St. Raphael is a small port town on the French Riviera, nestled between Cannes and St. Tropez. It is a sweet little place, nice and calm this time of year, not particularly exciting but made very enjoyable as a result of our lovely hosts Christiane and Roger, an adorable old couple who hosted us for 2 nights. We enjoyed exploring the old town with its cute little churches and interesting buildings, and thouroughly enjoyed the Sunday markets, stretched along the w...

Paray le monial was the place Ariane and I met up with Sally and Tony Pritchett, grandparents of Sam who I know from back in Sydney. He had mentioned to me a while ago about his grandparents cruising around the canals of France on their houseboat and that I should stay with them if I ever crossed paths with wherever they happened to be. It seemed like something that would never get round to actually happening…and yet here I found myself, stepping onto this drea...

There is something about Lyon. It is an air of liberation, an excitement in the streets that mixes with and sometimes even overpowers the smell of sausage and freshly baked bread. This was the place where I chose to heal my freshly wounded soul after the awful Geneva affair, and it helped not to be alone. I met up with Peter, on his bike, and we spent a lovely 5 days in this most interesting city. It is undoubtedly the city of food. I never knew it was so famous,...

What happened in Geneva stayed in Geneva, the horrible sickly feeling lingered for many days and continues to fester in my memory but the regret and anger and sadness I slowly fading…Camera and laptop gone, sneakily stolen away by some faceless little s*** while I slept hugging my unlocked backpack, my lack of awareness still baffles me but I guess that's just life. The things I regret the most are the loss of my writing, those little entries I never put into b...

Paris Paris Paris. A very belated blog entry in homage to this most magnificent place, visited 24th--29th August 2009 by Sophia, Liv and Jess: We arrived nice and late on the night of the Mondayn after a hectic to say the least day, full of flights, fears and frantic flight hopping and baggage scares. But it was all worth the pain when we saw our Servas host Dora waiting for us in Charles de Gaulle, ready to take us to our new parisien home for the next two ni...