sept. 22.  2012

saturday-day 13

jarom goes home tomorrow-sunday-so we wanted to see something in this area together before he heads home, and i’m on my own…like by myself, in a foreign country, with four kids, knowing no french, and still having to drive a stick shift.  like a saying i love says, “if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.”  ok, i’m scared.  it’s so much more comforting knowing you have another adult to help make decisions with and figure things out.  we’ll see how things go!

we made our way to carcassone.  there is a medieval castle there, actually the oldest and largest in all of europe.  52 towers, and absolutely beautiful.  we paid for a little train ride around the castle, listening to our headset about the history of the castle.  this was interesting…the castle was surrounded and the people on the outside were guarding so that no food or water could come in or out, and the people would starve inside.  the people inside decided to give their last pig all the food they had left in the village, which wasn’t much, and then dropped the pig over the castle.  when the outsiders saw all the food that fell out of the pig, they thought the people inside were still very well fed, if the pig had that much food inside of it.  brilliant!  that’s where the carcass in the name comes from.

we found lots of lovely, lovely shops inside.  these were the best shops we’ve seen in our journey, and they were inside this amazing castle.   not to mention the darn cookie or biscuit shop we found, and spent 32 euro’s on for a bin of cookies, that nobody ended up really loving, but of course, i still snack on them.  darn those purchases!

we headed back, the hour drive, filled up the car, which is freaking ridiculous.  our little mini van cost 40 euro to fill up half a tank.  ouch!  it’s as expensive as our yukon xl back home.

made yummy spaghetti for dinner with salad, watched the goonies together as a family…i love that movie, and it’s so fun watching it with our kids, it’s a classic for jarom and i.  we loved just sitting together, no technology invading our time, quiet, chatting with the kids, and laughing.  it was brilliant.  how can i incorporate this back home?  always stuff going on, i just want it all to be less, and slower.  a great end to a very fun and adventurous day.

sept. 21.  2012

friday-day 12

we have slept in-until 8:00…and decided to walk around the little town we are in, and of course, head to the patisserie…evil store for those of us who are addicted to bread.  i’m very gluten intolerant, and was on a very strict diet for months before coming here, trying to heal my gut as much as possible, because i knew there was no way i could refuse bread in france.  i’m sure i will be at square 0 when i get home!

we lounged, figured things out around the house, jarom did a load of laundry and hung them up to dry out on our terrace, enjoyed the lovely cool, overcast and breezy day.

we then ventured out to the grocery, one of them aldi-which they have in the states, and great prices i might add, and the other one called intermarche’ super, which was a large grocery for here, and more supermarket prices with more options.  we bought our goods at both places, and on our way home, decided since we were so close to beziers, to visit the city.  we keep seeing this beautiful picture of a lovely medieval bridge to the city, and thought how awesome it would be to see it.  nope.  but we made our way to the center of the city, and back to the very narrow, hard to drive incline streets that give you a heart attack, especially driving stick.  came home, made salad, rice and sautee’d veggies for dinner, which was so yummy!  lovely day, very relaxing.

a link to our town, magalas, france…  http://www.france-voyage.com/towns/magalas-11941.htm

here are some pic’s of our cute village home…

11th century church at the top of the rue from our home.

 

pic’s from our day:

