Family visits! (part 8) - the last one :)

On Monday, my family called me and told me that they would be going to Italy for the next few days.  They went to a place called Lake Maggiore in Northern Italy, only a few hours from here.  Even though I myself did not go, I will not deprive you of their European experiences.  Here is what I got from them:
To get to Italy, they had to drive through Switzerland and thus right through the Alps.  Even though it was in the 70s in Chambéry, there was still snow up in these mountains.

This is Lake Maggiore (there are two islands in the middle)

They went to a castle; I believe it is the one you can see across the lake in the picture above.  It had white peacocks (as any proper castle should).

Here they are at a restaurant.  My mom says that the food there was much better than in France (It's much more her style: more tomatoes, less meat)

On Wednesday, they came back to meet me in Chambéry.  We got some lunch and spent the day shopping around.  

My grandma and grandpa also got some more chocolate from Jeff de Bruges to take home to their friends.  Then they went on their way to Geneva.
It was so happy to have had my family come visit me.  It was awesome to share some of this experience with them and to get to see places that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Family visits! (part 7)

The plan on Sunday was for us to leave around 10 or 11 am from Beaucaire in order to head back to Chambéry, where I would be dropped off.  Then my parents and grandparents would go to Geneva to spend the night and catch and early morning flight out of the airport there.  Now, we did get out of Beaucaire around 11 am, but if any of you remember, this was the week that the volcano in Iceland erupted.  On the way back to Chambéry, they found out that their flights for the next day would be cancelled.  After about an hour of being on hold with several different people, they managed to get their flights rescheduled for Thursday.  Given all of the extra time, we decided to make a stop off in Grenoble on the way to Chambéry.

When we got there, we had lunch in a plaza and then took the cable cars up to the fort at the top of the hill.

We stopped on the viewing platform again to look out over the city.  It was beautiful.  The mountains were fairly clear that day.

After seeing the platform, we went up higher to the top of the fort.  I hadn't seen this before.  It had some pretty amazing views of the mountains.

After that, we headed to Chambéry.  We sat around in my room so that they could see if they could try something to get home sooner.  It was to no avail.  They also couldn't change their reservation in Geneva so they headed there anyway, unsure about what they would do the next three days.  I had class, so I couldn't go with them.

Family visits! (part 5)

On Friday, we decided to go to Aix-en-Provence to do some shopping.  There wasn't a lot to see in terms of sights (although Cezanne's studio is there, but we didn't see it), but it was a really cute little town.

Right when we got there, we headed to the office of tourism to get a map of town.  We got lost a lot wherever we went so it was always good to have maps.

We shopped around for a bit and my mom got a really cute little bracelet from a store that sold jewelry inspired by nature.  My grandma also found a cute shirt from a store in town.  We had lunch at a little sandwich/ crêperie store.  Afterwards we found a chocolate store for dessert called Jeff de Bruges.  We have one in Chambéry but I hadn't tried it yet.  Everyone agreed it was the best we'd had.  My grandpa also found a very colorful cookie store so my mom took a picture in it.

Then, as if we hadn't had enough sweets already, we headed to a candy store so that we could get a sample of my favorite European candy (Lutti Fili-tubs) so that my family could try it.  They're delicious!


After Aix-en-Provence, we headed down to Marseilles (an old port town on the Mediterranean Sea) thinking that we could maybe see the Chateau d'If, which is the world-famous prison that is also one of the key settings in my favorite movie The Count of Monte Cristo.  The outskirts of the city were quite dirty with trash everywhere on the streets.  The inner part of the city was nice although extremely congested with traffic, so nobody really wanted to stay.  We hopped out at the Tourist Office just to get a map to figure out how to get out of town.  Here is the one and only picture that I took in Marseille:

After we got out of Marseilles, we headed up to Les Baux, a medieval fortress turned tourist attraction.  It was awesome.  Somewhat like Mont Saint Michel (a cathedral set on an island-y hill in Normandy), it was set high up on the top of a hill/mountain.  I don't have any pictures of it from a distance but I have pictures of the view.  We parked at the very top of the parking lot which looked out over the country-side:

Right next to where we parked there was a rock formation that we climbed up.  At the top it had a little peep-hole.

When we got inside, there was a medieval town below the fort.  Everything was made of stone, with cobbled paths.  Even going into the stores was like walking into caverns.

The scenery around it was very rocky intermixed with plants.  My dad and I standing in front of it:

This picture point in another direction.  You can kind of see the more modern town below (at the bottom of the photo), but I mostly took it because I liked the colors.

