Adventures in France!

A few weeks ago, Caroline and I took a much needed break, and set out across the Atlantic! This was basically a last hurrah before C's busy season began (she's a tax accountant).

The itinerary: a circuit through the south of France for 10 days.

We flew into Nice, which is a coastal city very close to Italy. This area of France is called the Cote d'Azure, or the Blue Coast. Wow they were not kidding! The water actually has a lot of green hues too, it's gorgeous. Airplanes flying into Nice go right over this area, so you get this amazing view right as you fly into the area.

At this point, I think we'd been awake for about 26 hours? Thank goodness for coffee!

Nice is stunning. One thing most people don't realize until they get here--the beaches aren't sand, they are large pebbles! But that doesn't stop anyone from getting into that surf!

C and I decided to try out watercoloring during this trip, so we bought some travel watercolor sets that we broke out during various times. C has just taken up art, and it's painfully clear that she has way more artistic talent than I do!

From here we travelled west to a cool beach town called Cassis, which is close to Marseilles. Somehow I did not get a good photo of this place, but here's one courtesy of Wikipedia.

Miraculously we did not get a sunburn this whole trip! high fives to us for sunscreen application!

For the largest portion of our trip, we stayed in an area of France called Provence, which is in the south, but inland. This is the land of lavender fields, farms, and cute towns. We rented a car to drive around, which made this my first experience with driving a car in another country! I was nervous about this, but it was absolutely necessary because this area is so rural.

Our favorite town was a rock-built village on a mountain, called Gordes. The region of Provence is dotted with amazing, unique villages like this!

Most days of our trip were a lovely mix of wandering fun areas, finding a cafe to refuel, and repeat! We had so much tasty food, and literal gallons of Perrier (and wine of course)!

A funny story about coming home: as we flew back to the US, we talked a lot about how we wanted to change our eating habits to adopt the French-eating lifestyle. We planned how to get fresher veggies, cook with olive oil, eat more fruits...and as we walked into the Washington airport, the first American thing we saw was "Belly Buster Sandwich Shop!"

We laughed, and then 10 minutes later realized we hadn't had dinner yet and were very hungry...

Next thing you know we are sitting at our gate eating Belly Buster sandwiches. So much for our new eating habits!

Thanks for reading! I'll include a few more pictures of the trip below!