june 30: things you learn in a Swiss movie theater

so after a day of wander around the uber-expensive city of Zurich, I decided that the lowest cost thing I could do tonight would be to see Die Hard 4. As with most of the rest of Europe, seats are assigned here. I like that. buy the ticket early, show up when you want. other things I noticed:

1: commercials before movie. not too strange except there was a commercial that said something about hillary clinton being president and us leaving Iraq. it was for the newspaper. Isnt this a neutral nation??

2: they have intermission. not a bad idea, but it makes long movies longer.

3: they force you to exit into the alley. hopefully you know your way out.


other random observations:
* to encourage people to bring their own bags to the grocery store, the only free bags are tiny. like the size of 4 apples.
*they actually card minors to buy alcohol here. I watched it happen
*they have advertising on their creamers. you know, the little things for coffee. ive seen ads everywhere, but on breakfast items? i wonder if America is aware of the untapped ad revenue at meal time....

june 25: Pisa is dead to me. Go To Lucca!!!

boring ride out of La Spezia. It was seriously 10 miles of beachfront restaurants. couldn't even see the beach from there. then we made our first mistake. we listened to Graeme. he convinced Ben that he needed to see the leaning tower of Pisa. Ben half heartedly aagreed. I was overruled. Turns out that Pisa is a huge tourist trap with bad food in the area around the tower no surprise there) and the tower is not all that different from the one in Niles. Really. Plus, they stabilized it and it doesn't even lean as much as it used to anymore. turns out G just wanted to skip riding over some mountains, he didnt really want to go to Pisa that much anyhow.

The ride into Lucca looked beautiful....from the train that is. the city has this huge earthen wall to protect it from medieval invaders or the French. not sure. all the walls were turned into walking paths & parks and inside the walls, it is almost exclusively bikes and scooters. amazing city to get lost in. which we did before dinner. stumbled on a gelateria run by a brit who directed us to a place called Trattoria Leo. had to actually make a reservaation and come back, so you know its good. had great primi piatti pasta, soup, etc) and decent main dishes. free limoncello drinks after dinner were the highlight I think.

come to Lucca. It was a top 5 city on this trip w/ Avignon, Girona, 5 Terre and Florence. that is my pitch.

June 23, 24 Good News: Cinque Terre still the same

another delayed blog:

took train into 5 terre to avoid the evil mountains. someone wouldve died. train had a specific bike rack for us and it was only 10 euro for a 3 hour ride. we messed up though. after being so train savvy in France, we forgot to stamp our tickets on the train platform. the conductor tried to fine us €25 each, but we talked him down to €5 each.

decided to stay in the last of the 5 towns, called Riomaggiore. no real beach here, just rocks, but it is a less touristy alternative to Monterosso where I staed in 99. we've been relying on the Routard door stickers to determine if a place is ok, and the hotel we found was certified by the Routards in 07, so it was a go. note: we have no idea who Routard is, but we'd like to meet him someday. Ben had a sweet bunk bed. he even made a tent like Pete Blanton did in college. not sure why...

got some wine to go you can do that everywhere in Italia, according to the lady at the restaurant) and walked up to the next town. all 5 towns are connected by footpath as well as train. we walked btwn the 5th & 3rd towns before settling in for dinner. ben was brave and ordered something heäd never heard of. it was fantastic. he won the dinner prize that night. later found out it had pig's ear in the sauce.

next day, G and I took a train to Monterosso to rent an umbrella & chairs and enjoy the Med. Ben went all tough and chose to do the remaining hike btwn towns 3 & 1. It took him 4 hours, but he got great photos and seemed to enjoy it. on the flip side, I enjoyed killing off some of this wicked farmer tan and reading my book.

on the way home, we stopped at opur favorite gelato place in Riomaggiore and G had grapefruit gelato. it was incredible, so he went back for seconds. good thing we bike for 4 hours a day because we eat and drink about 4000 calories.

we tried to eat cheap, but just couldnt bring ourselves to eat with the backpacker crowd. instead, the pizereria/tratorria/bruchetteria in town had the stragest pasta pancake thing that G had them cover in cream pesto sauce. he won the dinner prize that night.

while eating, the catholics had some sort of eerie procession with half the town marching uphill and the priest chanting over wireless loudspeakers. the candles everwhere made it even odder.

