Mercure Pont D Avignon

... we were nearly blown to Marseille. Tomorrow we are going on a lunchtime cruise on the Rhone with more food and wine and before that visiting the famous bridge and hopefully we will have time to go over to see the nearby fort in the afternoon.

Then we start the final run north - first a night at Beaujolais, then 2 nights at Strasbourg and one last night at Munich before we leave Big ...

... full of flavour. For the second course I had a seafood dish and Alison had a beef stew on mashed potatoes (looked very simple but Alison said it tasted "Divine!"). My seafood dish had a variety of shellfish in their shells, and other seafood, and was delicious. Our desserts were a mousse made with raspberries, and soft meringues floating in thin custard (the descriptions do not do these dishes any justice at all).

The cost had ...

... jason's ass music with peaks and valleys no less that 10,000 feet above sea leave in the lowest valley. gosh he hid it well before moving in!

right, so i have noticed that you can rate these travel blogs, so pls do, we'd love to hear what u think. some knob (an englishism) seemed to rate us 2/5 stars, but i can only assume they are not one of our friends or family and they are not welcome to come back and read anymore!

Lucy asked for it and we got it. Today we experienced the beginning of the Mistral season. Each fall and winter Provence is swept by a wailing wind. Lucy made the mistake of saying that she'd be interested in being here for that. She got her wish and our last day was very windy. Luckily, the temperature held and we stayed comfortable, despite having bits of sand and debris swept into our eyes as we walked around.

We visited three towns ...

Believe me you don't want the story but here are a few photos and videos of what was a wonderful adventure for the most part.

The bull running was a random and free event - just next to lovely beach. Camargue horses are breathtakingly beautiful in the wild.

Unfortunately no photos of characterful and cultural city of Arles because only took the camera out one day - the day we went to The Camargue obviously.

... up toward Villenueve, but found that the restaurants right around us don't open for dinner until about 7:30, so we hung around until we saw the doors open on the restaurant across the street and we went over.

I had my first Pastis! This is a licorice flavored drink that Peter Mayle writes about extensively as the quintessential Provencal liquor. It was pretty tasty, too. I might bring a bottle back with me. You cut it with water to ...

... There is a Roman theater and arena (amphitheater). We got a great tour by Janice form Maine. She told us all about the history of the town, especially when Vincent Van Gogh stayed there for a few years, the most productive period of his life, painting 300 paintings. Because no one in Arles really liked his paintings when he was there (because they thought he was crazy for cutting off his ear) they don't have any of his original paintings, but they do have ...

Hi there Today we headed to Les Baux de Provence, south of Avignon, the site of an old fortress dating back to the 10th century. The ruins of the fortress are perched on a hilltop with magnificant views overlooking Provence and there is a little village on the hillside below the ruins. The site has full size replicas of different types of catapults one of which was fired while we were there - took six men quite some time to set it up ready to fire - and Rich ...

June 22, 2007 It would be ideal to put these online right now considering that I finally caught up with my journals but I can't seem to figure out why the wireless wont connect. I guess it's temperamental. Today was another long day. We had to be at the bus station at10:14 and I made it right on time. IES had a day trip to avignon scheduled for us. It's only about 30 minutes away by bus so it didn't take ...

Click here for satellite map Hide lines Reference map So left the Alps and headed down to Avignon for the night as it was the easiest way to get to our next stop Barcelona. There was a big festival on when we got there so hit the bars but don´t know what the festival was for as all the poster where in French but hey who really needs to know why your partying anyway. Just join in and enjoy the fun. I was kind of intrigued though because all ...