Bonjour!! Here we are in Provence, Lourmarin in the Luberon area to be exact. Provence has been beautiful. Whenever we arrive the good weather arrives also so it seems. We have broken our jinx from previous years travels. Well we have visited lots of little villages: Lourmarin, Gordes, Rousillon, Saignon, Apt, Bonnieux. Of all of them Lourmarin where we stayed is my favourite. It has a small Chateau which was fully furnished. It was just amazing to see how they lived back then. Whats even more amazing is that I still have all the large chateaus to come yet in the [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone Yesterday we decided to do one of the walks on the Cinque Terre (5 lands) which was the most steep walk from Monterosso around the clifftop walk to Vernazza a beautiful small village. There were about 400 odd steps at the start of the walk which was pretty hard going for me, Geoff raced ahead of course, being the fit tennis player. It took us about 2 hours and was a beautiful scenic walk looking back to Monterosso and then to Vernazza. Also great to see all the cliff top terraced gardens and vineyards. Heres a few photos. Next [View Full Entry]

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Hey Everyone Had an awesome day today on the beach at Monterosso. What a stunning place. Real beach resort, but also has the lovely old medieval village too. Our first swim in the Mediterranean was beautiful. Great temperature and really buoyant, more so than New Zealand water. I could float on my back which I can never do in NZ. Went for a couple of snorkels and saw lots of fish but other than that just chilled out today. Heres some photos for you all. Ciao [View Full Entry]

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Ciao, we have made it to the Cinque Terre on the Ligurian Coast in Northern Italy. Bit of a wrong turn off the A1 at one stage but managed to make it back on, then got really lost in La Spezia quite a large port town where we had to return the car. There is no way we would have found Avis, all the streets were tiny narrow lanes and sure enough it was down one of those in a one way street which was impossible to find. We ended up in a dead end just about to drive into a [View Full Entry]

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Well, after 3 flights, one train journey and one car hire, we made it to Torrita di Siena just south of Siena where we are staying. Tuscany is everything you imagine from the films and pictures you see of it. We have been visiting the beautiful fortress towns around this area such as Montepulciano, Pienza, Montalcino etc. They are stunning walled towns with cobbled streets with shuttered windows and flower pots everywhere. Our laptop is not working here so I am doing this from an internet cafe so will try to upload some photos next time. Residenza de Arte where we [View Full Entry]

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