Six final stops in familiar, convivial France, is how we rounded out Z2A2, taking our total hotel/BNB count to 39! ~5 per week. A cracking pace for the oldest backpackers in Europe.

Alternative titles for this final blog included:

• Strategic dehydration
  • When you have 39 pillows, 12 boat trips, 7 hire cars, 4 budget flights, 3 car transfers, 2 trains and 1 canoe ride, plus many hours on foot over 8 weeks, you do tend to manage the outflows by controlling the inflows and dink a little less water than you should under the summer sun…or at least replace it with Champagne/wine/raki
• Sunflowers
  • Due to us starting out in Paris before heading to the country side and driving past fields of bright eyed sunflowers in full bloom, and then, almost 2 months later, heading back to Paris, driving in the country side past all the worn out, weary, sunburnt and droopy sunflowers after a hot European summer…a perfect analogy for our own transformation
• Money Throwing
  • Second only to “How is that a park?”, the most common phrase between us must have been “let’s just throw money at the situation”
• Belt tightening
  • Covering multiple bases, one foreseeing our near future to overcome the “throwing money” and secondly, to describe the literal belt tightening due to 8 weeks of a bread based diet (no pain, no gain as we say in France)

From our elusive Z in Zadar we flew Ryan Air to Marseille, sans applause on landing.  A town we’ve avoided on all previous 6 trips to France based off Lea’s experience 20+ years prior.  However, partially due to a 600 million Euro investment as part of the European Capitals of Culture program in 2013, other measures to pedestrianise the waterfront and encourage tourists into the once scary old town, and partially due to the sheer relief/disbelief we’d successfully passed through so many pain points to be back in France, we found Marseille to be delightful! We did one of the best walking tours of the trip, James got to drink Pastis for aperitifs, Lea ordered the most expensive fish soup we’ve ever had, before muttering, “I’m not really sure I like fish soup”…The waiter’s orders for her to add more garlic and MORE CHEESE into her FISH dish (after weeks in Italy smuggling my parmesan under the table) was enough for her to fall in love. Vive la France!

Another day in France, another protest. Lea had scheduled us a Catamaran boat trip out to the Calanques national park and, confident trains and buses were at least cancelled to where we were picking up the boat, we stood on the Marseille docks next to a ferry watching the protests kick off earlier than expected and watching the ferry staff sit, smoking and staring back at us.  We couldn’t help but worry this was just another (albeit elaborate) part of the protest, but suddenly, a mere 2 minutes before scheduled departure, things kicked into gear and we were off!  We spent a stunning day at sea, swimming, drinking house rose, lunching at anchor next to a nudist beach/rock (continuing the run of disappointment in the viewing options at said beaches) and talking with a cop from Queensland to remind us our days jobs back home really aren’t that hard.  We closed out our last night in Marseille watching very serious street pétanque competitions, reminding us of our early days on Rotto circa 2006.

From Marseille, we slowly made our way to Bordeaux in our final car, an MG3 we had to beg to get instead of the “free upgrade”, and along the way:

• We stopped for a wander around picturesque Montpellier, looked for a light salad lunch, but stumbled into and waddled away from the best duck confit we’ve ever had
• Dined at the markets in Beziers
• Played the board game “Carcassonne” on our balcony in Carcassonne
• Lea ate duck, duck, goose over 3 days in France…it actually ended up being: duck, duck, goose, chicken, duck, duck, duck over 6 days
• Got in a strange conversation in Carcassonne when explaining our next stop was in Sarlat. Pron: Sar-lah. Or apparently not. After Lea’s best Sar-lah yet (instead of usual Sar-lat) was met with no response to the shop owner (living 2 hours from said town and never having visited) only to reply “Ohhhh, you mean ‘SAR-lah’, zis is difficult for you”… “Euh, yeah mate I think she just said ‘Sar-LAH’…” “Yes, of course, but no it’s ‘SAR-lah’..” This continued for some time and totally cost her us buying more cheese…we still bought enough cheese
• Managed to see 3 light shows in 3 towns over 3 nights, as we happened across a random water/light show in Beziers, walked the walks of Carcassonne at night (planned), and saw lights on a church from our balcony in Sarlat (SAR-lah), after watching hot air ballons float past, and wandered down for yet another breathtakingly detailed show over the cathedral/church (nobody really knows the difference)
• James walked into a stinging nettle bush minutes into his break from driving after heading to town through ever narrowing streets and through the first old town gates of trip (on second last driving day).  Now I’ve heard of stinging nettle, I didn’t think I’d ever seen it before, and I certainly didn’t recognise it at the time, but f**k me if every plant I saw for the rest of the trip didn’t look like stinging nettle!
• We got grounded in a canoe on the Dordogne… in rain…and finally got in our paddling groove after many a-“your other lefts” (groove=floating with a glass of wine looking at the cliffs and castles and letting the river do the work)
• Saw immobile geese in fields looking like they’d had too much too eat
• Sat immobile on our balcony in Domme after eating too much of some parts of geese that have had too much to eat…and wondered what was next in line in the food chain to eat our fattened livers
• Got to finally say (or try to say) “brouillard” as we woke up to fog over the Dordogne valley
• Posed with panache at Cyrano’s statue in Bergerac (and, no, nobody told me to say that)
• Managed to check in on time to our flat in Bordeaux after a tense-tete-a-tete-via-text by a lady we were told “doesn’t speak good French”, to which we replied, “parfait! Nous don’t either”.  Then watched the doubled over sunset at the mirroir d’eau
• Met up with our Croatian travel buddies in our FINAL stop, back in Paris for the 3^rd time in 2025 and ate rotisserie chickens in our Parisian home
• Explored some new spots in Paris, and shared some favourite old spots with our first time friends
• Had our Opera Garnier experience cancelled…because of more strikes (having experienced strikes on each of our 7 visits to France, we’re beginning to think we’re the problem)…but watched the most amazing sunset over Notre Dame, the Eiffel tower and Sacre Coeur instead
• And spent half our final day watching enterprising <traveling people> hustle crowds with the ball and cup game under the Eiffel tower…drinking Champagne, and then, drinking more Champagne watching the lighting crack over the city from our balcony.

Finally, after 39 pillows, we made it safely back home, where, thankfully and comfortably, European pillows are just for decoration…and to absorb a few tears as the memories and realisation that it was all over flooded in*.

* Editor’s Note: We had the most incredible experience exploring new parts of the world on Z2A2, and while we absolutely love travelling and chasing the grape together, we also realise how lucky we are to have each other and the lives we have made for ourselves back home.  I’m so very privileged to always be the first person to read these blogs and watch James count how many times I laugh, before I then unfortunately have to remove “most” of the funny parts so we can publish this online.  Most importantly, I want to say thank you to my amazing husband and travel buddy for taking me on a second Z2A adventure – I’m more in love with you than ever.  And when’s the next holiday??

See all about Z2A2 here: Z2A2

And don’t forget the Z2A2 updates: Z2A2 list