Vineyards in southwestern Switzerland

Our in car picnic view in Trient near the French border

The pretty pink church in Trient

A very beautiful village in southwestern Switzerland

Montblanc in France with a glacier at the front center

View from our bedroom at Montchateau

Our wonderful king sized bed

Montchateau B&B was a hunting lodge originally.  Our room was at the top left.

The dining room at Hotel de la Post

My salad with melted brie cheese on toast

My sliced duck

Randy's steak

Randy with the friendly dog who frequented the restaurant

The entrance from the village parking lot through the garden

Kristi and Jeff Smith are glad to be back in France

Alice and Randy are glad to be with the other Smith's

Randy at breakfast on our terrace in Gardanne

View from our terrace towards the drive

View from the terrace in the other direction

We are glad to be back in France for the final leg of our trip.  We drove through scenic southwestern Switzerland (surprisingly a big wine area) to the French area of Montblanc and Grenoble which was very beautiful with good roads.  Our destination for Friday night was Montchateau, a bed and breakfast run by British couple Hazel and Phil.  It is a hunting lodge from the 1800's and is located in a spectacular rural setting.  They have four rooms to let and we stayed in their new La Suite des Alpes which has the luxury of a true king sized bed.  They had to import the bed from England to get such a big one.  No one else was staying at the B&B so we had the run of the guest lounge, which is well appointed and comfortable.  After downing a bottle of rose with our hosts on their terrace, we headed to an ATM to get Euros and then to dinner at a nearby village.  We ate at Hotel de la Post at the recommendation of our hosts and it did not disappoint.  It is a husband (chef) and wife (front) team and I had duck and Randy had steak.  It was relaxing and there was only one other couple in the place (they were celebrating their "wedding birthday") and a friendly little dog.  We slept really well that night and woke up to a big continental breakfast spread which we ate at for an hour.  After a 30 minute walk through the countryside we reluctantly headed for our last stop, Gardanne, about 30 minutes north of Marseille.

Gardanne (as far as I can tell) is ugly and is home to a mining industry (and the mining university where my workshop is) and a nuclear power plant.  We found the house where we are staying without incident thanks to our hardworking GPS, Clive.  The owner, Steve, was swimming in the pool with his daughters (in a Speedo of course - the French!) but showed us our "gite", or small guest house.  This is actually quite large and has a big living/dining/kitchen on the ground floor and two bedrooms and a bathroom (with separate toilet closet) upstairs.  The main issue is that the A/C is only downstairs (through two wall units) but we have cranked them up to full blast and gotten the upstairs bearably cool.  It also has a washing machine which was really needed as the last I could do wash was in Pelago (Florence).

We got a few groceries and picked Jeff and Kristi Smith up at the Aix-en-Provence TGV train station.  We had a libation with them at our place then headed to Aix for dinner.  We ate at a serviceable and well priced restaurant near the main square.  As my stomach was not good yesterday (Saturday) - probably from the fresh goat cheese at breakfast - the bland salad and salmon pasta was welcome.  We then headed home for bed and are now enjoying breakfast in the relative cool of mid morning on our terrace.