A Day in the South of France – photo challenge

Eileen over at In My Playroom took part in a wonderful challenge a few weeks (or possibly even a few months) ago. The challenge was to take a photo every hour or so throughout the day and post them on the blog. Now I didn’t get tagged in that challenge, but I thought it seemed like a really fun way to be a bit more aware of my surroundings and to look for pretty things in the day to day, so I took part anyway.

I am cheating a little a lot, mind you, because this post — sadly — doesn’t reflect a normal day in my life. It was a day while I was back in the South of France, visiting my grandfather — and it was a lovely day! I’ll do a post of a normal day in Hong Kong soon though.

5.30am: Unable to sleep because of jet lag (there’s 7 hours between HK and France), I make the most of the early morning fresh air, and go sit out on the balcony to read my book (I’m re-reading The Phantom of the Opera)

7am: Heading out to buy the morning’s baguette. I am very excited.

7.15: ok that’s not an hour later, but I have to post a photo of what is my favourite meal of the day. Petit déjeuner is ready — this time I had acacia honey rather than jam. For those who read my A to Z post, you’ll notice that the ceramic bowl is colourful, slightly cracked, and the baguette is nearly ready for dunking. My mother remains, as ever, unimpressed with my breakfast eating methods.

9am: We head out to meander in the market

10am: We buy some figs and a cabas (Kelli, I’m tagging you here after we talked about figs a little while back for one of your A to Z posts. These were delicious!!)

11 am: pop into a second-hand furniture auction house and spy a pretty painting.

12pm: On the walk back we pass a pretty terracota couple

1pm: Lunch!! On the balcony, bien sur. Fresh ravioli a la daube (which is like slow cooked beef)

2.30pm: We drive out to Gourdon, a village at the edge of the world. Or at least at the edge of a very precipitous cliff.

Here I am with my grandfather at the very edge of the village — the wall behind us is the one you can see at the rightmost edge of the village above.

3.30pm: A pretty candle shop and another shop selling perfume and eau de toilette.

4.30pm: We spot a fig tree growing out a wall (sadly the figs weren’t ripe). And since no trip to the South of France would be complete without some calissons and nougat, we make a pit stop at a little confiserie where they make it all by hand. They were delicious.

6pm: on the way home we stop by an old olive oil mill. When she was younger, my mother used to bring olives here from my grandparents’ olive trees. The old mill no longer works, but there’s a modern mill round back. Sadly it was already closed by the time we got there.

8pm: The table post dinner. I’m totally pooped after a long day and still completely jet lagged, so it’s an hour of reading for me before falling asleep.

So there you have, it a day in the South of France. I’ll do another post on Hong Kong soon — although not quite of a typical day or you’ll get lots of photos of my computer screen. Which, trust me, is even less entertaining than it sounds.

I’m tagging a few others bloggers who I think might enjoy this challenge. No obligation to take part if you don’t want to. And obviously if I didn’t tag you but you want to take part, do it anyway!

Sabina over at Victim to Charm.

Sammy at Bemuzin (I’m being selfish there Sammy. I want to see more of those beautiful landscape photos of yours!)

Sarah at The Old Shelter. Sarah, you may consider this the latest instalment in our challenge-off 😉

Kelli at Forty and Fantastique.

L. Marie at The Blog of L.Marie

Sara Snider

Emily from A Keyboard and An Open Mind

Denise Young

Anabel from Anabel’s Travel Blog