Blogs from Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France, Europe - page 10

We had set the alarm for a bit later, than usual, but were awake anyway. We had a very leisurely breakfast and there was plenty of choice. We then used the hotel computer to print off our boarding passes for the flight home. European key boards are very different to ours so this is not as straight forward as you might think. We had already managed to check in. We had a short walk outside for a bit of fresh air before going back to our room and sorting washing, doing puzzles etc. Late morning we walked across to the airport again as it was Terminal 2 we wanted not Terminal 1 where we had been last night. This was a good half hours walk. It would be much easier on Saturday if we knew exactly ... read more

Thursday 3rd October 53 miles Breakfast was excellent. The best we had had for ages with real fresh fruit salad , good quality granola, yoghurt and as much milky coffee as you could drink. (And 'yoghurts to go'). Heaven. We were a little earlier for breakfast as we knew it would be a longer day. Before leaving town we headed to the Boulangerie as we only needed bread for today's picnic, already having tuna, crisps and nuts in stock. The Boulangerie was closed! The guidebook had boasted about it staying open until the evening so perhaps the pay back was that it opened later in the morning. Fortunately, there was a tiny Casino supermarket. The best I could do for bread was a small sliced loaf, more than we wanted really but at one euro it ... read more

Monday 30th September 38 miles. Breakfast didn't have as much choice as I had expected but we had enough to eat. We were soon off on our travels and heading out of town. We stopped at the large Intermarche about a mile out of town for lunch goodies and yoghurt. Roughly the first ten miles were downhill, with just the odd incline. This brought us to Oraison and we stopped for yoghurt and nuts in the centre. We had stopped in Oraison many years ago when we cycled down part of the Rhône and then did a loop of the Luberons. It must have been one of our earlier trips because it was when we travelled on the European Bike Bus. Just before arriving at Oraison we crossed the River Durrance which divides Provence in two. ... read more

Our brief stop in France. Unfortunately our experience will colour my ‘mood' of our short 2 day stay in the country but alas, with such a large trip there surely has to be a bump in the road! We left San Sebastian quite early, and caught a bus (I must say the bus station located underneath the train station is much bigger) to Biarritz airport in France – an hour away. Biarritz is in French Basque country, and the airport was quite big for a small regional airport. Our destination was Marseille, where our plan was to train to Avignon and make it our base to visit ‘Les Carriers de Lumiers', an old limestone quarry in Les Beax de Provence that has art exhibitions where they project art images on the walls along with composed music ... read more

We woke up pondering where our travels should take us today. We had a lovely time in Antibes by the sea and a challenging time driving to Ventimiglia, we thought today would be a great day to visit Cannes the next town West of Antibes. Yes Cannes, home of the international film festival in June. It's another town by the sea and the weather is still hot and very humid so off shore breezes won out. We've become fond of traveling by the local train. We hike down to the Villefranche-sur-Mer Gare, buy our tickets and hop on. While my French in general suffers from lack of proper accent plus the fact that I only know very bare basic words, one area I do exceed in is ordering red wine from the St Emilion region AND ... read more