sept. 20.  2012

day 11

up at 5am, everyone got ready and packed up the suitcases.  grabbed some food from the breakfast in the hotel, caught a taxi, and caught our first train from the rome termini to torino.  we thought we would only be taking three trains today, but turns out, four.  from torino, we caught a train to chambery, and then chambery to lyon part deux, and then from there to montpellier, france.  11 hours on trains, not including dragging everyone on and off them, just including riding on trains.  we got in at 8:30pm, caught a taxi(hopefully for the last time!), and headed to the airport where our rental car was-20 minutes from the train station.  oh, the beauty of the end of the day fiasco’s when you are tired and hungry and have to go potty.  but since we caught all our trains, i guess some things had to happen.  i got in the rental, but had to go tinkle so bad and couldn’t find the emergency break to turn it off and drive the rental up front so we could load it, and i had to hop out and run into the airport(which we were by) and came back.  i almost backed into the mercedes behind me when trying to pull out(it’s been about 14 years since driving a stick shift-and never in a mini van).  then girls needed to go potty while we were trying to fit 6 people, 7 suitcases, a large bag and six backpacks into a small minivan.  when coming back from the toilette the second time, i see jarom has the car loaded, his arm on the passenger seat overlooking his shoulder to back up, and the car moves forward!  oh, holy crap!  but luckily he didn’t hit anything, and i told him “no driving!”  he’s not on the list as a driver for the rental anyway!  ok, so we are driving a french car in france with french highway signs, and thank goodness for a gps from home.  we find the tiny village, and are driving the narrow pathways, and i disagree we are to walk our luggage up a steep hill, albeit short, to our home…(this is an old village where all the homes are stuck together and they are on narrow streets.)  i get the brilliant idea, that if we keep following the road around, we’ll come back to the road we needed at first.  so i drive, and then we come to a dead end, but can’t turn around, there’s no room.  jarom says, “look, follow that road!”  i didn’t even see it.  so I proceed to try and turn onto it, except it’s really this sharp turn down steps for people who are WALKING!  not driving.  so we’re stuck down this steep incline, and hardly any room to turn around.  it’s about midnight, everyone’s awake, hungry, exhausted, and we’re stuck.  the very nice people living next to where we are making all this commotion come out.  they help push the car while i reverse it, he moves his car so we can back up ours, and we get out, lug our luggage up the steep hill, jarom finds parking, we eat pasta we found in the cabinets with indian curry sauce on it because we are hungry and don’t care, and we fall into bed.

and, it was my birthday!  it was a great, exhausting, and fun day.  and the best part, i thought i was turning 37, but after some calculations, i turned 36, so in my mind, i just saved a year!  except the lines appearing on my face tell me otherwise, but i will try and not cry over those too much.  i can’t believe how old we are getting, we have four kids and one is a teenager, and i still feel like i’m in my 20’s.  i’m excited for each new chapter, but am in disagreement with how my body is taking it.  c’est la vie.

sept. 19.  2012

day 10

bus, metro, and finally arrived to the vatican.  we bought and reserved tickets last night, and walked up with no line, which is awesome!  our appt. time was 11:30, which isn’t that early, so you’d expect a huge line by that point, but there wasn’t.  we bee-lined for the sistine chapel as soon as we got in, knowing the girls wouldn’t last too long.  i think it took us walking the halls of the vatican for 30 minutes before we finally came to the sistine chapel.  and that wasn’t looking at works of art, admiring sculptures, or admiring really much of anything.  that was walking straight to the sistine chapel.  it was absolutely beautiful and worth it!  this is jarom and mine’s second time, but it was so great having our girls there this time, and seeing michelangelo’s amazing ceiling that took four years, on his back on scaffolding, with his arm up and paint falling and dripping into his eye.  what an inspired man.

we then walked out of the vatican, saw the now huge line wrapped around the walls of the vatican, and headed for st. peter’s basilica, getting a gelato on the way.  there was a huge line, and when i say huge, i mean gigantic, and i walked up to a woman in the line to ask her and confirm this was the line for the basilica, and it ended up being a sister missionary-so cool!  didn’t even see her missionary badge until after i had asked about the line.  we saw elders over by the colosseum yesterday, and sisters at the vatican today.  crazy!  we decided not to wait in line, because we just didn’t think we could wait an hour or two, on top of an hour and a half getting home, so we headed for the metro.  it’s been lovely relaxing, had dinner in the concierge lounge, and went swimming.

tomorrow we have a huge, long day of  trains, and finally a rental car late at night.  it will be about 9 hours training up italy, into the middle of france, and then back down to montpellier, france where we will get our rental and drive an hour over to our small village outside of beziers.  we look forward to being in one place now, and having more control over what we’re eating, and better access to water that we don’t have to pay for.  that should be nice!

