buon giorno from italia...

tues am in reggio emilia...some random thoughts from the past week

beaune is most beautiful. the center of burgundy and ground zero for all things wine. the people, the food, the villages and the landscape were all just perfect. the wine? im sure it wqas great.... go if you can.

remoulin is a pretty, old village..very rustic and rural...it is far south, and like the states, things are different down south. some of the oldest architecture and monuments. the romans were all over the place. we had dinner one evening in an old orchard on top of some high hills..i have pix on the 35mm, will add later...it was so beautiful. the ground is full of herbs and flowers, the trees are so pretty...after dinner we were driving along the backroads and came to a field..it was dusk, almost dark. gisi spotted something at the edge of the field..we stopped and looked. bear, dog? ah, the ears..it was le grand sanglier...a big black wild boar! really....it looked at us for a minute, then ran into the woods...it was quite a sight.

provence...you could spend a month there...or a lifetime. just everything you ever read or
heard...the small villages in the hills, fields of flowers, grapevines, lavender, corn...stone walls, big skz...just look at the pix...i dont know what else i could add....ill get to some specific stories later.

the traffic on the autoroute in france was murder...apparentlz every frenchman went on vacation at the same time..from beaune to remoulin and from remoulin to cannes were both much longer trips then we anticipated. dont travel on august 1st or 2nd! from cannes to italy was great. the autostrada is very fast, not much traffic at all. we probably averaged 100 km hr compared to 50 or less in france.

cannes was not so good. the beach area, croisette, was like any other beach destination on the east coast...the sea is beautiful, but the surrounding area was dirty, crowded and too commercial..but i guess that is what it is supposed to be. the mountains to the north, the verdon area, on the other hand was reallz special. so glad we went there.

dinner last night in a local resto...gisi had pizza...very good as you would think...and i had rigatoni and veal, both excellent. prices in italy much more reasonable than france or germany....to the po river and bezond today...gonna get started...its 10>30am....later