Ben & Graeme likely airborne

a break in the delayed blogging to bring you an update on my fellow travelers. G left at 5am this morning and Ive gotten text messages saying he made it to Frankfurt. At 10am, I took Ben and the largest bike box you have ever seen to the airport. I didnt stick around to make sure the plane took off, but Im assuming it did. he was supposed to call if anything strange happened.

btw - when G & Ben read this they should know that I had lunch at the Central Market again and got gelato from our place on the way home. They just put out a fresh batch of pistacio and it was amazing.

june 22...savona?

I'm blogging this without my notebook, so I'll have to wing it. first off, cafe is much better in italy. instad of the french or spanish drip coffee (like home), you get a choice of cappucino or latte at breakfast. I opt for latte, since you get twice as much. plus, you get to MYOL. Make Your Own Latte. they give you two containers....1 is steamed milk, the other is expresso. you get to play strabucks and scoop one into the other. it's fun.

*******LONG RIDE I DON'T REMEMBER******

we established rule #1 in Italy: just go....and hold your line. meaning, cars will seem to want to hit you, they won't. in fact, they probably won't even honk. it's like a ballet of potential destruction and mayhem. I don't know how it works, but the cars, scooters, motorcycles and bikes all manage. also, there are a ton of cyclists in this country. many in team gear, all without helmets. maybe that's the key: traffic darwinism. the dumb ones get run over.

stayed in an incredibly random swiss hotel in Savona. it had floor to ceiling carpeting. with the company logo on it. why? why? nice shower though and it had yogurt for breakfast, which has become or tipping point on whether we'll pay for it, or get a bite on the road. although, lack of yogurt can be made up by the presence of multi-vitamin juice. ask a german about that, they'll know.

couldn't find a decent looking dinner place, but located a gelateria. prebably the nicest looking one in my life. G tried the spicy chocolate. it's dark choco with pepper flakes in it. the dude wouldnt even sell it to hit without forcing him to taste it. it starts out smooth then hits you like a sot of tabasco. why?

got a reccomendation for a pizza place where I had the lemon veal cutlets. Graeme cried for the baby cow. I ate its delicious goodness.

june 21 - 3 meals in 3 countries

disclaimer: we've been in Florence for 2 days. bikes are boxed and I am blogging late as usual.

on june 21...we had breakfast in room and left nice. climbed into Monaco, which G says is one mile by one mile. had lunch overlooking the marina. not as many ships as in st. tropez, but two of them had helicopters, which is two more than st. tropez. also saw too many ferraris to count and a Z06 corvette with Illinois plates?!

climbed a monsterous hill up to the casinos. saw a $1 million Ferrari Enzo, a ton of Bentleys and a a $300,000 Mercedes. climbed an even bigger hill out of town. it was probably >15 degrees incline. crossed border into italy, which is really more like crossing from IL to WI. There is a vacent border station, but that's it.

Made it to San Remo for the night and scored a cool hotel room with a balcony facing the sea. The place had a great rooftop deck also.

went looking for dinner, but didn't see much that was open. did, however, find the old part of town that consisted of these little, tunnel-like passages similar to Venice. who knew? finally settled on some random place called 'Dick Turpin's' for dinner. turned out to be fantastic. G had a lemon rissoto that was out of this world and the sangria (yes, in Italy) was the best of the trip.

introduced Ben to the wonders of gelato (Italian ice cream). the key with this stuff is to only eat from a place that makes it on site. you can quickly tell by the gelato itself. if it is rough and a little unprofessional looking, it's probably the good stuff. if it is smooth and polishe dlike baskin robbins, steer clear. it would still be better than the crap at home, but not nearly what you came for.

photo time

Since G leaves tomorrow and takes the USB card reader with him, here are some photos:

1) tough climb. it might be the only one that was walked

2) hey - that's not where Ben parked his bike!

3) my new house is just down there on the right...

4) see if you can find the tree ninja in this photo. he is very stealthy.

5) that's the real Monte Carlo. It's got 3 bentleys in front, so one can argue that it's nicer than the replica casino in vegas.

6) the view from our place in Cinque Terre was pretty ok

.

7) mmmm, wine in a box. tasty & cheap.

8) breakfast on Lucca's city walls.

