We woke up early the next day, packed our suitcases into the car and waited for Madame Butterfly to come and see us off. When she did turn up to carry out her final inspection we were shocked to discover that the shower in bath was not working - we hadn't used it during our visit. It turned out to be a twisted pipe which once untangled allowed the water to flow. Madame then returned our deposit and we went outside to take the obligatory "visitors snap". If you do visit the villa take a picture and send it to me so that I can see what we looked like. All completed we jumped in the car and started the long drive to Ile De Re...
The drive was pretty uneventful through Toulouse and Agen so we decided to take a detour at La Reole and by-pass Bordeaux. This gave us opportunity to leave the auto route and take in the sights of the Dordogne valley and the vineyards around Libourne. We then rejoined the auto route North through Pons and Rochefort-Sur-Mer to La Rochelle.
We approached the bridge, paid the toll and joined the back of the traffic jam - for an island that is renowned for it's bikes there were an awful lot of people in cars. We drove West across the island in our convoy of cars and entered the small town of La Couarde from the East after going in a bit of a circle. It reminded us a bit of changeover day at Centre Parcs. The apartments were on the right as we approached. We eventually found a space to park the car, went and collected the key and went up stairs to check out our apartment taking in the facilities and pool.
The apartment was pretty much how we expected it to be - small but functional. It had a double bedroom upstairs on a mezzanine floor, a double settee bed downstairs and a single bed in the hall way. It did take a little getting used to after the luxury and space of the villa Claire in Collioure. The view was obviously different as well. Instead of looking out over the blue Mediterranean sea we were overlooking the apartment’s small swimming pool. It was still lovely. We could open the large apartment windows completely and sit in the sun watching the comings and goings around the pool with a glass of wine in our hand.
It was quite late on our arrival day and we were obviously quite tired so whilst the kids set up the WiFi on their i-touches, Pug went and got a pizza from the restaurant across the road. Thus our first night on Ile De Re ended with us tucking into pizza and going to bed; not how we envisaged it but we were tired after our long day of driving.
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