The Cotswolds

Marshfield

Once we finally got our hire car, we drove all the way to our cottage in a small village called Marshfield.

We stopped at a miniscule village called Halfway for a pub lunch. On the way to our cottage we also saw a white horse (carved into the hillside) and Silbury hill, which is where all the ley lines meet (search ley lines on google!).

We caught a bus tour around Bath, which is only about 20 minutes down the road. Bath is an old Roman town and is home to the famous Roman Baths.

We later went to the baths, to look around and explore. It's a little bit like Rotorua, because the springs that supply water for the baths are actually hot.

The next day we went to Warwick Castle.

It was a stunningly clear and cold morning.

At Warwick Castle we saw a falconry show, where a falconer flew a hawk and had a giant golden eagle. He said he didn't want to fly the eagle because it was a bit of a psychopath.

We walked around the castle, and up on the walls and turrets.

The only way to get there was to take hundreds of dark, narrow, steep stairs up.

We also visited the dungeons, and the stately rooms.

It then decided to rain, then hail on us!

By the time we got back to the car we were absolutely soaked, and were pretty much icicles. Later that day we found out that it had snowed in Birmingham, which is only 20 miles away from where we were.

We went to visit our friend Ashara, and she took us to see a white horse that was carved into the hill. It was only 5 minutes up the road from her house. It disappointingly had been concreted over to make it maintenance free. We still had fun clambering down the steep hillside to get to it's hooves. We found buckets and buckets of stuck together hail from the day before that hadn't melted yet! We then had well needed warm soup at Ashara's (Thanks Ashara - it was delicious!)

We then drove to Glastonbury.

This is a magical, mystical place that has many legends and myths behind it. It used to be known as Avalon, and Joseph (Jesus' uncle) supposedly brought him here as a young man. Also, King Arthur (the one who pulled the sword out of the stone) is supposedly buried in the Glastonbury Abbey, which we also visited.

At the Glastonbury Abbey we saw all the hundreds of years old ruins. We also saw a couple of squirrels, a badger set (which is their network of home tunnels) and some very unfriendly territorial geese! The grounds were very large and peaceful.

I fell down the stairs at the cottage (yes, from the top!) and now my tail bone is as good as broken (no, not actually that bad, I am exaggerating a little - but it did REALLY hurt)(Chantal).

Today we visited the graveyard next door. Some graves here are from the 1700's, and those are the ones you can read.

Back to London tomorrow, to visit some friends, and then we are truly on our way home!

Getting homesick, and missing friends, family and cat! I know this sounds silly, but I actually miss our phone ringing!(Chantal)

London

London

London is very polluted - it gives you black snot!

There are millions and millions of people in London, all pushing you around, not bothered about who they bump into!

London is great for shopping!

I LOVED the old fashioned red phone booths!

In London we went to the London Eye.

This is like a giant ferris wheel with 32 'pods' that you sit in as it goes around.

The movement is so slow that it takes about 30 minutes to do a full circle, and you can't feel it moving.

There were amazing views of all of London, and you could see lots of famous places like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and London Bridge.

We got on a double decker bus for a tour around London.

We had a great tour of the city, and saw lots of streets off the monopoly board.

We went to Camden markets. They were full of punk rockers and goths, it was a zingy place. Lots of black gothic clothes, as well as lots of neon.

We also went to the original Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. It had amazingly good service, and we would recommend it to anyone going to London. We the classic hamburgers, and they were delicious.

We spent one day at the Natural History museum. It was wonderful.

It was a lot of fun and very impressive.

Might even have to say it was better than Te Papa. he heh heh.

We saw some dinosaur skeletons and some giant bugs. A realistic, yes life size, yes scarey T Rex was roaring and scaring little kids.

Madame Tussauds was really a big waste of money and time and energy. We didn't like it. It was SO busy and there were so many people that you couldn't even see the wax statues.

We saw our friend Lisa and went out for dinner with her, and another night went to her house. Thanks for the pizzas Lisa!

One night we went to see Mamma Mia the stageshow. It was amazing, and we enjoyed it thoroughly - much more than the movie (which we also enjoyed). The actors were exceptionally good.

We caught the underground to Mum and Dad's old house in Wood Green. It looked old and scummy, and I'm glad I was ONLY conceived there (Chantal).

