What a beautiful day – just right for the seaside so it was off to Monaco, Nice and wherever the fancy took us. We decided to take the train today so we wouldn’t have the hassles of parking. The train from Grasse reaches the coast at Cannes and then follows it to the Italian border. We bought our Isabelle ticket at the Senior’s rate of 12€ which enabled us to get on and off the train at as many stops as we wanted. Our first stop was Monaco – a 90 minute journey, then we thought we would work our way back to Grasse. What a wonderful sight as we emerged from the hills at Cannes to see the picture postcard scene of blue Mediterranean, cruise ships and super yachts. With seaside views all the way ... read more

We leave our hotel today that has been our home for the past five nights. It was situated on the outskirts of Salon-de-Provence but a lot of road works and deviations made it difficult to drive the short trip to the town centre. But being a Sunday all was quiet and we ventured into the centre of the town. We had a very pleasant and an unexpected surprise. A recent face-lift made it a pleasure to walk the historic part of town. Like many of the towns we have visited Salon’s history goes back to the 13th century. We were pleased we had made the effort to pay Salon-de-Provence a visit even if it was only for an hour or so. Our drive today was to Manosque, a town north of Aix-en-Provence but we decided to ... read more

Today it was to be a trip to Avignon, another of the cities in this part of France with a great historical past. Once again we were armed with a city map showing all the carparks, both paid and free. All was uneventful on the drive, having successfully negotiated one deviation and several tempting offers to take the toll road. Once in the city we discovered the officials had taken it upon themselves to dig up many of the free carparks, perhaps in preparation for the summer tourist season. With a bit of patience we finally succeeded in nabbing a park near the famous bridge. Arriving in Avignon at lunchtime presented us with an opportunity we couldn’t turn down, a cafe lunch in the main square, Place de l’Horloge. France always seems in party mode and ... read more

We had chosen to stay in Salon de Provence, not because of its wonderful sights, but because it was central to many of the places we wanted to visit in the region and Arles was one of them. A quiet drive along the N113 took us into Arles where we found a convenient, free, all day carpark. A quick visit to the Tourist Office soon had us armed with maps and information about Arles. The city has a history going back to at least 1 BC and the Roman occupation. It was obviously a very important city at the time. The important sights we visited included the amphitheatre, theatre, Roman baths and the Cathedral Saint-Trophime. The region is obviously proud of its historical past and vast sums of money are being spent on restoration and preservation ... read more

It was a leisurely drive today, full of excitement and expectations of what we were going to see when we reached our destination of Millau. But first we had one final visit to the town of Carcassonne before we headed off. Adventurers before us had discovered the Otago Rugby Shop in the town and gave us no instructions on how to find it so we wandered the streets hoping to stumble across the shop. We suspect that after the 2010 New Zealand rugby season and Otago’s dismal performance the shop has probably closed down and that’s the reason it couldn’t be found. Leaving Carcassonne we headed northeast towards Millau. The green rolling countryside was similar to that in North Otago, New Zealand. There were vast fields of grain or sunflower plants and roads lined with plane ... read more