week 2

Bonjour from Provence, in southern France!

First, our last few days in Germany:
We visited a palace in Munich, Schloss Nymphenburg. It was the summer palace for the ruling family.

It has beautiful gardens, and lots of waterfowl, including tons of Canada geese, swans, and this Eurasian coot - check out his feet:

Our last day in Germany, we went to Zugspitze in the Alps, the tallest mountain in Germany. It was quite cloudy, so we didn't get much of a view, but we were able to cross over to Austria briefly. There are glaciers and places to sled.

The next day, we then took a long train ride to Avignon in France, where we rented a car and drove to an adorable town called Fontvieille. 

We are renting a place with a pool, the boys are really enjoying that

We visited Chateau Montauban in town 

and then went to see the remains of a Roman aqueduct. The most amazing part about this is the aqueduct is just in a field near an olive grove, no museum, interpretive signs, or parking lot - just ancient Roman ruins on the side of the road that you can explore on your own.

The aqueduct brought water to Arles (our next stop), an important Roman city with a coliseum that is still in use today, they still hold bullfights there (though nowadays the bull is usually not injured)

 We also visited the ancient theater

the cloisters of St. Trophime church

and saw an obelisk that is 2000 years old

For Van Gogh fans, you may recognize the city of Arles as a place where the painter produced some of his most famous works, he lived here 15 months and produced 300 paintings. He also cut off his ear in Arles and gave it to a "lady of the night". There are easels set up around town, placed at the location where he painted some of his works. The easels show what he painted from each location, such as "Cafe Terrace at Night":

Yesterday, we visited Les Baux de Provence, a hilltop medieval fortress. (full disclosure, photo is from a brochure)

They had blacksmith demonstrations, we all got to fire a crossbow, and they also demonstrated the firing of a real catapult - it took 8 people and about 30 minutes to set up the catapult for firing:

We then went to the Abbey Montmajour, which is about 1100 years old - I couldn't get a good photo, so this is from a postcard:

They have a rock cemetery, a new concept to me - they dug tombs into the rock - not sure how the bodies didn't rot and stink

The buildings around here are all from limestone, which is pretty cool because there are loads of fossils, mostly shells. But we did see one small mammal or bird bone, Teo was pretty excited about that.

Whew! 2 more days in Provence, and then we are off to Spain. Au revoir!