We took the TGV from Avignon back to Paris on Saturday AM with only a small hitch finding the TGV station in Avignon. But, on the plus side we did see many of the small streets in the center of Avignon that we would not have seen without the detour, of course nerves were not so long and there were some short words exchanged during the debacle, but after 16 nights with the three of us being together I think we did quite well.

We arrived in Paris around noon and got quickly settled in our VERY SMALL hotel room by the train station. We realized upon check-in just how lucky we had been with our accommodations throughout this trip - this "quad room" was TINY. There were 2 double beds (hence quad as four people could have laid down there), and literally NO place to walk or stash bags or anything else and the bathroom was no better. After "settling in", we tried to make determinations of what we were going to ship back to the states vs. try to cram in our suitcases, then headed off to find the one and only FEDEX office in Paris. We jumped on the metro with our bags of stuff and found the FEDEX fairly quickly with help from our hotel front desk man.

We didn't quite understand how "shipping" from a foreign country works... Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork - and oh by the way, nothing flammable (like perfume) can go in the box, and food items need to be "sealed and packaged" yada, yada, yada... And, customs may decide to take anything out of the box and you will never see it again... Yikes! Plus, we had ALOT of stuff and with Mighty Hunter's account we couldn't ship such a big box with a discount - HOLY EXPENSIVENESS. But, we were tired, hot and ready to just get on with the day so charge us whatever and let's get out of here! Hopefully it will all be intact in Colorado in a few days.

Geesh, it is now August and I am finally opening this back up to finish our trip. We've been home for 3 months and it already seems like so long ago that we were in France. I miss it already, heck, I missed it right away. Guess I better start saving my pennies!

So, on with the story, where did I leave off? I think I was rushing on Friday evening to go and meet the Wood's for a drink. Sandy and Shan said I didn't move that fast the whole trip, but of course I didn't want to be late for my first "very mini" slow travel GTG. It was great meeting Kathy and Charley, they are a very nice couple and we wished we were staying just a couple more days to meet their incoming tour group. The Woods have a business organizing trips for small groups (up to 12 I think) to tour the Luberon - it is called the Luberon Experience and you can search for it on this website. They have a welcome dinner for each new group and like to invite other slow travel travelers and local Bonnieux friends to join them - bummer dinner would be Sunday night and we left Saturday.

Sorry peeps, but just wanted to do a quick post to bring you up to date and then I am unsure if I will be back online until possibly Chicago airport. I can't remember if our hotel for the last night in Paris has internet, but even if it does I think it will be a whirlwind day there trying to send some stuff FedEx and getting last minute gifts and having our last French meal!

Last nights dinner at Capelongue de Bastide was amazing - and tres French! If you can believe it when all was said and done it was 11 courses and even Shannon was finally full! I will write soon about the complete experience and post some pictures from Shan's camera. But, suffice it to say it was a really cool thing to do and a LOT of food. We also enjoyed two good bottles of wine and had the cutest sommelier - not in looks necessarily but in personality! Man did I ever wish then that I spoke better French so I could have had a conversation, since his English wasn't great and my French wasn't great we did as much talking as was possible but was very little!

This morning was Bonnieux's market day and it was a quaint market and we found lots of last minute things on our list to take home - great stuff! I won't indulge with the details since some of the purchases were gifts and I don't want to ruin any surprises! The cash machine here in Bonnieux was out of money, suffice it to say it was probably a good thing and we treated it as our destiny and stopped buying when we were out of money - I'll let you decide if the amount we started with was big or small!

From there we were off for a hike on the Lioux Falaise. A Falaise is like a butte for all intents and purposes, so we hiked up around to the back side and then out on the falaise itself and down the other end of the cliff. We had brilliant views of Roussillon, Gordes, and Bonnieux and La Coste in the distance along with views of all the vines, orchards and farms directly around the falaise. It is a very nice day again and it was a nice hike and not too long or taxing. We had lunch in Rousillon, but I don't know the name of the restaurant, it wasn't too exciting one way or the other, but the beers were cold and tasted good after our time in the hot sun.

We made a stop at the Bonnieux Cave (wine cooperative) and purchased a few bottles of Rose to bring home - we ultimately decided that we have liked some of the white and red wines of the region, but nothing "wowed" us with those, but since France produces some great Rose wines that we just don't yet seem to have in the US, we focused our effort on Rose - so yes, we are bringing home pink wine! I'm sure it won't last very long when we get home, but if nothing else we have learned a bit more about French wine and which regions and/or chateaus we like, so it should make buying more French wine from home a bit easier if not cheaper! I don't know if I have mentioned, but wine here (good, decent wine) is CHEAP! I'm talking $6-$10 a bottle, not euro mind you, dollars! The shelfs have many good wines for 2 to 4 euro a bottle and most less than 10 euro unless you are at a boutique wine store! It has been great, and even with that we only had 8 empty bottles on the counter for 6 nights here so far - for the three of us together that is an excellent feat!

Well, gotta run, exciting news - Charley and Kathy Wood, slow travel old timers and bloggers have arrived in Bonnieux and we are going to have a get-together (GTG) tonight before we leave town! I'm psyched since I spent hours combing Kathy's blog about the area before we came and I actually feel like I know her already!

