Ancient towns, stone bridges, friends and a scent of spring

I have dreamt about small ancient towns, stone bridges, sunny squares where the spring hits earlier than on the windy fields, cathedrals and markets with fresh and locally produced fruit, vegetables and cheese. It isn't as if I have never experienced it before, but it is definitely not a part of the South East Asian landscape and therefore I have missed it quite a lot.

France has quite a few of these amazing places and since we had the chance to learn to know two lovely and witty Brits on a couple of diving trips to Indonesia, we took the opportunity to visit them in their new home in France. I think we used the weekend in the best of French ways by visiting the markets, eating loads of cheese, drinking the locally produced wine, having coffees and croissants for breakfast and feeling the spring.

And then we ate more cheese, drank more wine, had a few more coffees and discussed whether Indonesia's Raja Ampat or Mexico's cenotes are the coolest place when it comes to diving. I think we all were unsure. Or, maybe I wasn't after all...  It was a great weekend with more ancient towns, small sunny squares, stone bridges and green olives than one can dream of. We are grateful, of course, that we three years ago had the chance to learn to know such lovely people in a small corner of Indonesia and that we managed to hang out on land as well.