mini hike near Saint Martin la Garenne

 Saturday we went for a a mini hike with Marie-Kate and Alexis around Saint Martin la Garenne. We took a picnic and hoped the weather would hold up for a couple of hours.
As you can see  the above photo a poster with Francois Hollande on it, it's election time here and he's through to the second round the 6th May, Hollande verses Sarkozy...funny thing was, there were posters of all the candidates apart from M. Sarkozy, someone had pasted a FN one on top of his.

 The plan was to complete a 14.7 km hike, but the weather soon proved to be difficult. It might look as if the weather was nice and sunny above, but oh no, the wind had whipped up and it was freezing.  Good place for a picnic but too cold, so on we went.

 Monkey Alexis, just before swinging from this branch and falling on his bottom

 There was a few great vantage points to watch birds

 And just before the rain came bucketing it down we found refuge in this bird observatory point. Underneath you can see the view we had from there.

We managed to do seven rainy, windy, and darn cold and sometimes sunny kilometers and we loved it and plan to get out and explore more soon.  Next visit, probably Monet's house and gardens which are less than 30 km from where we live.

Le Canard Enchainé...What Marie Kate always reads

I was lucky to have my camera at hand to get this shot of MK reading the  *Canard Enchaîné the other day
Her favourite column  that she always reads, is Le Journal de Carla B (Carla Bruni). You know when she's reading it because of her constant giggling.
She also loves to watch Le Petit Journal presented by Yann Bathès and as we are in the midst of the French presidential elections here, she has been watching Yann interview the different candidates. Last night it was François Hollande's turn to be grilled, tortured and teased by Yann and by gosh he's excellent and what he does (Yann I mean).  Anyhow, Marie-Kate asked last night if by the time she's grown up, would it be possible for Nicolas Sarkozy to still run for president, because if it was, she'd vote "tout sauf Sarkozy". 
This morning while eating breakfast and listening to the radio, she moaned on about the presidential campaign being useless because she hadn't heard any ideas just  polemics, her final words were "c'est nul".


She certainly is forming her own political ideas early, it's a shame that Mr Mélenchon (left front) refuses to go on the Petit Journal, because I think Marie-Kate would really have liked to see this candidate....  by the way she wasn't in least enamoured by Mr Hollande's  performance last night. 




*French weekly satirical newspaper that features investigative journalism  and leaks from sources in the French government and French politics and business a long with some jokes and cartoons