A big THANK YOU to Rachael Hallinan, who changed the settings on the blog site on Thursday while I was riding the train to Paris.  She set up the Paris background scenery for the remainder of this trip.  Merci, Rachael!!

Writing this while traveling on the train…walk like I am intoxicated. The kitchen porter carried my sandwich and tea back to the seat. I needed two hands on handrails to keep from lurching over onto someone’s lap as I walk through the train cars, laughing to myself all the way. Love watching the world go by from the windows…the houses, the gardens, the graffiti, riding alongside the Mediterranean Sea and finally turning inland where the flora and fauna change from tropical to forested hillsides and geometrically shaped patches of small gardens and large farms. Cattle appear in the fields, grapevines have tendrils of green embracing wire supports, plane trees (a form of Sycamore tree) have leaves bursting forth from the pollarded branches that have been pruned within an inch of their lives during the winter months. Red poppies…the kind painted by Monet, Pissarro and Renoir color the landscape along the rails…occasionally filling a nearby field with a great brushstroke of poppy red. ( The French word for poppy is “coquelicot”, always a fun word to try out in the mouth. And if you look at it carefully you will also see how cocaine came by its name.). The farm girl in me thinks of how my Dad and my husband would have enjoyed the “drive by farming” opportunity of this varied agricultural region.

As we move further north, we pass bucolic scenery like this.

And finally into the lush farmland of Burgundy…home of grapes and cattle and produce and Epoisses Cheese, some of the most pungent cheese I’ve ever tasted.

I fell asleep only once…so afraid I would miss some of this beautiful scenery.

Here are a couple of scenes from the place near Luxembourg Gardens that will be my home for the next two weeks…..

And with that, I’ve caught up on posts and it’s now time to take a visit to those gardens!!!