9-Year Old Dave's Dream Trip

For the long time followers of this blog, you may remember we took a trip to Germany back in December. At the time, I commented about Bamberg and Neuschwanstein being fairytale-like, and they were. If visiting those places was like stepping into Cinderella, visiting Avignon and Carcassonne, two medieval French villages, was going to Camelot…except in France.

Avignon, like Lucca, has decided to keep its historic wall. However, while Lucca’s is from the Renaissance (you tell because it’s thick enough to repel canon fire, a new invention at the time), Avignon’s is Medieval (only needed to withstand arrows and worst a catapult or two). The town within the walls is a typical French town with winding streets and older style buildings. Definitely charming to see, but far from the main feature of this particular hamlet.

The star of the show is the Palais de Papes, or Papal Palace. For most of the 1200’s and into the 1300’s, this was the home of nine pontiffs. At the time, there was quite a bit of political unrest in Europe and it was decided that the holy residence would be built in Avignon. And let me tell you, this is most certainly a castle fit for a pope.

Standing in the plaza in front of the palace (sidebar: I will use palace and castle synonymously here though they are slightly different. A palace is a grand residence for royalty. A castle is a fortified structure meant for protection. Palais de Papes is definitely both.) one feels small. Imagine standing in front of the gates of Hogwarts. It was kind of like that, but real. In the picture, if you look very carefully, you can see Stacey and the girls standing at the entrance to give you a bit of a perspective of scale.

Touring the building, as you’d expect, you learn about its history and see the spaces inside, most of which are now home to exhibits of information and don’t much resemble their original look. It’s always a crap-shoot if the girls will find a place we visit interesting or not. I was amazed that their initial reaction to the palace was seemingly blasé. Perhaps they’ve just seen too much cool stuff this year that it was “just another castle”. As we walked through it though, they seemed to get a bit more interested and Arya even took the audioguide from Stacey and wanted to hear everything there was to say about the place. By the time we reached the chapel at the end of the tour, they were excited to be there and *gasp*, enjoying themselves!

Not far from the castle is the Pont Saint-Bénézet, or as you may recognize it (especially if you teach beginning band) the bridge at Avignon of the song “On the Bridge at Avignon” fame. Sadly it was a bit of a let down. Only half the bridge remains and part of it is undergoing restoration right now so it wasn’t much more than a walk out part of an old bridge and back. But at least we can say we were there!

Our last stop in France (for this trip anyway) was a bit of an unknown to me. Stacey did most of the research for this outing and I intentionally didn’t look too much into what to expect at the destinations she’d chosen so I could be surprised. About the only thing I knew about Carcassonne was that there is a geeky tabletop game of the same name that was Medieval in theme.

Upon arrival, I discovered why that name was chosen.

That’s Carcassonne there behind us. This town/castle/fortress/awesomeness makes the Palais de Papes look like a cute backyard playground. Carcassonne was in Medieval centuries a stronghold border town between France and Spain (the border is now quite a ways further south). It was of such importance that they built a fortified wall around the town…and then a fortress within the fortified town for nobility…and then another wall around the wall they already had. Around the 1600’s, the town had outlived it’s usefulness and had become so fortified that nobody wanted to bother to come in, at all. So a new town built up outside the wall and became modern day Carcassonne. The walled city fell into disrepair and much of it’s architectural history was lost. However, in the late 1800’s a resident of the city who was fascinated with its history took it upon himself to begin to unravel the layers of the old city and to restore it to it’s original, Medieval state. By the early 20th century, it had been reestablished as a historic site and looks as you see it in these pictures. (by the way, compare the last one in this group with the cover of the game Carcassonne...we almost took a picture of the box without realizing it!)

When I was a boy (not just at heart), Carcassonne is what a castle was supposed to look like. In fact, there is a room on the tour of the fortress that has many different toy lines from Lego, Disney, Playmobile, and the like that were clearly designed with the Carcassonne look to them. All the cool castle things you learn about as a kid, murder holes, merlins, crinolines, portcullises, arrow slits, it’s all there. And it wasn’t built for you to come and see and think “Wow, cool,” or to kind of look like it’s supposed to be real like Medieval Times. It was put there for real, as a real castle.

I hope I’m conveying my sense of childlike excitement here. That’s really how I felt. The streets of the town are old stone streets and many of the shops have traditional picture only signs hanging by their doors. Our hotel was literally built into the wall between the fortress and the grand cathedral (pictured above) also contained within the old city. I stayed over night in a castle…now you know why my inner 9 year-old can’t calm down!

