The winter holidays are over!

Last week was the rentrée or back to school week on Reunion.  This winter I have been lucky enough to be home for the holidays so we have lots of time to do stuff together as a family during the holidays.  We have been on walks in the woods and along the coast, spent lots of time at the beach and in the sea (even if it is not the hottest part of the year), started making meals from around the world with the kids and generally lazed about the place.  All in all a pretty wonderful winter/summer holiday in a pretty wonderful place and how lucky we were to have it!

Picking wild berries on a family walk, very tasty!

Sam and Ela enjoying the sea at L'Hermitage

Ela in the Saint Pierre Bastille day parade

Sam at the Bastille day parade

Sushi night!

Hundreds and hundreds of little cairns that people have built along a few hundred meter section of the coast at Le Gouffre, very creepy if you ask me!

Aurelie at the mini blow up water park!

And Ela too!

Interestingly (at least if you live here and have kids in school!) the school year is a bit different here compared to mainland France (and Ireland), rather than a main summer holiday and a shorter winter/Christmas holiday the kids here get two similar length holidays of six weeks for winter and summer/Christmas. So we poor parents don't get overwhelmed by months of holidays all at once but rather two more manageable chunks.

Lemons (and other citrus fruits)

It is lemon season in Reunion at the moment and for me that is heaven, my go two drink in the fridge at home is the juice of a couple of lemons in mixed with water.  So just before I headed away for work (to Armenia this time) we took the chance to go to a lemon orchard and pick as much fruit as we wanted for the low low price of €1.50 a kilo!

Aurelie and the kids among the trees

As a result we had plenty of fresh lemons (and some other orange citrus fruits that I don't care about) resulting in a fabulous lemon tart and lots of fresh lemon juice.  It's the simple pleasures!

Playing in the sea at Etang Sale

Not much to say, just me and the kids enjoying playing in the ocean at Etang Sale (while Aurelie reads on the beach)!