Hello again dear reader - here are the votes for yesterday from the Honfleur jury.

Weather is being nice to me.

I’m still not sleeping especially well at the moment - so am wide awake more or less all the time. Was particularly awake at 3am when the lights came on in the bedroom! Nothing too sinister - I just think that I was trying to run too much off the same plug - and the electrics are quite sensitive at Fiona’s apartment (eg cannot have oven on at same time as radiators). So have unplugged many items from charging and things settled down quite quickly. Obviously my iPad is now flat.

After a breakfast of Nespresso coffee (number one priority when I arrived on Tuesday afternoon was to clean the machine out!) and a mistakenly left over Paris Brest (how did that happen?!) I was in le jardin - having a go at the weeds. I am not a good gardener. Fiona has a gorgeous garden - so me half heartedly pulling up a few weeds before my back started playing up - is not an ideal solution. The key thing was to have started well before lunchtime because the sun comes round - and I’d be getting too hot and bothered.

So after a small portion of patio was cleared it was away with the trowel and out with the sunglasses for a walk around town - to see what’s hot and what’s not in Honfleur.

It’s been a good couple of years since I’ve been so it was going to be interesting to see how town has grown. And importantly who the current proprietor of the restaurant formerly known as Pizza Gino is this season.

Town was quite busy with holidaymakers. And people off of cruise ships - not the Queen Mary types of ships - more Viking River Cruises (off of sponsors of Midsomer Murders on ITV3) - and it appears that their dress code is ‘white’; jeans, sarongs, jackets, floaty tops etc. As long as its white. So that rules me out straight away - I’d be dropping pain au chocolat down myself every two minutes. Nobody wants to walk around looking like a dirty protest.

Honfleur is at the mouth of the Seine, off of Paris - hence the cruises by the way. I’m pretty sure they’re not here to look at the EDF power station across the estuary in Le Havre. Or Chemical Beach as we know it colloquially.

Sadly Travels Coffee and Burger Man (breakfast and burgers respectively) are no more. There IS a current incarnation of Pizza Gino (good) and I am relieved to see another bakery has opened to replace one where they used to get funny if you didn’t have exactly the right monnaie to pay for your baguettes. Also in shop news my actual favourite bakery (off of Paris Brests) is still here. So that’s me sorted for pain au chocolat- as long as its within the medieval opening hours.

That said - there’s something quite nice to go back to the olden days of opening hours - but it is a bit frustrating if there’s a baguette emergency and everywhere is closed.

Just behind Fiona’s apartment is the church of St Leonard. It has bells. That ring. A lot. My favourite time (by which I mean least favourite) is 7pm when they are bonging their clappers off (steady - I do the jokes) for about 30 minutes. I wouldn’t mind a peal - but its the same note - perhaps ringing here is the gateway route for campanologists to ring at St Pauls or similar....

So I’m just getting myself ready for Thursday - first order of business after coffee and writing this will be another portion of garden weeding.

Then I may go on a small adventure. Given I have a parking space right outside Fiona’s I am reluctant to move the car - so picked up the bus timetable yesterday. I think I may trot off to Trouville/Deauville. I do like it there as well.

Deauville is v posh off of designer shops - but I’m quite happy sipping an overpriced coffee on a terrace watching the plethora of people with teeny tiny dogs, Jackie O sunglasses and Louis Vuitton bags sashay around doing air kisses.

Now where did I leave my tiny dog....

More tomorrow. And do enjoy tiny video.