We’re in St Louis! Not the famous American version, but a small French town a few minutes north of Basel. Our overnight stop before the early flight to Catania tomorrow has thrown up some lovely surprises.

A free music festival! Love a good festival. We couldn’t be in Byron Bay for the current Splendour in the Grass festival, so this was a close second … except all the songs were in French. We think they must be quite popular bands because there’s a good turnout in this small village – the town slogan is ‘village of the future’. A pretty sign near the train station said it was more than 16,600km to Sydney.

It was quite cool when we left Bern today, so I threw on my denim shirt as an extra layer and it turned out to be an inspired choice for tonight, as the town square created wind tunnels in the side streets. We stopped for a beer then watched a trio who were so French. I don’t know how to explain it other than ‘so French’.

Our first holiday beer!

A very tasty amber

A very funky food van

An arty snap of the action

The locals had a laugh watching me lick my ice cream straight off the cone, onto my handbag and then the ground – luckily not in my shoes! Leo was laughing too much to snap evidence. I trod back to the ice cream van and the man looked at me as if to say, “What’s happened? You were just here!” I theatre-sported the whole schemozzle and he wanted to replace it for free. I did my best French-accented, “Ohhhh no, no, no, no, no” and he happily took the cash.

Wishing you a wonderful day.