10.01 Day 116 . . . Wet, Windy & Foul

We’d decided to get up and go to Niort for the morning. The market was due to be on - but as it was a Tuesday we weren’t sure to what extent - Did’s had not been there!
The morning was could - we had woken to rain and it was still lightly falling as we jumped into Roxvanne at 9.30am.
The drive to Niort was wet, misty and grey and on arrival it had not changed. We first visited the market - which as we guessed it might be, was very short on stalls, we’d never seen it this quiet.
We hopped into our usual coffee shop ‘Munch’s Crush’ and had hot chocolates.
We decided due to the ever worsening weather that walking around the shops was going to be painful and so elected to go to Decathlon so Did’s could get some bits.
Back into Rox - we headed to Decathlon. Inside I managed to find another fleece type top for me, Tre and Did’s were more happy playing a very poor game of table tennis on the shop display table. 🙄
From Decathlon we drove to the retail park nearby and visited a few of the shops, grabbing a few bits and pieces as we went. Tre also eyed up one of her top ten purchases for when we get a place here - it has to be in pink apparently.
Lunch beckoned and so we hit the nearby patisserie and grabbed some quiche (chorizo quiche here is to die for).
We then drove to what turned out to be the wrong store. A 30 minute drive to Centrakor, at Azay le Brulé turned out to be a total waste of time . . . it wasn’t what we had expected at all. We had it turned out spelt the shop name incorrectly on our google maps search - hence our result. After a very quick five minutes around a very small store we headed for home. Fortunately the error in finding Centrakor, had at least taken us in the right direction home.
We received an email from the estate agent re the house, as always it was changing something we had thought was already agreed - so we need to sort that tomorrow 😡
We stopped in Sauze briefly so Teresa could pop in the now open hairdressers to make and appointment - only to find our neighbours sitting in there, Jackie having her nails done!! For a big country we seem to constantly bumping into people we know wherever we go! Anyway - appointment now made, so next Tuesday will see the skills of the French hairdressers I. Taming Tre’s locks.
Back to home, we all just chilled, before making even more bookings for flights and sailings, car parking and hotels. We seem to be doing this constantly at the moment 😂. Tre made dinner a little later - my favourite merguez sausages. For pudding we had a cake Tre and I had picked up on Saturday. Tre thought it was something to do with 3 Kings day - which meant nothing to me. However after nearly cracking my tooth on an enamel object within the cake, which had a picture of a ‘pharoah’ depicted on it we had to do a little research.
On January 6th, people across France celebrate Epiphany day by eating “une galette des Rois” King cake.
L’Épiphanie sometimes referred to as “La fête des Rois” three king’s day or “le Jour des Rois” Kings day, is celebrated on January 6th, exactly 12 days after December 25th.
This religious celebration marks the time when the three wise men or Magi “Les Trois Mages” visited baby Jesus in Bethlehem bearing gifts and to worship Jesus after they saw a star in the East which they recognized as a sign that a king was born— a messiah and God. It’s also the day when John the Baptist baptized baby Jesus in the River Jordan
Hidden in each king cake is a small figurine, called a fève (bean) which is baked right into the king cake. (Originally an actual bean was put in king cakes. Around the 1870s, it was replaced by porcelain figurines and more recently sometimes by plastic toys.)
The person who gets the slice of king cake containing the fève, gets to wear the paper crown which is always included with a King cake purchased at grocery stores and French bakeries in France. Tre had unfortunately found the paper crown within the packaging and thrown it away, so I missed out on that award.
We finished off with an evening of TV - and the weather was still grotty outside.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for Did’s - we have lunch booked out.

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