Welcome to France, Open Your Wallet.

It’s great to be back in Toulon. And it was nice to see that the Mistral winds had not taken away my boat. It was as I left it 2 and a half months ago except for my three daughters that have been staying on it. They have been marooned for about 5 days waiting for me to catch up with them. The batteries had been drained for a couple of days and they thought they were out of water. I showed them how to pump the water when the batteries are gone. We stayed for a couple of more days trying to find my bike and dingy that I had shipped over here. Turns out they were being held hostage by the customs. Just pay them 500 euro and we could get them out of hock. We ended up leaving the money with the capitanaria and heading to Porquerolles some islands right off of Toulon. It was a welcome break. Very beautiful islands. It is where Napoleon sent his best soldiers that had done heroric deeds as a reward and to recover. Seemed like a fitting place after our ordeal in getting to France. There is an old fort up at the top of the hill still giving a commanding presents to the area. We met a British couple and spent a couple of hours swapping political views, customs and ethnocentric habits. It was fun getting a British take on Americans and the cultural differences between us. The next day we went back to Toulon to pick up my FedEx deliveries which fortunately had finally arrived. We made one last trip to the Carrefour (Frances version of Wal-Mart) to stock up on as much as we could carry and set our sails east. We got out of Toulon so late, we ended up going to Porquerolles one more night before heading off to St. Tropez.