Today was not an exciting day. Francois and I had to catch up on lots of work before we head off to Paris on Wednesday. The kids did some homework in the morning and played with Diane in the afternoon inside and outside. It was another sunny and warm day.
Just after supper the kids and I went for a quick dip in the pool before the storm came. A great downpour of rain and hail with thunder and lightning. What a nice show! Not many pictures but Emma was quite photogenic today.
Today was another beautiful, sunny day around 23°C. We spent the morning at home and in the afternoon went up to our town of Giroussens. There was a large pottery exposition along the downtown strip where people from all over Europe came to sell their pottery. It was fantastic. I didn’t even know you could make things out of clay so beautifully. Francois admitted that he doesn’t care much for pottery but looking at the display here sparked a bigger interest. Perhaps he’ll even take up the craft…well not today.
We bought a couple of nice handmade pieces on the lower end of the price range and hopefully we don’t break them coming home. I can’t wait to use them! They had a great outdoor pottery workshop for the kids to do as well. Both Liam and Emma liked working with the clay and each took home the tiny treasure they made.
After the fair, we returned home for a quick dip in the pool while Diane and her sister Monique cooked up a beautiful duck dinner for us. Merci beaucoup!
We went to Toulouse in the afternoon for a lovely tour with Diane’s sister Monique. She showed us some nice streets with shopping and took us to a fabulous bookstore (it was massive inside). I loaded up on lots of French children’s books while Francois picked up a couple of history books written in French. I’m sure I’ll get more before I go back home.
We then went to a park along the Canal du Midi. It was very nice and funnily enough, we met another english speaking family there. They were from Pennsylvania and they are staying in Toulouse with their 4 kids for 3 months! Imagine that, running into another family doing the same thing. However, they actually bought a house and have been coming here for several years now. The mother homeschools the children while the husband works out of the home, he owns an office furniture business back in the US.
After our work we returned to Monique’s house where we dropped everyone off while Francois and I headed off to a movie! Yippee. We saw “Goodbye Bafana“, it was in french but it was still very good from what I could understand. Will have to watch it in English at home. We then picked up the kids and went home – thanks for babysitting Diane et Monique – Diane stayed overnight at her sister’s home.
We spent the day travelling from Nimes back to Giroussens with a long break in between on a beach in the Mediterranean port of Sète. Liam and Emma really enjoyed playing in the sand and I even enjoyed a brief nap. There were only a handful of other people enjoying the beach on this day but judging from the surrounding hotels and other tourist amenities I suspect that this beach must get very crowded during the Summer holiday season. And indeed it is true that many women here in Europe will sun bathe topless.
Another visit or two to the Mediterranean will certainly be in our upcoming plans. Time is flying by though and it will already be 4 weeks since our arrival on Sunday. So much still to see….
Good night from France.
I’ll keep this short as I’m feeling sleepy and will let the photos do most of the talking. We spent a lovely day in and around Nimes today visiting a Roman arena, a Roman temple and a Roman aquaduct. All three of these structures date back to the 1st century AD so all are close to 2000 years old. All incredibly impressive. Visiting these monumental structures has just ignited in me an interest to learn more about the Roman empire and so I will have to acquire some books on the subject.
Good night from France.
We are in Nimes at the moment. We didn’t do much today except actually travel here. Nimes is approximately 325 KM away from Giroussens and the journey took us a little less than 5 hours including bathroom, coffee and lunch breaks.
We’re checked into a Formule 1 hotel here which is in itself a new experience for us. We have two rooms and we’re here for two nights and the total price including taxes came to 123 Euros. Thats as cheap as it gets I think. Two rooms at the Holiday Inn down the street would have cost us over 450 Euros by comparison. Anyway a room in Formule 1 is about the same size as a university dorm room and through the use of a bunk bed they offer space for 3 people to sleep. Toilets and showers are shared facilities located down the hall but the sink to wash your hands is in your room. The showers have an auto-steam clean function that turns on after you leave so theoretically they are kept in good clean condition. The toilets are reasonably clean but the automatic lighting system in them has been pushing the limits of my mom’s patience. When you open the door to enter the toilet the lights automatically go on and when you leave the lights automatically go off – thats the way its supposed to work. There is no manual switch to change this behaviour. Anyway for reasons that are unclear the lights went off shortly after my mom entered the bathroom on two occasions. On one of those occasions my mom was in there helping Emma and when the lights went out Emma panicked a little and ended up peeing all over her clothes. While I’m on the topic of washrooms I forgot to mention our rest-stop incident earlier in the day. While en-route to Nimes we stopped at a nice rest stop so that Emma could go pee. When she was taken into the bathroom she began to cry and scream because she couldn’t stand the stench and the general creepy conditions and she refused to pee in there. So Marissa and my mom took her behind some bushes and Emma went pee on the ground. After they were done a French man went up to them and complained about how Emma was peeing on the ground while there were bathrooms there. Imagine that!!!! Its ok for your dogs to crap on the sidewalks but a 3 year old girl peeing in the bushes, out of the way of any foot traffic, is a problem? Overall I love France but the French and I have extremelly different views when it comes to things relating to toilets, pooh, and the washing of hands.
