I’m doing a back-to-back post because I suspect that tomorrow will be a total loss with the drive up to Branson (about 8 hours) and questionable connectivity on that end. Last night was with my girlfriends and having now entered our 60th year and knowing each other for much of that, we discussed a lot of topics. The warmth that comes from friendships of that duration (notwithstanding that I’m the one who was away for nearly twenty years) hovered around us as we enjoyed fajitas, homemade guacamole, and so forth. While I usually do beer with such, wine was fine. Now, the roads that I take to get from my daddy and stepmother’s house to Natchitoches is one of my favorite drives. Not that it is scenic in the traditional sense – nostalgic is much more accurate. It is mostly two lane driving with a fair stretch of it in no-passing lanes with slight hills and curves. There is a mix of agricultural, (and they were harvesting cotton yesterday), gas and oil sites, the pulpwood mill is still going, small towns, and someday I really am going to stop at the Red River Cowboy Church (complete with small corral outside) to see what it is about.

I find a Country and Western station to listen to as I make this drive and think of what I didn’t know back in the days when we drove that road, and what I dreamed of was getting away to see what else was out in the world. Having now been out in that world, I am glad that I have been, and would always urge anyone to do the same. Go, and see, because only then can you make a genuine choice as to what it is that you want. You don’t have to go do everything, but at least enough to understand why you might want to come back to the familiar if that is what you choose.

The scuba world is a fun place for a lot of reasons. Setting aside the wonder of the underwater world for the moment, there are the great people that you meet while diving. Yesterday, my husband had a guy on the boat who is currently from Boston, but originally from a small town near Nice, France. Nice is an incredible city which is why I included a chapter about it in Irises to Ashes, but that also is not the point to this post. Hubby and the guy were talking about the Azure Coast and hubby mentioned us spending one night in Sete, and the guy was excited that we even knew where it was, much less had been there.

When hubby recounted the story, memories flood back. Sete is a small fishing village that we went to en route to Normandy, en route to Frankfurt the last summer we were in Italy. I found it in the guidebook almost by happenstance and it was a logical stopping point for our first day of travel. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/the-perfect-break/8342532/Sete-France-the-perfect-break.html) As it says in the article you can click to, a large part of Sete’s charm is because it isn’t a tourist destination. The seafood is plentiful and literally comes to the restaurants steps away from the docks. We stayed near the center of town, close to the water and strolled the streets for a couple of hours before it grew dark, then picked from several restaurants, any of which I’m sure would have been just as good. Canals run through the village to make it a “small Venice” and we lingered in another waterfront café to enjoy coffee and a cognac – or perhaps it was another glass of wine – I don’t completely recall. I awakened early the next morning as I so often do and meandered back onto the streets watching the village come into day. I found the place for us to have breakfast and went back to fetch Hubby. We had six-plus hours driving ahead of us and didn’t linger, yet it was a pleasant interlude – croissants and café au lait at an outdoor table along a canal as gulls shrieked and swooped. If you are ever in the South of France and want an off-the-mainstream village, then Sete is the place.