Marseille

Ok. I am finally putting up part 5 of our trip.... now that it has been almost a month . After Nice we went west along the coast to the city of Marseille. Marseille is the second largest city in France, after Paris. We we went to the old port, it was really cool, there was a morning fish market, the boats with their morning catches were pulled right up to the edge of the port where they were selling the fish. That's about as fresh as you can get....if you like fish . After looking at all the fish we got our tickets for the boat. The ride was a little cold with the wind but Max and Maddie both loved it.


Here is a picture of Max on the bow of the boat with the Old Port behind him.


Here is a picture of the coast line of Marseille from the boat.


We took the boat out to the Island of If, the home of the Chateau d'If. This is the castle in the story The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a castle that was first built to defend Marseille from attack and later turned into a prison. It is famous for it's security, no prisoner ever escaped from this castle, The Count of Monte Cristo is a fictional story. But it is said to have housed the man in the iron mask. The castle and island are white stone, a beautiful contrast to the very blue Mediterranean water.


The castle is well preserved and you can tour through the prison cells, all made out of the white rock. We got a lot of pictures of Max and Maddie as prisoners. They are so cute together.


We have more pictures of our day in Marseille here in our photo album.

The French Rivera

After Pisa we headed up the coast of Italy and around to the Cote D'Azur in the South of France. A disclaimer about the following pictures, they were not taken by us. The memory card that we used to take the pictures on this part of our trip was lost . But to give you an idea about how beautiful it was I found a couple pictures on the internet. We spent the morning in Nice, this a really cool city. We parked by the port and there was a huge cruise ship there and another one on its way in. Max was pretty amazed and the enormous size of the boats. We climbed up on top of the hill that you see on the right of this pictures. From there we had a beautiful view of the water, the city and the mountains. The Mediterranean Sea is so, so blue, it was that way in Spain too. Nice has pebble beaches. Instead of soft sand there are little rocks about the size of flat golf balls, not the greatest to walk on but they make a really cool sound as the waves come in to shore.


Later that afternoon we drove down the coast to Monaco. This is a small country a little over a mile squared. It has more millionaires per capita then any other country. We went to the port and saw some huge yachts.



Then we went to a town called Eze, It is called a perched Village, because it sits on the top of a really tall hill. The mid evil part of the village on the very top is for pedestrians only. The streets are all too narrow for cars, and they wind up in a spiral to the top of the hill. On the top there is a botanical garden with plants and sculptures. From the gardens you get an awesome view of the mountains and the ocean. It was a really cool place and we wish we had the pictures we took of it to share. But like I said earlier, these pictures will give you an idea.

Pisa

Now for part 3 of our trip. After Venice we headed to the west coast of Italy, to Pisa. We stayed in a little fishing town south of Pisa. It was a really cool town and would have been 10 times better if it were summer. We stayed at a little resort with a private beach and a huge swimming pool, too bad we weren't able to make use of them in the winter.....but that is why the rooms were so cheap . I don't think we will soon forget that place, the rooms were like little villas and there were tons of trees and grass everywhere. On the web they advertised laundry facilities, so needing to do a bunch of laundry we followed the signs to a shed in a wooded area with 2 washing machines and no dryers. We had to wash our clothes, then hang them all around our room to dry. There was also a family of cats living in a shed next to our room. The kids loved that and Maddie was constantly wanting to go outside to play with them.




We went to visit the famous leaning tower of Pisa. It was really cool to see. It is hard to imagine that a structure that big can still hold together shile leaning at that angle.



We couldn't resist joining the other tourists in getting some "holding up the tower" pictures.



Max was very impressed and has talked about the leaning tower of Pisa several times since our trip. To see more pictures of Pisa click here.

Venice

On Sunday afternoon we left Munich, Germany and headed toward Italy, it was the most beautiful drive from through Austria, the alps and into Northern Italy. On Monday we went to Venice. Venice was incredible, unlike any place I have ever been. Max really liked watching all the boats. We was really excited when we got to see a police boat speed through the water with it siren going.

Maddie loves to stop and smell the flowers. This was in an out of the way plaza where we got some cheap pizza for lunch. It was really good but it did a number on Bret's stomach, he was in pain half of the day. (That is what he gets for ordering the Gorgonzola Pizza, I guess).


The canal streets were so picturesque. We didn't take a Gondola ride because they were very expensive. But they were fun to watch.


This is the Piazza San Marco. There are hundreds of pigeons. The kids were having so much fun chasing them and feeding them.



To see more pictures of Venice, click here.

Neuschwanstein

We are back! We just got back from a really fun trip. We saw so much that I decided to write about our trip in increments. The first day we drove to Munich, Germany. This is the southeast area of Germany known as Bavaria. On Saturday we went to Hohenschwangua Castle and Neuschwanstein Castle.

Hohenschwangua Castle was a castle is where King Ludwig spent his summer as a child, then on the next hill over he built Neuschanstein Castle. To get to the castle it was a big hike up a hill. The castle is huge and very beautiful.

On Sunday we went to the English ward in Munich. It was so different to go to church in English again. They had a large primary and it was Max's first time every going to primary in English and he loved it.