After walking through the medieval village, we headed up to the actual fortress itself.  

Right when you walk in, there is a catapult (which I learned is called a "couillard").  

After that, we wandered around what's left of the fortress (which is actually quite a bit) and looked at the magnificent views.

As you go through, you just keep going up stairs and then more stairs until you're at the very top of the fort.

We hadn't originally planned on going to Les Baux but it was really cool.  I'm so glad we did!

Family visits! (part 4)

The following day, we set off for Beaucaire, a small river port town off of the Rhone, where we rented a small apartment for the five us to stay in.  It was a pretty centralized location for all of the towns that we wanted to see.  It was about a 3 hour drive from Lyon, which is very long when squished in the back seat of a car with two other people.
On the way there we stopped at the Pont du Gard right outside of a town called Orange.  The Pont du Gard is a Roman aqueduct that still stands over the Gard River.  Because Rick Steve's lied to us about how much it cost to park, we parked off on a side road and hiked over to it.  It was a lovely walk full of olive groves and older broken down parts of the aqueduct.

When we finally got up the aqueduct, it was much more gigantic and amazing than I was expecting.  I might even call this my favorite thing that we saw on the whole trip (maybe).

One of the cool things about this was that it actually formed a bridge over the river and they let you walk on it (which doesn't usually happen with ancient structures).

Here are the views from each side of the aqueduct, it's funny how they almost seem like two completely different places:

On the other side, we got a woman to take a group picture.

After that, we crossed back over the bridge.  My grandpa wanted to go around to the other side of the Pont du Gard because the sun was shining on that side, so he and I did that while the others went to get the car (the pictures look different because they're from different cameras)

Also while we were over there, there were some people canoeing underneath it which I thought would have been completely awesome!

After that, we headed to Beaucaire and got settled into the apartment there:

Before wasting too much time there, we headed out to see Avignon, a walled city.  The picture on the right is me and my dad standing into the entrance to the wall.  For those of you that are not history or french people, there are two major attractions in Avignon, the Palais des Papes (the Palace of the Popes) and the Pont d'Avignon (a bridge).
The Papacy was moved to Avignon in 1305 because of the danger of armed disagreements between Roman nobles.  In 1378 due to rising tensions between France and the Holy Roman Empire, Gregory XI moved the Papacy back to Rome.  His predecessor, an Italian, then deliberately alienated France.  After his election, the french cardinals formed their own conclave and elected anti-popes, who lived in Avignon.  This schism ended in 1417 with the Council of Constance.
The palais des papes was interesting.  It was very large, very cold, and very stoney.

The inside was too dark to take pictures of, but here are some pictures of us in the courtyard.

They gave you these gigantic cellphone-like thing that told you about every room in your own language; it was interesting but got kind of long before too long.

After the pope's palace, my grandparents took a break for a glass of wine and my parents and I headed to the Pont d'Avignon.  I was excited to see it because there is a well-known french children's song about it that we'd learned in French class.  The bridge only goes halfway across one side of the fork of the Rhone River because much of it was destroyed by flooding. 

Here again they gave us the giant cellphone-like things to tell us about what we were seeing:

They had stairs that took you down onto a platform closer to the river, here are my parents on the platform:


The story of the Pont d'Avignon is actually really interesting.  It's also called the Pont Saint Bénezet for the shepherd boy who was told by angels to build it.  He was apparently ridiculed at first.  To prove that it was a message of God, Bénezet was asked to lift an impossibly heavy rock into place to start the foundation for the bridge.  When he succeeded, it was considered a miracle and the bridge was built.

Here is the view of the palais des papes from the bridge:

That night, my dad had made reservations for us at a French cuisine restaurant (probably more french than any of us had eaten at thus far on the trip).  It was called Au Tout Petit and I suppose if you like French food (which I don't particularly), it would have been very good.  As for me I got the vegetarian dish which turned out to be a whole lot of mushrooms. :-/  

It was funny because at every restaurant that we went to, my family asked for a suggestion of a dry red wine.  Now I don't know anything about wines, but this always seemed to perplex the restaurant people. They kept saying that red wines weren't really dry.  It just amused me because no matter how many times they'd been told that, they kept asking for dry red wines. :-)
For dessert, I got an apricot ice cream dish.  It was really bad, but my mom and grandma's chocolate caramel lava cake was really good (minus the caramel)

Overall, it was an awesome day!  We got to see a lot of stuff that I'd been looking for.