We departed Paris but not without some unplanned adventure. The hotel assured us that getting cabs to the train station would be no problem and as often as we asked, we got assurances. That is until 8:30 on Tuesday when we were advised no cabs were available. We took to the streets to hail one and Greg finally did after a half hour of frustration. We put all the big bags in the cab, including Lillian and Ginger!! Greg went as well. Ron, Diane and I took the Metro. Naturally. when we got there, we could not find them, nor they us. Ron managed to finally meet up with them. In France, the track for your train is not posted til 20 minutes before the departure, so there is a bit of a mad rush to board. They managed to complicate things for us by putting another train on our track, so we kept trying to get on the wrong train. Eventually it got all sorted out but in the rush, I lost one of our two tickets. It was eventually found, saving me 85 euro.

We picked up our rental van, a 9 passenger Renault which we named The Ark. After piling everyone in The Ark, we promptly held up a long line of traffic since we could not figure out how to put it in reverse. A man from another car showed us how. Off we went to Chateau du Roques, our home for the next 2 nights.

After checking in, we went into St. Emilion, a charming and hilly town in the center of some of the finest vineyards in the world. After wandering the town a bit, we returned to the Chateau and had dinner there. It was o.k. but nothing really special. Our waitrees, however, was a delightful young lady who spoke very little English. when confronted with a word she did not know, a frequent event, she would get a most perplexed look on her face.