Paris

Paris

The first big thing we did was to go to Disneyland Paris. IT WAS AWESOME!

The first we went on was Sabine's first ever roller coaster ride - Space Mountain. It was in pitch black darkness with laser lights flashing against the walls, ceiling and ground so you didn't know which way up you were. Apparently we did a 360 turn, but I didn't know because I was screaming hard out (Sabine).

It was actually quite surprising, but there weren't many queues, or people, because it wasn't peak season.

The queues were only about 10-30 minutes wait. We went on many other rides, and one of our favourites was Thunder Mountain which was another roller coaster. I loved the sharp corners and the adrenalin rush!(Sabine).

We also enjoyed the Pirates of the Carribean, a water flume, a Dumbo the flying elephant ride, giant teacups, Peter Pan's flight, a Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones. (I couldn't go on this last one because I was too small - Sabine).

We ate candyfloss bigger than our heads!

I couldn't even finish it (Chantal).

We stayed there the whole day and had heaps of fun.

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We also went to the Louvre, where the start of the Da Vinci Code was set. We have both read this book on holiday, and we really enjoyed it.

We saw the pyramid, with 666 panes of glass.

We saw the Mona Lisa, which was actually pretty tiny. And the Madonna of the Rocks, also by Leonardo DaVinci.

Next we went to Monet's Gardens in Giverny. We took a bus as part of a tour group. We looked at his two gardens, - the flower garden and the water garden.

I liked the water garden the best, as it was more peaceful and the crunchy crimson leaves looked stunning. (Chantal).

I preferred the flower garden as most of the flowers I hadn't seen before, and all of them were very pretty (Sabine).

We visited his old house and studios.

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We also went to the Eiffel tower.

It took ages to queue, by far the longest we have had to wait so far.

We took the lift to the third floor, stopping off at the second floor for a lower view.

The view was beautiful, but I found it less enjoyable because there were so many people.

We walked back from the Eiffel tower, stopping at St Sulpice on the way, which is a church featured in the DaVinci Code. It was old and beautiful.

Next day I went shopping at C&A, my favourite shop (Chantal). I bought three summer tops for 12 euro (about $24).

That night we did a bus tour around Paris, which went past the Eiffel Tower.

We were stunned when we saw that it was all lit up in blue, looking very pretty.

On the hour, every hour, the tower completely sparkles for about 5 minutes, as an extra 40,000 lights get switched on. This looks absolutely spectacular!
Soon we will be going to London, and I will miss Paris and the lovely croissants we get from our local bakery every morning, for breakfast. I look forward to being in an english speaking country, though...

Barcelona

Barcelona

We stayed in a lovely spacious light apartment in Barcelona. Our apartment was on Ramblas, a very long, busy, touristy street. On Ramblas you can find mimes, street performers, pet shops, flower shops and lots of people.

The mimes are dressed in outrageous costumes and wear amazing makeup so you can't tell who you are posing with. Some were quite scarey.

We had our photos taken with many mimes.

Lots of Gaudi's work is in Barcelona. Gaudi was an amazing designer and architect. He took inspiration from nature.

While in Barcelona we visited many of his famous works of art, including an apartment block called La Pedrera, and a park called the Parc Guell, which features in lots of movies.

We also went to see some flamenco music and dancing. Flamenco is traditionally from this part of Spain. It is mainly very fast guitar playing, accompanied by percussion such as clapping and drumming. It is also sometimes accompanied by singing, and flamenco dancing, which is danced by a woman in a long layered dress and high heeled tap shoes. The dancing was sharp and fast, and had lots of intricate, fast footwork. The singing sounded like a strangled cat... (Sabine suggests not going without earplugs - but then you miss the guitar playing).

In Barcelona we went to a Imax theatre, and saw a 3D movie on prehistoric sea monsters. As it was our first 3D movie we weren't used to the effects, so we jumped a lot - especially when anything with teeth swam towards us (which was most of the movie). It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed it heaps, and even though it was in spanish we still loved it.

One day we caught a flash cable car up a tall hill.

From the cable car you could see amazing views of Barcelona - which was a lot bigger than we had expected.

It had a castle on top, which we walked around before walking back down, stopping at the water and sand park (no water though, because Barcelona is in the middle of a severe drought).

