Take baguettes twice daily as recommended

Bon jour again from Anglet France.We have been here a month now, and it's time to move on. It was nice to put down roots though for a bit, instead of unpacking every other night.

The Basque country here is beautiful and all the people have been very friendly. It's a postcard pretty spot where cute country cottages nestle in pine trees, with freshly painted window boxes overflowing with vivid scarlet geraniums.

Where giant hydrangeas on steroids fill the gardens, in every spectrum from deep royal purple to bright blue, magenta and powder pink.

Where elegant stone mansions line the boulevards, looking like miniature castles with turrets and pointy witch hat roofs.

Where people wear yellow or purple pants, and sometimes even berets (yes berets!) and drink pitchers of sangria for lunch (we are just next to Spain, so sangria and tapas have slipped over the border here - as easily as they slip down your gullet after a long day of swimming and surfing : )

And where people ride by on bicycles with baguettes peeking out of their backpacks, walk their dogs to get baguettes, and stop off for baguettes twice daily in their little cars. In fact, the French buy baguettes fresh several times a day, and we often find ourselves going down to the boulangerie too for our twice daily fix.

While we've been here, we've done several excursions - visited the charming nearby cities of Biarritz and Bayonne, and also went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain - see us in front with Jeff Koons' giant living flower "Puppy" sculpture, which we had the pleasure of seeing many years ago when it came to Sydney Harbour in 1995.

Unfortunately, Miles has hurt his back and has not been able to surf in the last week. This has allowed us to see the inside of a French hospital (a long wait, but efficient, helpful and shockingly cheap - we thought socialised medicine in Australia was inexpensive! ) Fortunately, the doctor was able to tell us, with a mixture of our bad French and his bad English, that it was probably a tendon pulled or strained. So hopefully with a bit of drug therapy, he is on the mend and will be feeling impish again soon : )

We are off to Toulouse now and then flying to Greece for two weeks at a resort on Rhodes. No baquettes there but there is always fresh fetta, olives and ouzo....Mmmmm.