9) coming soon.

june 20 (french train strike day)

we wanted to start early. instead we went grocery shopping at the Casino (grapefruit yogurt!) and had some cafes. ride was decent from what I remember (7 days later). tried to catch the train to Nice from Frejus, but there is apparently a strike in progress, so only every 9th train or so is running. Kept riding on to St. Raphael where we had to get a ticket for the TGV (hi speed train) to Nice. Normally, bikes are not allowed on this train. Howver, G talked our way on and the bikes were placed in a secret compartment.

blatent endorsement time: use TripAdvisor.com when picking a hotel. users rank the hotels in each city and you can see candid photos and reviews. it steered us right in Nice at the Little Palace hotel. great location near the train, beach and pedestrian street. only €90 for 3 stars also. not sure why nice is so famous. the beach is all rocks and it seems pretty touristy to me. perhaps cannes would have been better but we didnt have time to stop. antibes was also supposed to be fun, but didnt see that either. apparently Tom Cruise was there for a wedding yesterday.

oh, I lost my wallet tonight also. found it at the supermarket the next day though. that almost sucked.

wanted to go to Monaco for the evening, but the tain strike has us worried about getting stuck there. instead, got some doner kebabs in nice and planned to hit Monte Carlo for lunch tomorrow.

jun 19 Toulon to St. Tropez (day of the gull)

ok, we were a day behind at this point. whatever. we have the trains to make up lost time if needed. most disturbing sight of the trip: 500 ft. from the hotel we see a seagull dragging a dead pigeon across the road. it looked like a lion with an antelope in its mouth. the gull shook the bird like a dog does to try & break its neck. we stopped and stared. french people pointed. then the gull took flight carrying the dead pigeon with it. all of us were too shocked to snap a photo. i think it would have won a natural geographic prize.

Traffic in to St. Tropez is awful. miles of cars bumper to bumper. french bikers ride on the yellow line, but we opted to stay to the left out of the way of oncoming traffic. scored a decent hotel 100 feet from the main plaza and chained bikes to a tree in the courtyard. should be safe.

reminds me how much I love my combination cable lock. in that spirit, here are some things I am happy to have along for the ride:

-powdered gatorade. best investment ever. $3 makes 2 gallons. sports drink is $3 for 12 oz. here. you do the math.
-raincovers for the bags. G is missing 1 of 3 and fears for his belongings everytime it drizzles.
-swiss army knife...opens wine, cuts chorizo, tweezes, scissors.
-moleskine journal. thanks kieffer. so much better than a notebook.
-boxes of wine. cant say enough good things.
-campsoap. this stuff is amazing for cleaning out jersey, water bottle, etc. a few drops makes all sorts of suds. highly recommended.
- shoulder straps for luggage. simple but lets me get everything up stairs in one load.

ok - back to st. tropez. amazing yachts here. some as big as the cruise ships at Navy Pier. G really likes the 'Ability' a 5 story ship that seems to have Americans on board. A quick Google reveals that this is a charter yacht. cant be cheap.

strange that we can walk right up to these yachts. not very secure in my opinion. after getting rushed thru a crepe dinner (15 seconds from fork down to bill arriving), we went back to the main plaza where people were playing bocce ball (as ususal in France). we got some really strong beers (8% alcohol) and sat to watch them. Ben decided he was a tree ninja and climbed into an old oak tree to harass passers by. G has a video that absolutely needs to find its way onto you tube. there goes bens career in politics.

pretend it is june 18

so let's imagine for a minute that I am writing this as we leave Marseille and not in an internet cafe in Florence.

let me start with the ongoing battle between the bike rack and the spoke. it turns out that the racks Graeme and I have were meant for much less weight. Mostly because they wobble side to side if the rack is overloaded. eventually, this motion causes the hook that holds the pannier (side bags) to fly into the spoke of the wheel. consequently the hook gets vaporized or your spoke gets mangled. on the first 10 miles out of town, Graeme had the latter happen. the hook hit his spoke and the spoke shattered.

Ben and I went ahead to a Shell station and tried to ask where a bike shop was. unfortunately, the french word for shop is magazin. which I pronounced like 'magazine' prompting the Shell clerk to send me to a bookstore down the road. eventually, we made it to a Decathalon sporting goods store where G got his repairs for €8 and Ben got a AG2R racing jersey. the French are so into biking that they have 3 aisles of supplies in their version of Sportmart. Brand name stuff too, not the crap you get at a sporting goods store at home. we the problem fixed, we rolled on.

got to La Ciotat and took the train up to Toulon to stay on schedule. some lady was hogging the ticket booth and the machine only accepts smart cards, so we had to hop on the train without a ticket. apparently, this is a 60€ fine if you dont find the conductor immediately. oops. Lucky for us the conductor was too lazy to come find us. the train had a really nice bike area where you hang your bikes vertically to keep them out of the way. clever french.