Today we picked up our rented bikes, had a wonderful breakfast of fresh baguette with ham, cheese and fried fresh eggs compliments of Sandy and hit the road with the intention of tasting some wine and getting some fresh air and exercise. We left Bonnieux headed for the Pont Julien and two wine chateaus along that route. The first chateau was closed (today and only today), as the first of May seems to be some kind of holiday around here? I sort of remember that, but not really to tell the truth. It doesn't seem to be affecting the restaurant and such in town, but none the less, ferme (closed), so on down the road we continued. The next place on our stop was the chateau that had furnished our wine at the Le Tinel dinner on Tues night, Epyceries, I think... We stopped, rang the bell and had a nice tasting of the wine we had at dinner and all their others. They had a nice variety and we all walked out promising to come back tonight or tomorrow with the car to buy some wine - we each wanted at least 2 bottles.

One problem, we still haven't figured totally how we are going to get any wine home, let alone a fair amount of wine. Guess I better check FedEx while I'm here on the internet to see if there is a location close, our plan is to send back the majority of our clothes (that we severely overpacked by the way) and check the wine in our suitcase. The issue is that United has changed their rules about wine in checked luggage and it needs to be in packing material like it would be in boxes, no worries though as the French seem to pack their wine laying down with formed pieces in between that is much more compact than our standing up styrofoam way. We can each easily take 6 bottles, and could probably do a case with some creativity and strong muscles - never the less time is waning and we need to figure it out soon - guess that is my job to think about and figure out...

After our tasting we continued on to the Pont Julien, a roman bridge remaining completely intact here in the Luberon. It is pretty amazing to think how smart the Romans were and the engineering feats that they accomplished as a society. This bridge is pretty small, but impressive none the less due to its age and still working order. After a quick break at the bridge to take some pictures and get Sandy in the wild poppies we headed out towards La Coste a town ~ 4-5 km from Bonnieux depending how you go, but our way was likely 10-11km. It was bordering lunch time and everything except the resaurants closes down, we weren't hungry yet, so we continued on to the Abbeye St Hilaire.

Shan had tried to get to this abbey on her walking tour on Sunday, but had made a wrong turn and never did find it, so we set out to correct her mistakes on a faster mode of transportation. First, we had to climb up to La Coste (another perched village), then climb up and out of the village, then climb some more, whew I knew it was hilly here, but as usual on a bike it takes on a whole new perspective. We finally started the descent to the turn off for the Abbey and I was thinking... for every down there will be another long up... guess I better enjoy it while I can.

We found the abbey and had a nice walk around and look, and then I checked the map for a way back to Bonnieux hoping for not too many hills. This is a past time of mine in Colorado Springs, how to get home on my bike, climbing the least amount or least grueling hills. Unfortunately my map is not a topographical map, and therefore I couldn't really tell, but the road below the abbey appeared pretty flat!

We climbed up the gravel road from the abbey to our original road and continued on down the hill, and down and down and down to meet up with my "flat road" back to Bonnieux! Silly rabbit tricks are for kids!

At the turn for my "flat road" Shan and Sandy thought they wanted to ride more than the 11km back to Bonnieux so we parted ways and I started climbing my flat road - turned out to be a nice steady incline for 7 of the first 11km back, then a nice downhill reprieve which only meant I would have to climb (more steeply this time) back up to my perched village.

I was only home 20 min when in came Sandy and Shan, they had gone a ways then changed routes to come back here and had ridden about the same as I had by the time it was done. Sandy was pooped - she hasn't done much riding with Shan on the open road and didn't know what she was really getting into...

So now, after a snack of baguette and cheese on the terrace, I'm at the cafe blogging so I can finally feel somewhat caught up. Tonight is our michelin restaurant night at Bastide de Capelongue, and we are all saving our appetites to eat and eat and eat! So, I will be done, need to put on some makeup and finally put on a dress after two weeks of carting them around and not using them!

We woke up to a cold, rainy, windy day with plans to go for a hike and then hit some of the other perched villages in the region. We bundled up, to the best of our ability, in our “hiking clothes” and I set off for Henri’s with computer in hand to see if I could get a signal from the café on the corner – Henri’s company is much better than the guy at Cesars! We got our croissant, pain au chocolat etc… I tried the computer – but no luck we were still too far away – so I wrote my blog for the day in word and got some pictures ready for posting while sipping tea and eating my delicious chocolate breakfast treat – they were fresh out of the oven this morning.

The girls took off to walk the town in the rain, life is a bit more back to normal and they can’t sit still for long periods of time, and I headed to Cesar’s Café to get my internet fix. I spent a good hour to 2 hours posting, reading comments, posting pictures, downloading new pictures etc while I drank some tea. Sandy and Shan found the bike shop and reserved our bikes for tomorrow and then found a specialty food shop to get some gifts.

Finally it was noonish and still cold and blowing and raining and we were hungry, and I found the girls researching winerys (chateaus in French speak). So, we ditched the hike due to the rain and jumped in the car to head south to Loumarin for lunch and then to some of the southern Luberon chateaus. We had sandwiches at a small café in Loumarin then wandered over to a big castle (also chateau in French) that we saw on our way into town. Turned out the chateau had been purchased by a man in the early 1900s when it was intended to be torn down, this man then restored the entire chateau and furnished much of it. When he died in 1927 ish he left the chateau to the arts college or museum in Aix en Provence and they keep it as a museum and a place for young artists to board and to display their art. Anyways – it was really cool and we decided to go in and check it out along with checking out an artist that had an exhibition that day – too bad the dollar is so crappy because she had some beautiful things that would have been somewhat affordable if we weren’t paying 1 ½ times. So, we grabbed a couple of the cheap reproductions…

Amazingly when we popped out of the chateau, the sun was starting to shine and it was warming up. I grabbed the good camera, loaded with black and white film, and started to take some shots – well tried, but the camera was flashing error. I tried to figure it out, but ultimately we had to call Rocket back in the US to try to remedy the situation. We figured it out and I hopefully got some good shots!

