Tuesday, August 31st, 2004: St Jean de la blaquiere, France

Languedoc-Roussillon

N 43

E 003

Nice to St. Jean de la Blaquiere: 396 kilometres

Barcelona is a longer drive than we had expected and before we leave Nice we decide to break up the trip a little and spend a few days in a small guest house with a pool about 30 kilometres from Montpellier. Coincidentally  this is also very close to the house that we will be renting at the end of September in St Fréchoux. We email Monika and Ditmar that we will be driving through and ask for more specific instructions to their house.

The autroroute takes us through towns big and small as we head west and then south. We are already making mental notes about what we want to see and explore when we return in a month. We arrive in wine country outside of Montpellier, choose one of the many “caves” (cellars) and decide to buy some wine. 5 cases later (alas, they are only cases of 6), we load the car and continue the search for the guest house, quietly secluded in the mountains, surrounded by olive trees and grape vines. We drive through many quaint French hamlets and find “La Vallee aux Ours” and like it so much we decide to spend a couple extra days here.

Our unit is self contained and this gives us an opportunity to cook. We buy some groceries for a couple of days and settle in, grab a glass of wine and some pool time.