A bad morning for me after a sleep challenged night. We had a quick bite in the View buffet before catching the tender to Cannes for our wine and cheese tasting trip to Château de Saint-Martin. No one looked at our tickets at all, instead the French woman guide called names off a list and relied on expected numbers. It felt a little disorganised. A long journey there and back but French roads are better than English ones, and the coach had reasonable air conditioning on this hot day. There's a tradition at "Château de Saint-Martin" of mothers only bearing daughters and so the winemaking being passed down matrilineally. It was a competent woman and her 11-year old daughter who talked us round, and handed out cheese and a variety of wines for us to sample. They mature some of the wines at least in large stone 'vats', nowadays coated with epoxy. Discussion of the fruitiness and flowery scents of the wines went over my head. Virginia and I escaped the shop without spending anything.

A long pilgrimage by coach to worship at Monet's house and garden in Giverny. This is a very popular site, and the narrow paths were packed making getting round difficult to impossible. Pilgrims had come from all round the world. The gardens are well tended and there is a lot to see, the Japanese gardens over the road (accessed by an underpass sponsored by a Japanese) are very photogenic. In the house you see shadows left by Monet.

We docked at La Seyne sur Mer then after a very early breakfast caught coach 5 (moving from coach 4 which we were at the back after they filled the coach without counting how many were on it) to Aix en Provence. Pretty scenery with hilltop villages and vineyards (first in France but the original grapes killed off by phylloxera worm so replaced from California and Texas). Aix is an interesting place, rundown mansions slowly being restored by Unesco. Apple store like a glass pavilion on Mirabeau Avenue (Mirabeau was a dubious character who bought it during the French Revolution). One of our party tried sitting on a rising bollard which slowly descended under him and he slowly fell to the ground!