Next we were off to do some wine tasting and were able to stop at 2 on the list Chateau Constantin Chevalier and Domaine de Fontenille. Sandy and Shan liked the first one best and I liked the second one best. After our second tasting it was time to be headed to Velleron for the night farmers market. This is a unique market that is every night but Sunday and is mostly only produce, and I believe it is mostly direct from the farmer, so there is only for sale what is in season and it is extremely fresh. We picked up some strawberries, asparagus, baby potatoes and biscotti (not on the list), then quickly popped into the center village of Velleron to grab some chicken, bread and dessert. We had chicken thighs and legs with a provencal rub roasted with the new potatoes and my special asparagus a la the microwave! Of course preceded by cheese, strawberries and champagne and dinner accompanied with a bottle of white wine Vin de Bourgogne; Macon-Villages -2006 made with the Chardonnay grape and it was quite good. These simple whipped up meals at home with the fresh market ingredients have been so tasty and made for nice nights to just relax.

On Tuesday morning, everything is closed in Bonnieux so we decided to make this our day to go to Cassis. Cassis is a small port town on the Mediterranean just 20km or so from Marseille and is know for its Calenques, cliffs that go into the sea. We were up early for us – 8 AM – and on the road just shy of 9 AM. Shannon drove so I could navigate, it was going to be some map reading and hoping since we had not gotten on the internet for several days to look up actual directions.

It was a fairly uneventful drive, we didn’t probably go the most efficient way, but the signs on the autoroutes (interstates) here are very confusing. So, we followed what I thought was the right way and eventually we did make it, but I know someone who lived here would not have gone the way we did!

It was just as beautiful as expected, but first things first we had to pee! In france it is a bit different than in the US – you don’t really wander into the first shop or even café/restaurant you see and use the bathroom, it is just not really accepted. In the countryside around Bonnieux I have asked a restaurant proprietor to use the toilettes, but in the cities not so much. So, we had to find the public toilettes, and fast! They were by the beach and it cost .50 cents each to go in, so now we had to dig through our purses and try to find the 50 cent piece when all we wanted was to go NOW!

Next up, lunch and we found a busy restaurant with outdoor seating in the shade. It was a great choice and the plat du jour was moules frites – yeah – I love it here! We had a nice relaxing lunch and Shan and I shared a good half bottle of white wine called 4 Vents from the Cote du Luberon – it was quite tasty! We went from there to have a boat ride to the calenques and chose the shortest of the trips, 45 min to three calenques. It was a lovely trip and we got to see plenty of nude sunbathers on the cliffs next to the sea – Rocket and Mighty Hunter would have loved this part!

We took the scenic route back through the southern Luberon and then through the canyon from Loumarin to Bonnieux and found our Michelin Star restaurant on the top of the hill at Bonnieux. We stopped and made reservations for Thursday night… It is my treat to Shan and Sandy, well really my boss Andy’s treat as my gift for my 10 year milestone with my company, to go for a Michelin dinner while here and this place is just gorgeous at the very top of the village and with amazing gardens – I hope the weather cooperates. It has sort of been weird weather, a day of rain and wind, then a day of sun and now (Wed) back to rain and wind.

I took a quick peruse of town and what restaurants were open for Tues night and made a reservation for Le Tinel – a strong recommendation from the Wood family – and it was a fabulous dinner! I think this was my favorite so far on the trip, although it is hard to decide since the dinner at La Fournil was so good as well. We all had very good food and some nice conversation with the owner Nicholas (I think, the girls got his name while I was out taking sunset pictures and they haven’t always “understood” peoples names very clearly), who had spent a couple of years in the US and was also just very charming and not bad to look at either!

A good day, but too much time spent in the car for our taste, today (wed) we planned to do a hike, but will see with the weather, then just short car trips to some of the neighboring villages all within 30 or so minutes. I’m currently sitting at Henri’s patisserie having my tea and pain au chocolat – forgot to take a picture but I will before we leave. I have to go to the café for more tea to get this actually posted on the internet, but oh well I kind of enjoy it!

Today we first had to take care of some business, buy some necessary toiletries like soap, shampoo, and sunscreen for Shan and then head to what turned out to be the hardware store to buy a new electric plug adaptor. I’m not sure how mine broke, but we quickly realized how we relied on having it for the computer, Sandy’s phone charger, Shan’s camera charger and our Ipod speakers so we can have music while we hang out. I took the adaptor to dinner last night and asked the owner where I could get a new one and he directed us to the hardware store in Apt, just 15km or so away, plus it was right next to Le Clerc so we could get the other items on Shan’s list.

It took us some time looking around Apt and asking 3 different people before we finally found the stores and were able to buy our goods. I realize now that we have come home a different way that there is more than one way to get to Apt from Bonnieux and I don’t think we chose the way that the owner would have gone, and if we had his quick directions would have been very good. But, we have an adaptor again, in fact for 8 euro we decided to buy two so we could charge more than one electronic at a time.

