The start of Carneval here in France was upon us. It is traditionally the beginning of the Easter season and many European cities celebrate this with a Mardi Gras style parade. We’d seen a sign for a parade on Sunday afternoon in Cluses, the next biggest city from Morillon about 20 minutes drive away. We roused ourselves from our sickness fog and headed there.

Unfortunately as we left Evie had done a number 2 in her nappy. And our wipes were at home and not in our nappy bag. To make matters worse it was Sunday and so everything and I mean everything was closed. I raced off with her, trying to find a toilet where I could use water and paper towels to do the best job I could. But when I came to the toilet at the train station it was by far the most disgusting I had seen in my life!

Finally after 30 minutes of searching, we went to a restaurant and ordered some very expensive drinks. I used their very clean toilet and warm water to deal with the poo.

The carneval was about to start and the streets were filled with costumed locals. It was a very cool experience, they had a big parade and lots of different floats and performances.

Thea was ecstatic to meet a clown who made her a balloon dog!

We all boogied along with the various brass bands and musical items from the performers.

It finished up around 5pm and so we went to get our car. As usual our GPS was unaware of the road closure for the parade so tried to direct us down the main street. On one small street we went down we almost had an accident when a car to our right continued through an intersection. Thankfully it stopped just in time and we didn’t hit them. However their bumper flew off from such a fast stop, which we thought was a bit odd.

Craig got out to check if we had damaged or tapped them with our car but we hadn’t so we carried on.

We didn’t think anymore about it until we were waiting at the round about when they pulled up behind us and tapped on the window. There were two young guys and they didn’t speak english. I tried my best to understand what they were saying and essentially they were intimating that we’d hit them. They showed me a break in their front light but it was clearly older than that and we were certain that we hadn’t hit them. I said “je suis desole mais je ne tappez pas”, translated “I’m sorry but I didn’t hit”.

An older couple stopped and shook their heads at us as if to say “they’re spinning you a tale”. We were absolutely certain we hadn’t hit them. So after we shook our heads a bit more at each other, they gave up and drove away. They certainly weren’t keen to see Craig get his phone out to film them either. It seems that they were trying to get us to pay for damage from an older crash.

Shaken and very tired we headed back to our house. We’d only had such positive interactions up to this point and the language barrier made it so difficult!

After a much better night sleep (praise God), we had our final day in Morillon. I had seen a few shops on my toilet finding expedition of Cluses yesterday that I wanted to browse through. We all got in the car and drove to Cluses for some retail therapy and lunch. I got our girls a couple of cute tops and skirts from a lovely shop before we had lunch at the Carrefour hypermarket mall in Cluses. The girls loved playing in the coin operated cars.

It was a strange experience. It is a self-service/hot meals to order kind of place. It took me a while to figure out how it all worked with my high school french. Essentially you choose salads and cold desserts and take them to the counter to pay. Then you order and pay for the hot meal you want there and take a ticket to the grill area to have it cooked for you. The kid’s meal was great value at 6 Euro including a drink, hot meal and dessert. Thea and Evie especially liked the cool roller high chairs that were available to sit in !

That was our time in Morillon and our final ski stop for this voyage. It was a real shame that we didn’t have more time on the ski field, I know I definitely need more practice on my skis!

To finish our time off in France we had a trio of sweet delicacies for our dessert.

But it’s onwards and upwards to Switzerland tomorrow.

Au revoir France, and bonjour/guten tag Switzerland.