Trip to France

For the children's October break from school we drove to the Provence region of France and spent a charming week in a little cottage in a tiny Hamlet "Hamlet des Crottes". Because we did not have internet access for the week we were there (!) I kept notes the old fashioned way and am finally getting around to post them.

October 4th

We got up early and were on the road by 7:30 for the 9 hour drive from Frankfurt to "Le Pigeonnier", the name of the house we had rented for the week. The trip was uneventful and the kids basically ate their way through the trip. We did have a couple of rousing rounds of "Find the Vehicle" Each kid got a type of vehicle to look for and then had to search for 10 minutes Whoever found the most got M&M's. Thomas claimed it wasn't fair that he had to find purple campers being towed behind orange cars while Noah had black sedans. Every group needs a whiner!

The house was fantastic, three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. A kitchen with a wood burning stove which came in handy drying out clothes (more on that later), a living room with a fireplace and a little patio/balcony with a table. It had it's own wooden archway as an entrance. (You will note the absence of photos-more on that later as well). Above the arch was a brick with the date 1775 carved into it! Very old! Everyone happily found a bed and we had dinner! Peabody explored the back yard and made friends with the old basset hound that lived next door.

October 5

We went to the Gorges of Ardeche. A huge stone bridge over the river D'Ardeche. We let the kids play by the river for a while and climb over the rocks. Noah was quite anxious to go rock climbing and this seemed the safest way to give him that experience. We then drove through the town of Pont Vallon D'Arc scouting out places that were open in the off season so we could go canoeing later in the week. We went to the Aven d"Orgnac (huge cave) and went on the official tour. It of course was in French so Jon and I translated the best we could for the kids. We walked down through the caves and then had an elevator ride up and out! Noah was disappointed that there weren't any bats. We were all impressed with the stalagmites! We had a picnic lunch.

Now is a good time to explain about the picture situation. The deal with the lack of pictures is that our digital camera is broken, it finally succumbed to being dropped one too many times. We weren't that concerned because my phone has a nice camera on it. While we were eating lunch Thomas was taking a picture when an insect landed on him. I claim it was a fly he claims bee, regardless it caused him to fling my phone up into the air landing with a crash, battery and sim card flying. I collected the bits and reassembled it. It still worked although asked me for my PIN. I had no idea what the PIN was so no more camera and that is why there are only three pictures for the week! So here they are!

The other bummer about the caves was that Thomas lost his Ipod. WE think it may have been stolen out of the car. He left it on his seat and when we came back from the caves it was gone.

Monday October 6th

Today we drove down to Orange to visit the Theatre Antique D'Orange. Very interesting. We all got an audio tour guide in English so we could all walk through and learn about what we were seeing. We had lunch at a nice little pizzeria and desert at a bakery of course. We saw the Arc de Triomphe. I guess all French cities have one! On the way home we stopped at the Fortress of Mornas. It was a fortress at the top of a huge hill. I struggled to walk up and Noah and Sophie literally ran up! The hit of the fortress was the torture chamber. Thomas got to spend some time on the rack!

October 7th

It was a bit cloudy but the kids were extremely anxious to go canoeing today and very reluctant to do two days of sightseeing in a row so we headed off to find a canoe. We found a place that we had driven past the other day that we knew would be open. We went in and asked for two canoes. Jon took Sophie and Noah in one and Thomas and I would go in the other. I guess my first warning should have been was that they provided us with wet suits. We walked our canoes down to the rivers edge. They were actually more like a cross between a canoe and a kayak. Not the most stable boat I have ever been in! This was proved further a little later on when Thomas and I hit a rock and both got spilled out of the canoe. Luckily the water was not freezing and only shin deep. We got back into the canoe/kayak and decided since we were wet already we should continue (never mind the fact that we were several miles into the trip at this point and had to continue if we wanted to meet the bus at the pick up point! Jon and the two little guys seemed to fair a little better until they also got caught on some rocks. They didn't spill out but Jon had to get out of the boat to dislodge it. The water suddenly got deep so Jon ended up swimming for awhile with the boat. Noah and Sophie thought this was great. We returned to the house wet and happy that there was a wood burning stove to help with the drying out process!

October 8th

Lots of rain today but we braved Avignon anyway. It was raining so hard when we arrived we drove through the old town and past the famous bridge. It is really only half a bridge. We parked and walked up into the old town for lunch. By the time we found a restaurant we were soaked to the bone. We could not have been wetter if we had gone swimming in our clothes. We had a nice lunch (Thomas tried duck liver pate-he didn't know what it was at the time). We then went on the the Palais du Pope. I didn't know that the Pope lived in France but he did for several hundred years and had quite the house! We did a little wine tasting on the way home!

October 9th

Today we drove through several little medieval towns doing some wine tasting and visiting the Gummi Bear Museum! We stopped at a potters workshop and he showed the kid how he makes his pottery. We were going to drive by the Pont du Gard and just take a look without doing the full blown tour but incredibly you can not see it unless you pay to park and walk through the grounds. We opted not too and did more wine tasting instead!

October 10th

Today was our last day and everybody voted to do outside activities instead of sightseeing so hiking it was. We were staying up on the ridge of a high valley. We thought we might try to walk down to the river. After following a trail for about 45 minutes we were about half way down. I made the executive decision that it was too far given how difficult the way back up would be. Noah was very disappointed! The excitment of the day was when we returned home and were cleaning up to go home and I found what I think was a scorpion in the bathroom. Jon gallantly disposed of it! Anybody have any idea if there are scorpions in Southern France?

Great vacation!