Day 47 - Paris

We arrived safe and well at our holding camp, transfer to princess paradise at 0800 Sat!

Will they sleep...

Day 46 - last bbq!

Well we celebrated our last bbq last night - we go to Paris today and then Disney on Saturady. Olivia put herself to bed yesterday at 5pm because 'if I sleep Disney will come more quickly!'

Well they have wine in their baby bottles over here...

Day 46 - Still in Burgundy

The local vineyard at the bottom of the road

We only brought 1 barrel

Enjoying our recent purchases

Our morning run for croissants - in pyjamas

Day 44 Burgundy

After just a 3 hour drive we arrived at our next site for 2 days but instantly felt we can spend a week here. Think postcard / holiday brochure pictures of rolling vineyards and quaint French villages and that’s where we are!

Stu was despatched after set-up to find some local wine – he came back with a bottle of Chablis from the vineyards we overlook – can’t wait to try it!

 

Forgot last time to share with you that as we left the south of France (admittedly the motorway junction that said left for Barcelona and right for Paris caused a few questions – Stu thought that another few weeks might be pushing his luck with work!) the road hugs the southern Alps and we saw a huge eagle just soaring on the thermals – it seemed to follow us for a couple of miles, the most majestic bird we have ever seen.

 

FOD:

There are 59 species of eagles.

Day 42 - Provence

After a lovely last day and morning (we didn’t leave until lunchtime so the girls had a run around before the 4hr journey) on the beach we set off for Chateau-neuf sur-Isere in the heart of Provence.

 

As we were sat having our last morning croissants I said to Stu ‘I love the beach, I love the warmth of the sea, I love the food and I love the climate – I just love it down the ‘med’ way…’ Stu said ‘next year I’m taking you to Rochester’.

 

The new campsite is very pleasant, set amongst peach and olive trees and overlooking a vineyard. As you can see it has a bar and swimming pool – what more does a girl need?

 

Stu’s off this morning to get his hair cut in the local town – I think everyone reading this can all agree that they don’t think it will go smoothly or as planned. I will put a (probably funny) picture of the results on here tomorrow!

 

FOD:

The average bottle of wine contains 630 grapes.

Day 41 - Surprise firework displays

Last night there were lots of small public firework displays all around. Just when you think you've seen it all, at midnight the bay was lit up with the largest display we've ever seen been fired off of a barge in front of a super yacht! Now that is bling!

PS Baz has met a local girl...

FOD:

Most historians put the chinese as the inventors of fireworks, filling bamboo shoots with explosives to scare off attackers. It is thought Marco Polo brought the 'technology' back to Europe and that is why Florence was the 1st major European centre of firework construction in the 1300's

Day 40 - St Tropez

We decided to see how the other half live and went for that planned ice-cream in St Trop , that’s what the ‘hip’ people call it. Surprisingly there was not a huge number of cars with extended wing mirrors in the port car park (there actually wasn’t that many with more than 2 seats – Stu said they might go fast but they would be rubbish at towing).  The place is exactly how you would expect it, full of expensive plastic toys and plastic people, but that just makes it a great place to watch the world go by, we thoroughly enjoyed it. The big rich people even have lights under their boats which the girls adored as they lit up the sea for some excellent fish spotting. A great place to have an evening promenade but with a bucket of moules at 23E, ice-creams at 4E and 7E for a beer you need to own a super-yacht to afford a holiday there…we retired to our ebay caravan!

 

PS From the pics you will see that Britannia still rules the waves!

 

FOD:

The largest super yacht in the world was put to sea this year, Eclipse (168m), is owned by Roman Abromavich. No2 on the list is Dubai (160m), owned by the royal family

Day 38 – Port Grimauld, South of France

Well after a super organised start we left Italy ahead of time by 15 minutes and set off for our longest drive of the holiday to the South of France we estimated 6 hours and we actually did it in 5½!  Our pitch is practically on the beach we could have had a pitch on it but they offer very little shade so we opted for the row back under a very big tree.  The girls as you can imagine absolute love living on the beach as does Mummy!  We look across a very beautiful bay filled with  all the expensive yachts moored in St Tropez, which is about 10 minutes drive away. We are planning on an ice cream trip there one evening if the credit card can stretch to it.  As we are in France our evening entertainment is a paddle (or as they say it ‘en piddle’) and a game of boule.

