Aix en Provence to Cannes

We are sitting in bed at the moment, I'm typing (obviously!) and Caron is busy reading and the Mistral is howling overhead. We're in a campsite in Cannes right on the top of the hill, the one we would have preferred was closed so this was it. I'm a bit dubious about just exactly how much sleep we are going to get but the tent doesn't really flap about, it's more the rustling of the trees above us as the wind goes back and forth. It is said that the Mistral can drive men mad and I can certainly understand why; it just doesn't stop.

Ok, so what did we do today. Well, first we went to visit the studio of Paul Cezanne which is pretty much as he left it when he died and we couldn't help but think of laurel and carons mom, both of whom are artists. The studio itself is about 50m2 but the real distinguishing feature is that the north wall is almost entirely of glass and it is about 6m high so the light that one gets in the room is a very gently natural light which, I assume, is ideal for painting. There aren't actually any of cezanne's painting at the atelier (studio) but I found it to be an interesting visit even though I'm not exactly a cezanne fan. The garden is completely overgrown with trees and has the most amazingly peaceful feel to it.

Heading out from Aix en Provence the car behaved itself impeccably, no squeals, not juddering. Lets hope this continues but i don't expect it to. I'm going to have to change the spare wheel for the front left because the tyre is starting to get just a little threadbare.

Just outside St. Tropez we drove past the most amazing olive grove and yes, the tree behind Caron really is an olive and it was only one of an entire orchard of similar sized olive trees.

Arriving in St Tropez I was expecting the yachts to be more, bigger and flashier than Capetown but I wasn't expecting anything like this. Now, this is a yacht! Eat your hearts out yacht lovers.

St Tropez is a lot like a mix between Capetown and Tobermory but with warm (I think) sea and much more expensive. We had two cups of coffee and it set us back 8EUR, yup, almost R100.00 for two cups of (robusta) coffee. It wasn't even that great a cup of coffee but it was worth it to just see what St Tropez is like.

Walking back on the quay past all the painters Caron spotted the yacht she would like ...

If you look really carefully you can just see the two sun-bronzed deck hands cleaning the yacht. I think they come with the yacht. Seeing as I can't afford one at the moment Caron was speculating on the possibility of trading Laurel and Kim for the yacht. Personally, I think she was just after the deck hands in which case I definitely need to work on my tan amongst other things like fluent french ...

On the way over to Cannes there was miles and miles of the scenery below, it's not for nothing that the area is known as Cote d'Azur