It's Me, Sara Louise

On a very grey and wet Saturday in November, seven expat bloggers braved the rain to meet up for lunch in a tiny Corsican restaurant in Avignon for Blogapalooza, the second (the first one was in Aix last March).

Some of the same faces were there but some new ones as well; Sarah of St Bloggie de Riviere came along with Samantha from Life, Love, and Living in France, Ameena from Mummy in Provence, (and to any Americans reading this… that’s Mummy like Mommy, not mummy like scary, dead, Pharaoh), B from Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Cheese, Aidan from Conjugating Irregular Verbs (I don’t seem to do much of anything without Aidan nowadays do I? Well I don’t, and I don’t want to, so there… I may or may not have stuck my tongue out at my laptop right now). Crafty Kirsty from You Had Me at Bonjour and Piglet from Piglet in France came with the two newest additions… babies!

In fairness, the babies were there for the last Blogapalooza but they just weren’t out yet. So really, they weren’t the newest additions; Sarah, Ameena, and Samantha were. But anyways.

We couldn’t have picked a better day if we tried, while the rest of Avignon seemed to have stayed indoors and out of the rain, we had the entire restaurant to ourselves. How cool is that? We got to speak English in our American, Australian and British accents as loud as we wanted without dealing with any stares from other tables. That’s pretty much an expats idea of heaven… chatter, gossip, chatter in our native tongue without fear of the French stares.

And after three hours of chattering, laughing, and sharing stories it was time to head back into the rain. Aidan, B and I had some place to be. You see, not only was the weekend in Avignon a happy Blogapalooza occasion, it was a sad one too.

After lunch we found our husbands in an Irish pub having pints and watching rugby (shocking right?!). There wasn’t really anything to do but join them. I mean it was raining outside, and the rugby was on. Pints all around please (except for B… her baby koala didn’t want one).

Pints, rugby, chat, laugh, repeat… was followed by dinner at Fou de Fafa. Listen up my little friends… if you find yourself in Avignon, Fou de Fafa is where you want to eat. Holy schnikeys it was good! But you have to make reservations, they are always booked solid, because yeah, it’s that good.

Moving on.

Of course we couldn’t just say goodnight and bid adieu after dinner… no no no… it was a goodbye weekend after all, so what to do to but return to the Irish pub where someone had this clever idea…