We talked quite a bit last night about how many carry on bags we'd be allowed to have, and this morning we found that both sides of the discussion were right. I was correct that we were allowed only one bag per passenger, but Nancy was right that she'd have a little pull to be able to get us past the rules. Her influence wasn't too huge though, as we were allowed just one extra bag for the four of us, and that bag would be my camera bag. So, with a BMI rep with us, we headed for security [View Full Entry]

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I took a "shower" so as not to flood the place again, and after breakfast we went to see the Village des Bories, which is an outdoor museum of ruins of a variety of stone buildings from the 12th century that were built without mortar or cement of any kind. The stones just stay together based on how they are pieced together and gravity. Next we made a rather short stop in the village of Gordes to see the markets there and get some shots of the village, which is perched nicely upon the hills. We got the best "postcard" pictures [View Full Entry]

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I woke up and was 2 minutes into my bath (I have no shower in my room) and suddenly there is a sort of urgent knock on my door. I call out that I'm in the bath but there is no response. There is more knocking as I get up and throw on a towel and a t-shirt saying "just a minute, just a minute," and before I get a chance to open the door I can hear somebody (who I then know must be Patrick) unlocking the door with his key. I open it up and Patrick is frantically [View Full Entry]

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The sun was shining brightly and the sky was a nice deep blue when I woke up, which was great news. We had breakfast in the front sun room and Patrick took us to a farmer's market where we shot for a little bit before moving on to a Lavender museum. At that point, Patrick had to go for a little while, so we took a taxi to the town of Isle sur la Sorgue, where all sorts of antiques were for sale along the main drag of town. We wandered through all the stands, shooting along the way, and [View Full Entry]

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Cinco de Mayo in Provence. We made our way to Avignon after breakfast and went to a market (where I felt I got more dirty looks because of the video camera than anywhere else on these trips) and walked through town to the Palace Square. We did not go inside the Palace of the Popes, but we did take a quick peek into the cathedral next door. It was already time to head to the location of our BBQ lunch by that time. The weather was better (not sunny, but not raining) when we arrived, and the food was already [View Full Entry]

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We had breakfast downstairs at Patrick's, and then headed off to a small winery called Domain Marie where we did a short interview with the winemaker. It was a very pretty vineyard and wine storage area, but the rain was still coming down, so we won't be showing it on TV in its full glory. We stopped briefly at a cork screw museum, but barely spent any time there before they closed. We moved onto where our lunch would be, a restaurant called Blue de Tois, where we filmed the chef, also named Patrick, as he grilled and rotisseried prawns, [View Full Entry]

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My alarm went off at 2:20am, and that was the start of a long day. Our driver, Victor, picked us up in an old van at 3am, and we began the drive to Gatwick to catch our flight to Marseilles. I immediately noticed as we got on the freeway that the van was working awfully hard to get up to speed. About half way through the drive, the exhaust started smoking like a steam engine, and after a few minutes of trying to keep it going, Victor had to pull over on the side of the road. We were still [View Full Entry]

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We had Ian Luck as our driver again today, and started out with a tour of some of the London trousity sights. We saw and shot Big Ben and Parliament (got stopped by the police there), saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, walked through St. James Park, and wandered around outside Westminister Abbey. Our 1st restaurant of the day was at a hotel called Montague on the Garden, which had a big deck in back with a BBQ and they made hamburgers and steaks and at least a little bit of that will make it into the [View Full Entry]

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Our host at our B&B fixed us a quick breakfast and our first stop was Harrod's, to shoot in their food departments. When we arrived, we were greeted by a Kansas City native who now runs 3 BBQ restaurants in London, who would be joining us for our tour. Our host at Harrod's, Andre, took us through the staff entrance and on to the meat department, where we began. Very soon after we arrived, the main doors to Harrod's opened, and people started pouring in. It became very difficult to get what I wanted, as there were people all over [View Full Entry]

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I woke up to great weather in Manchester, but we didn't need it because we weren't filming there today. We hopped on a quick flight to Heathrow and by around noon we were checking into our small B&B. We had lunch at a local pub (fish and chips for me) and then our driver took us to our first shoot in the city at a restaurant attached to a pub called The Gun. Along the way our driver, Ian Luck (who gives a London Rock 'n' Roll tour and is full of bits of wisdom and trivia), pointed out a bunch [View Full Entry]

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