sept. 18.  2012

day 9

traveling with six people is no easy feat.  it also can get a bit pricey.  i think we’ve done a great job finding ways to do things as cheaply as possible.  so, that takes me into one way we’ve saved money…our hotel is 4 1/2 miles from city center, which we thought would be easy to metro in.  but not so.  the marriott is beautiful, but in the outskirts, out in the middle of nowhere it seems.  and the hotel charges 10 euros per person for the shuttle to the city.  so instead of paying 60 euro a day, we paid 15 euro a day to ride the bus and use the metro.  we have seen very poor and dirty parts of the city, which it doesn’t seem to get much cleaner going into the city.  we’ve seen homeless families sleeping on cardboard.  riding a bus for an hour, and then the metro for 30 minutes to get into the city has been very long, tiring, and really grosses me out.  but it presents excellent life lessons.  i think it’s important to see these things, to learn from them, to teach our children to want to work hard and be able to support themselves, and to be grateful for what they have.

so after breakfast, we took the bus and metro in, and came out right next to the colosseum.  such beautiful architecture!  we took an audio tour, which gave us quite a bit more info than just walking through, so it was nice.  it was also very warm, and slightly uncomfortable, so everyone was a bit agitated.  we took more pic’s, and jarom and i wanted to take the girls to the forum and through quite a few things, but no one was interested, and everyone was tired.  we knew with kids, to try and do one thing a day, so we started walking to look for a restaurant, and we ran into some elders.  so fun!  we then ate pizza, lasagna, and salad, after our gelato of course, and then public transportation’d home.  luckily the girls got in a short swim with jarom, and we raided the concierge lounge.  uhh, dreading tomorrow.  i’m just not excited about rome…lines, dirty, lines, expensive, and more lines…ready to leave rome.

sept. 17.  2012

day 8

we left switzerland early this morning, and caught a train from montreux to milan, and then caught another train from milan to rome(six hours on train today, which is such a great way to travel).  we decided to eat lunch in the restaurant car on the second train to rome.  we thought we’d share meals with one another, because we didn’t really want to spend 21 euros on each person for lunch, and the girls don’t eat that much.  it was a three meal course.  so we ordered three to share, and it ended up being 33 euros per plate!  oh my goodness, 100 euros for lunch!  luckily, when we checked into the marriott here in rome, jarom’s days of travel paid off.  since he’s platinum, we got free upgrades, and access to the concierge lounge.  so we had free snacks and drinks for dinner.  plus free buffet breakfasts!  we have been relaxing, watching a movie, and making fun of italian commericals and shows which are hilarious.  oh, so needed rest!  we will have three very full busy days coming up!

 

i must say, coming from switzerland, where it’s clean and beautiful, to rome where it’s dirty and graffiti’d everywhere, is a definite change.  the pushy taxi drivers who are very short tempered are also quite a bother.  i know it’s only my second time here, but very dis-enchanted so far.  hopefully the colosseum and other historic sites will make up for the rest.

oh ya, check out the swiss chocolate bar we all ate in about two days…good thing we have another one.

 

 

 

 

 

sept. 16.  2012

day 7

first of all, today is camden’s 9th birthay!  happy birthday cam!  and in switzerland of all places, how lucky!

one of the things we love to do when we are traveling, is go to church and meet new people and see how the church is always the same, but to meet all the different people.  we woke up sunday morning, and i could not push myself to get out of bed, i was exhausted, and so was little madison.  i was terribly bummed to miss out, but also terribly tired, so jarom took the other three girls, and went to church.  they had a great time, and on lds.org, it said church started at 10:50, but that ended up being the last hour of meetings.  so they ended up catching sacrament meeting.  camden was hoping to go to primary, and have them sing happy birthday, and alex was excited to meet the young women.  but sacrament was what they got to go to, and it was a fun experience.

