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Published: March 15th 2008
South of France
Just outside MontpellierActuaaaally, we dodged Paris, but believe it or not, there are still other places to go in France!
From Venice we took the train to the city of Montpellier in the south of France to meet up with Kristena's friend Jordan ... and we pretty much spent the time just visiting and seeing bits and pieces of the area. We hunted for a man painting a picture in a beret and red and white striped shirt, fumbled through some pathetic french sentences, chomped on a baguette, sipped cafe au lait from dinky shot glasses, and ate copious amounts of lunch meat smothered with cheese! The ladder is known as "Raclette," it is a traditional French meal served mostly in the winter, and is similiar to cheese fondue, but with wine and potatoes too.
From the south of France, our plan was to head to Paris (to see the Eifel Tower and take obligatory photos of the Mona Lisa of course), but our "go with the flow" attitude backfired a bit and we were unable to get a train in that direction. Instead we headed for Geneva (in Switzerland, for you rusty folks 😉 ... but that didn't work out
as planned either! It turns out that sometimes the trains split, and by the time we caught onto this, it was too late! So, the front of the train went to Geneva and the back of the train went to St Gervais, aka the French Alps! Not that we were complaining much! We spent a day exploring the town of Chamonix, and took a cable car up to the top of Mont Blanc (Europes highest mountain, and the worlds highest cable car at 3800 ft). The views were amazing!!! And the mountains and snow reminded us soooooo much of home (which we are desperatelly missing right now!), that we decided to skip Paris and spend a few days skiing the alps instead! Sounds good ... but we happened to be the middle of "French Ski Vacation and every hotel was booked for miles. Hmmm ... so we get lost in France (uh oh), end up in the Alps (ooo la la), decide to spent a few days skiing (whoo hoo), but have no where to sleep (bummer). Not the most ideal circumstances to date (haha, but still not nearly as bad as discovering the Greeks expected us to sleep on
top of the ferry while crossing the ocean in January!)Over the last 4 months we have learned to "roll with the punches", but those would be some frozen, hypothermic punches ... and we panicked and jumped on an overnight train for Paris. Not such a happy ending ... but we'll be back!!! 😉
Next stop: WW1 and WW2 memorial sites in the north of France!
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Adrian
non-member comment
those pictures look sweet. and I like the digital price tags. proud of you guys for still going strong!