Saturday - Thom's last day

Saturday morning Thom and I packed up all the gifts to take home, and the few things of his that were returning to the states (and aren't destined for a French dumpster). With that done, we all headed to a local abbey for an exhibit of tapestries made by a local couple who have a son in Ria's school. We loved the tapestries, and hope to buy one or two for our new house. Here's a picture of Ria sitting on one of them, making drawings of several others. The attendant at the gallery was a wonderful woman, delightful to chat with, and encouraging of Ria's artistic pursuits in the corner.

After a big family lunch on the picnic table outside, we drove Ria, Annabelle and Benjamin up to Venasque for the village's annual Fete des Fleurs. Venasque has been awarded two flowers for prettiest village (I assume out of three, although I don't know), and it has an annual flower festival each year to celebrate. Ria, A&B spent the day there while I drove Thom to the airport in Marseille.

The drive was boring, the airport in a blighted industrial area, and in need of updating. But Thom's check-in was uneventful, and I left him there and headed home, following the directions of our beloved GPS system Tom-Tom. Did I mention that it stopped working right outside of where we picked it up? Yes? And did I mention that we stopped at a Renault dealer in Annecy to see if it could be fixed? No? Well, we did, and the service man looked at it, did all the same things we had done to troubleshoot, and then turned on the radio, which fixed it. Turning off the radio didn't re-break it. Mysterious. Anyway, it has been working well ever since, and we adore it.

When I was almost home, the low-fuel alarm went off, so I asked Tom-Tom to find a gas station for me. It took me to a village that was also having a Fete des Fleurs, so all the streets were blocked off. Tom-Tom just kept finding new routes for me as I missed the turns she urged me to take, and eventually got me to a gas station, which was all torn up and under construction. By this time, my estimated range left had gone from 28 km to -- km, which is hardly reassuring. Tom-Tom found me another station, a nice young man pumped my gas (all 65 euros worth), and off I went, merrily back home.