jarom and the girls picked up two pizza’s-medium size, and to show how expensive it is in switzerland, it cost 35 francs!  ouch!  the day before, we bought four large sandwiches, in about 15″ size baguettes, and it was 40 francs.  add 10% onto that, and that’s the equivalent of a dollar.  not cheap!

we dipped our feet into lake geneva with mi’chel and isabelle, and soaked in the sun and admired the alps.  our little family then walked 20 minutes along lake geneva on the path over to chillon castle.  this medieval castle, built in the early 12th century and renovated up to the 20th century, was marked by the savoy era, the bernese era and the vaudois era.  so many rooms, it seems they started making up things to do in them.

we made it back for dinner with marielle and allan.  it was absolutely a lovely evening.  we enjoyed so much getting to know all these wonderful people, their stories, and a small part of switzerland.  we were taken care of from head to toe, we are so very grateful for marielle’s hospitality and kindness.  what a beautiful hotel, and a beautiful location!

after dinner, cam opened a card from grandma waldon(she already opened her nice camera before our trip), danced with her daddy, and then the kids decided jarom and i needed to go on a date. so we walked the path along the lake by twilight, and while we were gone, the girls wrote thank you cards and watched a movie.  it was a nice close to our switzerland stay.  we packed in a lot in in a short amount of time, and it was beautiful!

 

 

sept. 15.  2012

day 6

we awoke thinking we had a rental car(just made the resv. last night), and received a call this morning saying they didn’t have anymore cars, which we decided wasn’t a big deal since there are so many trains.  we ate a lovely breakfast in the hotel, and then walked to the train station, caught a train from montreux to montbovon, and then on to bulle, then caught the train to broc, where we went to a yummy swiss chocolate factory tour, and chocolate tasting.  to be quite honest, i didn’t think the chocolate was that great…belgian chocolate is much better!

the views along the trains were gorgeous, and great photo opps.  i felt like we would spot heidi and peter at any moment…it looked just like the movies.  after the chocolate tour, we trained back from broc to bulle, and then on to gruyeres.  gruyeres is where we did a swiss cheese tour, and ate cheese samples on our 10 minute walk up to the medieval town and chateau de gruyeres.  wow, absolutely amazing.  the medieval castle was exactly like you see in books…we toured the chateau room by room, and walked through the medieval village.  there was a show of five men blowing the alphorns in the center of town.  we had to buy(or jarom decided it was necessary), to get swiss army knives while in switzerland, so we visited one of the small shops in the village, and got our souvenirs and chocolate, and headed back to the train.

we were on time, ready to go, got on the train that pulled up, and even asked the conductor to make sure it was heading back to montbovon, and it ended up going the opposite direction than we needed, back to bulle.  so that was over an hour that that put us back.  we waited at bulle for an hour, and then got on the right train back to montbovon, and then on to montreux.  i’d say we did a pretty good job navigating all the trains, the extra hour and a half pushed us over the exhausted and hungry line though.  we made it back, and had dinner at the hotel, which was very nice.  we left this morning at 10:00am, and got home at 9:30pm, and that’s walking and training all day.  the girls are absolutely amazing.  they are excellent travel buddies, they just go, go, go, with hardly a complaint.

isabelle and mi’chelle(relatives) got our girls little gifts, including chocolate for us all, which was so sweet.  oh man, i’m not going to fit into anything after this trip.  we did walk quite a few miles today, hoping that helps!
exhausted and ready for some rest!  good night.

sept. 14.  2012

day 5

last morning of paris…we awoke at 5:00am to get bags packed, and the apartment in order.   our taxi we ordered the night before came and left…without us…so we were sweating bullets for a few minutes, but got a hold of another one.  our train(tvg-high speed) left paris gare de lyon train station at 9:11, and we arrived to Geneva a little after noon.  we then caught a smaller train from geneva to montreux, which took an hour.  the train from geneva to montreux goes along lake geneva, and once you see it, you really don’t ever want to go back home.  you start thinking of ways to try and make a living over here so you can stay and see the view everyday!  so the “large” taxi’s to house all of us took off from the train station, so i’m sure it was quite a sight to see six people lugging 7 pieces of luggage through the beautiful streets of montreux, the distance of 1 kilometer to the hotel…but we made it!

