Le Bourget du lac

We have moved to a new holiday home today.  Once again the little kids are happy as the house has lots of new toys to play with.  Corban is especially happy as her bed has a ladder!  Taylor not so happy because our internet will be turned off tomorrow and she will be without facebook, youtube & 9gag for the next 7 days (ha, ha, ha).  We will catch you up with everything we have done when we get internet again!  This time we are staying in Le Bourget du lac which is in the French Alps.  Our cottage looks small on the outside but is actually really big with three levels and 5 bedrooms.  It is also much cooler than being in the South of France, so we are all looking forward to an excellent nights sleep.  There is a lake about 6kms down hill from our cottage so we plan to swim there!  Today on our way to Le Bourget du lac we visited Orange and saw a Roman theatre, one of three in the world that still has the rear theatre wall in tact (better than the one in Rome). I'll post photo's when we have internet again.  Chat soon :+)

Corban Swimming

After a couple of weeks of swimming at the beach and having a pool Corban has learnt to swim!  When I did this video she could only go backwards, but today she has started swimming forward as well.  Out of shear determination to swim without her floats she did it, so proud of her :+)

Monaco

Monaco , a set on Flickr.

Money, money, money!! Monaco is a place where incredibly wealthy people hang out, there are some serious cars, apartments, hotels and casinos. We began our day early to avoid the crowds. The Monte Carlo Casino was closed to play, you could look around if you wanted ... but we didn’t want to pay the 30£ required to look inside the Casino (we just took some photos from the outside). Casino Square is perfectly manicured gardens and fountains surrounded by all the extravagant shops and the famous Hotel de Paris (all very pretty to look at). Following this we visited the Japanese gardens and a walk along the marina. Heaps of massive super yachts, Leo liked picking the boat he wanted settling for the cruise ship because it had water slides. It was cool seeing the Formula 1 track!! Next we walked up to castle hill to see the changing of the guards and views of both sides of Monaco (only a little place). Jumping back in the car we went to Nice for a late afternoon swim, and a walk through old town. On the way home we stopped in Cannes (another place of the wealthy to hang out) ... Allan took 100’s of photos of cars, our car (Bessie) was feeling a little embarrassed because she hasn’t had a wash in a few weeks :+)

Route des Cretes

Route des Cretes , a set on Flickr.

Route des Cretes is considered the Grand Canyon of the France. It’s a serious drive about 5 hours not including stops, but we are so glad we did it. If we had known how amazing the area was we would have arranged to stay the night and done some more exploring. This was the most amazing drive with the most spectacular views!! As part of our drive we stopped at a cute medieval town called Castellane. It was situated just below some mountains and had lots of little streets and markets full of boutique stores with heaps of interesting pottery, clothing, crafts, food ... Continuing on our journey we stopped several times to do short bush walks to look at the huge cliffs and canyon. The road was narrow with heaps of rocks over hanging the road. The lake and river were a magnificent blue; this is a place I would definitely visit again. We also visited another town called Belvedere before heading to Frejus beach for a sunset swim on the way home.

Cassis & Toulon

Cassis & Toulon , a set on Flickr.

The weather forecast was for scattered thunderstorms so we thought we would look through the little town of Cassis (where we have departed for our hiking trips). It’s a cute little town with neat shops, we even sampled some (free) cookies and chocolate at this really fancy boutique type store. The chocolate is 5£95 for 100g so we didn’t buy any! Well the thunderstorms didn’t come but the temperature did drop from being about 35°/36° to 24° so was quite a cool day. We decided to drive to the city of Toulon at about lunch time where we drove up a really winding mountain to a naval memorial and fantastic views of the city. There were heaps of navy ships in the harbour and lots of neat little beaches. Before heading home we stopped at a beach called Bandol for an evening swim.