Anyway, we are in Nimes and tomorrow we’re going to visit the best-preserved Roman arena in France as well as a Roman temple called The Maison Carrée. Both of these structures are approximately 2000 years old so they will officially become the oldest structures that I’ve ever seen or visited.
Good night from France.
Here is another video. Enjoy!
(please right click the link to download it to your computer before playing)
The weather was beautiful today so the kids and I went in the covered swimming pool in the back of our home in France. It was about 22°C in the pool and about 28°C outside. Fantastic! I could get used to that.
After our swim the family went out for a drive and a tour of Toulouse. When we told the kids of our plan to visit Toulouse, Emma innocently inquired “what are we going to lose?” Well, I thought it was cute.
Toulouse, a fabulous city with a very thick downtown. I mean everywhere you look there are plenty of shops, restaurants, cafes, museums, churchs, cyclists, cars, scooters and of course people! We parked and wandered around just for a taste of what Toulouse was like. We stopped in a few toy shops for Liam and Emma and a sandwich shop for Francois…I guess he was feeling much better today. The cook at the sandwich shop responded in English to Francois’ Canadian French – You need to work on your accent Francois!
We crossed the Pont-Neuf which is a bridge that crosses over the river Garonne, very picturesque. It is the second oldest bridge in Toulouse (finished around 1632). The city sidewalks were very clean but many of the scooters would pull up on to them and park for free. It is not legal but the law rarely does anything about it.
We went into Cathédrale Saint-Étienne which was refreshingly cool and refreshingly bright inside. There were a great number of windows, both stained glass and plain. The grand pipe organ was built 17 metres above the floor. Liam was quite impressed and so were the rest of us.
After some more walking around we then drove off to our favourite little mall in Toulouse. We had a lovely Chinese dinner with Diane’s sister Monique, her husband Bruno and his daughter Barbara. It was very pleasant and very filling. One interesting tidbit is that it is not common for people in France to bring home their leftovers. When we asked for ours at the end of our meal, the waiter said he would have to ask the chef if it was ok. Hmmm, well I guess we’ll have to start ordering a little less or start bringing our own doggy bags.
What a great day, I can’t wait to go back again and tour some more…and of course shop!
Today’s Photos April 21st Photos
It’s been a couple glorious days of sunshine and fun here in France! Saturday was spent at a couple of parks while Diane spent the day with her sister Monique in Toulouse. They did some shopping and had a great dinner at a Thai restaurant.
So, Francois and I took the kids to the nearby town of Graulhet and found a really nice park for Liam and Emma to play in. It was close to 30 degrees celius outside! So we didn’t stay out too long before we needed a refreshment break. We motored on down to the town of Gaillac where we ate some lunch and stopped at another park under some nice shady trees. Very nice park – very crappy washrooms. Standing basins where you can pee in a hole with no toilet paper (lucky I always have tissue handy) and probably never been cleaned since it was built. It was difficult to hover Emma over while trying not to touch anything, I think I ended up with more pee on me than in the washroom. Ah well, c’est la vie. I think I’ll invest in a potty to keep in our car. 🙂
Today, Francois didn’t feel so well so he was stuck in bed for most of it. As for the rest of us, we were picked up by Jens, Diane’s brother-in-law. We went back to Diane’s sister Carole’s home and went for a refreshing dip in their fabulous pool. Even though it was hot outside, the water was still quite cool. But the kids really enjoyed swimming with Sean. Then Carole and Jens cooked a wonderful Thai meal for us. You can probably smell it just by looking at the photo! Merci, our bellies are still aching from the amount we ate.
Francois eventually felt better and came out to join us before we all headed home ready for bed.
Blog you tomorrow…hopefully!
Well, we had good intentions of doing lots of work at home today but the weather was way too gorgeous to stay inside. The kids spent some time outside today while we did a bit of cleaning. Francois, Diane and Emma went to Lavaur to do a bit of shopping and Liam and I worked on his video journals.
Liam made dinner tonight (which will be one of his next video journals) which consisted of soup, bread and wine…a real frenchman’s meal plus some extra chicken wings on the side. Mmmmmm, chicken wings. After dinner, we were all outside for some ping pong, flower picking and lounging.
Not too exciting to blog about but enjoyable nonetheless.
We’ll see what work we actually accomplish tomorrow.
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