us help if needed. Thankfully we did not have to use this nice offer as we faced no problems at all. We chose the upper bedroom and my parents went downstairs, so each couple had their own bathroom and awesome outdoor shower. These are really a treat! Espacially as in the first 2-3 days, the temperatures were quite high (around 32 degrees). That, we enjoyed a lot as summer in Germany hadn't been too good this year. We did water the plants but soon, the temperatures went down a little and we had quite some thunderstorms with heavy rainfall (luckily usually at night, so we could do fabulous daytrips). Therefore, the plants were taken care of by nature so to speak. They developped beautifully, the small hazel even had new sprouts. The grass which had been all yellow when we came finfished off in a luscious green. The roses as well developped new sprouts and the wine had delicious grapes. The rosemary and lavender also looked wonderful and the geraniums were a great reception. The wild fennel had ranked (? sorry, not sure wether this is the correct word) and the blackberries had some last berries left for us.

During the holiday we spend a day in Toulouse (always worth going there), did some canoeing on the Célé and Lot rivers with our 50 year old faltboat that we brought along, went fishing, hiking, sightseeing (Fantastic: le gouffre de Padirac and la grotte de Pech Merle). Also visited St- Cirq la Popie, Cahors, Rocamadour, Martel (took the old steam train). Goudou had a vide grenier, where I could not resist to buy a lovely huge old mirror and - of course - we also did the wine route with wine tasting.

Nevertheless we spend several days also just relaxing and enjoying the beautiful sight on the patio.

Another thing we fancied a lot was the delicious local food (cheese, lamb, great vegetables) that we usually bought at the nice markets around.

Unfortunately I didn't receive your mail in time about the tipps and tricks but I think most of all we did figure out. Maybe it would make sense to label the stove knobs again (edding?).

The flies were in the beginning not to bad. I guess as the weather changed a bit, they became a little bit more annoying. Not really a problem though.

The last days almost went by in a haze and when we left, we left the house as we had found it (as arranged with Sarah).

We had two minor breakages: 1 glass lantern, that was caught by a sudden gust of wind and the rope of the big sunshade ripped off on the last day, so we couldn't fix it anymore, though it should be easy to do.

We left some (German) books (mostly crime) in your bookshelf. I hope you don't mind. We liked the idea of leaving a bit of us in the house and maybe other German speaking visitors will enjoy them.

The way home we spend a night in the beautiful city of Troyes (Champagne region). I would recommend a different hotel though, unfortunately due to our arrival time we took the best western Hotel de la Poste. Good hotel but not really authentic french. I guess there a more romantic ones. The medival city thought definitely is worth a trip.

Thanks again for everything,

best regards,

Alex

September 2009