Days 61

Day 61 Avignon (South France)
Saturday 28th August

4.00pm: Arrived at the Avignon station precisely on time.... we have a reputation for this!!
4.30pm: Our rendezvous with Jamo and Rhonda is imminent. They had arrived earlier, picked up the hire car, driven out to the farm house (Gite) we were renting for the week and would be there to collect us at around 4.30pm. Sutts had predicted this plan to be a little loose.
5.00pm: No Jamo yet. Probably took longer than expected to get the car etc. The famous Avignon mistral (wind) is picking up and is messing up my hairdo (still haven't found the Italian barber with the big moustache yet).

5.30pm: Debbie is getting a tad concerned. We have no idea where to start walking. No phone contact. No-one at the station can speak much English. The mistral is now messing with Debbie's hair!!

5.45pm: Still no Jamo. I've got Debbie by the foot to stop her blowing away. I finally concede - something is not quite right here. We wonder...could there be TWO Avignon stations?

5.50pm: I attempt to converse with the ticket lady and yes, it seems there is another station - 4 kms away! Oh dear!

6.00pm: Just as we are trying to explain the whole episode to a taxi driver so that he could take me to the other station, we hear, "Toot toot!". Just in time.

Can't say I've seen Jamo with beads of sweat on his brow very often. As usual he mangaged admirably, trying to park a left hand drive car on the wrong side of the road while we were scrambling in, throwing our bags in the back giving Rhonda a quick hug with traffic piling up behind us. The GPS was malfunctioning, Debbie's hair was sticking straight up, the windscreen wipers kept going on instead of the blinkers and we were in a totally foreign city.

The Gite was a rural paradise though and hosed down everyone's stress levels -well apart from a few twitches on Jamo's behalf.

I need to mention Aud here. She's the Gite owner who took every opportunity to prance around with her immaculate long blonde hair and a new bikini every time she stepped out to work the horses, feed the geese or water the garden... as you do!! Jamo thinks of everything when he books a Gite.

Aud couldn't speak a word of English but her sumptuous chocolate cakes and fluffy aubergine mousses did all the talking for her (and her bikinis).

This photo below is for the Suttons. We passed this winery on the way to Provence.