Toulon was ok. had a fun waiter at dinner and ben learned how to work peel & eat shrimp. we also discovered that he really really likes chocolate mousse. he ate his and most of Graeme's before we made him wipe off his face and leave the cafe. G tried steak tartare. esentially, it is a hamburger with a raw egg and a bunch of spices so you can make your own meal. the capers made it tolerable. someone at home: make a burger with capers and tell me how it is. please cook it though.

blame it on the construction

so this post is REALLY REALLY late. we are in Lucca, Italy getting ready to leave for the last ride of the trip. before that, we plan to sit on the old city walls and eat breakfast. since the hotel wants to charge us $15 each, we figure this is the best option.

I blame the late-ness of this post on the european construction. everything here is under construction. fountains, roads, tunnels, railroad tracks. Therefore, I assume the Internet is also under construction. in fact, its been really difficult to locate internet cafes in Europe (as opposed to Latin America and Asia). I assume its because everyone has a home computer here.

Cinque Terre was beautiful as it was when I saw it 8 years ago. we stayed in riomaggiore, which is the 5th of the 5 towns. the first night, we walked between town 3,4,5 which was a good time, and less technically challenging than the hike between the first two (which Ben did solo on Sun). there is some weirdness going on in the Med, causing most of the town harbors to be shut down and massive waves to crash over the boulders. we almost saw a couple get swept into the sea. I blame the whole thing on global warming, right Al Gore?

have I described how cheap wine is here. in the grocery store, you can choose from several bottles under $4, most of which have been incredible. its actually tough to find one in the store thats over €15. you have to go to a special wine shop for that. they also have miniture wine in a box. some are personal size (like the size of the juice boxes you had as a kid)

ok - time for breakfast. I will write more tomorrow.

Ben joined us

ok; i know this entry is late. we have been running around a lot and have not seen much of the internet. I'm glad to see that its still here. our day trip to Aix was gorgeous and much better than the construction ridden city of Qix itself. the trip back into Marseille was a mess as usual, so we were late picking up Ben. he called us and we worked out a plan to meet him at the train station, otherwise we'd have been 2 hours late getting to him. once back at the hotel, we introduced Ben to the wonders of Port. our new favorite drink. we dont really go anywhere without it and have sampled 4 brands at the time I'm writing this. besides powdered gatorade, port is one of the things I'm most thankful for on this trip.


for dinner, we took ben to a creperie where we got sweet and savory crepes. the nice french family next to us convinced me to get a crepe flambe (i.e. it was doused in alcohol and set on fire). family was extremely nice to us. the father even gave us his contact info an offered to take us on a tour of the city. i guess the mean french you always hear about are mostly in Paris. at least thats my theory.

ok, there are 3 people waiting for this PC, I'll have to get back at this later.

thank god for the old guy

so, on our way to narbonne, we took an incredible bike path that took us across this uninhabited island along an old canal. the canal is mostly used for houseboats now, so it was pretty quiet. the path started as asphalt, turned to pea gravel and eventually small boulders. reminder: we are on road bikes with 35 lb packs on the back. so, it was a bit rough on the bikes. eventually my rear tire gave up and went flat. no big deal, i'm a tire changing pro, right? after 2 inner tubes, i finally realized that our only pump was broken from the fall i took after the flat. not good. it was 6 miles from the next town. so we sat there for about 10 minutes cursing the bad luck and the failure of not getting another pump when this 70 year old comes tearing up on a mt bike. turns out he has the presta valve pump we need and we were rolling in 3 minutes. thank god for the old guy.

in narbonne, we finally transitioned to crepes from tapas. mine had some sort of chicken, tomato, veggie mix. it was excellent.

trip to aix en provence

once in marseille, we changed plans and found a local hotel in lieu of the ibis chain hotel we booked before. this one has more character and it's 2/3 the price. plus, they have a spot for the bikes.

after our typical hotel breakfast (croissant, bread, cafe and oj) we got on the road to aix. getting out of this town is like passing thru the layers of hell. there is construction, hills, insane traffic, one way streets. basically, it sucks. they do have a nice palace though (see photo)

once we got out of town it was all good though. the hills turned into a mt. with a great bike lane and beautiful scenery. i dont feel like writing now, so here are some photos

(me in a sunflower field i swear, i had that jersey before i took the job)

change in plans

so, it wasnt really a train that went to aix en provence. it was a train to marseille, then a bus. we didnt want to deal with the bus, so we got off in marseille to make the home base for 3 whole days. finally, we can do laundry!

