Mel and Vonnie come to visit

Gotta love that chateau.

Evonne, Mel and Marie all spend a long weekend in Paris, while I babysat the kids (not that hard when they have a couple of buddies to play with). Marie says they had a nice time, of course.

They had dinner and a footie match on TV Friday night. Saturday was the modern art museum and a walk around. Night was some music festival with a band on every corner. They had way too much to drink and all woke up with a hangover. Sunday was Versailles.





Then they all came down to Nice. Spent some time in a few villages Eze, St Pauls, and Nice, the usual ones. And some time along the beach.

Cycle geeks unite!! She looks cool. He is mmm practical.

All the glamour of gay Paris.

Lourmarin in the Luberon

Well I'd heard about the Luberon and how beautiful it was, and it being a great place to cycle. Maybe, but not so great that the kids could do much. We managed a trip into town on the small patch of footpath. Later Marie let me cycle 5ks on to the next village. The campsite cost 39e$/night and did not provide toilet paper. Males taking a pee for free for all to see. Otherwise it worked very well. Lost some paint off the car with the bikes banging on the boot on the freeway.

Enjoying the raw carrot entree.

I made this, could you? The cooking too.

Lourmarin, same type of town, different place.

Cucuron, nicer and less crowded.

Cucuron.

The boys

A couple of shots from when home.

The good times.

Time to eat your vegetables.

Final leg of the trip April/May.

The way to the cave at Societe.

After a night in the freaky named St Affrique, we headed to Roquefort to check out cheese. Oh boy, it IS worth the trip. This is the greatest cheese in the world. Maybe Beaufort is close. They use raw goat's milk, blue mould and natural caves that are 10 deg C all year round. There's about 2 months to collect the milk when the brebi's have little baby goats. They sit in the cave to age for some months.

After this, we stopped by Millau to check out the monster bypass bridge or Viaduc.

How it's done. Understood about 50%.

Heaps and heaps of 1 or 2kg wheels.

The town itself is in a spectacular spot.

Can't get enough.

The Viaduc de Millau is enormous.

St Affrique

Fundraiser beers, yeah!

Stayed the night in St Affrique. Got there the night of a big rugby game on the TVs, which the local club was showing, along with fundraising beer. Two euro beers and the boys had a playground next door. Aaah now that's a holiday.

Had a three cheese salad for dinner, correction (from the hotel manager) that's 3 types of Roquefort. After tasting, have to agree, it's an important difference. This is Roquefort land, and tomorrow we planned to go to the cheese factories and the natural caves used to mature the cheese to salty tasty heaven.

St. Affrique not too bad at all.

One funny goat fountain in goat central.

Albi April/May

Albi nice.

For the afternoon, after Lisle sur Tarn, we went to Albi, another Cathar stronghold, crushed by the Catholic church.

Albi.

Albi. Good things done in brick.

Me and the boys.

Lisle sur Tarn April/May

Lisle sur Tarn

After leaving Toulouse, stopped at Lisle sur Tarn for lunch, walked around a bit. These great little villages are all over the place.

Lisle sur Tarn main square.

Toulouse April/May

The rugby chicken.

A couple more shots from Toulouse.

The Garonne river. Hotel de Dieu are the start of hospitality.

Lots of nice buildings still here.

Toulouse.

Traditional timber brick building.

Sushi!

Toulouse April/May

Christophe is a hit, again.

After La Grande Motte, we headed for Toulouse. We rang up Christophe and Maelle, just to see if they would be free to meet up, then they kindly offered for us to stay. So we stayed at theirs for 3 nights in Toulouse. We shouted some food, and a trip to Space City.

Toulouse is a nice historic town, well preserved. It was a major stop on the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostella. There are several Hotel de Dieus where sick travellers could be quratined before release into town.

Louis on the launchpad.

In Space City, Louis tried out launching rockets propelled by air and water. Sadly there was a malfunction, and he couldn't get the spacecraft off the launchpad. After the technician started watching, everything worked fine again, but Louis had missed his chance.

Later, he and Marie climbed into a Soyuz. Apparently the Chinese are using a rebadged version of exactly the same capsule. It is well tried and tested, and pretty reliable by now.

Ariane 5 rocket - a full size model.

Space looks like soup at the big scale.

Squeezing into a Soyuz space capsule.

The Mir space station.

Rocket engine.

V2, the father of all modern rockets.

Christophe takes a jump with Moon gravity.

La Grande Motte - April/May

Welcome to another camping test run.

We did a test run of camping. It worked really well, and the boys were stoked. The campsite had a very nice pool, and a little kids play area. Finally we worked out the beach was only 5 or 10 minutes walk, after going some super long way the day before.

What the hell? Weird concrete blocks got bent.

Sand castles, tunnels, sand's nicer than our usual stones.

La Colle sur Loup - June.

Christian and his band. There's more of them.

They had the Festival of Flowers at the Colle sur Loup. One guy from work was playing in a band. They had a procession of vintage bikes, cars, bands, face painting etc. Good fun.

Maybe a place for when we retire?

Spiderman takes a swing.

The old machines never die.

Old cars were definitely fully made in France.

One of the processions through the village.

Beuil in June.

A big fluffy Marmot.

About 2 months ago, we went up for a walk in Beuil. This is the kind of scenery about an hour's drive into the mountains around here. Nice is surrounded by the Alps and it's all lovely, especially with a perched village neatly on the side of a mountain.

Lou flying in the mountains.

At the goat farm for some strange cheese cheese.