OliviaMargaret

Our last destination in France before heading home was to Bayeux and the Normandy beach landings. The day we travelled to Bayeux was going to be a very interesting day on the Tour de France where Voeckler was going to be tested for the yellow jersey. We were hoping to make it to our hotel in time to see the end. Although at the train station there weren't any taxis so we decided to walk to our hotel which wasn't that far away. We walked passed a bar that was showing the Tour de France just along from the train station. We decided to stop and watch the very intense ending at the bar. Voeckler managed to keep the yellow jersey but only by 15 seconds which is good. The french people in the bar were ... read more

After Adele's we headed up into the Brittany region to a small town called Pont-Aven. We were supposed to stay here for about two weeks but only ended up staying about a week as there wasn't much there to do. I wasn't looking foward that much to staying in Pont-Aven as the house mum had chosen to stay in had a straw roof or thatched rooves as they are called. But the house actually wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. It seemed a very arty town as almost every second shop was an art shop selling all sorts of paintings. The weather wasn't to good there either and it rained almost every day we were there. We didn't do much while staying there apart from visiting a few towns and watching the Tour ... read more

We arrived in Perigeux to find Adele, her family and mum waiting to meet us. We had missed our train that took us to Perigeux so Dad, Sophia and I ended up spending a few hours at the train station before the next one came. It was nice to see Adele again after a few years. It was also nice to finally meet her family. Adele hasn’t changed much and still looks the same although I am now taller than her. Adele drove us back to her house which was about half an hour away. Her house was nice and big although it was in the country. We put all our stuff away and then sat down quickly for something to eat before going to her end of year dance show. Their dance shows are different ... read more

Toulouse was our third and final day trip away. This time we didn’t have mum as she went to London to be with Rhonda while she had some nervous tests done to figure out the reason behind her weird eye. Toulouse didn’t really have any tourist sights to see so the whole day was basically spent shopping. The train trip was good, it was only a few hours and we didn’t have any difficulties. When we got there we went to find the tourism office where we got a map of the city and got shown the main shopping streets. All the shops were having their annual end of season sales which was good although I didn’t end up buying anything. The weather was quite cold which is a change from what we’re now used to. ... read more

The week after Barcelona was spent going on little day trips to three of the bigger cities in the area. The first city we had decided on was Nimes. Nimes is mostly known for its Roman buildings and history. Three major attractions are the Roman amphitheatre, the town hall and the Pont du Gard which is a three level Roman aqueduct. We went there mainly to see its Roman attractions although we didn’t get to see the aqueduct as it was out of town and we didn’t have a car to get there. The first thing we saw was the Roman amphitheatre which was really impressive. It’s apparently the best kept amphitheatre in the world. It told you lots about it and I learnt heaps from it. It told you what would happen if you were ... read more

I was looking forward to coming down south to be able to rest and not have to do something everyday. It was a bit of a struggle getting to our house with mums gps on her phone taking us through the smallest roads I’ve ever seen after being put on a detour. We eventually got to our house which is a nice three bedroom house with a pool but soon discovered there is no internet which is going to be a bit of a pain. The village where we are staying is tiny! There are a lot of vineyards here which we spent a few nights walking along the little tracks that went through them. It’s nice to relax here and be able to have proper food and home cooked meals. Our first day trip was ... read more

Today we did some more touristy things but it wasn’t as much as yesterday. We started our day with a walk around the Olympic Village. We stopped at one of the two New Zealand owned cafes to have a drink which had a good view of the main stadium. We walked around until we got to the other side of the stadium which had a better view of all the stadiums. It looked like most of the stadiums were nearly done which was good. We had a look at some boards they had put up about the London Olympics which had a map of where all the stadiums are and it told us what stadiums were for what sport and also what they were going to do with the buildings after the Olympics. One of the ... read more