we are leaving on a day trip up to aix, so I will write more later

photos have arrived! go back and look

avignon france

first, a response to matt. yes, blogger does have spell checker. unfort. it is french spell checker. thanks, wiseguy

back to regular programming:

so we rode from narbonne to beziers (20 mi) and started to get rained on...a lot. thats when we decided to alter course and head for avignon in provance. by train. since it was 2 hrs by train, we never would have gotten up here. train ride was challenging to fit all the bikes in the little area they give you, but probably the toughest part was watching the guy next to G pick his nose for 25 min straght. i am dead serious, he was knuckle deep in that thing. i threw up a little in my mouth.

avignon is amazing. the whole city is fortified from back in the roman days and supposedly it is the oldest city in france dating back before jesus. the pope even lived here for a while. since it poured last night, we are taking another train to aix en provence tonight. tomorrow, we will ride thru the french countryside to marseille to meet ben.

perpignan and narbonne, france

perpignan has a decent pedistrian area where we hung out in a cafe and ate tapas. it also has a really seedy area with a mqssive housing project, which is right next to the citadel. we ate dinner in this really cool passage between ancient bldgs. eventually, youll see photos.

leaving perpignan was fine as we went thru a bunch of cool little towns and learned the wonders of the french bike path system. please dont make fun of the french, they really do use their socialist govt to create some nice public facilities like bike paths where you cant get killed (are you listening spain???)

eventually in port la nouvelle, we found the gravel bike trail along the canal to narbonne. beautiful little trail. there were even some houseboats on it where ppl lived or vacationed. my wheel didnt like the path though and i got the second flat of the trip. not a big deal except when i found out my pump broke when i fell (dont ask) and we were 6 miles from the town. luckily after 45 min a mt biker came by and pumped up the tire.

narbonne is tiny, but decent. the crepes i had were excellent, it was a nice change from all the ham and cheese in spain. they really love their jamon there. G says it started as a cultural protest against the muslim occupiers way back when. can someone confirm this?

ok, its almost noon here. i suppose i should be riding a bike or somethingm huh?

montopelier, here we come.

French siestas?

did you know the french take a siesta? i didnt until we tried to buy water btwn the hours of 1pm&4pm. the shops were all boarded up like hurricane pierre was coming. we'll need to keep that in mind.

so far the catlonian influence in france has been noticable: sangria, tapas and signs in both languages surprised us. we've been trying the patas bravas (potatos w spicy mayo) in each town as a basis to compare. i call it the aldo escurra method. so far, none beat the ones at cafe ba ba reeba in chicago...although the sangria is much better here; even in france.

so this keyboard ive been complaining about... here are some highlights:

• you have to press the shift key to access the numbers, the period and the ? mark
• q is where a should be
• it has cool keys like: éèçàù¤

ok, g just taught me how to convert it into an english keyboard, but you cant look at it, kind of like typing tutor. my head is about to explode...

the weirdness continues

so, I got a little behind on the blog. we are in france now where they dont use a qwerty keyboard like us, so i am hunting & pecking to find the letters to type this....)

the ride out of girona was hilly and shoulderless at times, but i lived to write this. saw more odd things like a woman on a motorcycle skid out & crash on the highway as well as a beer truck accident (you can imagine how that smelled in the hot sun).

on the way to the coast, we got our first rainstorm, although Graeme thinks it was hail. either way, it caused the woman on the moto to take a digger. the pannier covers actually worked and our stuff stayed dry.

the spanish port town of llanca was underwhelming. in fact it was spooky how empty it was. we stayed in a hotel of 33 rooms that had 31 empty. we had a 50/50 shot of ending up dead, so we barricaded the doors and took turns standing guard. ok, I made that last part up.

to avoid the dreaded pyranees mts, Graeme took the train to perpignan france along with half my load. the climb over into france was tough, but i made it pretty quickly. it turns out i was missing my 3 lowest gears...those wouldve been nice, huh?

the only thing that stopped my progess that day was the french government. in argeles sur mer, i encountered a big blue sign w/ a picture of a car on it. can i take this road on a bike? who knew, and i was tired, so i took the train to perpignan to meet G. my rationale: the mts were done and i wont miss 20km of highway riding. i got a train ticket at the station & the lady thought i was italian. i dont know how to feel about that.

