Recap of the last two weeks.

Besides Monday and Tuesday, last week was quite eventful for our uneventful lives.  Monday and Tuesday were spent catching up from our trip: cleaning the pool, doing housework, laundry  and blogging about the trip.  On Wednesday, Brent and the boys went camping with a co-worker while the girls and I enjoyed the quiet time with a movie night and a little shopping the next day at the "Mercadillo" our weekly street market.

Aug 15  Mercadillo

The purple purse and hat were what Kamree picked out for herself at the street market. 

 

Aug 14-15 Atazar Reservoir

Brent and the boys went with a few other families camping at Lake Piraguas.  They had to kayak across the lake up a finger for over an hour to get to where they planned to camp.   Morgan began sharing a kayak with his friend Mateo and another boy Luis.  But after struggling together rowing this kayak, and repeatedly hitting each other in the head with the oars they inevitably switched things up a bit with some older kids.

Here they are at their 4**** campsite eating dinner.  The boys were very disappointed that they weren't permitted to have a fire for hotdogs and marshmallows.

 

 

 In the morning, after surely a very comfortable night sleep, the bravest ones kayaked farther up the finger another half an hour for some cliff jumping. 

 

 

 

 

 Morgan being Morgan surprised everyone when he ran and jumped off this before anyone else.  Morgan keeps reminding me that it is a lot higher than I think! 

 

 

 

I guess since Morgan jumped off this monster Brent figured he should be able to brave it as well. Only 2 other kids (out of 12) besides Brent and Morgan  dared jumped off this. 



 

 

 

Aug 16 Parque Warner

 

We surprised the kids on Friday when we pulled up to the Warner Bros. amusement park.  It has been compared to Disneyland since it has cartoon characters walking around and driving around cars such as Scooby-doo, Tom and Jerry, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny etc, and they also have lots of themed rides: Batman, Superman; however, most of the rides were more comparable to Lagoon's than Disney's.

 

These are the "Scooby Doo tea-cups"  in the Cartoon Village where all the younger kid rides are.  Morgan has taken over the wheel after being warned not to and so he was obviously having more fun than the others. 

 

Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the "superfun", "superscary" or "superwet" rides!  As we were waiting for the gates to open we noticed a lot of people in swimsuits and assumed they must have a water park inside, but it wasn't until after waiting in line just a few minutes at one of the water rides we got drenched from being squirted by people on the ride that we understood. 

 

After a full 12 hour day we were entirely exhausted and ready to fall asleep in the car!!!!

 Aug 17  Entrepenas Reservoir

While we were at Parque Warner,  Brent's co-worker called and asked if we wanted to go boating with his brother who is a professional wakeboarder the next day.  So obviously, the next day we set out to this beautiful 30 mile long lake.

Here is Morgan going over the wake.  It really felt great to be on the water again and it was also nice that Brent didn't have to drive.  We were surprised by the relaxed boating laws here compared to what we are used to.  We asked where the orange flag was when the first wakeboarder crashed and the driver said "the what?" He also said he didn't think there was a law about kids needing to wear lifejackets on the boat.  There is also no law against driving within 75 yards of other boats.  He drove close enough to a stopped boat with a skier in the water that our wakeboarder had to cross the wake to avoid them. 

After boating the kids seemingly hadn't had enough of the water so they did a little cliff-jumping.  Morgan is just so graceful don't ya think?  This lake is popular with wakeboarders and most of these buoyed boats belong to people that only live in this small town during the summer to wakeboard. 

Aug 22 Brent's Birthday  

For Brent's birthday we went to dinner at Foster's Hollywood (American Food) since it was one of the few restaurants open around 7:30 at night.   Fortunately we were early birds so we had the place to ourselves for awhile. By the time we left around 8:30 there were two other families. 

This resistant swim band is what Brent made himself for his birthday.  He had planned to buy one and realized we had everything we needed to make one.  We have all greatly enjoyed swimming with it.

Aug 23 Fiestas Patronales Virgen de los Remedios

The next night, on Friday evening we went to the opening ceremonies of a neighboring town's festivities.   We felt quite out of place without being all dressed up. They began with a procession of a virgin statue and then they had some amazing fireworks which is the reason we went.





We unknowingly ended up sitting right across the road from where they set off the fireworks and so they were extremely loud, stinky and bright, but mesmerizing.  The show was quite amazing.

 

Summer Vacation Part 1

 1st Country: Spain

Spain and likely a lot of Europe take most of the month of August off of work for vacations, in fact many stores close down entirely for the month and most others shorten their hours.  Instead of living in a ghost town for an entire month we set off on a tour of Southwestern Europe.

*We first headed for Barcelona, Spain for our first night's stay.

Barcelona, Spain

Sagrada Familia 

This was quite an impressive building.  The Temple de la Sagrada Familia  is a large Catholic Church, designed by the catalan architect Antoni Gaudí.  It was started in 1882, and it is still under construction for 30-80  more years. As you walk around the building you can see the different aging of the building.  It is a masterpiece of Gaudí  and it is the most visited monument in Spain.

Park Güell by Antoni Gaudí

This park is said to be inspired by Hansel and Gretel, but instead of candy it had mosaic tile everywhere and it is huge. You can see much of Barcelona from here and the coast.

The Magic Water Fountains

It was hard to choose just one picture for this.  This was a half hour show with lights music and of course lots of water.

*After Barcelona we headed to our next stay Sophia Antipolis, France just above Nice, France.

 

2nd Country: France

 

Camarque Parc

We drove through this large natural wetland on the blue coast of France on our way to Nice.  We read that we should be able to see wild white horses, black bulls and pink flamingos.

