This is the back of Bernard’s parents house. Pretty spectacular, eh?

I took this picture of Christine and Melinda from one of the upper windows of the house. They had been chatting with the neighbor’s sheep.

This is the barn on the property. M. Bertail , age 87, was cleaning it when we arrived. It was around 90 degrees at the time. He was wearing slacks and a button down shirt.

Yesterday, Bernard took a group of us on a drive. We found this antique store along the road. It was fabulous!

Maxime, age 20, the oldest of the Bertail children, found a new old guitar. Me, I got some Ricard drinking glasses.

A short drive later, we were in Deauville. Not only does Deauville have a beautiful racetrack, the city happens to be the place where Maxime was born!

Max snapped this and the previous picture of me. Believe me, this track is incredible.

Look at that grandstand!

To me, this could be a postcard. We missed seeing the last race of the day by about an hour.

But we did get to see several horses loaded into this van.

Back at home, here is the Bertail family (minus Theo and plus a cousin named Manon on the left). Yes, this is the full picture from which I cropped the silly M. Bertail pretending to pour champagne on his unsuspecting wife’s head. Before the night was out, M. Bertail had shared with me a taste of some very old, and very delicious, Calvados. What a treat! And in a future post I will tell you about Madame Bertail and her painting of icons.