Needless to say, if you ever find yourself traveling the south of France, perhaps on your way to Spain (as we were…stay tuned for Barcelona and Madrid!), do yourself, and the you-of-the-past who still remembers Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and wished you could see what those places were really like, a favor and spend some time in these amazing portals into history.

Nice is Nice and Monaco is Majestic

I had a lot of fun in Nice, especially since there are a bunch of things for kids that Arya and I did that we liked. For starters the beach. There was a big beach that we found a lot of sea glass on. We got to walk along it over and over again.

We also found the coolest playground on earth. And I’m not just talking about your everyday ladder and slide, people. I’m talking about the biggest structures you could possibly imagine.The biggest structure was a huge whale made out of wooden whale bones with ropes to climb on and a slide coming out as a tongue on the end. There are also big swings that look like bowls made of rope hanging from strings. One of the coolest playgrounds was a little hut in the air with ropes coming of of it with logs below them, you sat on the logs grabbed the ropes and pulled yourself across the log to the next one. We also met this nice boy at the park that pushed us on the swing. We found out that he was from California, then moved to Oregon, and now he’s lived in France for three years. I liked talking to another kid in english.

Near the park there was a small fair set up with a ropes course, a jumpy house, a fun house, and most importantly, super jumping. You get strapped into a harness connected to thick elastic bands and jump on a trampoline. It goes very high, and since we had done it before, we knew how to do flips. The guy kept us on there for a long time. We got really worn out. One time I even stopped jumping and got stuck mid air, so the man had to pull me down to start jumping again. 

We also took a day trip to Monaco, one of the smallest countries in the world. We walked across the whole country in a couple hours, taking stops along the way. While we there we saw the Grand Casino, probably the biggest casino I’ve ever seen. Then again I haven’t seen that many casinos in my life. I haven’t even been to Las Vegas.

We walked uphill to the palace where we saw the changing of the guards.

After that we wandered around the streets surrounding the palace. For lunch we stopped at a crêperie, I had a ham and cheese crêpe. In the restaurant there was also a tiny dog that Arya was afraid of.

Down along the dock in Monte Carlo, there were a million yachts. A lot of the yachts were being cleaned up. My favorite yacht was called Zeus. It had big sliding glass doors in the front. 

That same day we also visited Villefranche, more specifically Cap Ferret. We were there for one reason, to see Marie Rothschild’s estate that had nine gardens. To get there, it was a very long walk. First we walked along the beach for a long way, then we had to walk up a hill a long way. When we got there and bought our tickets, we got a children’s activity guide. It had things like decoding a pattern painted in the room, counting the number of telephones, and finding a special flower’s name. It was one of the most fun children’s activity guides that I’ve ever done and I’ve done a lot of activity guides because we’ve visited a lot of places!

The gardens were beautiful. The first one was the Spanish Garden. Our guide’s clue was, “All the fountains in this garden have something alike, what is it?” Well it turned out all the fountains were fish. Which is very strange because I’ve never seen a fish fountain… until now. My favorite garden was the exotic garden. It was filled with succulents and exotic flowers (thus the name). Arya’s favorite garden was the Japanese Garden, of course, because she loves pandas and there was a lot of bamboo. A whole bamboo forest. I saw a very strange plant while I was there. It was kind of like a vine, but not really. It went up up and up and I wondered why it didn’t fall down. I’d never seen anything like it.

We stopped at the tea parlor at the estate and ordered ice cream that turned out to be huge ice cream sundaes.

I’m glad we went to the Côte d’Azur. Now I can use the sea glass we found to make arts and crafts along with many other things I’m collecting like bottlecaps, wooden sticks, and wine corks.

Cinque Terre

Now that the weather is brightening up, we’re headed out on another train trip. This time along the Mediterranean coast. First stop: Cinque Terre or Five Lands. This is a very popular tourist destination, but since we are visiting at the beginning of March, we are still in the off season. The five towns that make up Cinque Terre are Riomaggiore, Manorola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. From Lucca, it theoretically takes us only two hours by train to reach our AirB&B in Monterosso, but because of train delays, it became more like a three and a half hour journey. No worries, everyone is in good spirits and ready to hit the trails for a hike around the cliffs and mountains of this beautiful countryside.

