Flight arrived on time. The meals on BA were awful. Didn't eat anything on the plane, luckily we had a snack before boarding. We had a 4 hour wait for our connection but it seemed to go fairly quickly. Both Dorothy and Maija had their bags checked at security...and saying 'checked' is not strong enough. They took them totally apart, and even took their 100 ml liquids away to put them in a scanner. Must have taken 20 minutes or more. Good thing we had a lot of time to kill.

Flight to Marseilles was a little late but they made up the time . The flight was only 1.5 hours and we landed by 4:30. Our limo got us to the hotel by 6:00PM. Le Calendal Spa Hotel, a quirky little place, about 45 rooms spread over several buildings with a large garden in the centre. No 2 rooms are alike. Our building only has 4 rooms, 2 up and 2 down. Ours overlooks the Roman amphitheatre. The hotel is in the centre of the old town in the midst of a warren of tiny streets.

We met the rest of the group, 13 of us plus our tour manager Maryse Blouin, the bus driver, and 2 other reps who are training with Collet All are American except the four of us and Maryse, who is from Quebec.

We had a group dinner in the hotel which was delicious. Our table of 6 had the cod in a beurre blanc that was awesome, except for Paul who had the bull 'stew', which was tender but just tasted like beef stew, which is what it is I guess! The rice was grown locally in the Camargue, where we are going tomorrow. It was white and brown mixed, and was really flavourful. The dessert was called Tiramasu, but must be the French version as it was really light with just some graham crumbs on the bottom and topped with a lovely whipped cream and some berries. Much nicer than the Italian version. They have house wine that is very nice, especially the rose, and it is 4 Euros a glass.

Our group is very friendly and it will be interesting to get to know them.

It is now 9:30 PM and have been up for who knows how long...36 hours maybe. Time for bed.

There were clear skies and 25C today.