¿Dare I say én fuego´?

there is a car under all that smoke!

we left Barcelona along with about 500 motorcycles since today is the Moto GP competition. made it to the ocean just fine though, when we decided to stop at a train station for a snack. while sitting there, a guy stalls his car in front of us. the car starts smoking. then, little bits of fire start shooting out the bottom. someone yells ´fuego!´. guy opens the hood and a small flame comes out. he shuts hood, waits 2 minutes and for some unknown reason, opens it again to release a 6 foot fireball. we ran and hid from it, expecting it to blow up like something from teh A-team. I´ll show you how it ended when we get access to a USB port. we even have video!

ride to Girona was challenging w. lots of hills. drivers have been very corteous though and it feels much safer to me than even Ashland Ave. in Chicago. G. might beg to differ however. We will have to compare blogs.

Girona, Spain might be one of the most beautiful cities I´ve ever been in. I´t´s no wonder Lance Armstrong kept a place here for training. there is a huge fortress & medieval walls that ring the old city and you can walk all over it for free. plus, they made that whole area pedestrian-only.

Graeme is patiently waiting for this computer, so I´ll show you more in photos later.

cheers

there is no Guiness on Aer Lingus

someone needs to talk to Aer Lingus management. ¿how does the Irish flagship airline only serve dutch & singapore beers on-board? (as you cansee, I found the upside down question marks on the spanish keyboard. i plan to use them lots).

pretty uneventful trip over here, which is always good. took a minivan cab with Graeme over to the Ibis hotel. despite the angry protests from the cabbie, both bikes fit fine. after building the bikes up, we went to El Corte Ingles dept. store to get water & maps. I can´t believe how much we over-pay for bottled water at home - here it was 13 cents for 1.5 liters.

(when we get access to upload our pictures, I´ll show you evidence of the Spanish infatuation with ham...wait for it).

did touristy stuff, live visited the temple of the Sagrada Familia and had dinner off las ramblas. it will also be more interesting when I show a photo of it.

I´ll leave you with the other cool letter I found on the keyboard... Ç. I have no idea what it does, since I don´t speak the Catalan dialect. Castillian Spanish has worked fine in getting us around though.

it's my bike in a box!

it took some doing, but the bike is packed. I had to take off both wheels, the skewers that hold them on, the handlebars, pedals, seat post and the rack. in other words, a lot more than I've ever had to take off a bike to pack it. the only issue now...is it under the 70lb. weight limit or will I face the wrath of the irish at aer lingus. hopefully, i get to find out. the hurricane force winds here in chicago are killing o'hare. i'm looking forward to finding out if they serve guiness on the plane.

PS - sing the title, it's fun.

Welcome

So, I've decided to tryout this blogging phenomenon. I figure my bike trip from Barcelona, Spain to Florence, Italy would be a good event to chronicle.


As most of you know, before I re-enter the working world, I am taking a 3 week around the northern part of the Med. I'll be riding with Graeme MacDonald for all 3 weeks of the trip and Ben Missele for the final two weeks. We are carrying all our own gear and staying in cheap hotels when we get into each town. From Florence, Ben will return home, G. will go back to Spain and I'll head up to Scandinavia for a few more weeks (although not on the bicycle).

Here's what the route will look like (in Google Maps):

Go to Google Map

Our Itenerary is roughly:

		Day		START DAY	END DAY	COUNTRY
sat	9-Jun	0		prep day in Barcelona	Barcelona	Spain
sun	10-Jun	1		Barcelona	Girona	Spain
mon	11-Jun	2		Girona	~Port de la Selva	Spain
tue	12-Jun	3		Port de la Selva	Port-la-Nouvelle	France
wed	13-Jun	4		Port-la-Nouvelle	Beziers	France
thu	14-Jun	5		REST? (flexible day)	Beziers	France
fri	15-Jun	6		Beziers	Arles	France
sat	16-Jun	7		Arles	Marseille	France
sun	17-Jun	8		REST	Marseille	France
mon	18-Jun	9		Marseille	Saint Tropez (OR Hyeres)	France
tue	19-Jun	10		Saint Tropez (OR Hyeres)	Cannes	France
wed	20-Jun	11		Cannes	Nice	France
thu	21-Jun	12		Nice	Albenga	Italy
fri	22-Jun	13		Albenga	Genoa	Italy
sat	23-Jun	14		Genoa	Cinque Terre	Italy
sun	24-Jun	15		REST	Cinque Terre	Italy
mon	25-Jun	16		Cinqueterre	Lucca	Italy
tue	26-Jun	17		Lucca	Florence	Italy