We had chosen a drive based on Provence Byways a guidebook to the Luberon region of Provence that included Apt since we were already headed that way. It was a drive that took us north of the Luberon national park region up to the Vaucluse Plateau and to the small villages of St Saturnin les Apt, Sault, St Trinit, Revest du Bion and back through St Christol and Rustrel. We stopped in all but the last 2 villages on our route, but by then we were thinking we needed to get back towards Bonnieux and we actually headed to Goult for the afternoon market. I either had the day, time or place wrong and maybe the dates because there was no market in Goult this afternoon when we arrived.

In St Saturnin les Apt we climbed to the top of the village to the ruins of the walled medieval village and chateau. It was a nice hike up and beautiful views of the valley and back at the luberon mountains. After we found a back way hiking trail down that took us past an old windmill and down some stairs into the back of town. It really is unique and I will try to remember to take pictures of the small stairways that connect one street to another in these perched villages.

Our back way down to the village provided these picnic tables and Shan and Sandy decided they should pretend these were "their tombs" and so we had to have a picture of that!

Next up Sault and we stopped to have a picnic lunch, unfortunately it started to rain so we had to eat in the car – boy would some pigeons have a hey day in there now with all the crumbs from the croissant and baguette. A nice lunch though of sandwiches with ham, cheese, and hard sausage on fresh baguette and some strawberries and a banana. Tasty! Since we hit Sault at lunch time, all the lavender shops were closed, too bad because this is lavender central and I am sure it is beautiful in June and July when it blooms and we were looking forward to learning all about it! Maybe we will get back some other day, or maybe not…

Following our guide, next on the trip was St Trinit, a sleepy little village with a small but very sweet Romanesque church from the 12th century. So, we stopped at the church and finally figured out which door was open so we could go inside. This church has amazingly lovely acoustics and the guidebook said we should test them out with a Gregorian chant or other liturgical music, unfortunately we don’t know any so we tried out some Elton John and it was very pretty! Oh yeah, and I did my best try at Trav’s favorite “In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit” in latin like I have heard priests do… very authentic!

The weather turned very cool and windy following the rain in Sault and I fear we may be having a mistral, a very cold, famous wind in province. It is said the mistral lasts for an odd number of days, so tomorrow we will know if it will be just one, or we are destined for three or five or seven. While it was a bit warm yesterday at times, I definitely prefer that to this cold biting wind mixed with rain. Anyways, we were all a bit chilled so we stopped in Revest du Bion for a chocolat chaud (hot chocolate) at a sweet bar in the village. It reminded me of walking into a bar in small town Iowa where everyone stops what they are doing to see who is coming in, then they stare because you are obviously not from around there, a bit daunting really but we walked right in and in my “fabulous French” ordered 3 hot chocolates! There were very tasty and hit just the right note in the cool damp day on the Vaucluse Plateau. It is there that we decided to move on quickly and head to Goult for some groceries at the market to make dinner ourselves tonight.

Of course as I mentioned – un petit probleme – no market to be found in Goult. So we went to the small grocer and the butcher and rounded up enough to make up a dinner. I decided we would have a salad (we need to get our veggies to balance the wine) and then pasta with a fresh tomato, basil and olive oil sauce with whatever meat looked good at the butcher – turned out to be sausage since foie gras is not tops on any of our lists. Now I am at the house with full computer juice catching up on blogs and downloading and resizing pictures for our faithful audience, enjoying a glass of rose and assuming Shan and Sandy are a bit cold on their walk as the wind is now howling (definitely mistral). More for you peeps tomorrow! Oh and I will make a concerted effort to load pictures for the last couple blogs that I posted with a VERY low battery and no time for photos, so go back and check!

This morning I woke up a bit slowly – not a great nights sleep – but with plans to head to the big Sunday market at Isle Sur La Sorgue just about 35 km north of here. Sandy and I were going to market and Shan was going for a hike since she isn’t the shopping kind. I showered and got ready then woke Sandy to find out she had been sick all night – guess the cream sauces and bites of ice cream finally caught up to her – so I was off on my own. Before I left Shan and I stopped at Henri’s patisserie for pain au chocolat and tea for me. Shan ordered a café crème and it turned out to be a HUGE bowl of steamed milk with a little bit of coffee.
From there we separated and I jumped in the car to head to Sur La Sorgue; I have to admit it was nice to have the drive to myself and mostly to not fear being in the car. It is an easy drive from here to SLS and beautiful as well with all the grape vines just beginning to sprout their first leaves. On the flip side the olive and fruit trees are fully leafed out and done flowering and provide a nice background for the barren looking vines. I’m going to try to get some good black and whites of this, but today I forgot to bring the big camera – too bad the sun shine was perfect.

This morning we were up and out of the hotel the earliest we have moved to date – (9:45) and Sandy chose to drive (this turns out to be my nightmare today). We headed a short trip down the road to Grasse, the parfum capital of the world, one of the things on my list was to visit a parfumerie. We came upon Fragonard first and so that is where we stopped, with extremely good timing as 2 tour buses joined the fray 10 minutes or so after our arrival. We received a nice tour of the parfum factory (in English) from a nice Chinese girl and learned a whole lot that I didn’t know before. In the end we hit their store where we smelled several different types of parfum (natural, sweet, floral, and oriental). I found a fruit category one I liked and so I bought it – one more thing off of my list!