i really haven’t had many personal connections in my time…but when we were making our plans for this trip, my grandma let me know we had relatives who owned a hotel on lake geneva.  she emailed mireille for us to see if it was possible for us to stay with them.  mirielle said of course, we could stay in her mother’s apartment.  we have been very blessed to be able to not only stay here, but with relatives and get to know a part of their lives and their stories.  they have been so very gracious, and we have enjoyed our time today.  we were able to eat dinner on the terrace of the hotel, overlooking geneva lake and the alps.  magnifique!

we’ve had a long but wonderful day, and are ready to head off to bed.  just wait and see where we are going tomorrow!   good night.

 

sept. 13.  2012

day four

we woke up to a surprise today, and not a good one.  it sounded like someone was drilling right in our room, it was so extremely loud.  right outside our window some guys were working, and it was so loud that we left that side of the flat and went to other rooms and closed the doors.  i finally went back to sleep, and so did the others that had woken up, but it wasn’t enjoyable at all.  of course, the people we rented the flat from, never pick up their phone, and then after emailing them, they said they can’t help work that is being done in paris.  unacceptable!  obviously, that’s why we got a good deal!  it’s a cute flat, i will take pic’s tomorrow before we leave.  jarom was joking, that that’s probably why the owners rented it out this week, because of the construction.

we left the flat this afternoon, with the lovely smell of fall in the air today.  oh, so breezy and cool.  september is such a great time to visit paris.  we have not had lines anywhere we’ve gone, including the louvre.  we showed them our museum pass, and walked right in.  it wasn’t very crowded in the louvre either.  seeing the mona lisa the first time two years ago, there were hundreds of people vying and pushing with shoulders to catch a glimpse and raise their arms over others to get a pic.  today, only maybe 40 people were standing in front of mona, it was easy to get to the front, much more enjoyable.  walking the halls of the louvre, with the old stone, and all the historic artifacts is very exciting.  all this history, each telling a story from the past, needing to be told.  it’s fantastic.  we saw “mona” and other beautiful art by leonardo di vinci, “venus di milo,” and a lot of  other beautiful paintings and sculptures that we have no idea about.  you walk through seeing people getting dowloaded on info either with a tour guide or headphones with info, and we were happy just hitting the few important sites in our eyes with four kids!   we teach our kids to not look at inappropriate pictures, obviously, so it’s a little shocking to them as we walked around seeing many naked sculptures left and right.  alex said, “i’m going to take pictures of the guys showing just the upper part.”  good idea!

we walked out of the louvre through the pyramid, and enjoyed the front of the grounds, which are immense!  we kept walking the opposite direction of the louvre, toward the obelisk, with the trees changing and beautiful lanes to stroll down, it was breathtaking to look at.  of course, everyone needed an ice cream along our stroll, which made the view even better!

after the louvre, we headed to the mall, called-galleries lafayette.  we did get to pass the opera house, which is gorgeous.  we made it to the mall…i don’t really care for the mall here, probably because the prices seem double to triple.  but we did grab some healthy food in the mall, which isn’t a normal thing in the u.s.-quite the opposite!  the girls kept saying they wanted to go to the mall and shop, so it was good for them to see it, and realize we really didn’t “want” to buy anything there.

we finally headed home, exhausted, and ready to journal our day and get to bed.  also, we are bummed the bread stores are closed, because we ate what leftover baguettes we had when we got home, and it’s kinda gross how much you really enjoy snacking on bread!  plus, it’s pretty cheap.  we can get 6 croissants, 2 baguettes, 2 chocolate rolls, and 2 chocolate baguettes for 12, 50 euros.   we have an early day tomorrow, packing up all our garb and setting off for switzerland.

good night.