Home Sweet Home

Our last dining experience in Nice was at 6 a.m. on the top level of our hotel where we got to see the huge moon followed by the beginning glimmer of sunrise before setting out for the airport.

We made it through the Spanish Inquisition at the airport. Since we were flying into New York, it was crazy that amount of security we had to pass through. The first line of defence was a guard who questioned us about who owned our luggage, who packed it, who transported it, who gave us stuff to put in it, who carried it down the stairs, who put it on the bus, who took it off the bus - it was crazy - she didn't just ask, "Did you ever let this luggage out of your sight?". There were different people to scan and scrutinize our passports and our boarding passes. Only one student had overweight luggage and had to transfer some stuff to another bag.

It was looking like we were going to clear the carry-on security without an issue until one student tried to get through with two jars of jam and one teacher had a knife in her carry-on! When they found the knife I had a moment of panic because I had no idea why I would have a metal knife in my carry-on and I was desperately hoping they were mistaking something else. As they pulled my aside and asked me to open my luggage, I was denying that it was a knife until I remembered having a knife the day before during lunch - I had LEFT it in the bag - I am going to attribute it to lack of sleep! Thankfully the security guard laughed at me and what must have been my genuinely flustered state! We made it without further incident to New York. At JFK we had to pick up our luggage and re-check it before transferring flights. They must have been scrutinizing every bag again because it took over an hour to get all of our checked bags! Even though we went from the plane to the the luggage claim to security, we had to go through the whole security process again! Some students got patted down and a few got their hands swabbed to test for explosives! I swear, New York has got to be the MOST paranoid city in the world!
After a few hours of down time, we had a quick flight to Detroit, got our luggage within a matter of minutes and then spent the next hours and a half trying to find our bus.

It turns out the driver was late as it was and then was held up at the border. He had driven from Toronto, had no idea where Strathroy was and couldn't use his GPS because it was so overcast he wasn't getting a signal. We ended up taking the long way home via Windsor and the backroads from Iona Station but eventually we arrived safe, sound and exhausted to SDCI where the parents were waiting to take their darlings off our hands!

My body has no idea what time of day it is and all I really want to do is sleep BUT if I don't want to go to school naked tomorrow, I need to get some laundry done! And, we need to head out and pick up electronics to replace the ones that Eric and I managed to fry while abroad - funny that NO ONE else but the two of us had issues!

Until we travel again......Greece 2013 maybe?

Aéroport Nice :(

Well, we're checked out of the hotel and checked into the airport. They are boarding the first few people for our flight. I can't believe that after 2 years of planning, a year and a half of fundraising and organizing that we are on the final leg of this trip. I can't wait until it is our turn again for an international trip! Amanda has suggested Switzerland- I'm in! I shouldn't have too many problems finding some volunteers to chaperone that trip!

I have 18% battery left but I'm waiting until we get to JFK to recharge the battery because I am still leary about plugging it in here!

We had a jam packed day yesterday.
We were up early and on the bus to go to Grasse to a perfumery. I was definitely not interested in that so a few students and I went for a walk around the area. The views were beautiful but other than that, we didn't have much to see.

Our next stop was Cannes for a brief walking tour and lunch. We had time to shop in a big market where we scored some fresh Niçoise olives, dried strawberries and fresh apples. I wished we had more of an appetite because there was so much fresh fruit, veggies, meats, fish, etc.

Leanne, Eric and I had a nice picnic lunch on the boardwalk with a beautiful view of the water and the harbour with all the yachts and sailboats. We enjoyed a stroll up to the Festival Theatre and looked at the handprints outside.

We hopped back on the bus and took the scenic route to Antibes. Once again we had a few minutes to take in the gorgeous view and then we were back on. We finished off the bus trip in St-Paul de Vence, a quaint little walled town. The students were anxious to get back to Nice for shopping and exploring, so we just had a quick walk through.

Back in Nice, we treated the students (and staff of course!) to gelato from Fenocchio's where they have 100 different flavours to choose from! As the students headed off to explore or pack, we did some last minute souvenir shopping and then ate dinner at a great little hole in the wall place on some back street. We enjoyed the assiette Niçoise which featured traditional niçoise options like pissaladière, socca, beignets, etc. Of course we washed it down with our final glass of red wine in France!

