We have been driving quite a bit over the last 2 days so we are gon na spend the day in town. It was raining but we still walked around town looking for a boulongerie to sit at and have coffee.

We couldnt find one with coffee so we got pasteries to go and went nack to the house for coffee. Later we went back into town to tour the town and have a late lunch.

We ate at a place which specialized in gaulette. Which is similar to a crepe.

We were all tired so we went back to the house and all tetired early for tge night…

We got an early start from Lavandiu. We left at 7:30 am with the destination of Rochefort-en-Terre. A city in the Brittany area of France. This area is in the nw corner of France .. Just west of the Normandy area of france well known for the WW2 history. Garmin indicates that it is a 6 1/2 hour drive. So ou4 expected arrival is around 3 pm with no stops. Of course you cant drive for 6 1/2 hours straight. We stopped about 3 hours into the drive for a half hour sleep stop for marty. We arrived in the town around 4:30 and tried to call the owner of the house we were renting. We got a message machine. Because we were not expected to arrive til 7 pm we decided to get in a trip for provisions. After a trip to the Intermarche we returned to the rental and found the owner waiting for us to check in. What a wonderful surprise. We knew that this was a special place to stay but we were wonderfully surprised at the splendor of this place. Its 3 bedrooms with a large kitxhen dinning room and living room. It will be a Great landung place for us over the next week while hubbing to other towns in this regiin. We are excited to having Greta joining us tommorriw. We will be picking her up tommorrow in St Malo a 2 hour drive fromrochefort…

Our area is above the “Librairie” which is a book store not a “Library”..

Thsi is the main house on the property. Where the owner lives.

It will be a Great place to call home for a week …

It’s 8:15 am on Monday October 2nd.  The day has finally arrived.  The main reason for this trip. Bunny’s first day of school.  French Immersion language school that is.  Here she is saying

Au Revoir

Off to School !!!!

Today (Saturday) was moving day. We had been staying in Robion – at a DEElightful little apartment. Here’s a pic of the shower:

Yes, it’s in the bedroom. It was shaped like a little tower, with steps up to it. How cute is that?

Back to moving day. We decided to take the back roads to see some more of Provence. We also wanted to see a few more “plus beaux villages.” Our first stop was Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.

PHOTOS OF MOUSTIERS SHOULD GO HERE

Marty is going to have to add photos because, for some cyber-silly reason, my tablet/camera is not uploading all of my photos – only a few, like the shower, above.

Suffice it to say, this little hill town was crowded with tourists for good reason. Beautiful, medieval (and older) buildings, enchanting cobble stone lanes, a centuries-old church (for some reason, Enya was playing while we were there!), set against a backdrop of cliffs and a tiny church high up in the hills (there was a path one could walk up to it but it was a Travel Day so, after our “plat du jour” lunch of a gratinee of gnocchi and salmon with an elaborate salad, we moved on to another tres belle ville, Tourtour.

MORE PHOTOS HERE 🙂

It was a quick (but delightful) stop because we were running late to meet our new landlady in Villefranche-sur-Mer. We called and rescheduled with her and hit the road. It was WILD trying to find this place! OMG! These drivers are NUTS. And the streets are so damned narrow that it is a miracle that the roadways aren’t littered with dented cars and mangled humans.

We finally found our place – and it is lovely. Here’s a view (with raspberry rose’) from our terrace:

It’s now Sunday – I think I’ll let Marty take over with his bons mots. I need to mentally/emotionally/culturally prepare myself for my French immersion tomorrow. HELP!

This morning (Friday), our destination was Lourmarin because it’s supposed to be a beautiful town AND they were having their weekly “marche” (market) and we had heard that it was to-die-for. And it was! The town itself is beyond beautiful – my favorite thus far. The first three photos below are of Lourmarin (for some reason my photos aren’t all uploading; these photos do NO do it justice!). I had a “moment” in Lourmarin – while wandering the market I came upon a trio of musicians (two guitars and a cello) playing “Hallelujah”. Ahhhhh….

The rest of the photos (below) are of Les Baux de Provence, another beautiful village with castle ruins at the very top. The very last photo is of a chapel, one of very few intact buildings that were part of the castle.

The photo of the door? Just threw that in because I love doors. 🙂 All for now.

These photos are of Roussillon. It’s called The Ochre Village because it is, er, constructed from ochre. It’s beautiful. We were there in the morning to go to the market. I have a feeling that the late afternoon sun would have shown off the amazing hues of burnished red in this delightful town better but it was still awesome in the morning. We really enjoyed walking all over Roussillon. Lovely people, lovely spot. Cute cats, too!

We flew into Nice at 10 am (Nice time) or 2 am portland time. We left Portland at 7 am so thats 19 hours of travel time. We flew 51 minutes to Vancouver BC. Then we flew to Montreal. Around a 4 hour flight. We had just over an hour layover and then a 7 hour flight to Nice. It seems much easier when the flights are broken up into smaller chunks.

When we got in we immediately grabed a bus to downtown Nice and got our rental car and got out of Nice. Extremely hungry and tired we stopped at a truck stop and got chicken sandwich and fries at McDonnalds. Hopefully the last time we are gonna have to do that. We then closed our eyes for 30 minutes and caught up on our sleep a little then got back on the road to finish our 2 1/2 hour drive to Robion France. We had rented an Airbnb for 3 nights in Robion which is in an area with some other beautiful little french towns which we will be touring over the next few days. We arrived around 4 pm. We were given a tour of the rental by Michelle and settled in. We took inventory and determined we needed to go to the local market for some items. In particular marty forgot his toothbrush.

After a trip to the store we hit the hay around 5:30 and now its 5:30 am and it seems like the 12 hours of sleep resolved my jet lag. Bunnys still sleeping. Its GREAT to have that plane ride done. Really excited about the travel coming over the next few weeks ….