From there we made our way to the gorge du verdon with a stop for a nice, long French lunch at a small restaurant, Chez Marius, between Grasse and Castellane in a village called Villaute. The food was great and a three course meal to boot that we all chowed down. I had a smoked salmon appetizer with some type of fish mousse, Shan had a deli tray (charcuterie) and Sandy had gnocchi with a crème sauce and walnuts for our “appetizer” course. Then I had lamb with polenta, Shan had chicken with gratin potatoes and Sandy tournados of beef with roasted potato. For dessert, Sandy & I had triple chocolate mousse cake and Shan had a red wine soaked pear with vanilla ice cream. Sandy ended with what she says was "the perfect cafe au lait" and she wants to take this picture to Starbucks to show them!

So after our 2 hour lunch stop we were back on the road headed toward the gorge. Already we had been on some STEEP, VERY CURVY, NARROW roads, and I was FREAKING OUT with Sandy driving! It is like the Indy 500 and she thinks if there is a curve it means to go faster and with a stick shift in hand it is worse! She was actually leaning back and forth like on a motorcycle in her seat – CRAZY! On another note the Gorge du Verdon is beautiful – very narrow roads – but beautiful! It is supposed to be like the “mini grand canyon” and it isn’t really like that but it is a green version of many of the canyons in Utah for sure. Tons of motorcycles – buzzing by us like we were standing still – and we weren’t! We stopped off for a couple photo opportunities but kept on trucking for the most part.

We stopped at Moustiers Ste Marie at the far end of the canyon near the Lac de St Croix and did a quick hike up to a small catholic chapel at the top of the village. We wished we had more time since the village looked cute and fun, but drinking and driving isn’t an option here at all, so we passed on any drinks or browsing and back in the car for Bonnieux.

After Moustiers Ste M, the road was still twisty some, but not so much along the cliffs and drop offs like before, so I started to relax into Sandy’s driving style – that is until she was going around a curve and looked away from the road – the curve straightened out, but Sandy kept on like the curve right towards a concrete barrier pole – no joking (she admitted tonight) we missed it by 6 inches (on my side of car) and it scared the living daylights out of me! She and Shan were in comic relief – I was crying – don’t know why, but it was just such an adrenaline rush I couldn’t help it… Luckily, since I am blogging now, you realize we made it with no problems – but crap that was scary! I think I will drive and navigate myself from now on…

We’ve settled into our village house here in Bonnieux and it is great. Not terribly big compared to any of our houses in Colorado, but the biggest yet for the trip. We each have our own big beds (whoo hoo) and rooms and 2 bathrooms which is a blessing in disguise! No more sharing of biological functions if you know what I mean… We have a great terrace off the top level (pictures will come later as we just settled in) and it is at the top of the town so we will get plenty of exercise going to and fro. Tonight we headed out for a quick bite and ended up at a brasserie, La Terasse, for a pizza and some salads and of course wine (we took last night off, that was enough) and it was great. Our waiter even bought us a round which was so sweet of him, so we obliged and drank another glass of wine (S&S 3rd my 4th (trickery this was)).

Now, home, laundry, planning and such… It is a nice night, but it is also 12:20 AM and we are headed out early tomorrow to Isle Sur La Sorgue (largest Sunday market in Provence!)

Bon Nuit et A Bientot!

PS – My plug adaptor has broken and is not working so our time blogging may be short lived, not to mention no WiFi here at house – have to go to La Terasse (bummer ). If you don’t hear more – don’t worry and I apologize in advance I will try to find another adaptor tomorrow or more likely Monday!

We spent Friday in St Tropez, after our excursion last night getting up at a decent hour wasn’t an easy thing to do! We had coffee/tea, pain au chocolat & orange juice at a nice little café across from our hotel entrance at a real bargain – 4.50 euro for all of it. From there we jumped into the car and prayed to find our way out of Nice and to St Tropez – Shan drove and it was less worrisome – she reads signs and understood where we were going so after I figured out I wasn’t navigating for Trav all went well. We took the autoroute to get there a bit faster, then through Frejus to St Tropez. The autoroute wasn’t bad and we enjoyed the scenic drive from Fejus through Ste Maxime and to St Tropez.

Once there we found some parking and headed to the sea to have some lunch – I know seems like we just ate breakfast, and so it goes on this vacation. We walked all along the port shops, found some cute shoes, but zut alor not in our size. Finally agreed on a place for lunch that was a good price and most importantly for me had moules frites (sorry Drew, Huey and whoever else can’t understand my bits of French, that is mussels and fries)! It was a nice lunch ended with ice cream – YUMMY – and we only had one drink since we had to drive back, saving our livers a bit for the first time this trip.

We walked along the shore to find the “famous white sand beaches of St Tropez” – well, first the sand isn’t white, second the ones near town are small, I mean really SMALL, needless to say Shan was a bit disappointed. There was another cool cemetery right along the sea, not a bad place for a final resting spot if you are into the water and being buried. We climbed a small hiking trail up to the Citadel in St Tropez – nice views and pretty flowers from there!

Finally it was pushing 6 PM so we headed back – in bumper to bumper traffic (can’t imagine the summer time) – jumping on the autoroute again (not our plan, but couldn’t take the traffic) and back to Nice. We arrived at our hotel close to 8 pm and decided sandwiches or crepes to go (a emporter) would be a nice change from a long dinner and would allow us to get packed for our morning departure.

