Getting here - Settling in

We always plan to "not do too much" when we travel, but the planning always goes astray.

Flights MEL - SIN - Paris were OK, but I wonder how Rod Marsh would go these days. A woman in front of us had great difficulty getting just 5 little bottes of wine (ten standard drinks) out of the hosties.

In Paris the first snag was we got lost. We were knocking on the door of house #7 instead of #7 bis. 7 bis means 'next door to 7' - all explained in the emailed instructions we had in our hands.

Once inside all was fine, welcoming hostess with lapsong souchong (smoky tea), great apartment with basket of goodies including a bottle of Cote de Brouilly. Video of Mon Oncle. A highlight was the visit to the Cemetary of Pere Lazaire where I met my old mate Balzac.

Weather was great. Site seeing included Notre Dame now cleaned of the black soot on its outer walls, Picasso Museum, Pantheon and Voltaires tomb, a small selection of the louvre, the cinema Francais museum including a special exhibition of Jacques Tati, parc Monceau for sandwich lunch with office workers and joggers doing the tan, Jacquemand-Andre Museum, stroll along the Seine at sunset watching the buildings light up etc.

Unfortuntely George Biron's recommended restaurant was having fermature exceptionelle for the week we were there, but we manged to get a reasonable feed or two elsewhere. Weather was just great mid 20's sunny, calm.

To Bordeaux via TGV with heavy luggage. Nice but compact hotel in the pedestrianised centre of the town. City quite beautiful. Three nice new tram lines. Plenty of small restaurants. A month-long fair of hams occupied one square. There were about 10 stalls with local producers of ham, wine and other products and about 60 stall selling assorted bic-a-brac. I managed a conversation in French with a Basque ham producer whose son was in Australie mining Uluru, at least that's what I think he said. Had a few very nice white wines here. I kept away from the reds, apparentlty they use Cabernet.

Saturday Anzac Day. Rain set in. We found ourselves at La Gare with half of Bordeaux's men getting on to a train to go Toulouse for a football game - soccer or rugby I didn't ask - they have Geelong colours. We had nice lunch at the railway cafe - ham steak with noodles and spinach. We had a quiet local stopping all stations train to Port-Sainte-Marie where we were picked up by Miles and Max and bought out to the chateau.