all pictures, all the time!

okay, i'm going to try this new thing where my blog posts are pictures instead of words. well, "instead of" is pretty strong language. i have never been one to not use words, so of course, there will be words as well, but the focus will be pictures. oh, and this will just be while i'm in france, not an all the time thing...

okay, enough rambling, bring on the pics!!!

each morning we set off in the car to show house, and each morning the car is carefully equipt. a cooler filled with diet coke. you might think that one item doesn't make for 'carefully equipt', but you my friends would then have not encountered my mother and her diet coke addiction (you can clearly see where i get mine from...). believe it or not, you can fit two purses, a cooler, a broken fuse panel and a pair of feet all in one small space, amazing, non?

oh sure, it's just barely, but still...

the essencials always at the ready...

i'm not sure why the picture of a no parking sign. it just goes to show you, the rule might be universal, but the sign sure isn't...

signs signs, everywhere are signs...

this morning we met clients at a cafe, i felt it was perhaps a bit to gauche to pull out my camera then and there, so instead i took this picture as we drove away. you'll notice it's called cafe de la poste. well, that's because there is a post office right beside it. see, not all french people are brilliant creative folks...

with stylish green accents no less...

to be efficient in your travels across france, even within a small area like the south of france, you need to take the 'payage'. it's basically a toll road. an old school toll road, with toll booths and everything. none of this 'we take a picture of your license plate and send you a bill' crap, nope, real live toll booths, some of the booths even have real live people working in them. cool eh!

take a ticket please

when you get to a village you're bound to see some pretty cool houses. some run down shack like houses too, but certainly some pretty cool ones.

i happen to think this one is pretty cute...

we drive into a lot of random pretty typical villages.

like this one...

i felt it was important that you knew that neon was alive and well here. i do wonder if the campy nature of the sign was on purpose given the name of the pizzaria, but really, i think that's too much to ask for.

"PIZZERIA el Campo"

in one of the houses we showed to folks i had to pee so badly i thought i was going to burst. so i excused myself to the toilet room (often in houses here the toilet is in a seperate room from the bath and shower, hence why when you're here you have to ask for the toilet, not the bathroom or washroom, because, really, if you have to pee really badly you'll walking to the bathroom or washroom and want to cry because there will be no place to pee...). the thing about this toilet room is that it had a lovely view. while sitting on the toilet you looked out onto a square. so i of course took a picture while i was peeing, because i love you guys that much and i'm that dedicated to getting you the true france experience!

'room with a loo' becomes 'room with a view'

then mum had to go talk to a maire (mayor) about some drainage issue with one of the houses she's selling. it seemed like a better idea for me to stay in the car during such delicate negotiations. so i did. and i took pictures (shocked i know).

yep, it's a road, exciting i know.

for no apparent reason i was facinated with this house.

"no, really jean-claude, i saw a ufo!"

and so it was time to head home. which of course meant it was time to pee (my mum and i officially have the smallest bladders on the planet). where do you go when you have to pee? mcdonalds of course!!!

call me crazy, but i think "mcdrive" is way better than misspelling "drive-through"

we have to throw out the diet coke cans somewhere...

on our way home we drove past lots of pretty stuff, but i'm tired of converting pictures, so i'll just show you some grape vines and be done with it.

yep, they're grape vines all right

and of course, it is important to finish each post with some kind of cute animal picture. these two pictures actually feature 3 different cats, even though you would only think there are two... and yes, the only time i can manage photos of the cats is when they're eating, they're wily little buggers.

i can't see the difference... can you see the difference?