Provence

Paris, first weekend: Moulin Rouge, Louvre (pictured: the Three Graces, another example of which is in the Tripoli museum), Eiffel Tower at night. Paris, second weekend: a run of fantastic meals including a tasting menu that beat Perth's Jackson's if only because every single course was better than the one before even when you thought it couldn't possibly get better than this.

In between: hiking in Provence. I started off by making a rod, or more literally a 10kg brick, for my own back by buying the Ambassador a giant book of maps in Paris and then carting it with me to Provence...this made the 6km walk from the L'Isle sur la Sorgue train station to my guesthouse near Valleron a lot harder than it needed to be. The meal I had at the guesthouse that night, by the way, was so good I had to call the Ambassador at the end of it just to tell someone about it.

The next day I discovered this aqueduct on my hike (not the famous one near Avignon) and then stumbled into the exceedingly touristy town of Fontaine de Vaucluse which had an old ruined chateau perched on the rockface overlooking the peons below...I particularly like this photo because the rock looks like a fossilised castle itself.


The morning of my second day's hiking started well as Provence unrolled itself and demonstrated why every man and his dog wants to move here and spend their retirement doing up an old stone cottage with no modern amenities...

The afternoon did not go so well as I got my planned lunch stop so late the sole restaurant in town was closed for the mid-afternoon lull and I then had to hike four hours across country back to my guesthouse with no food or water, navigating by the sun as my map failed me halfway home. I was pretty impressed with myself when I popped out on the very road my guesthouse was located on, which meant I had managed to walk in a more or less straight line for some 5km with no other guidance but the setting sun. Less impressed when it turned out the guesthouse restaurant was shut that night too...

Knitting a Doctor Who scarf, and that'll be about it for the next few months, given how stupidly long the Doctor Who scarf is and how slowly I knit...Reading, aptly, Paris: the secret history. Watching Scrubs Season 5, not as good as it used to be.