Je te presente.....Monique!

I think it's fair to say I love her. I love that she rattles when we drive. I love that she is squished, despite seeming enormous when you're trying to squeeze up a laneway in Paris. I love that it takes a good half an hour of moving and removing anything to arrive/cook dinner/eat dinner/get ready for bed/leave.

It really is still sinking in that we're here and doing this. We worked our butts off to get our jobs and our house and our lives wrapped up in Australia for a while to be able to come here and do as we please for a while.

I'm publicly acknowledging that I doubted George. I doubted his ability to turn some basic ingredients into an incredibly tasty stirfry. He is the Macgyver of northern France. I, on the otherhand, am not quite as savvy in the foreign supermarket, and really should read labels more carefully. As it turns out, not reading the labels means that you have to eat your cornflakes with buttermilk – way less than average!

Lunch more than made up for it however, with what I think I'll call Panini Surprise. This is a game I imagine we'll play often, involving small sandwich shops in the middle of a small village where the lady has to write down the sandwich choices on a piece of paper before I can understand her, and we point to the only two things that seem barely recognisable. Today Graham has 'saucisson frais' and Ross and I had 'jambon blanc'. There were no further questions required, as obviously all panini's come with cheese, gherkins, lettuce and your body weight in butter – delicious!

The only thing better than the paninis was the conversation we had with the guy running the bar. While I'm still sure we were having two separate conversations, I think we covered the main points – someone has already thought one of the others than Ross is my boyfriend, - that George doesn't eat bread and swam the English Channel to get here (which makes him 'svelte' according to the man), and that George should be careful I don't leave him for a hot frenchman!

We drove for about 6 hours all up today through some of the back roads from where we stayed last night (Attichy? - we're not really sure) to Gent (Belgium) to get the Brompton. The Brompton is my friend Lance's folding bike, and I have to say, she is as pretty as he described (P.S. Lance – does she have a name?). Lance has been generous enough to let me borrow her so that I can do some riding with the boys (I'm holding out for Alpe D'Huez so far). So that makes two bikes that Lance owns on the trip – perhaps sponsorship rights?

Driving along somewhere we saw a sign pointing out an Australian War Memorial – so like all good nomads, we followed the sign along a dirt road through a wheat field and found a monument built by the Australians in the middle of the field near the Hindenburg Line. Quite surreal to stand again in the very spot where Australians fought and died for the freedoms we continue to enjoy (and take for granted most of the time) today. Quite fittingly, at the edge of the field was a small patch of poppies.

I'm now sitting in an outdoor chair next to the van in full sun (at 7pm) waiting for the boys to come back from their first ride together (and Ross's first on his new bike). I checked out the shop here earlier and cans of Leffe are 2,90 – I think we've got some drinking to do tonight!