Our daughter Caleigh, who is in the local French school, will be having a two week holiday coming up in a week. We are thinking at this point of returning to the states in mid April, and because of this want to go for a small trip, maybe to Nice and Florence, with Caleigh while school is on break. To make this trip possible, it will have to be done at a minimum expense, since the car is leased with unlimited mileage, I’m guessing that we’re gonna drive. Plotting the route will give us a way to maximize the places of interest that we can visit, and will be our only chance this trip. Places we would like to see, in no particular order; Carcassonne, Montpellier, Nice again, Cahors, Florence, Venice, Bologna, Rome. In discussing it with Cindy her approach is to do Italy, and then separately see Carcassonne, Montpellier, and Cahors some other time. Carcassonne is a 3 to 4 hour drive, so it’s relatively local, as is Cahors, and to a degree so is Montpellier. So this week we’ll narrow in on Italy, and chart a course for our road trip to Italy. While in Eymet, the small town not far from the rented farmhouse we are staying in, we purchased a map of Italy. This will allow us to plan a trip in some fashion of order, as well as the Google earth application. I think we’ve narrowed it down to leaving Eymet, heading to Italy , possibly overnight in Villfrance Sur Mer, just north of Nice. Waking up and heading towards Venice and possibly overnight along the way, then arriving the next day in Venice, staying for three days, then head to Florence. Well, we’ll have a week to fine tune this plan. Because we all know that the best laid plans of mice and men………My logic behind this whole trip was crystallized earlier today, when I said to Cindy. “You know if you look at these four months in France, its kind of like eight years of two week vacations all rolled into one.” Of course you could divide the long term rentals, leased car, and the fact we only had to fly over here once, what a savings. Boo Radley C.P.A.