France June 2006 - Toulon

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Time to head to the Cote d'Azur (French Riviera) to bake in the sun...

Lyon at night - more impressive than Lyon by day. On the way to Toulon, we stopped in Lyon to have dinner with another one of Mr. Pinault's well-mannered, English-speaking college friends. I ordered a regional specialty called quenelle, a light dumpling made from fish and eggs. It was an enjoyable meal, though the quenelle didn't much impress me. Our companion, who works for the French police as a narcotic chemist, set the record as the French Person I Met with the Most Vacation: A whopping 11 weeks a year. He even complained that it was stressful to be away from work so often.

La Garonne Beach, Le Pradet. We could walk to the beach from Chez Pinault. Paradise: Clear, warmish water with schools of tiny fish, gentle waves, and topless women everywhere.

La Garonne Beach, Le Pradet

La Garonne Beach, Le Pradet

Speeding alongside the Provence Wine Trail. A majority of the grapes are destined to become dry rose.

La Laborieuse, an olive oil cooperative in Cuers. The amount of graffiti in France was stunning. In Paris, "artful" murals of graffiti are common, while remote areas featured hastily-scrawled words.

A sleepy mountain town in the Provence Alps (photo by Mr. Pinault).

We ventured to a centuries-old Notre-Dame monastery in the woods at the top of an isolated mountain. Not quite what we expected.