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Recently while on our honeymoon Matthew and I were driving in France from Valensole to Nice. Along the way we saw this incredible sight down a large hill on a windy road. In the morning sunlight the water was sparkling a heavenly blue and we could see sailboats between the trees. Our GPS told us to go one way, but we decided to go another. We had to get a closer look.
What we saw was the small village of Sainte-Croix-du-Verdon and it became one of our favorite spontaneous discoveries of the trip. As the car moved closer we could make out the lovely houses on the cobblestone streets, tables and chairs set up for petite dejeuner (breakfast) along the edge, and people paddling small boats from the beach into the lake. It was a little after 9:30 in the morning and the town was just beginning to wake up. Very few people were out and about and we only saw a handful of people, mostly tourists like ourselves including a group of three bikers from Germany with thick leather vests and a hearty appetite.
We took a seat to watch the boats float by down below and breakfasted on tea, crescents, jam, and fruit. The air was already beginning to get hot, but we rested under a shady spot and took it all in.
My message for today is to take the time to make a wrong turn or move away from the path you are on to try something new. You may just end up some place magical. It would have been easy to say “We have some place we need to be, let’s just keep going,” or, “I’m afraid we’ll end up lost, maybe we shouldn’t.” But we did not do that. We decided that this was our time, that life is one short gift and we needed to stop to explore along the way of the path we were already on.
I will be sharing more about our spontaneous morning in Sainte-Croix-du-Verdon, but for today, I hope that you make the decision to wander. That on your way home or to a place you need to be, you take a road you haven’t driven before, that you walk to a place nearby that you have never walked through, and that you make the decision to slow down and see what is around you on the way to your next destination. You might not find a magical lake, but you may just find a beautiful moment that is all yours.