As we were arriving back at the hotel, we saw several students making a mad dash away from the hotel towards the beach. This was the beginning of a late night of inquisition as we tried to get to the bottom of what had happened to cause a student to "run away" and all of his friends trying to chase him down. Let's just say alcohol leads to poor decision making and a few girls can be very dramatic BUT, everyone was fine and we managed to get everyone tucked into their rooms before heading to our own to pack.

It was around 1 a.m. when I crawled into bed and I was not well rested when the alarm went off at 4:45 a.m.!

Nice is NICE

Up early for breakfast and checkout today then a quick ride to the train station for another ride on the TGV from Avignon to Nice.  The Train at Avignon only stops for 3 minutes so with 44 people and LOADS of luggage it wasn't a lot of time to get our kids and luggage on the train so we ended up spreading out over three cars to get on and we just had to make our way to the back to our seats. It went well even though my group carried our luggage through two cars to get to our seats it was all good. A little excitement can do a body good at times there's not doubt. Our bus met us and we had quite an exciting drive through the streets of Nice to our hotel. 

We arrived at our Hotels and they are VERY nice indeed. Close enough to the main strip that we don't have to walk too far, yet far enough away to not have a lot of noise and foot traffic nor bar temptations for the kids.

We had a bit of time to freshen up and then we were off and walking through the busy crowded and very narrow streets of Nice. The architecture is similar to that of Paris, but the people are very different. There are many more mopeds and motorcycles here then in Avignon or even on the way to Avignon, so in that aspect it was a lot like Paris.

We had a fabulous walking tour thanks to Amanda and Rick Steves. It was great to see the culture.

I have more to say but I'm tired and sunburned... yup 20 plus degrees today (Friday our last day) I have lots to write but it will have to wait until I get home now as I have to get to bed and there is only 30% left on the computer's battery. I typed this all up once and it didn't post so i'm not going to do it again right away.

Good night see you all soon.

We leave tomorrow (Friday) for New York arrival at 2:30 and detroit Arrival at 9:30 - to Strathroy around Midnight... and home to Brampton at 3 am. (happy happy very tired and sunburned tourists!

Did Someone Sing out of Tune?

FYI - these three entries were typed up and pasted quick as it is our last night and we only have 5 hours to get packed, sleep and ... blogs done.

Today was busy. We visited Avignon, Pont du Gard (WOW) and the wonderful village of Uzes before traveling to Chateau Neuf de Papes for a wine tasting experience.

Our Guide Nina mentioned today that someone - no names will be mentioned here, but we know it isn't me, must have sung the Avignon song out of tune. Apparently when someone sings the song at the bridge out of tune it brings RAIN... had we only known we wouldn't have sung anything at all. It rained a bit in the morning but cleared up for us and turned out to be a really nice day!

First things first. We took a bus (thanks Marcel) to Pont du Gard, the amazing Roman aqueduct that remains from thousands of years ago when the water was directed to Nimes. It was an amazing site.  I could have spent a whole day just hiking around and enjoying the sites. Unfortunately for us though, we were two months early to walk on the top of the bridge. It didn't open until May.

We got quite a few nice pictures and while we were there an american photography group of students was there and taking some amazing shots. I can only image how wonderful their photography trip was. I also wonder how much more they remember of their trip because of how much they concentrate on the shots... do they or maybe they are so concerned with getting "the" shot that they miss all the good stuff and enjoy just LOOKING!

our trip to the village of Uzes was very nice. I loved the market. Most French people shop at the local markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The market was on when we arrived close to noon. Annette had her lunch, the kids went off to find something to eat so Tony, Amanda, Matt and I went in search of a cafe for our own lunch. We found it in a wonderful cafe specializing in Pizza. OMG Tony and I had the Plat du Jour, which contained a marinated chicken with amazing sun dried tomatoes, a vegetable medley (THANK YOU - I've really been missing my greens! But I do find that they over cook the veggies here. the Green and yellow beans were mushy but tasty.) Matt and Amanda both had the Italian pizza  a super thin crust (my fav) with yummy tomato sauce, prosciutto  mozzarella and arugula. Matt was nice enough to let me try it! :) it was very tasty.

