Heya, we are in Madrid, Spain, in a couple days we fly back to England and then on Oct 1 to New Zealand. We haven´t had much blog updating time so we´ll just publish this bit of our journeys in France that we began preparing a few weeks ago, hope to fill in the gaps soon though!:
Our final day in France! Mike has spent the last two weeks trying to run away from French cheese but rather unsuccessfully as the pungent odor permeates even the double glazed fromagerie windows 
. But aside from this minor detail our time in France has been un experience tres charmant. Mike has had ample opportunity to practice his French, since our hitchhiking lifts rarely speak more than a few words of English, but occasionally the chatting switches to Spanish. Mike is looking forward to hitch hiking in Spain when he can relax in the back seat and sleep while Carli-Ann maintains the conversation in Spanish. When the drivers ask why we are taking such a non direct route in France Mike always gets a laugh with "Nous essayons dessiner une étoile dans notre carte" (We are trying to draw a star on our map).
We spent four fabulous days in Paris with Julien, our Hospitality Club host. After doing the cliché Parisian activities (climbing the tower, eating a ten dollar crepe, and peeking through the throngs to glimpse the Mona Lisa) he took us out for some more local pastimes (like playing pool in a Cajun bar). His flat was in one of the saucier neighbourhoods so the muted clamour in the street kept us entertained, as did the pigeons that flapped in through his open window and pecked at the stinky cheese on the counter.
Hitchhiking has proved to be a delicious way to pass the time in France, and contrary to the opinions we heard so many times in England, we found the French to be incredibly hospitable! I know, I know, even the French people we revealed this to were surprised! Seven times in a period of two days our hitch hiking lifts offered us a bed to sleep in if we didn´t make it to our destination that day, and twice we took up the offer! And our hospitality club experience has been top notch as well. In Dieppe we were introduced to the concept of the lengthy multi-course French meal by our host Ludo, after checked out the museum about the Canadian contribution to WW2, and the enormous chalk cliffs, of course. In the quirky, crooked medieval streets of Rouen we were given a fantastic walking tour by Virginie and Hugues that enchanted us with the night time projection of Monet paintings on their cathedral, and were gracious enough to offer us plates with our breakfast to avoid confusing the poor North Americans.
Our second Rouen evening was passed with sipping wine at an outdoor cafe with Maeva and Kevin and their friends from his punk band, Youssof Today, and a fellow passionate HCer, Morgane. Next we went on a mission: winding our way through the Normandy countryside to locate the Canadian war cemetary near Caen where Carli-Ann´s grandma Betty´s brother is buried, and then proceeded to pass the following three days hitch hiking to Lyon, which we anticipated would take a single day. Come on, its only 433 kilometers, but we took the exceptionally long route, as everyone is quite keen to point out. But this path did take us hitch hiking on the Formula One race track at Le Mans, a night with a French family who owned a wine store, and on a close encounter with the ditch at night which left us and the driver all fine but without a vehicle to continue our journey as the frame was bent beyond repair. But the insurance paid for a taxi for us and our driver to the next town and for a night in a hotel and breakfast, so we considered ourselves lucky in a strange way.
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