Floral collage

Friday 26 July
Today we were flying from Manchester to Alicante in Spain to meet up with Jen and Jason for about 9 days. The reason behind the trip is to attend the wedding of Jen’s best friend, Magali, from her childhood days in France. Magali is French but is totally bilingual. We left France when Jen was going into 7th grade, but they have remained best of friends over the years. Jen vacationed a few times with Magali’s family in Provence. Magali vacationed with us in the US and one year in England. After university, Magali lived and worked in New York for five years, and during those years they would meet up twice a year, once in New York and once in Houston where Jen and Jason were living at the time. She now lives and works in Geneva. Her husband (to be) is of French nationality but his parents live in southern Spain, in Elche, about 30 minutes drive west of Alicante. I put “to be” in brackets, as they were actually married last year in a civil ceremony in France with a reception in the garden of her mothers home in Provence - she lost her father a number of years ago. I don’t know the exact reasons behind the second wedding, except last year numbers were limited, and this year is a full blown church wedding and reception in Spain, so only Jen got to go to last years wedding in France, while this year we were invited too! The wedding is a week tomorrow, so we have the week to see something of the area.
Jen and Jason were arriving in Alicante about 6pm and were being met by Magali’s sister in law, as Magali and Fitzgerald aren’t arriving until Sunday. Our flight arrived about 10.30 pm, and we picked up the rental car. Fitzge’s parents have an apartment in the town of Elche which they use in the winter, but they spend the summers at their house out in the country, about 25 minutes out of Elche. They have very kindly let us have the use of their town apartment for the week. By the time we got there, Jason had already gone to bed as he was getting over a cold, and after Jen had showed us around, we all turned in too.
If you’re wondering where my blip fits in to this, it is a collage of flowers from Janet’s beautiful garden, which I took in the morning before we left.