Kurt and I have arrived in Montpellier today to await our morning train to Barcelona. It was our last day with our beloved little red Renault Clio, which despite her tininess, served us well these past 5 days in Provence. We loved her so much that we’ve decided to name a future pet cat Clio. Kurt seemed against the idea of using it on a daughter. Personally I think it a cute name.

I am in the process of trying to upload all the photos we’ve taken so far. That is roughly 500 of them! The super-slow connection in Cassis took an hour to upload just 28 pictures but this cybercafe we’ve found near the train station in Montpellier is a gamer’s paradise so we’ll have no problem here.

Highlights thus far: the Eiffel Tower at night; Cafe Rousillon in Paris; being in the belfry when the bells tolled on the Notre Dame; driving wild Provencal roads; feeling like we landed on Mars at the peak of Mont Ventoux; seeing a donkey; saying place names in a French accent and being correct (Manitoba should learn something from this); going totally in the wrong direction in Montpellier that we nearly shorted the car on a tram-only bridge; seeing Kurt successfully speak French; dipping our toes in the Mediterranean.

Observations thus far: the ‘walk’ signal is a green man; every stop sign says ‘STOP’; the pop radio station DJs must all be cloned; wine at lunch is much cheaper than ordering sparkling water (though our newfound love of Badoit will make us search Vancouver for it); you can have a beer with your Big Mac and dip your nuggets in curry sauce (there’s a turban on the lid) or ‘sauce chinois’, will we believe to be the sweet-and-sour equivalent.

Yes, we did just eat at McDonald’s tonight. It has been an exhausting day of travel and we’ve been inundated with various modes of fowl fat since we got here. Besides, I wanted to see if they had any regional variations on the menu. For breakfast, their english muffin equivalent is something called a ‘Croque McDo’, which I imagine is a croque monsieur. Was hoping for more… in the Philippines, I recall spaghetti.

Well, better get back to task. A plus tard!