By this Author: alexchan

Our drive to Mont St Michel conveniently took us through Le Mans [Le-Mans-travel-guide-446381] where Kim visited the car museum. We took a drive into the circuit. OK, enough said.

Four of us headed down to Lou's place in Douchy about an hour outside of Paris ... when people ask "where's that?" just say it is near Alain Delon's place! Lovely big old restored farmhouse with a heating bill to match in winter.

Oh! What warmth and hospitality ... yummy lunch and dinner, then breakfast on the sunny lawn the next morning. That was all interleaved with conversations, walks and afternoon tea ... reliving the old times (well, maybe not-so-old times as it was only 5 months ago when we were all in Yemen).

We had some discussions on future travel together ... maybe Ethiopia either directly or accessed from Yemen? Watch this space!

Under the Eiffle Tower.
In the city of lights, once again. I love this place but this time its even better as we're visiting friends ... people I've known from Yemen. There's Marie who lives here, Kristina who is visiting from Hamburg and Lou who lives outside of Paris [Paris-travel-guide-471458].

We stayed in a hotel near Marie's place so it was easy to spend time doing things together.

Having been here in recent years, its nice not having the pressure of visiting the "must see" attractions. Just relax, eat, drink, absorb the atmosphere and enjoy the company of friends :-)

If only we had nice weather ... it was cloudy and drizzly ... but to make up for this, August is the month when many Parisians take holidays. We were told that this was uncrowded by local standards (it didn't seem it) and all the parking we needed was FREE!! Oui oui ... GRATUITE.

Big day today with a drive from Arroyo Grande [Arroyo-Grande-travel-guide-10191] to LAX then fly to London. We had enough time to stop at the Mission at Santa Barbara [Santa-Barbara-travel-guide-14304]. While the mission was founded in 1786 the existing building was only finished in 1820. An earthquake damaged the building considerably and what we see now is largely the result of the restoration completed in 1927.

The Pebble Beach [Pebble-Beach-travel-guide-13695] Concours d'Elegance (classic carshow) didn't interest me and I didn't want to pay an exorbitant sum to see more cars. So I got dropped off in Monterey [Monterey-travel-guide-13168] to spend the day there.

No photos of Monterey as the camera went to Pebble Beach without me (with the others in our group). So here are some more photos of cars ... staged on their famous golf course.

Spent the night in Arroyo Grande [Arroyo-Grande-travel-guide-10191] to set us up for a shorter drive down to Los Angeles [Los-Angeles-travel-guide-12789] tomorrow, for our flight to London. The drive down from Pebble Beach to Arroyo Grande was a nightmare ... due to forest fires the traffic came to a standstill for about two hours en route.