 

FOD:

St Tropez: The town’s name derives from that of an early, semi-legendary martyr  named Saint Torpes. His legend states that he was beheaded at Pisa during the reign of Nero, and that his body was placed in a rotten boat with a rooster and a dog. The body landed at the present-day location of the town.

The 23 steps to the beach from our pitch:

The view from our awning:

Our beach:

The view across the bay to St Stropez:

Our evening ents...

Day 37, Florence

What a great city, the indoor pleasures of this place are supposed to be the best in the world – big queues and small guests saw to it that we didn’t go in the Ufizzi – but the buildings are quite special too. New leather handbag for mummy, new wallet for daddy (he claims he now needs a much smaller one), new party shoes for Olivia and new jewel twin set for Eloise meant a happy train ride home.

It wasn’t a great day for the travelling elephants as Elvis was dropped and run-over and Ellie went missing – a panicked search of Florence was arranged and unbelievably an Italian lady stopped me and asked ‘you look for elephant?’ she obviously was used to seeing emergency searches for loved elephants! She had put it on a bollard and told me ‘it looked much loved’ (must be Italian for filthy bio-hazard).

 

St Tropez beckons tomorrow, for our final few days of chilling on the beach before we start our descent through France to normality!

 

FOD:

The gold doors shown are from the Bapistry (Michelangelo said they were so beautiful they could be the doors to paradise itself – guess things have moved on)  it is the oldest building in Florence, started in the 5^th century and is opposite the worlds 4^th largest cathedral (the biggest being in Milan).

 

Day 36, Lucca

A totally unexpected treat today when storm clouds threatened to ruin our afternoon swim we decided to visit the near-by medieval town of Lucca. What a thoroughly lovely place to wander around and have an early evening ice-cream (you will see that Eloise’s choice of yellow-mango flavour was a perfect choice for a yellow dress! It also had a big park so the town was a family hit. Boy – its hot in Tuscany – 38 again today. 

Day 34 / 35 Tuscany & Pisa

With a heavy heart we left the Italian Adriatic coast but our mood changed when we started driving through Tuscany. Our campsite is perched on a hilltop surrounded by olive trees, vineyards and terracotta roofed buildings and churches– exactly how you would expect it to be. The last picture is the view from our pitch.

 

Pisa is very quite, might be something to do with the Palio today down in Sienna (Stu was going to go but it is so hot here and it requires 7 hours stood in the sun to get a view!). We are still having a great time, however because of its rural location our campsite does not have internet so we will blog again in 2 days time when we are in Florence.

 

FOD:

The leaning tower has always leaned. The foundations subsided during construction when only 3 of the 8 stories were complete. Work stopped for 150 years as architect after architect could not solve the problem, then in 1318 they decided to continue building it anyway.

Day 34 - Stand down the international rescue.

Cancel Bob Geldolf's visit and the proposed christmas single. We have found some Bombay - unfortunately Baz did as well. Most herbs are crushed, Baz is grounded...

FOD:

Gin was created in 1650's Holland to treat stomach complaints, the name, gin comes from the word for juniper (genievre). By the 1720's one in four houses in London was producing and/or selling gin partially due to the fact that it was safer to drink than the water. Public drunkenness was a problem to say the least. By 1751 legislation was put into place to end this "gin madness"

Day 33 Still just chillin' down Italy way!

Sorry we haven’t blogged much this week – but we have been really busy doing nothing. Stu shops for dinner every morning, he’s now found a fish market (the Italian neighbours were most interested in his fish stew and even complemented the English chef on tasting). We just hit the beach, relax, swim and enjoy the sand. This campsite has a strictly enforced ‘siesta’ from 1330-1530 which Stu and Eloise support 100%.

Stu returned from the showers the other morning and said the man in the next cubicle couldn’t half belt out a perfect James Blunt song. I returned from the shower and said ‘there is piped music’. I overheard Stu saying ‘bon soir’ to our neighbours when I challenged him why he had been wishing our Italian neighbours goodnight in French he said ‘oh dear I’ve been saying it to everyone all week’. We, as a family, are hoping that there is not a common sense module on Stu’s new course.

Tuscany beckons on Saturday.

 

PS Yes, that is dinner of take-away pizza out of the box in the carpark of our travelling cousins fair ground. We are settling into our romany ways.