All in all our stay at Hotel Rex (70 euro/night for a triple) in Nice was lovely. The owner, Michel, and his son, Peter, were super nice and spoke slowly to me in French so I could practice, while with them I tried to communicate only in French and I think I am getting better, they just talk so damn fast here! Our room was smallish, but very clean, and a bit noisy. The walls are pretty thin. The only thing making us crazy was the porn pigeon outside our window. Porn, because the first night I heard it I thought it was people next door “having relations” and I hoped it would be over soon. As it continued hour after hour in the wee morning hours I realized what it was, but it didn’t change the first impression. Do pigeons have heats? Sandy originally thought a weird alley derelict was hanging outside our window, she then wanted a slingshot to take care of it, but alas we had nothing! Unfortunately I was once again moving to fast and forgot to take pictures of Michel and Peter – total bummer – but they will remain in my memory for some time to come for their very kind hospitality!

Sorry for no posting yesterday - I was busy putting up pictures from the past several days during the free time. It was a very nice day, sunny and warm even along the sea, and we decided to enjoy the day just putzing around Nice itself. Before we could do that, we had to go and pick up our car at the train station to have for the remainder of our time in Provence.

We made our way back to the train station without getting lost and decided to pick up our tickets for the train from Avignon to Paris while we were at the station. The woman behind the counter was very nice and let me practice my French! I asked her where we would get our car and she looked at the paperwork and said the airport... "WHAT the %$#@"? I am sure I scheduled it for the train station, but she says - "nope, there is a bus to the airport, guess you'll be taking that".

BUT, instead of trusting her, I thought I would just ask at the train station car rental, my gut said I had done the right thing and Sandy said follow my gut. Well, it was right and we got our car at the train station with no issues - then we had to get it back to the parking garage near our hotel - YIKES! Nice and Paris for that matter are full of one way streets, which I learned is sans unique in French, who knew? I decided Shan or Sandy should drive and I would navigate, so Sandy volunteered. It was a crazy drive, but we made it and we didn't even make any real mistakes - we got a bit of whip lash, seems Sandy hasn't driven a stick for awhile!

Once back we walked to the seafront to try and find a restaurant where we could look at the water, but it seems that is not something they do much of here, at least in the old town area. So, starving since we had no breakfast before our car adventure we went back a block and had some lunch at one of the many choices (we can't remember), it was good, but nothing overly special. After we headed back to the beach and Shan and Sandy put their feet in the water - Shan said it was like California, cold but not unbearable. I had to laugh as a big wave soaked them both pretty far up their rolled up pants and Sandy almost lost it on the pebbles (it is a pebble beach). The water is so pretty and blue here!

From there we climbed to the top of the old Nice fortress since it looked to have great views. It did have a nice vantage looking over the sea, and up higher was a pretty cool waterfall and then cemetaries. My mom and grandpa would be proud because I spent a fair amount of time wandering around these cemetaries looking at the headstones, it wasn't hard really since these were tombs and beautiful tombs at that. I don't really totally get how it works, but whole families are "buried" on a single site. If anyone knows how this really works I would love to be educated!

After our hike we shopped a bit in the TINY streets of old town Nice and then had some Ice Cream. It is a good thing we waited so long to taste the ice cream here because since we had it I think we have had some everyday! SO GOOD! Sandy is a bit lactose intolerant so none for her except small bites of Shan's and mine. From there Sandy was interested in olive oil tasting so we searched out the store in her book A L'Olivier, if you are ever near one of these stores it is definitely worth the stop! Of course we had a very nice young lady waiting on us named Eve and her english was impeccable and she was funny and extremely enthusiastic about her products. We tasted a couple basalmic vinegars and several olive oils and none of us left empty handed. We will be having some great salad dressings and pastas when we get home!

For dinner we made reservations at a place called Acchiardo at 38 Rue Droite, but we couldn't get in till 9:30, so in the mean time that is when I caught up loading pictures. This place was on a website somewhere and my notes said " Nicoise eatery with gorgeous sons that wait tables." Well, that is my abbreviation for saying the sons of the restaurant owner are the waiters and they are good looking - obviously something the other recommendation had mentioned. NOT DISAPPOINTED! The food was good too and cheap, but ladies if you are in Nice you have to go here and check out the eye candy, and they are nice and charming to boot. Jean Francois and I don't know the other's name, he left for the night before we had a chance to answer. And unfortunately, they were so cute we lost our minds and forgot to take pictures for evidence...sacre bleu!

From there, we headed for a drink to Thor, a brew pub type place in the old town area. We ordered beer for Sandy and I and wine for Shan and my beer was HUMONGOUS - not kidding check out the pics... We were then interupted and subsequently joined by a couple of young frenchmen - Jean-Remy and Jean-Christophe - who were pretty drunk, but mostly amusing. Although by the end of the round of beers they ordered us without asking, we were tired of them and Sandy mentioned to JC that she and I were married - that put a crook in their thinking, although they still tried to convice us to let them "show us around" on Friday. We passed and said au revoir... At least it was someone to talk to besides each other for a short bit!

This morning we were all hanging just a bit - whew champagne will do that to you no matter what. Shan and I got some pics taken before the crowd then picked up some breakfast - I got baker boy to smile at me this AM too, turns out he is shy not mean, the things you learn about people after a night at the local cafe.