 

We saw lots of wild white horses,

 

fortunately just a few wild black bulls,

and lots of pink flamingos. 

We also found the blue coast at the far end, but we didn't have easy access to our bathing suits. 

Nice, France

Nice is a nice beautiful, large coastal town between Cannes and Monaco

We saw many nice expensive cars and a few nice little ones as well. 



We found lots of nice beaches with lots of nice sand, but the snorkeling here was what was really nice!  We saw lots of colorful fish, Morgan and Brent saw small crabs and an octopus. 

This beach was best for snorkeling since the sand stopped not far into the water and the reef/rocks began.  The water was very shallow so it was also hard to swim without snorkeling through it.  We switched to a more swim friendly beach after a couple of hours here.   I also wanted to point out the flag design on Mason's rash guard.  In the US it seems that flag attire is mostly just worn in July, but here they are in style year around.  We see them in most stores and on people everywhere we go that are not from the US.  We love it!

Morgan, "King of the  nice big Rock".  He had a very challenging time getting to this rock trying not to hurt the reef or himself if you can imagine, but he did come back with a nasty cut from all the sharp rock he had to crawl across to get to it. 

We found nice warm and soft sand for napping.

*After several hours at the beach we made a last minute decision to drive north about an hour to a medieval city Entrevaux Basses-Alpes where some of my Bellon-Columbet ancestors come from.

The Drive 

The drive was quite amazing as it hugged the hillside going through tunnels, over bridges, under nets filled with rocks, following a river below cities in the "sky".

One of the nets used to catch rocks from falling on cars.

One of the cities in the "sky", not sure how they get up there or how long it would take them, but we know we would not like to live up there with kids. 

 Puget Theniers

 

We were driving past this town festival and saw that they had a trapeze set up right next to the road so we pulled over just in time for the show to start.   Notice Kaiya's sunburn from the beach, it was painful!!!

Entrevaux-Basses-Alpes

Entrevaux is a very old amazing city below a citadel surrounded on two sides with a river.  I have several great grandparents who are buried there and so we wanted to see if we could locate their graves. 

A frontal shot of the citadel and city from the graveyard. Unfortunately we were not able to find any related  gravestones.  We found the old graveyard and lots of very old graves but few with headstones and even fewer with readable headstones.

 The city was quite majestic, this is the bridge to enter the city.  Don't miss Brent and the kids on the bridge.

 

  

Inside the old city.

Free Puplic "Toilette"

On the way home our kids really needed to go to the bathroom and we were excited to find a free public toilet across the street from where we were getting dinner in a small town on the way home.  You rarely see public toilets and free ones are rare, but seeing just a hole in the ground was our first.  We were happy that we had a roll of toilet paper in the car since 3 kids had to go # 2 and the toilet paper was not included. 

 

Summer Vacation Part 2

Church

We started out our day by going to church in Nice, France in an actual chapel with a parking lot.! It was small and there is just one ward that attends here, but it was a lot larger than where we attend in Spain. 

 *We traveled through Monaco, and Sirmione, Italy on our way to our next stop in Vicenza, Italy.

3rd Country: Monaco

Monaco

We drove through Monaco, the 2nd smallest country in the world after the Vatican.  This is probably the most beautiful city/country we have ever seen.  A lucky Australian family in the Nice ward lives here and the father works for the United Nations.

One more breathtaking view!

And through another tunnel on our way to Vicenza, Italy.  We surely went through over 100 tunnels throughout this trip. 

4th Country: Italy

Scaliger Castle

Scaliger Castle is located in the Italian lakeside town of Sirmione. Sirmione is a commune and town located in Northern Italy on a small peninsula that sticks out into the southern portion of Lake Garda.

 

Sirmione had been a summer resort for the elite since the 1st century BC. The town had grown to become one of the most important Roman cities in northeast Italy,

This is just past the castle,  inside the resort town of Sirmione on the peninsula looking out toward the water.

Past the castle, and just past the main shopping area, you can see the farthest point of the peninsula on Lake Garda, Italy.  There were beaches, gardens, and shops in this area. 

*After staying in a very comfortable hotel in Vicenza, Italy, we went to Venice.

Venezia, Italia

Venice is a group of 118 small islands separated by canals...

and linked by bridges

Our kids were disappointed in Venice, because they expected to be riding in boats the entire time since we had told them there were no roads for cars, but just water for boats. 

Instead of boats we used our feet for hours to see the city.

Venice is said to have more tourists than residents at any given time. 

We took just one short boat ride.   It was very sunny as you can see in the pictures.

Rialto Bridge

 This bridge is one of Venice's most recognizable icons, it was built in the 1500's.

*After Venice we headed to Fussen, Germany.

Reifenstein Castle

This castle was just South of the Austrian border in Freienfeld, Italy. This area was part of Austria until after World War I.  The castle is mentioned for the first time in the 12th century.  We saw it as we were getting off the toll road to go into Austria and because we wanted a picture of it we had to go through the toll twice to get over to it.  I hope this picture is worth the tolls we paid for it.  In the words of Rick Steves, “Reifenstein offers castle connoisseurs the best-preserved original medieval castle interior I’ve ever seen.”  I wish we had planned to go inside to tour this as we have since read that it still has an original kitchen, bathroom, knights quarters, and a dungeon.  Apparently, the owner currently resides in the castle and conducts the tours.

5th Country: Austria

Austrian Alps

As we drove through northern Italy, and western Austria to get to Fussen, Germany we saw and drove through mountain after mountain including the Italian Dolomites and the Austrian and German Alps.