My spring trip!

I will be flying to Paris. I have been there before but I will spend a full day there because you can never have too much Paris. After a full day in Paris I will rent a car and drive down to Avignon. I have a room right next to the Palais des Papes for four nights. I will make a few day trips (Aix-En Provence, Arles, Carcassone, Monte Carlo..). Then I will drive into Italy and spend a night at San Remo before heading into the Alps and spending a day in Geneva. Then I will drive back to Paris, spend another day there, and then fly home. Just sayin'

• This has got to be illegal! What you'll feel... Trés gay, trés chic, Trés mag-nifique! C'est moi, c'est vous, C'est grand, c'est too-too... It's too good to be true! All the things you can do. It does things to your point of view!

  Maggie%20Prescott%2C%20editrix%20of%20Quality%20magazine

• Have a wonderful time.

• Have fun, OP! I'd love to see France outside of Paris. What's on your agenda while zipping around the country?

• In theory, the Palais des Papes is boring - big and empty - and yet I thought it was incredible and wanted to stay there all day. It's easy to imagine thousands of people crowded into it centuries ago, watching some ceremony. Avignon's quite nice on the whole.

• Make time for Beaucaire. It's beautiful and not many tourists have found it yet.

• In Italia, we write it...Sanremo.

  Donatella

• Why are you ruining what sounds like a perfectly lovely vacation with an excursion into Italy?

• A few years ago I rented a farmhouse outside Aix en Provence and pretty much did the same thing for a few weeks... exploring Provence and the Riviera in a rental car. It'll be wonderful, you'll love it. Bon voyage!

• Thank you for that, r5. I am traveling with a friend who is somewhat elderly and who has a thing for ecclesiastical architecture. He has been to Europe many, many times and I think he would very much enjoy the cave Abbey at Beaucaire.

• .

• R1, are you going to be OK or do we need to send an ambulance to your home?

• They have these things in Europe called trains. And they're fast. Skip the Dollar Rent-a-car delusion.

• [quote] I will spend a full day there because you can never have too much Paris You wouldn't get too much of it in 24 hours, at any rate.

• Nice is nice.

• I feel tired already.

  Why spend a week in Europe flitting about?

• Sounds like a blast, OP!

• Please wear a beret - it doesn't even have to be raspberry.

• When you get to Monaco, stop by the palace. I'll drive you around town and show you the sights.

  Princess%20Stephanie

• Au revoir, Simone, au revoir.

• Nancy is Nice.

  She%20really%20is...

• Reading OP's post was like having dinner with a friend of mine. Every single time.

• Isn't it extremely dangerous to be driving around in a strange foreign country like that? I would never do it.

• No, it's not dangerous, you do need to learn the signs though. I drove in Germany/Austria/Northern Italy a lot, but spent a lot of time there beforehand learning the subtle differences in driving. The autobahn was the bomb!

• take the TGV to Avignon and rent the car from the train station there.

  http://www.tgv-europe.com/

• I love Paris in the springtime, when it sizzles ... One day is hardly enough in Paris. When I was 24 my best friend and I were there and walked from one end of the city to the other, its quite compact, or was in 1970! Then another best friend got married and lived there for a decade (he is gay in San Francisco now) so I visited there a lot and know it so well. One later visit was with my then partner a few months before he died, in 1996. As Bogie says to Ingrid: we will always have Paris.

• Why are you doing all this driving and by yourself? Why just a day. Are you stopping off to see and explore these places - I have been through Carcassone by train and it looks amazing. Always wanted to go to San Remo, it sounds the ideal Italian town and so ideally situated. They used to have an annual music festival there when I was young and it sounded so perfect.

• [quote]Why are you doing all this driving and by yourself? Who says I'm by myself? [quote]Why just a day. Are you stopping off to see and explore these places - I have been through Carcassone by train and it looks amazing. Of course I'll be exploring. Carcassone does sound amazing.