We strolled along the streets but didn't really have time to shop AND eat so of course since we are adults and our stomachs rule, we choose to eat... which meant I saved Matt a lot of money since there were a few shops that had real bargains on clothes. Sam bought herself a really cute outfit to go with her really cute boots! She's going to be quite a site when we get home. Unfortunately she is developing a sore throat (along with half the kids).

We made our way by bus to Chateau Neuf de Papes... the Pope's new Castle...it was not what I was expecting at all. This area is the area of France where the popes located their summer castle away from Palais des Papes in Avignon. There are many hectares of vineyards which all use the Chateau Neuf de Papes label with their own appellation on the label as well. In order to be part of the CHP (NOT CNP)  the growers must ensure that there are only 6 clusters of grapes per vine, the vines are hand picked, they are not irrigated, the vines are covered with local limestone which keeps the roots at an even temperature, it absorbs heat during the day and gives off heat at night. (very cool - now I am going to have a vineyard as well! )

we returned home for a group dinner, which was ok but not totally impressive. Chicken legs, yummy potatoes, the starter was fantastic a filo pastry with a yummy mix of roasted veggies served with a small salad with yummy dressing. dessert was ok - a raspberry tart which was not as yummy as the raspberry tarts I bought in Paris.

One funny incident, we have a couple of vegetarian kids on the trip. They got FISH as their plat principal for supper. To the French fish is not meat and therefore counts as a vegetarian plate but our kids don't eat any meat or fish...it was quickly rectified for them and they got a plate of potatoes with - get this ... COOKED SPINACH!

After supper we took a walk around the town. It was quite hopping in a couple of places - but since we are getting up and going to Nice we thought we shouldn't stay up too late.  Matt made me a nice tea and I drank it while I read before we did room checks. After room checks, it was another tea and then bed! It was a really nice day. We really liked Avignon and I am certain the driving tour of France is something I want to do after seeing some of the towns we went through. I'd go back to Usez and told Matt that when I win the Lotto Maxx I am going to buy a place there and set up my bed and breakfast.

l'aventure continue

So...as you can tell from the lack of posts, I haven't had a lot of free time lately.
We had a fantastic visit to the Arc de Triomphe and most of the kids opted to walk ALL the way back to the hotel with Tony, Amanda and me. The rest headed back via the metro with Matt, Leanne and Jordan. Jacqueline was already back at the hotel with the sick students.
We had a fantastic stroll back down the Champs Élysées then stopped at Place de la Concorde for photos. Unfortunately, Tuileries was already closed so we walked along the Seine and then through the Louvre so the students could see the Pyramides lit up at night. They also got a chance to look from le Petit Arc to the obelisk to the Arc de Triomphe - it always amazes me what a feat of engineering that would be even in this day and age let alone back then!
At first I was worried that some students had opted to walk all the way back in hopes of sneaking off to a bar but they were fantastic! They were all so enthusiastic about the little history tidbits I had for them! It really was a night to make me remember why we've been doing all this!
When we got back to the hotel, one of the sick students had still been throwing up and the other had developed a fever. The vomiter assured me she was starting to feel better and didn't want to go to the hospital. So, the other girl and I headed over to Hôtel Dieu to get her checked out. It was definitely interesting navigating the medical system. So very different from Ontario! Luckily it wasn't busy so we were seen by a doctor within a few minutes, she was diagnosed with a UTI, given a prescription and we were back on our way. We caused a bit of a kerfuffle waiting for the taxi to come back and get us because I was going to take a picture of her and the receptionist panicked - apparently the flash would alert the hospital security and I could be arrested!!! Thank goodness he stopped me in time- that would have been a difficult one to explain to the board of education!!!!

The next morning while everyone else headed to the Louvre, I was back at the hotel with sick students. The vomiter came down for breakfast but then had to turn right around and head back upstairs. The UTI and I headed to the pharmacy. We got her one dose cure-all sachet of antibiotics (not sure why we can't have something like that in Canada). I forced the poor vomiter to drink some Gatorade for my own peace of mind and then the UTI and I went for a short walk to a bakery and fruit market. We checked on the vomiter who had now gone 3 hours without throwing up but was still in bed then headed to Montmartre.

We arrived about 45 minutes before the rest of the group and had time to walk around. In order to avoid the sketchy, sleazy men who kept following us on the main street of Montmartre, we ducked down a side street and stumbled upon the Montmartre cemetery. It was unlike anything either of us had ever seen! We had a few minutes just to wander until it was time to meet up with the group.