Then, pack, walk to train, and we were off on our way to Nice. I slept for almost 3 hours, can't tell you what Shan and Sandy did, but it wasn't sleeping. It was so pretty to look out from the train, I do feel slightly bad that I missed alot of it. The area right outside of Paris was very much farm land and they grow canola here which has beautiful yellow blooms on it and is spectacular in the fields. I have pictures of it from Sweden, but today it was an early bloom and just gorgeous with all the green in the other fields - no pics though, the train was moving to fast to capture anything.

I woke at Aix en Provence - and just in time to then see all the beautiful views of the Med as we traveled along the coast for the last couple hours of the journey. We are checked in here in Nice, had good pizza for dinner and now off to bed for our earliest night in many!

Mardi (Tuesday) our last day in Paris and still many things on our list to see, but command decision was made to go the the Basilisque de St Denis. It is one of the first, if not the first gothic style cathedral built in Paris.

We started our day with cafe creme, tea and pasteries at the cafe we had been getting coffee from each morning. I conviced the girls that we should sit down outside at the cafe this morming and have a proper cup of coffee and tea instead of the "to go" method. It was a very nice morning, first day of sunshine since we arrived and a nice time at the cafe taking our time.

Our plan for the day included a stop at Notre Dame to see inside the chapel, then head to the burbs to see Basilisque de St Denis. We are very close to Notre Dame at our apartment so we headed across the bridge and into the cathedral after a very small, fast moving line. You can see the inside of the cathedral for free, but you must have tickets to go up in the towers like we did previously. I wondered through and was done in about 10-15 minutes and we had agreed to meet outside the exit if we got separated so I wandered there and waited, and waited, and waited, went back in looked and looked and looked, back outside waited, and waited - getting nervous - and FINALLY here they came. Lesson learned - don't go to Notre Dame with two catholic dames, they can spend forever in there!

BTW, that was church number two for the morning since we stopped in the smaller church right by our apartment on the way to the cafe - wandered through, lit a candle for whatever reason you light candles, then on to breakfast. Oh yeah, we also stopped at the boulangerie where Shan got pastry yesterday and the boulanger was not rude to me, but definitely very brisk. More to follow later on the story of "baker boy"...

And, next on the list, another church... yeah for us! The basilisque st denis is just outside of Paris in a Northern suburb so we hopped on the metro for the trip. The trip to the basilica was uneventful and we easily found it. Now, this was a COOL place, we rented the tour guide things that talk to you in English to tell you what you are looking at and they were SO worth it. We would have been (or at least I would have been) in and out pretty quickly without them. There are crypts at this basilica and it is loaded with royal history. I am going to have to study up when I get home because I know nothing of Louis and his brothers and the royal families of France, but many of them are entombed at this basilica - or they were - can't remember as it was soooo much to take in. At least an hour and a half we spent in the basilica, and it was very cold in there, taking it all in. I think in actuality we all could have stayed longer and listened to more history, but it just got too cold and we needed to get outside to warm up!

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Lundi a Paris and Shan was the first one awake this morning. She purposely left the blackout blinds open to let in the light so she wouldn't sleep too long... I heard her get up and go and Sandy and I got rolling shortly after she headed out. Her breakfast gathering experience wasn't nearly as fun as mine was... Unfortunately the good boulanger on Rue St Louis en L'Ile isn't open on Monday, so she had to go to the "snobby" boulangerie and the boulanger wasn't very nice to her - still she ended up with 3 croissants and 2 pain au chocolat, so the necessities were received! She also met up with my cafe man to get cafe creme and he speaks english so no problem there. All in all, she got us what we needed, just not the best experience in total, so I will go tomorrow.

We were out of the apartment in good time and headed to Notre Dame - it is just a ways down the street and across the bridge to the Ile de la Cite, quite close. We waited in line and headed up another massive amount of circular stairs to the towers and looked out over the city - quite the view. The highest tower was open and coming down from there we ran into a woman who worked up on the tower - she was not a small woman, wearing a down snowmobile suit (very puffy), and yelling up the spiral stair case that is all of 2 1/2 feet wide - "Stop coming down the stairs!" She was trying to come up, but couldn't fit with anyone coming down. She let Sandy and Shan go by, but they were several stairs in front of me. Shan tried to tell her we were friends, but she told me "it is impossible - go back up!" So, I went back up and waited for the female quasi moto to pass and then headed down again... For the main towers there are 2 staircases, one for up and one for down, but to the high tower only one for both and at the 2 1/2 ft wide on a spiral, trying to pass was tres dangereuse to say the least!

At the bottom we realized that our line was only for the towers, not the inside, that was another line that was very long by the time we came down so we decided to come back later. We headed towards the Louvre and the line for Ste Chapelle was not too bad so we jumped in. Just as we were very near the front a large group of German tourists (30 or so peeps) came to the front and were obviously meeting their tour guide. The started cutting in line right behind us until the door guard came and gave the tour guide a ration of angry French to which she tried to rebut, but she was no match for him - it was quite heated and entertaining! Poor woman though, I have no doubt she had a group reservation and thought she was doing the right thing, then was humiliated in front of her entire group - ultimately they went to the end of a now very long line.

Ste Chapelle - well, words don't describe how beautiful the stained glass is on the upper level of this church - you start on the bottom and there are only signs in French that even elude to there being an upper level. The lower level stained glass is quite pretty so you think - hmmph this is nice. I saw the sign however for the "haute" and told Sandy and Shan we needed to go upstairs - when I entered the room I couldn't believe it - crazy pretty. I think Shan captured it best with her camera, but I haven't had time to fix the picture problem I'm having so you will have to wait - maybe I can remedy the situation on Wed during our train ride to Nice. Just trust me, if you are ever here, it is very worth the visit.

