WEDNESDAY

Wednesday morning was devoted to cruising, there was no bus or bike tour. It was another great day and provided a good opportunity to take pictures of the Chardonnay. Photo 1 is looking towards the bow and photo 2 towards the stern.

This sequence was taken as we spotted a lock, got ready to enter the lock, and enjoyed the lock.

Below we can see smoke stacks from a nuclear power plant.

The Chardonnay docked for in Viviers for the rest of the day. The afternoon bus tour made a brief stop to allow pictures of a castle in the distance, then continued on to Nyons for a tour of a lavender distillery (photo 2). Photo 3 was taken while walking to the olive press.

The olive press was built in the XVIII century and is no longer working. First the olives were pulverized in the grinder of photo 1. They were then pressed by the mechanism in photo 2 to produce olive oil. Photo 3 show where containers of olive oil used to be stored.

After the bus returned to Viviers, Sandy went on a walking tour of the town. One road led her to a field of poppies. Photo 2 shows a castle that could be seen from there. After returning to the village, Sandy took a picture of pruned Plain trees (similar to sycamores).

While the bus tour to Nyons was happening, a smaller group left on a bike ride. The number of bikers was only a dozen since Paulo had warned us that hills would be a challenge. We saw our own field of poppies. In photo 3, Paulo wanted a picture demonstrating how hard he works. Photo 4 shows local art work about "Hello" in many languages. A local man used our cameras to take pictures of us in front of this scene (but my camera took a picture of the ground!).

The goal of our bike trip was this 11th century monastery in Drome region of Provence. Inside the monastery was refreshingly cool (contrasted to our ride up hills in the hot Mediterranean sun). We spend some time in the monastery's gift shop which had interesting items.

Shortly after leaving the monastary we encountered our monster hill; not impossibly steep but improbably long. Polly timed the uphill climb at a half hour. On the way down I rewarded myself with lots of pictures of the views we had worked so hard for.

Because of my picture taking, I was the last down the hill. Polly, Brian (Australian bloke), and I encountered Paulo at an intersection who was disturbed to learn the other bikers had proceeded ahead instead of turning at the intersection. As a result, the last ended up being the first to arrive back to the boat! On the way to the boat we saw a picturesque stone barn (photo 1), an Acacia Tree in full bloom, the village of Chateau Nouveau, and then entered into Viviers where the boat was moored.