Category ‘08.24 – France’

Ben and I spent about 3 days exploring Provence, France.  Our rental car was great for driving through the countryside and visiting small towns (but a bit stressful driving and parking in the cities).  We stayed 2 nights in Arles, and one night further north in the Cote du Rhone area.  If I were doing it over, I’d spend more time exploring the Cote du Rhone hill towns, they’re beautiful.

Here’s some of the highlights from Southern France… (more…)

We rented a car for 4 days for a road trip through southern France from Perpignan to Annecy.  The region is filled with Roman ruins, medieval castles, and endless fields of grape vines.  It is also where Van Gogh made his most famous paintings.

View Drive in Southern France in a larger map
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Ben briefly mentioned Carcassonne in a previous post… but since then we took a few more photos that I wanted to share.

Carcassonne is really quite the sight.  It’s a fairy tale medieval castle in real life.   The walled city is huge and it’s always open so you can walk around and get lost on the tiny cobblestone streets.  We really enjoyed it, and I think kids would love it too.  However, (more…)

The next phase of our European adventure is a road trip through southern France.  We started today by taking a train from Barcelona to Perpignan, France.  We had concocted a scheme to save €35 by renting our car on the outskirts of Perpignan instead of at the train station.  This resulted in a spectactular misadventure not unlike you might see on The Amazing Race – we took a bus with no idea of where to get off, we walked around an industrial district loaded down with our overstuffed backpacks and attempted to converse with people using our limited French (consisting mostly of “Parle vous Engles?” – the answer is always no – and words like “rendezvous”, “reconnaissance”, and “raconteur”), and eventually (more…)

At night the Eiffel Tower twinkles every hour for 5 minutes.  Check out this video I took:

That same night, I decided to take a photo of a person with the Eiffel Tower.  So I turned on my small Canon Point & Shoot camera, and guess what icon it has for night portraits?  (more…)

One of our days in Paris included a side trip to Versailles, the grand palace built by Louis XIV and also later inhabited by the famous Marie-Antoinette.  This place is huge and immaculate.  You might be able to imagine what the palace would look like – rich and lavish and gaudy.  But you could never imagine the size of the gardens unless you see it yourself.  There are statues and flowers and fountains and manicured trees and hedges and lakes and an enormous canal.  And then, away from that palace, (more…)

I really love Paris!  This city is just so pretty.  There’s not really any better way to describe it, it’s just really really pretty.

Our first day here was awesome.  We got up early and headed straight for the Eiffel Tower.  It is so cool to see in person.  I thought it might be one of those places that you expect to be amazing but when you see it it’s disappointing.  It wasn’t one of those places.  We rode the elevators all the way to the top.