We arrived in Nice the evening of Saturday, September 7. Sunday was a day of well-deserved rest, relaxation, and eating. Sheila and I walked around for a few hours and took a grand total of one picture (Hmm, Nice looks like a good place to retire, as well):
Sooo, Monday we drove to our friends at Montpellier. This should have been a 3 hour drive, including lunch. Remember the clouds on Saturday that looked rather ominous but never rained? Well, they did drop quite a bit of rain, and we drove through the floods. Dave’s sister Ruth and a friend drove from Manchester to Nice. When the two of them arrived in Nice on Sunday, they were weary from driving through heavy rain. I really didn’t pay attention to their story. I should have…..
We took off from Nice about 11 am. After sitting dead stopped once for 90 minutes and two detours from the autoroute, we decided to take a ‘national’ road, instead. We drove past field after field of grape vines under water. The Rhone river and its tributaries was flooding its banks.
Even on the national road we drove through water. The roads in France are not that wide and they usually have a deep ditch on either side. Fun. 7 and a half hours later we finally arrived at our friends’ house. It was quite the ordeal.
A few days after we returned to the US I heard that Rob and Sandy Parker (remember them?) were driving back from Entibbes on Saturday, Sept 7 to Geneva. They didn’t make it back to Geneva that night. Their car floated off the road and had to spend a couple of days in a shelter. They are OK; Rob sent this picture to me, but I couldn’t say exactly where it is taken.
On to the wineries…..