Next up, the Louvre. We were starving so we headed to the food court and had crepes for lunch. They were ok, but I am sure there are much better in Paris food stands. We decided to head to the French sculpture area, something we were all interested in, and it didn't disappoint. We all had our different tastes, but they were really cool. I know that place is huge, but man you just don't realize how huge until you keep walking and walking and walking and there seems to be no end - plus 4 floors worth of no end. Finally when our feet started to ache a bit, we headed to see Mona, and after that quickly found les toilettes and the sortie (exit).

From slow travel, I have a nice guide for Paris from a guy named Tom. Shan, Trav and others will attest I am pretty good at digging on the web and finding a local blog or web page or whatever that provides good info about the city we are visiting. In Tom's section about shopping in Paris he has a recommendation for those with a watch fetish for a small shop in the marais on the Rue de Verrerie called La Montre du Marais. Well, I am one with a watch fetish and thought that might be a nice thing to buy while here so after the Louvre we headed toward the Marais and my watch shop.

Of course, a cafe called our name just a little ways into our journey, we were a bit parched from our time in the Louvre and there were nice outside seats available! We enjoyed a couple beers, then decided to be on our way. We took an attempt at renting the city bikes, but after a few unsuccessful tries right in front of all the people at the cafe, we decided walking would be just fine. I swear I will get one of those bikes before this trip is over...

The owner of the watch shop was just as Tom described and after I picked a watch for myself, he started to help me match other watches to my style and of course to Sandy and Shan too. I left with 2 new watches and Shan with one too! It was great fun and he was extremely nice, he especially liked Shan and especially her "bon derriere" that Sandy and I happened to point out! Never seen Shan blush for 20 minutes straight - she was very relieved to leave and get into the cool air to cool off! He definitely would have been willing to give Lloyd a run for his money...

We headed back to the apartment to chill and make a dinner reservation - by the time we did we needed to make it for 10 PM to have time to get cleaned up. None of can believe we have been eating so late, but it just happens and paris restaurants don't heat up for dinner till at least 8 PM anyway. Tonight's dinner was just okay - probably the least best we have had so far, but still, we are in Paris so nothing is ever terrible. From there we headed out to find a jazz club called 7 Lezards, but we walked the entire street it was supposed to be on and never found it. I stumbled into another bar to ask and they said it was far away - I think they just wanted us to stay there for a drink so we did! Of course we were virtually the only girls in the place since it appeared to be a gay bar... :-) Amnesia was the name..

We finished at Amnesia and headed toward our place with intentions to stop somewhere else if we saw something cool - we ran into a bar called Stolly's and they were playing good classic american rock, so I figured we should give it a try. We are on the fence whether this bar was gay too, but I don't think so... Either way, the music was better than the french techno pop at the other place and the beer was cold and good so not a bad stopover. From there - home!

Now I think it is 3:20 ish and so I better crash since I told Shan I would get breakfast in the morning! Oh, happy days in Paris!

"strong like bull"

Wow - jetlag is crazy! Today I woke up and looked at the clock and it was 11AM and the other girls hadn't even stirred... Yes, you read that right, Sandy and Shan slept till after 11 in the morning... and neither could believe when I woke them that it was so late. So, no petit dejeuner trip for me today - bummer since I really enjoyed the early morning French life.

So - it is Sunday and according to the books, everything closes, so yikes our plan had been to get to the market and get some food so we could fend for ourselves for dinner. I quickly jumped on the internet to find a market in Paris on Sunday that would be close and hopefully not closed. The market at Place de la Bastille was the choice and open till 1:30, so we brushed teeth, washed faces and put on hats to rush out to the market.

The market was everything you read and a great test ground for my experimental French. Last night I told the waiter that Sandy says "C'est bon vetements" and he looked at me cockeyed so I knew something was wrong - he said "we have good clothes"? Ah sacre bleu - I meant good food but somehow after much wine and a long day I said good clothes... So, today I was back to being a bit intimidated, but all went well and we got supplies for Sunday night dinner.

After the market we stopped at a brasserie near the basilica for moules frittes - delicieux! We gathered ourselves enough to head to the Musee L'Orangerie for some sight seeing before we it closed. WOW - Monet's Water Lilies is there in 2 oval shaped rooms, 4 huge canvases a piece. It was so cool to be so close to the real painting we all take for granted on our calendars. The lower level sported Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Guillaume, etc... it was crazy.

After, Sandy and I took the metro to save my blistered feet some walking - Shan walked briskly home. Shan beat us back however, Sandy and I wandered into a nice shop with scarves and the epicerie for some necessities.

I fixed dinner - entree - charcouterie et fromage; salade avec chevre; fresh ravioli with pesto and mushrooms; gateau du chocolat (if we eat it, currently we are resting).

It was a nice relaxing pace today, but we made our list of items to see in the next 2 days and we will need to wake before 11 to get it all in. Oh well, we have taken on the life and are not worried if we don't see it all, we are just enjoying the experience.

Sorry for no pictures, the computer is being crazy with resizing, I will post as soon as I can get it working again. For now, it is off to bed, we are trying to have an early morning!