9/15/07 Arrival in Provence

Got up early Saturday morning for the trip from London to Provence. Train from Whitton to London Waterloo, then the Eurostar from Waterloo to Paris Gare du Nord in 2.5 hours! Lynne says this is a huge change from the trip on the boat train she used to take all those years ago. In Paris, it was the Metro to Paris Gare de Lyon for the TGV (train a grand vitesse, or very fast train) to Avignon. Another non-stop journey at about 200 mph. This country has magnificent trains!

In Avignon, we picked up our rental car, a little Citroen C3. Very nice little car that drove quite well. Lynne navigated, saying a prayer of thanks to our friend Jonathan, who'd loaned us a road atlas of France. In France, the only way to navigate in the country is to know the towns along your route as the signposts are only for towns of big cities in the general direction you want to go. Because the roads out of Avignon were undergoing some construction work, we wound up making a rather circuitous route out to Malaucene, the village where we would be spending the week in Provence.

We finally found the village and our hotel, an old mill structure that was converted into a small hotel with a stone exterior. Lui arrived one hour later. Met the entire walking tour group and had dinner. People are very friendly and dinner was good although it had lots of cream on it. Wine was good and drank too much of it.