BORDEAUX DIARY
Just a small digression from Florence, to give you a taste of where you can go using the sites on the blog.

Bordeaux
'We've been here less that 24 hours & it feels so much longer.Watch out Italy, I think I'm falling in love with France!
Air France was lovely - tiny little plane with only about 40 passengers.Such nice stewards, so different from Alitalia. Arrived to collect the car at Bordeaux airport, no trouble. Good car, diesel & comfy. Got out of Bordeaux on the ringroad no problem, heading for St. Emillion, world heritage village. Big mistake. Saturday & every Frenchman & his three dogs were doing the same thing. No problem. Wove our way through the endless vines & Chateau and magical country. Restaurants everywhere but no hotels. On the road to Bergerac (where even the panel-beater's is called Roxanne & Cyrano) we found a roadside hotel that had all the style of a Surfers Paradise highway motel. They had one last room left. Oh well, we said at least it's a bed. But no, this was where it all got even better. We went for a little stroll back from the road & found ourselves in Montcarnet, roses & Irises tumbling from every stone cottage, grey slate steeple roofs, & the local church, with the marriages bans posted on the door & surrounded by Roman ruins.

Back down to the tiny corner shop where we bought wine & water in what has become my patois of Italian/French/English. But it's working. Everyone has been incredibly kind & helpful & welcoming.
Never say a bad word to me about the French again.
Then the owner of the motel booked us in for dinner with friends of his up the road & that's where things started to get really interesting. Bordeaux red, of course. Then Foie Gras, baked camembert, Confit du Canard & Veau au Marsala. Wonderful service & lovely people.'