After leaving the glitzy Monaco on Saturday we headed to the quaint hillside town of St Paul de Vench just south & inland from Nice. There we wandered the narrow cobbled streets & overlooked the Mediterranean in the distance. We saw some beautiful art work by Michel Degav which we would have loved to bring home, vibrant colours & beautiful scenes. From there we followed the Cote D'Azur to Aix en Provence(the home of Cezanne)where we spent 3 hrs explo...

We've had 2 lovely days rubbing shoulders with the rich & famous of Monte Carlo. 'They' live in a whole different world of diamonds, Maserati's, yachts & haute couture. Nice for a visit but not really our scene. Our Fairmont Hotel was built into the cliffside & neighboured 'The Casino' of James Bond fame! Of course we had to try it out on Thursday evening & after 2hrs of speculating we went home with the same money in our wallets as when we'd arri...

Yesterday we travelled some lovely mountainous back roads, until we travelled along the sides of several beautiful lakes. We had a lovely 3 hr stopover at Annecy which is sometimes known as Little Venice in the Savoir region. From there to Aix-Le-Baix which is nestled on the edge of France's largest lake, Lac du Bourget & overlooked by Mt Revard. We went for a lovely walk along the lake side late afternoon. The cycle path there goes for kilometres around it. ...

Wow, what a beautiful place Chamonix is! It's situated right near the Swiss border on the Alps. We actually crossed the border temporarily yesterday afternoon. We got to Chamonix early afternoon in absolutely clear sunny conditions & 20 deg, so ventured off to take the chairlifts to L'Aiguille du Midi which had an altitude of 3842m. Although hesitant Charlie agreed to give it a go. As you can see from our photos the effort was truly worth it! Absolutely spect...

The past few days have been ones of contrast. On Saturday we went to The Arc de Triomphe races in Paris at Longchamps. In spite of neither of us backing a winner we had a lovely afternoon mixing with an interesting crowd, with people from Quatar, England,Ireland,Italians & of course French. We also enjoyed watching the horses parade & run. There was even a Group 1 Arabian horse race, the horses in that were amazing, beautifully built. That night we met up...