Up at 9 for coffee and the weather is beautiful. Word has it there is a market in Flayosc, so we go — Mike, Liz, Patty M, Jim and Jane G. There is no market. But we find street-side paella and buy enough for lunch for all.

We stop at a fruit market for salad greens, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lavender honey. We take a crazy, rotten back road to get back to the villa and scare off a few wild boar hunters. Everybody jumps into the pool, except for Liz, who specializes in hiding from the sun.

Dinner is taglietelle carbonera and green salad with oranges and avocado. In the heat of eating, Mike stubs his pinkie on one of the bajillion wrought iron chairs and breaks his toe. Luckily, we have a nurse who diagnoses him. Yup, it’s broken.

We are in bed by midnight, our flashlights on our bedstands and the lizards watching over us in the night.

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We stop in Draguignan for groceries to make sure we have something to eat at the villa. Major hubbub with French people darting this way and that. They know what to do in a French supermarket, and we do not. We are at the villa by 5:20. The guardian gives us a whirlwind tour. It’s enormous and spectacular — nine bathrooms and 82 chairs.

BUT, there is no Internet (bummer) or toilet paper (it’s always something). The rest of our party arrives. There is a big to-do over bedrooms and furniture-swapping and sheet-finding. We end the day with leisurely wine-drinking on the veranda and are tucked in our beds by 11.

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The “Usual Suspects”