La belle France

We arrived in Paris Wednesday morning. Really thick fog outside the plane window. As we passed by a sign over a building that read "roulez au pas"I thought about how that made sense to me and that it needed no translation in my mind and also about how different my life would certainly be today if my parents had not insisted that I continue studying French even when I wanted to quit because I HATED it!! I would be a very different person and this trip to stay in Provence would most probably not exist. Hmmm. Almost a surreal thought!

JC and I met up at the arrivals gate and began to stroll the various terminals of Roissy airport while waiting for the TGV to Avignon. We had a few hours to kill.
I love these  Relay news stands and they really signify "arrival in France" to me...

This poster really says it all for me. I love taking the train and reading French magazines!

My favorite terminal is Terminal 2. When you walk into the terminal there is a faint scent of French perfume which is nice. This is where the Air France flights usually leave from and we watched families lining up to go on the winter break ski vacation...Paris schools are on winter break this week. One family all grouped together for a photo wearing the same infinity scarf in blue print on the girls and women and blue wooly scarves on the men and boys...it was quite fun to watch. Here is a photo of part of the group after the pose...

 ...it was kind of fun to make up a story for their trip. I like the space ship feel of the terminal here.

As we wandered around the various terminals I caught some things to photograph. I liked this ad for a bank since we are expecting a new arrival in our family too and the little shoes are so cute!

Then I looked out of a window to see these huge pots all lined up but I could not figure out what they were for except maybe to create a design in an otherwise blank space. The posts in each pot might hold a light and maybe it is lit at night????

We were headed in this direction:

And before we knew it we were settled in our seats on the TGV and heading out to Avignon.

We sat back with our bottled waters and a magazine and enjoyed the smooth ride...we just glided along the rails and on occasion some very interesting villages would pop out of the fog.

It was difficult, unfortunately, to get a really good picture since we were going so fast. We sat in the tandem face to face seats...I like to go backwards because the horizon opens up as you go by but it was really pretty foggy until we got to Valence/Montelimar (that yummy nougat) area and then it was like someone had raised a curtain and we came into sunshine and such a brilliant blue sky you could feel its crispness.

Soon we could see the white calcaire tip of Mont Ventoux and then in the distance the Pope's Palace in Avignon. We arrived with only a short delay in Lyon while the police rounded up some "malfaisants" (hooligans) who were throwing rocks (cailloutage) at the trains as they came out of Lyon!!!

We piled off the train with all of our numerous bags (last trip for this many bags I swear!!) and whoosh the train was gone.

In Carpentras the next day we had some fun doing window stickers in Maya's room.

Still pretty chilly here but sunny nonetheless and before we know it the almond trees will be in bloom! Can't wait. Now on to the next adventure! By the way...the princess Elsa costume from Frozen that I made for Maya was a perfect fit!!! Yay! 

A bientôt!