Each town is connected by hiking trails from easy to difficult, the blue trail being the easiest, much like on the ski slopes. Since we are staying in town five, Monterosso, we hiked first to town four, Vernazza. It took us about two hours and was so beautiful! Lots and lots of stair steps, but well  worth the journey. We saw tons of yellow flowers, lemons, waterfalls, bridges, and a little wine trolley that is used to haul equipment and workers up and down the mountainside. The weather was about 55 degrees F, but in the sun felt more like 70. Perfect for a hike! Along the way, Dave even got us some lemons to snack on from some farmers, which if you know my girls, is a perfect snack! We also saw the first of what would become numerous cat sightings in Cinque Terre. Along the trail there was set up a food station for “unloved” cats, which were very obviously far from unloved.

Getting to Vernazza, we enjoyed some of the best Gelato yet! Why does ice cream always taste the best after a hike? This statement does not stand alone. I have said it over and over again through the years. We enjoyed wandering the little village, soaking up the sun, and taking in the views before heading back by train which took all of five minutes.

                                    
                              (Look closely, Ash is laying on the rock in the bottom right corner)

Low and behold, because it is still the off season, not much was open for dinner. We were lucky to find a place just across from our flat with delicious pesto, a dish which originated in Cinque Terre.

The next day our plan was to train to town one, Riomaggiore, and hike from there through town two, to town three or four depending on how the girls were holding up. Sadly, we found that all the blue trails except for the one we did the day before, were closed for maintenance. That’s what we get for coming in the off season! We talked to a local guide about the possibility of doing a harder trail but ultimately decided against it. The blue trail between town 1 & 2 takes about 30 minutes. The red trail between town 1 & 2 takes 3 hours and is all stair steps. Ugh. We decided instead just to enjoy our day wandering the different towns and taking the 2 min train ride between each. It worked out perfectly!

Here we go climbing down to the rocky beach in Riomaggiore (1). Dave climbed around the cove and got a great view of the beach “crowd”. He even gave an impromptu lesson on rocks and the rock cycle!

In Manorola (2) the girls enjoyed scampering along the rocks and we enjoyed focaccia ligure another local speciality. 

Corniglia (3) is unique because it is the only town not with direct access to the water. After we got off the train, we still had to hike up switchbacks to get into town for lunch. As expected only a few places were open, and we were trying our best to find pesto for Arya and lasagna for Ashley. After walking up and down alleyways between homes, restaurants, and shops, we finally found a little place to settle in for a bit that met the girls requirements. Dave and I generally just go with the flow!

Did I mention that there are a lot of lemons in Cinque Terre?! Oh my! When life gives you beautiful sunshine, hillside terraces, and sea views, grow lemons! And then make them into limoncello and sip it with your Honey in the afternoon. Our AirB&B host gave us a bottle of homemade limoncello that was delicious. Dave texted her to thank her, so she brought us another bottle! The bottles were only 3 ounces or so, but still so good!

Our last afternoon the girls enjoyed some beach time back in Monterosso while Dave worked out one small complication: Money. We got a message that morning letting us know that our credit card had been compromised and was being cancelled. Okay. He called and spoke to them and they were sending another arriving in 7-10 days. We will be traveling for the next 10 days… Our debit card works, but does not have a chip on it. In Europe, most machines and stores use that chip. We do have a back up card, that was just renewed but has not arrived to us in Lucca. Dave’s mom had just mailed it from CA. So now we’re relying on this chip-less debit card for the next two weeks. Dave went to three ATM’s before he found one that worked. And in Monterosso that’s how many ATM’s there are! It was a good thing we had a big lunch, because I was beginning to think that we may have to forgo dinner. But what’s a trip without a few snags?

Onto our next stop - the French Riviera - home base Nice. Dave said to the girls, “Tomorrow we’re going to be in France!” To which Arya replied, “YES! I’ve been wanting to go there my whole life!” Ha ha ha tough to be her :-)

Making of The Three Sisters

(FYI, this is Arya writing. It's posted in Dad's account because of where the video is shared on Youtube.)

In school I wrote a fairy tale called, The Three Sisters. I made a book out of it and Ashley and I made a shadow puppet show out of it. Below you will see that there is a pdf of the book with my pictures and a video of the shadow puppet show. If you do get to read my book and watch my video, tell me which one you like more. In the process we got frustrated, but most of it was fun. Enjoy!

My Original Book in PDF form