Saturday, 5 January

Fine

Nice to Avignon

I woke up at half past seven. We left the hotel at half past nine. I drove along the coast. My car passed through Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, Cannes, La Napoule, Saint-Raphaël, and Fréjus. The weather was extemely fine. I stopped many times to take photographs. We did not reach Flassans until ten minutes past one in the afternoon. We lunched at a small restaurant. The food was not so bad, but the price seemed to be rather high. For the three of us, the bill was 2400 francs. We left the restaurant at 2.00 p.m. We then found a quieter place alongside the highway on the outskirts of the town and parked our car there. We all took a nap.

When the car of Baoqiao and Zenghan passed by, we had already woken up and so we continued our journey. At 4.00 p.m., we passed through Aix-En-Provence. At 5.00 p.m., we reached Avignon. We stayed at the Hotel d’Europe, 12 Place Crillon, which we had booked ahead of time. I stayed in Room 48. For three of us, the hotel suite had two rooms with one bathroom, and costed some 4000 francs. We then went out for a walk to the business district of the town. We had dinner at a small restaurant in the square. We had half a dozen oysters, fish, chicken and fruit, which only cost 400 francs per person. This was the cheapest meal of our whole journey. The food was quite good too. At a quarter past eight we were back to the hotel.

It was not until then that the other two cars arrived. We decided on our itineraries for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow; we would follow the practice of today in that we would travel to different places individually. We retired early.