We headed up to Avignon for the day today. It’s an hour north of Aix, mostly on the autoroute so the navigation was pretty easy. Avignon is most known for being the papal residence from 9 March 1309 until 13 January 1377. The centre of the roman catholic church was not in Rome during this time. The palace of the popes is a very impressive building that was constructed in 20 years.

We hopped in the car again today to explore a bit of the Provence countryside. It’s a fairly large area and one could take many months (years?) to explore all the nooks and crannies that is Provence. Our foray isn’t that ambitious so today we wanted to have a look at Roussillon and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue We headed out of Aix on the autoroute for a few km before exiting and driving some of the back roads of Provence.

We planned to take today a bit easy and Aix complied with us. We needed to change rooms at our hotel as I had originally booked for three nights instead of four and they couldn’t keep us in the same room. Our new room is larger and has a kitchenette. It must have been an apartment/flat at some point in it’s existence. It has a refrigerator and a cook top. We decided to head to a small grocery store and pick up some soup and bread for lunch.

It is with some sadness, that we bid the Hotel Welcome and the charming little village of Villefrance-sur-mer adieu but it’s time to hit the road for Provence. We decided to take the scenic route today. We could have driven the auto-route all the way from Nice to Aix in about one and half or two hours. Instead we decided to head through the mountains and see the French Grand Canyon.

We decided to head into Nice today for a bit of a look around before we head to Provence tomorrow. Nice is a pretty large city and is just a few minutes down the road from our little paradise in Villefrance-sur-mer. We bought two tickets on Nice’s version of a hop-on-hop-off bus tour called Nice’s Grand Tour. There is audio commentary on a double decker bus that drives by many of the interesting sights that Nice has to offer.

After a relaxing day on the beach yesterday, we decided to get a bit more adventurous and drive to Monaco for a few hours. The first order of business was to get the car from the parking lot. Parking in Europe is expensive. Like crazy expensive. It cost us 65 for a day and a half. Don’t do the conversion, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know ;). Monaco is not far from Villefrance, around 20 km or so.

We decided to take a vacation from our vacation today. I know, how decadent. The morning dawned with a spectacular sun-rise, one of many on our vacation so far. The weather gods have been smiling on us so far this trip as it’s been perfect for the past three weeks. I headed out for some croissant and pain-au-chocolat for breakfast. There are no words. Yummerific maybe or Sumptaculious.

We’re in France! After nine years of patiently waiting (and saving) we’re back. We rented a car in Nice and proceeded to our hotel in Villefranche-sur-Mer which, according the map, is only 15 km from the airport. That may be true, but we hit some pretty heavy traffic so it took us the better part of 45 minutes to make it to our home for the next four days or so.

Saying goodbye to new friends is hard. We spent the morning with Sue, Bill, Jim and Millie. While the official tour is over, a number of folks are staying a few extra days to wring the most of out of Italy before returning home. We hopped on the metro (logistically much easier with six than with 28), and made our way to Saint Peter in Chains a church (not surprisingly) dedicated to St.

One can’t travel to Rome and not see the Vatican. Like other Roman icons, the Vatican has been written about, and portrayed thousands of different ways in movies, plays etc. It’s the centre of the catholic church and is a place of pilgrimage for millions of people every year. How can I explain what it’s like to be in the Vatican museum? Try this. Call 40 of your closest friends and invite them over to your house.