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We had an uneventful trip to Paris apart from the train being ½ hour late.   Dropped car at Avignon train station and caught the TGV to Paris and then by Metro to Montmartre and to the apartment which was home for the next 10 days.  And what a great home-base it is – easy access to all parts of Paris and the surrounding countryside.   The food is just so good in Paris and we visited some new and old favourites for at least lunch or dinner each day.  We completed another few of the city walks as per the cards that are in the apartment (a great series of 50 walks) which take you into areas of the city that are not on the usual tourist routes.  We went to the Orangerie museum again to admire the mastery of the Monet water-lily paintings, and visited the Pantheon where Foucault’s conducted his great pendulum experiment  which is still there and climbed to the roof for the wonderful views over Paris.  We did two out of town trips by train, one to Fontainebleau and one to Chartres.  At Fontainebleau we visited the chateau and gardens, huge with the original furnishings still in place.  Chartres is a charming country town and of course the cathedral is marvellous.  But the highlight was going into central Paris for the finish of the Tour de France (bike race) last Sunday.  The crowds, parade of sponsors vehicles, and hype was so special, apart from seeing the bike racers themselves rush by in a blur.  Of course being in Montmatre we walked up to the Sacre Couer where there were huge crowds.  However we made the observation that we thought that the crowds were no where as big as we had expected seeing it is mid-summer, and this was confirmed by a couple of tour guides who explained that with the increases in living costs and particularly fuel costs, the number of tourists particularly from the US was way down and also Europeans were also not going on holidays but staying at home.  And so to the end of our marvellous 4 months holiday in the UK and France, travelling to London on the Eurostar train, only 2 ½ hours, and flying to Brisbane once again through Tokyo.

We had a good flight from Edinburgh to Avignon, and no problems picking up our car.  We drove to Nyons and after a couple of false turns arrived at our Studio Apartment in Aubres 3 km from Nyons.  The apartment was underneath a private home with its own garden -apricots, cherry and olive trees plus grape vines around.  We also had the use of a swimming pool, but the water was too cold for us to use it.Provence has been everything we were looking forward to and more.  We were prepared to see no lavender as a lady at the Chelsea Flower Show suggested that the lavender would be all finished by the time we got to Provence.  How wrong could you be.  The lavender has been prolific and more spectacular than the pictures show it.  And the aromas, as you drive by the fields, just magnificent.  We obtained a brochure detailing lavender areas to explore and on three different days drove to different districts through fields of lavender, culminating on the last day driving to the Abbey De Senanque (featured heavily on postcards) and then the area around Sault.  We are well and truly lavender saturated.  We also found fields of sunflowers all with their ‘faces’ turned to the sun.  The other days we went to markets including one of the biggest in Provence in Nyons.  The food, of course, has also been ‘gastronomique’.  And so on to Paris.