Il fait chaud

After spending the best part of two weeks rushing around trying to pack in as much as possible it was great to get home to our quiet French town and back into the slow lane.  The best part of all is that we came back to heat.  Well, warm rather than hot, but 20 degrees and very sunny - shorts and T-shirt weather.  Great weather for hanging around the park or having a nice glass of red wine on the terrace at our house.
Saturday the boys and I walked the 5km to the Mediterranean.  It is a nice walk along a canal with no cars around.  Hopefully we'll be biking it soon as we bought very cheap secondhand bikes for all of us, trouble is Andy's chain just keeps falling off and we haven't gotten round to fixing it yet - so walking it is, for now.  The boys dunked themselves in the Mediterranean, I paddled.  We left as the sun was starting to set and walked home through the sunset, and into the clear starry night. Was really special, an afternoon I'll remember for a long time. Some photos below.

 The start of the walk - at the Port in Marseillan

Walking along the Canal

 At the beach

 Walking home

This pose was way more beautiful in real life....

Sweden

We went up to Sweden to see where Stewart is spending half his time.  On first impressions, Sweden was almost exactly what I was expecting - great public transport, lots of parents with their kids, and everyone driving Volvos.  We even had an opportunity to experience healthcare when Joe chipped his tooth eating a gummi bear (still not exactly sure how that happened - I know candy is bad for teeth, but....) and the dentist in the public health clinic saw him almost right away.
It seems like a wonderful country, but we all agreed that we're glad that our base is down in the South of France.

We spent days in Lund and Malmo, and a lot of both playing in the wonderful playgrounds.


The Malmo museum cafeteria had a menu just like an IKEA cafeteria in Canada.  Was a bit freaky.  This is the meatball option...

Joe is 10!

Joe celebrated his 10th birthday in Berlin.  He wanted to go to a movie so we went to Star Wars Phantom Menace 3D (English Version) in the Sony Centre in Potsdamer Place.  The cinema was really amazing, easily the best I've ever been in.
Can't believe my baby's 10!!!  How did that happen?  Feed them and they grow, I guess.

Berlin

I've been to Berlin on my own before, and always wanted to go with Stewart and the kids because I thought they'd love it.  They did.  We stayed three days in a great little apartment in the old East Berlin, a real little neighbourhood with stores and bars and everything and right on the tram line to downtown.  The kids were absolutely fascinated by the Wall and we ended up spending most of our first day there talking about the Wall and going to the Checkpoint Charlie museum as well as travelling round the city by tram to some of the bits of Wall that have been left up as monuments.  The kids were fascinated, and Joe astounded that some countries are still putting up walls.

Here are some Wall photos:

We did see some other sights as well.....

At the Brandenburg Gate

 At the Reichstag.  Unfortunately we didn't reserve early enough to go for a tour.

 Playing in the Tiergarten

We came across this (not great) American style diner call Andy's.  Andy was thrilled and we ended up having lunch there - he was very happy!

The Netherlands

We spent a lovely couple of days in the Netherlands with Cameron, exploring The Hague and Amsterdam.  The Amsterdam Dungeon was really good!  Here are a few pics:

On a canal ride in Amsterdam

Bike parking in The Hague

Brussels

We spent day two of our road trip in three countries: we woke in France near the Belgian border, spent the day in Brussels and then drove to The Hague in the evening to stay with Cameron.  In contrast to the amazing French roads, the Belgian roads were a nightmare, and the most common road signs we saw seemed to be ones telling us about the bad road surface.  It was also snowing and raining and foggy and loads of traffic, so none of the pleasure of the previous day's adventures.
We saw the sights of Brussels, though, and had a great time in the Parliamentarium, a museum-type information centre for the European Parliament.  Joe, who is fascinated by politics/history, was fascinated by it, especially the growth as new countries joined and loved the fact that the EU's biggest expansion had been during his lifetime. He thinks Turkey should definitely join, and is extremely concerned with the hole in the map left by Switzerland.  Even though he understands Switzerland doesn't want to join, he thinks they should anyway just so it doesn't look like any country is being excluded.

Road trip!

One of the best things about the French school system are the generous holidays.  The boys are currently on a two week winter break, so we are on a road trip to Northern Europe.  The first day we drove from Marseillan to the Belgian border.  It was a beautiful drive, blue skies and no traffic.  We didn't plan the route or anything so had no idea what we would see on the way so it was really exciting to see castles, mountains, windmills, and most excitingly to go across the very beautiful Millau bridge  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct.

The Millau bridge

Windmills old and new

Il fait froid....

It has been really cold here the last week.  Not Canadian cold, but cold for here - below zero at night and only slightly above during the day. It has been front page news in the local paper all week and people in town are talking about little else.  It feels cold, too.  This house is built to lose heat with high ceilings and skylights, not to conserve it, so the little electric space heaters we have are barely taking the chill off the rooms.  Apparently Wednesday saw the highest ever recorded electricity usage (everyone with their electric space heaters full blast, no doubt), and although the newspaper said there had been no brown-outs, we were without electricity here for at least an hour. 
But despite all this, it is still beautiful and sunny, and the forecast says it will get a lot warmer this weekend, just as the boys start a two week school holiday (and we leave for a trip to Belgium, the Netherlands (to see Cameron), Germany (Berlin), and Sweden).

Les flamants

We've seen flamingos feeding in the close to our house several times now.  This time I had the camera!  They seem close to shore in real life, but still it is difficult to get decent photos with our little camera.  Here are my best efforts.

Les Grottes de Clamouse

The Clamouse caves (http://www.clamouse.com/eng-index.shtml) are supposed to be an hours drive from our house.  We got a bit lost and it ended up taking two hours and some heated map-reading debates!  It was worth it though - the caves were massive and beautifully lit so that all the stalactites and stalagmites looked incredible (even if none of us could remember which goes up and which down, even after having watched the video and going on the hour long tour...).  The caves were formed as the water table dropped and the Herault river sunk into a gorge - there are still pools of water inside, and new caves continue to be formed below the ones we toured. 
Flash photography was forbidden in the caves, so the photos are a bit dark....

Sur le pont d'Avignon

We spent a day exploring Avignon.  The boys often sing the "Sur le pont d'Avignon" song, so it was fun to visit it.  I had no idea it doesn't even cross the river any more.  The really impressive thing in the town was "Le Palais des Papes" http://whc.unesco.org/fr/list/228.  It was the home for Popes in the 13th and 14th centuries and the tour was amazing.  There was hardly anyone there, and we were accompanied nearly all the way by the palace cat, Clementine, and a very enthusiastic tour guide who was kind enough to assume I understood his detailed explanations of papal life delivered in rapid French.  Avignon itself was amazing too.

Andy sur le pont d'Avignon (with the plastic sword he hasn't put down since buying it in Carcassone)

View of the pont from le Palais des papes

 Both boys sur le pont with le palais in the background

Andy is helping me with this blogpost and wanted this one of him sous le pont so you can see the bricks of the pont

Some photos from Le Palais des Papes