Bonjour from Fréjus!

Mom and Dad

Greetings from the Côte d'Azur, where we spent a wonderful week with my parents. I'm afraid that I don't have a lot to report from this trip. We may have set a new world record for lolling about, but quite frankly, I'm feeling too lazy to submit our achievement to the Guinness book people. That sounds like an awful lot of work. I suppose it's only fitting that the world's laziest people would lack the ambition to claim the fame.

Restaurant on the port

We stayed in the Mercure Thalassotherapie hotel, a gorgeous location on the port with an indoor and outdoor pool, spa, restaurant and private beach. We didn't do much sightseeing, but rather spent our time toes-up in the sea, lounging on the beach, lazing by the pool, lunching in the sun or taking walks along the port (inspiring some serious sailboat envy) to scout out potential restaurants at which to eat dinner. We also did a little shopping, which is always nice, and I even got treated to a massage and facial at the hotel's spa, spoiled thing that I am (my parents are so great).

The port in Fréjus

Johann and I hosted a cocktail hour on our balcony overlooking the sea every night that featured Champagne, snacks and card games brought from home, including "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Card Game," which my mother won easily, being a devotee of Fox News's nightly "terror" segment. She knows how to handle a vehicle that has come into contact with a downed power line, how to respond to an asthma attack and how to tell if a shark is going to attack you. She's your girl in any kind of emergency.

The answer is A. What can I say? I watched a lot of X-Files in the nineties.

Johann was better at outdoorsy scenarios, like avalanches, driving through volcanic ash and avoiding being swept out to sea; while my father knew how to detect signs that your hotel room is bugged, how to deal with an angry mob throwing a molotov cocktail into your car and how to avoid offending your hosts when invited to dinner in Zambia, resurfacing my childhood suspicion that the engineer thing is a cover for his real life as an international spy. As for me, I got this one right (pictured, the answer is A) plus the ones about how to hotwire a car and how to take a straight punch to the face. I'm not sure what to make of that, but quite frankly, I'm feeling too relaxed to be very concerned about it. It's just a game, not a Rorschach test, right?

We also played Gin, and it's worth noting that playing Gin while drinking Champagne does funny things to you. When it was my mother's turn to deal, she said, "You know, it's hard to count to five four times in a row." We all laughed like crazy. But then we all admitted that she was dead right. When counting started to get difficult, we knew it was time to stop drinking and go out to dinner.

The port in Fréjus

Anyway, it was wonderful and we all returned to Cadenet feeling fantastic. Well, fantastic aside from the fact that I have the sense that I'm detoxing from all the rich food and cocktails. My body is coming down from all the seafood in creamy sauces and Bandol rosé and it's crashing hard. I wonder if taking a bath in the organic bath salts the spa gave me will help. Mineral water? Tea? Advil? I think I'll call my mother. She'll know.