One night we took a tour bus around Barcelona when it was dark. We enjoyed this because the city looked so different when it was dark. We saw a huge fountain lit up, by different coloured lights. There was classical music playing, and as the music changed the pattern of the fountain and the lights, changed with it. It looked spectacular.

On the last day in Barcelona we went to the zoo. There were lots of animals here, including different ones that you don't get at Wellington zoo.

There were all the usual monkeys, camels and tigers, but there were also huge anacondas, elephants, pink flamingos and hippos.

That night we took a twelve hour night train to Paris. Our cabin was quite comfy.

It had four seats.

These folded away once the beds were folded out.

We had a hand basin, and they gave us things like toothbrushes, toothpaste and mineral water. I (Chantal) thought it was a bit like school camp - lying in a bunk, sucking on Wurthers!

We loved Barcelona, but were ready to start our new adventure in Paris...

Carcasonne

Carcasonne

We stopped off in Carcassonne for two days, on the way to Spain.

Carcassonne has two parts to it - the new city and old city.

The old city and it's castle are completely surrounded by huge ancient walls.

We spent a day exploring the old town and castle. We took an audio guided tour around the castle, learning about it's gory history.

There were lots of precautions to make sure that no-one could break into the castle (in the olden days).

City walls, moat and drawbridge, gates that could drop on you, a murder ditch, and even if you got past all that you would still be greeted by arrows.

All of this was so effective that people soon learned that it was best NOT to attack Carcassonne.

From the castle ramparts you had a very good view of the city, old and new.

After exploring the castle we went on a boat ride down the Canal du Midi.

We were given bread to feed ducks on the way. The trip lasted for about two hours... and in this time we saw a turtle and lots of ducks.

The canal navigates it's way down from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, making it 360km long. It is a UNESCO world heritage site because it is a man made canal that was established to allow the transport of goods from one side of France to the other without going past the Spanish.

About half way through the trip, we went through a lock.

The lock is used to control the water level, as one part of the canal has a much higher water level than the other.

There are many locks located down the canal, but we only went through this one, rising just over two metres very quickly.

Pyrenees

Pyrenees
The Pyrenees are the mountains that divide Spain from France.
The gite that we were staying in was 800m up a mountain. All the houses have steeply sloped roofs so in the winter time the snow just slides off.





On our first day in the Pyrenees, after a morning lying in and recovering from the longest drive yet, we went to the Parc Animalier des Pyrenees. This held a lot of animals, all native to the Pyrenees. These included brown bears, wolves, lynx, otters, squirrels, deer, foxes, mountain goats, and a funny little animal called a marmotte. We got to hand feed the marmottes, and realised that they had very big teeth, like a beaver. We learnt that there are around 20 bears left in the wild in the pyrenees.




We also went to see the house that belonged to our great great grandmother in a little village called Soulom. We also visited our family grave here, where our great grandparents and great great uncle and grandmother are buried, and placed flowers there.




We went to the Cirque de Gavarnie, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. Here we did a three hour walk, up to the cirque and back. The cirque is a mountain rock formation shaped like a huge horseshoe. There are lots of very tall waterfalls, and we saw a huge lot of ice. It must have been bigger than we thought, because although it looked quite close it would have been another hour to walk there. Instead of walking up to the cirque, you could rent a donkey or horse. Our great grandfather used to lead the horses and donkeys up to the cirque as a school holiday job.






One day we went to these caves called the Grottes de Betharam. They were sort of boring and not very exciting. We walked two kilometres through the inside of the mountain. You could see where an old river (diverted by man years ago) used to flow. There were massive stalactites and stalagmites. We then went on a gimmicky boat ride, that would have been faster if you had walked. When the boat started moving, all these old Portuguese ladies that were also touring the caves with us, started singing. Before long, the other Portuguese senior citizens of the group joined in. They sang very loudly, for the whole rest of the trip. I thought they were cute (Chantal). They gave Dad a headache. I got really annoyed and felt like doing something that probably would give me a one way ticket to the naughty corner! (Sabine). Actually, we don't have a naughty corner - but if we did, that is where I would have gone. No return trip!
The tour ended with a train ride out the bottom of the mountain.



