As promised, here are the rest of the sketches I did in France. Yes, I know there aren't very many of them, I all ready explained that.

This first one was done in the town of Gigondas in the Cote du Rohn region. I had a little bit of an obsession with the Plane trees.



Next we have a watercolor of the town square in Roussillon.



And finally a sketch of a coffe break in the old town of Nice on top and a schematic of our hotel room on the bottom.



So there you are, I hope you enjoyed them. Feel free to email me with comments or leave a comment using the link below.

Labels: france, provence, riviera, sketches

We got home last night at around 10:30 after spending way to much time on planes and transferring between planes and getting to airports. The cats were very pleased to see us, but were well looked after while we were gone.

I have many thoughts on our trip and of course a couple thousand photos to troll through looking for gold. I'll get started on that right away. I'll post more about our trip (and perhaps a few of the small number of sketches I did) this weekend after I've had a bit of time to decompress and unpack and do all the returning to normal life things that one must do after a long trip.

Including starting the planning for our next trip: Mexico! But that trip is a long way off.

Labels: france, journal_entry, paris, provence

In two weeks we are headed to San Francisco where we will spend 10 fairly low key days and we are both very ready for a vacation because we haven't had any extended time off since September.

Planing for San Francisco has been pretty minimal as it's an entirely different sort of journey than the one we'll be taking in May. This trip is all about visiting friends and family, relaxing and probably an excursion to Napa and Sonoma with a possible overnight stay in Calistoga. But really there isn't much required in the way of pre-trip planning apart from the rental car and a few emails and phone calls to people to let them know we're coming. And since I've put Irene in charge of finding us a place to stay in the wine country, my work is done.

Which is good, because most of my attention has been focused on France. And now with two months until we leave, the planning is winding down as the itinerary is fixed, the apartment in Paris and the car for Provence have both been rented, and hotels have been booked for Avignon and Vaison-la-Romaine. It remains only to book hotels for Nice and the Luberon (and I'm in the process of doing that) and to contact the apartment people and arrange the details of our arrival.

One thing that pleases me about this trip is that even though we will be packing a lot in, we won't be switching hotel as often as we might. We will have a minimum of two nights at two hotels and three and four nights at the others. This allows us to feel like we have a little bit of a base from which to explore the area. The logistics were tricky at first, but I feel like of got everything pretty solidly nailed down.

I really do enjoy the whole planning process and lately I've been listening to the A Year In Europe podcast and dreaming about what it would be like to drop out of life for a year and spend it traveling. And although it doesn't seem feasible right now, some day I would love to do it. Although I think I would probably broaden the scope a bit and make it more of a round the world trip.

For now though, I'll just have to settle for the two or three weeks at a time we can manage.

Labels: california, france, paris, provence, san_francisco, travel planning

There comes a time when you find yourself at the whims of the strange and convoluted rules of the travel industry, in which logic not only doesn't apply, but has in fact been taken round the back and beaten into the shape of white is black, up is down and frogs are allergic to the color green. And so the round shape of your trip must conform to fit the star shaped hole provided.

Our original itinerary had us renting a car for four days, but as it turns out, it's the same price, or cheaper, to rent a car for a week. And so things are set in motion, plans are altered and new schemes are worked out to accommodate this new information.

On the whole, this isn't entirely a bad thing. Now instead of spending two nights in Avignon and one night in Arles, I think we will be either spending all three nights in Avignon (because there is a definite advantage to camping out in one place and day tripping from there) or one night in Avignon and two nights in Arles (because I've read that Arles is more friendly for cars). Right now I'm leaning towards staying put in one place. But that could change.

The other change will be driving from the Luberon to Nice instead of taking a train, which will allow us to stop along the way if we desire and frees up all kinds of time schedule wise.

Labels: france, provence, travel planning

Twice a year Rick Steve's hosts travel festivals at his headquarters (located a convenient 30 minutes away from us in Edmonds, WA). Now mostly these are put together to help sell his tours, but one can glean a lot of useful information and ideas even if one as no intention of taking a tour.

This was our third or fourth time going to the festival, and was by far the most helpful. We attended two classes, one on France presented by Steve Smith, the coauthor of the Rick Steves' France books, and one was an intro to french for travelers.

While I didn't really learn anything in either class, the France class was nice because I got to see pictures of most of the places I've been reading about. I think Irene probably got more out of them than me because she's a bit behind on the reading and this class helped motivate her to start reading the books.

After the class though, thanks to our friend G, who is an editor at Rick Steves, I was able to talk to Smith himself and run my itinerary by him to see what he thought. I was a little worried that I was trying to cram too much in and that my expectations were a bit unrealistic, but he reassured me that my plan was indeed doable. He also offered a few suggestions for me to mull over. I don't know that I'll change anything because I'm pretty confident in my planning, though, and the reasons for scheduling things they way I did.

In other news, I booked our tickets for our flight from Nice back to Paris on EasyJet. It was a little more expensive than I was expecting, but still only cost $80, which, considering the time it's saving us, is a bargain.

Labels: france, guide_books, provence, travel planning

I feel I should post an update on how the planning is going, so here it is.

Remember last time when I said I thought I had the itinerary pretty well fixed? Well I've changed it. After much deliberation, juggling, rearranging and other machinations, I have decided that there is nothing for it but to drop Lyon from the trip. This made me a little sad, but things just fit more easily with it gone, so it went. Also, I have dropped the amount of time we are spending in the Riviera to three days instead of five and added the extra time to Provence.

I have updated the itinerary to the right to reflect these changes.

Now, a lot of this schedule is dependent on the renting of a car for four days, which is dependent on finding a good deal on an automatic (I can't drive manuel and Irene has expressed a reluctance to drive). And even so, it is an extremely packed schedule (which is a bit of a speciality with me), but should be doable.

The Riviera section is still a bit nebulous, as I am just now reading that section of the book. It should be firmed up fairly soon though.

Labels: france, paris, provence, travel planning

I feel like at this point I've got the basic skeleton o f the trip locked down apart from one point. I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to include Lyon in the trip or if that time could be better spent in Provence or the Riviera.

Right now I'm leaning toward yes, it should be included, even if it is a brief stop (which it most likely will be). Originally I planned on us spending two nights in Lyon, but now I'm thinking one night will have to be enough. We can take the morning train from Paris spend the rest of the day and the night, and the take an afternoon train out the next day to Avignon.

This plan is still slightly in flux but here's how I've got it breaking down so far:

7 days in Paris, 1 day in Lyon, 5 days in Provence, and 5 days in the Riviera.

And EasyJet offers very inexpensive flights from Nice to Paris, which means we don't have to waist precious vacation time circling back to Paris at the end of the trip.

The itinerary has been updated.

P.S. I should make it clear that my hesitation in stopping in Lyon is not because I don't think it will be a worthwhile stop, because I'm sure it will be, but because our time is limited and we would be going directly from big city (Paris) to big city (Lyon). If anybody has an opinion on this they'd like to share please feel free to leave a comment or email me directly.

Labels: france, paris, provence, riviera, travel planning