Chamonix to Nice

Hey, is anyone reading my blog? Please leave a comment if you have the time. I'd like to know if I am communicating with anyone.

The trip continues to be good: there are lots of good people on the tour and the weather appears to be unseasonably good. I keep thinking about the tour as if it is similar to Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' except that instead of each person telling a story, I continue to find out more about people as we begin to open up in our conversations with each other. We might be lucky, but we seem to have a group of really caring people. We don't have to mix with everyone and there seems to be a signicant number of people thatI can hang out with. Tonight I had a lovely meal of duck in a brasserie in the main street of Avignon with Ann and John, a couple from Newcastle.

With this blog post I will work backwards from today when we are in Avignon to our stay in Nice. Avignon is an interresting city. It is a walled town which is situated on the banks o the Rhone, France's largest and most significant river. It was a former home of the Pope, I think some time in the fifteenth century.

This morning we went to Pont du Gard and looked at a Roman bridge and aqueduct which was 2000 years old. It was part of a system which was 25 kms in length. The bridge took some 5 years to build, which was fairly quick for Roman times.

After this tour we visited the village of Chateauneuf du Pape (new home of the Pope) which is the home of the Rhone's most famous wines. These consist of 3 levels, in ascending order: Cote du Rhone, Village wines, Cru wines and they use a mixture of syrrah (shiraz), mouvedre, sometimes cinsault. As ever in France, it is never the grape type, it is always the terroir! We tasted some wines and they were good.

This afternoon I spent some time reading, watching the end of a film on an i-pad, ironing some shirts and working on some photographs from yesterday in Aix en Provence. My photography is improving and I am now seeing some of the benefits of carrying around my camera and lenses. I just could never have managed the quality of some of my shots without a DSLR and my 2 main lenses. I hope you agree when you see some of the photos that I post. I am also starting to take more people shots in order to capture more than just landscapes, buildings and churches. Many of the others went on a trip but I enjoyed the more relaxing option of the hotel.

On the two previous days we have stayed in Nice. It was a good base to see the city itself, as well as Monaco and Monte Carlo. Some of the scenery in this area is amazing: villas perched on the side of cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean; palaces of royalty; extravagance and wealth, usually expressed through great big motor vessels and yachts, super cars such as Ferraris, Aston Martins and the like.

Prior to that we spent the day driving from Chamonix through St Gervais and Megeve to Annecy. Annecy is absolutely beautiful. It would be easy to live here. When you see the photos you will understand. We spent 4 hours here before we drove on to Aix les Bains for our overnight stay. It is situated on France's largest lake but it doesn't have the ambience nor the breathtaking beauty of Annecy.