Another thing we did was go to the Pic du Midi.
This is a mountain with an observatory on the top. The observatory has been there for 130 years, and scientists live here and work. The government was going to close it because it didn't have enough money, but they decided instead to open it to tourists, to make money. It is nearly 3000 metres high, and we took two cable cars to get to the top. Outside at the top was very chilly. The wind factor made it colder. We were above the weather, and all the cloud was beneath us. We could see the tops of other mountains. We walked through the museum at the top, and sat down to watch a 15minute movie. Even though it was in french Mum translated and I learnt a lot about the history of the Pic du Midi.











While we were staying in the Pyrenees it snowed overnight, and even though the snow didn't wuite come down to us, it went onto all the peaks, and a few hundred metres up our road. That afternoon, we drove up our road a little to look at the snow. The snow was powdery and we attacked the car with snowballs. This was lots of fun, and a highlight for us.









Lourdes was our closest town. It was freaky (Chantal). Sick people come here with the hope to have a miracle, as 150 years ago a miracle did happen in Lourdes. A young girl called Bernadette had visions of the virgin Mary over a number of months. It is quite strange because there are lots of people in wheelchairs, and people collecting holy water from grotto, and I felt strange and uncomfortable (Sabine).

Provence

Provence

We spent one and a half days travelling by train to get to Provence. Along the way we stopped off one night in Nice (France). The hotel we stayed in was very nice and posh! We got given a little stuffed toy each...

The next day we picked up our rental car in Marseille and drove all the way to St Remy de Provence. We went to our little house in the middle of nowhere.

The little house had a downstairs bathroom, kitchen and lounge, and there were 2 upstairs bedrooms. In the late afternoon we went for a dip in the swimming pool we had in the garden. We shared this large garden and pool with two other holiday houses.

We rescued a frog from the pool one day. We didn't eat him though - his legs were too small!! Chantal

We went to Les Baux...

This is a mediaeval village and castle built into a stone hill.

While we were there we saw the biggest catapult in Europe in action!! It was amazing how it worked, with ropes and chains and things that pulled, until the catapult finally got set off. In the old days it used to fire 'greek fire' which a fire that can't be put out by water, only earth and sand. Today they used a giant water filled balloon.

We then walked around the old village and visited the amazing castle. When we climbed the steep steps to the top, we found that it was very windy. We had a great view of Provence.

The next day we went to the Cathedral d'Images.

This was an old quarry built into a hill.

Pictures were projected onto the walls, ceilings and floor, with music in the background.

The current exposition here is on Van Gogh...

(I found this quite boring and it isn't one of the highlights of my trip-Sabine)

I found it really amazing because everything was so huge-the quarry was really big. It felt weird when you walked over moving images on the ground. I would just love to put on a dance production here!!

We did a day trip to Toulon.

Mum and Dad tried to take the back roads, but it took a LONG time, so we jumped on the motorway to get there on time - it still took us four hours !!

We didn't see Tana Umaga, but we did see mum's friend Daniele. Daniele and her partner Jean-Claude showed us around the old part of town, and then shouted us lunch at a creperie. Mmmmmm!!

After lunch we walked around the port looking at all the boats, shabby or posh. We then had icecreams, shaped like Pinnochio.

We said our goodbyes, and headed off towards the motorways. Dad got really excited when he found that you could drive 130km per hour on the motorway which we soon did, Mum clutching her seat and wide-eyed. Then there was thunder and lightening, so we had to reduce down to 110km. Oooooohhh....:(

The next day we went to the bonbon museum (LOLLY Museum!!) :)

It was really cool - it was the Haribo Museum. You see Haribo lollies everywhere around Europe. At the museum we learned the process of how lollies were made, and got given a lot of free lollies along the way. They had lots of interactive games and I particularly liked one where you could send photo emails of yourself, decorated with lollies.

After the Haribo museum we then went to the Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman acqueduct.

It is a huge old bridge spanning the river. Before we saw the bridge itself we popped in to look at the ludo kids museum. This was very good and easy to understand, and I knew some of the stuff already because we studied ancient Rome earlier in the year.

Then we walked across the bridge, and paddled in the water. It was cold, and the rocks were very slimy. The bridge itself is a UNESCO world heritage site... we have seen a few of these in our travels now!