Hugh had arranged for a car, driver and guide to spend Saturday morning with us to give us a sense of the city. Useful exercise, particularly with as fluent and as knowledgeable guide as Maryanna was. Got a good sense of the city and am beginning to create a mental map, a sense of where things are in relation to each other.

The afternoon was spent walking and in anticipation of our coming dinner. We had made a reservation at a "closed-door restaurant" described in an article here: "The secret to accessing some of the most memorable meals to be had in Buenos Aires is a bit of insider knowledge and a reservation. Puertas cerradas, or closed-door restaurants, are where some of the city's best chefs are at work, often in the comfort of their own homes, creating mouthwatering, multi-course meals. Lately, more and more of these closed-door restaurants have been popping up, leading to a new variety of cuisines and dining styles, and they're quickly becoming the most sought-after tables in town."...

After yesterday's very pleasant weather, our day began more in the Provence mode than we would have liked, with grey skies and a steady cold rain.Not much fun slogging through the rain to look at sights so decided that today we would visit Le Bon Marché, our favourite department store in Paris and pick up any bits and pieces that we still needed to fill in the shopping gaps. It's a wonderful 19'th century building, straddling the 6'th and 7'th on the left side of the river, with a fabulous food hall and wine cellar. Took the Métro and arrived at about 11:00 and very surprised at how quiet and un-busy it was. First stop the food section and picked up some long pepper, a hard to find type of type of dried pepper that looks like a small black dry catkin, and which tastes like black pepper but with floral notes that span a much wider and richer taste spectrum than ordinary black pepper as well as a bottle of sel de citron which looks and smells wonderfully lemony and which will work very well sprinkled on asparagus or grilled fish. V loaded up on freshly baked Madelines....

Today is our first full day in Les Roux, a very small hamlet of 59 inhabitants located between Peypin-d'Aigues and La Motte-d'Aigues two slightly larger villages about 30k from Aix-en-Provence.

Red-eye flight from Toronto to Paris, a 2 hour wait at the CDG TGV station at the airport, a 3.5 hour train ride and, after picking up our car, a very kicky little Peugeot, an hours drive through the countryside being misled by the GPS which didn't know the location of our village any more than we did. Fortunately we had arranged with the caretaker of the property to meet us at a little village that the GPS could find who led us to our home for the next 10 days...