Provence and French Riviera: Part 1

Jake and I hopped on a bargain Ryanair flight and flew in to Marseille on the 5th.  Flying Ryanair is definitely a budget flying experience, but you can't beat flights around Europe for £10 each way!  We packed our stuff neatly into one teeny tiny Euro carry on bag each for the week (they make you pay a crazy amount to check a bag) and then hopped in the little Smart car we rented once in France.  We drove all over the region and hit all the places we were wanting to see.  It was great to have the week to ourselves!  We've really been blessed with great friends here.  Luke and Ella got to play with the Willeys while we were gone.  Despite Ella getting pukey sick one day, they had a good time.      

We stayed in a little family-run vacation home in the countryside just outside of Aix-en-Provence.  The couple that runs the place built 4 hotel style rooms just off the side of their home.  They spoke hardly any English, but were very nice.  In the mornings they would make us crepes or some other sort of breakfast tastiness.  She was a great cook.  The only real issue we had with the place was with the shower.  The thing had jets inside that were pointing straight out of the shower and someone before us happened to leave them on the 'on' position.  Anyhow, Jake got up to shower and couldn't figure out how to turn the thing on, and after I gave it a whirl, water came shooting out at me and all over the bathroom and the clothes that were in there.  Gah!  Seriously, craziest shower ever.  Funny memory though!

And the outside of the place...

    

Our first night there we went into Aix-en-Provence for dinner.  The town has some amazing restaurants.  We ended up going into Aix a lot on our trip!  More on Aix later.  Our first full day out was spent in Nimes ("neem") and Avignon.  Nimes has some pretty cool Roman ruins throughout the city, like the best preserved Roman arena in the world.  

We climbed around inside it for a while.  The view of the city was pretty cool from the top.  

Jake checking out our handy dandy Rick Steves travel book.  We look a little like tourists, huh?

And here's another site that puts Nimes on the map:  the Maison Carrée.  Acc to Rick Steves, it rivals Rome's Pantheon as the most complete building that survives from the Roman Empire.

 

We walked around in the park by the Temple of Diana and then hiked up to the Tour Magne.  I made the mistake of bringing just one pair of warmer boots and one pair of flats... lets just say the boots I took were not made for walking all day long in.  Not with pregnant feet anyway!  My feet were definitely  feeling it by the end of the day.  The area was so pretty though.  Cool place to walk around!

The Tour Magne ...

And a windy view of the city from the top!

 

First century Temple of Diana...

 So many boulangeries and patisseries to choose from and only 5 days to try things!  We bought several flavors of macaroons at this patisserie.   So tasty!  My fav was framboise

Provence is the wine and olive region of France.  We drove through lots of vineyards and past fields and fields of olive trees.  No leaves on any of them yet since it's so early in the spring, but still fun to see.

After Nimes we went over to Avignon.  Avignon is a super cute town to walk through!  It's home to the  Palais des Papes.   The Catholic church bought the city in 1309 and popes over the next century lived here.

Pretty much found the coolest old door ever here.  Looks like it's had a long life!  

Inside the courtyard of the palace...

A lot of the rooms inside have big paintings in them and you aren't allowed to take pictures, but here's one that I could.

Outside...one of the towers..

Views of the city from the top...

Walking on the Pont St. Bénezet....

We spent a lot of time just walking around the city.   Fun day!   We ended it with dinner at a restaurant called L 'Epice and Love where I ordered a disgusting sausage.  haha.  The only bad meal on the trip!   I had forgotten that my friend had warned me not to order sausage in France.  Bad move.  And I thought it was the only safe choice on the menu.  Jake thought it was gross too and that is saying something.  And that wraps up our first day of sight seeing.  More on the rest of our France trip later.  Looking at this computer screen is giving me a headache!  

Because some things are just better off base... I'm a big fan of Sainsbury's.

We've probably saved money being closer to the commissary now than Sainsbury's, but I still go to Mildenhall to grab some of our favourite things.   Just about all produce is better off base.  Most of the fruit and veg at the commissary is past its' prime by the time it arrives at Lakenheath.  You can almost be guaranteed tasty strawberries if you buy them off base.  A lot of the time fruit and veggies are cheaper on the local economy too.    

Sainsbury's carries great bread.  They have a  really good bakery, but the Kingsmill brand that's everywhere in England is where it's at lately for us.  No crust!  Saves me a few seconds when packing lunches  in the mornings since I don't have to cut crust off sandwiches!  Luke and Ella are stinkers about crust.

I love Innocent smoothies.  Delicious!

They come in cute little kid pouches, too.   

 We love pan au chocolate.

And of course the candy.  I saw these on base the other day for Easter, but Cadburry Eggs are on the shelves year-round off base.  Tasty little buggers.  The Cadburry factory isn't too far from here.  One of these days I want to visit it.

 
Other Sainsbury's favourites are the  premade sandwiches, dinner for 2 kits (especially the Indian ones!) and their awesome cheese and yogurt selections.  Yum.

Dover Castle

Last Saturday we went with the Willeys and the Lakes to Dover Castle.  We've seen signs for it when going other places but had never stopped to check it out.  It's a little more than a two hour drive if I remember correctly.  Anyway, it's right on the edge of some of the famous white cliffs, and since it's on the coast, it was cold!!   If there weren't so many places in this country that I wanted to see before we move, I'd save travelling for March-early October.  Cool place though.  I'm glad we went.   Driving up to the castle...

The castle entrance...

One of the first things we did was climb to the top of the castle to get a good view.  Here's Jake and kiddos at the top.

And some pictures of the view from the top!  The English Channel...

Another part of the castle and the town..

More view from the castle top... See those towers way in the distance (top right) in the next picture?  On the way to the castle we drove by them and Ella yelled out, "Hey!  It's the Eiffel Tower!!"  haha.  Not quite.  I guess her memory of our trip to the real thing is a little foggy.   She cracks us up!

Dover is probably the most popular location to drive aboard a ferry to cross over to France if you go the ferry route.  You can see one taking off way out in the ocean...

Okay, one last view of the top of the castle.

Lots and lots of stairs and windy hallways...

The castle kitchen...

There's a little war museum there.  Luke liked the guns.

Knight training  was going on that day so all the kids got to train to be knights.  It was actually really informative.  I leaned a lot!  After going through 45 minutes of  "training" the kids got to hunt down the castle's dragon and the king gave them all chocolate and dubbed them knights afterwards.

This guy taught the kids about weapons.  His dog was pretty much the size of a horse.

Kill the dragon!

After finishing up at the castle we went down to the secret war tunnels there.  They were used for hundreds of years.. up through WW2.  No pictures were allowed inside.  Some of the stuff in there reminded me of being at the Churchill War Rooms in London.  We drove over to the park to see the cliffs once we finished with the tunnels and in the five minutes it took to drive over there both kids fell asleep and it started pouring really hard.  Guess we'll do the cliffs another day.