It was a very long day June 6th, 2003.
But (and if the links for the photos worked you could see how cute I looked regardless of the grime.) notice that we're still smiling...I think it was out of mere exhaustion and surprise. After 20 + hours of train travel (all due to the French train strikes, thank you very much!) We (along with 3 others) all arrived at our planned destination (Octon, France) at approximately 10:30 pm. Approximately 20 hours after we had left from Verona, Italy. The trip via train is only supposed to take 12 hours. I'm surprised that we were even able to sit up, let alone smile about it and have a drink of wine for dinner.

But it was all definitely worth it. The entire point of the trip was for a friends wedding. A whole day affair in the bucolic landscape of the Languedoc region of southern France. The image below is from the garden of a lovely abbey where we had an all day reception and party for the happy couple. The church in the center of the photo was where the two got married in an all French ceremony (where incidentally 1/2 of the attendants didn't speak a word of French.)The entire wedding party didn't consist of more than approximately 70 people, but it could not have been the more perfect size for the occasion. Kids, adults and friends alike all danced, sang and had a great time, until they kicked us out around 2 am. (the food wasn't bad either...mmmm foi grais)
*edited 'cause the freakin pics weren't loading and I'm too lazy to try and load them to a secured server