As Jacqueline already posted, we had a lovely afternoon walking around Montmartre. Upon returning to the hotel, I picked up a pregnancy test just to rule out a cause of vomiting. Thank goodness it came back negative!!! AND I think the student was also very relieved because as soon as we got the test results, she made a miraculous recovery - even joined us at the Eiffel Tower that night!

I finally got a chance to nap on the train ride to Avignon and was ready to go again when we arrived. Despite the rain, we had a great evening last night. I've already made 2 trips to the pharmacy here because of the number of students with the sniffles and sore throats. I am learning LOTS of new French vocab in order to navigate health issues! :D

Today we had a wonderful day in the country. We started the day at Pont du Gard. It was breathtaking! Even after seeing it, I am still marvelling at the fact that the Romans had running water in Nîmes almost 2000 years ago! No wonder their empire stood for so long - they weren't stupid people!

The tour guide took us to a quaint little town for lunch and shopping. Then, we headed to Châteauneuf du Pape for our wine tasting. I've been looking forward to this from the moment David Temple suggested it! I love the wine from there! The guide did an excellent job walking all of the students and adults through la dégustation of a white wine (available ONLY in Châteauneuf) and a red wine. Unfortunately they can't ship wine to Canada so I had to limit my purchases afterward! However, Amanda bought a bottle of red for me from Temple and Temple as a thank you! I'm the one who should be thanking them for this fabulous trip!

We are now back at the hotel for supper, some free time tonight and then back on the train to Nice tomorrow. I can't believe we will be leaving soon! I've been having such a great time that I am NOT looking forward to going back to school!

Sur le Pont d'Avignon...

Yes, we made it to Avignon!

We had rain most of the day and we're all tired and soaked and SO glad Amanda our guide let us have an early night.

We visted Palais des Papes, the magnificent castle within the walled city of Avignon. I love this city. it is AMAZING architecture - you can really see the Italian influence in the buildings. There are 7 entrances to the city and 39 watch towers. Amazing! Because of the rain we didn't go ON the bridge like the old song but instead we went UNDER the bridge. We did sing a chorus of the song... just for you ;-) since you couldn't be here to sing it with us. This is one place I would love to return to as well. It is just gorgeous and there are lots of wonderful little shops and restaurants. We found that the people here are much more friendly than in Paris. They were wonderful with Matt and I at lunch today as I ordered our lunch and then had a discussion with the cafe owner about where we come from. Turns out - HE PLAYS ICE HOCKEY in MONTREAL some times. He also told us that this was an "unfortunate day to be in his city" because it is normally warm and very sunny but today was cold and rainy. He even apologized. I ate an amazing Pea Soup! YUMMY. Not as thick as the French Canadian Pea soup but so very tasty. Matt had a nice pasta with meat sauce and it was quite tasty as well.

For diner I had a wonderful mean of soup a l'onion gratinee (better than the last one I had so it was DELICIOUS), Salad Nicoise as my plat principal and creme caramel for dessert... disappointed in the creme - it wasn't smooth at all for a custard but it was tasty non-the less.

It's an early night tonight and I'm going to take advantage of it.

Tomorrow we go to the winery and another stop at Pont de Gard then home for a bit of free time and our second group dinner of the tour.  The next day we leave for Nice.
Sorry - internet is slow and takes WAY too long to load up the pictures so I'll try to add some before we leave for Nice. No guarantees on the internet connectivity though as I believe we only get 24 hours free....

Eiffel Tour And So Much More

I begin this post with the request that you please forgive all my typos... I'm using Annette's laptop (I'm a PC... Annette is a MAC, and yet somehow we still remain friends) and I struggle sometimes with the keyboard.

We began our day with a quick visit to the Louvre. Although we previously visited Paris, the Louvre was the one place that both families choose to miss last vacation so getting to see a few of the famous works was AMAZING!

I have always been fascinated by Greek mythology and Greco-Roman history and I love statues so it was really nice for me. Matt and I walked around with our guide Amanda while the kids sort of went their own way.

This ist he Winged Victory Statue found in Turkey.

We continued our day with a walking tour of Monmarte. This is the home of the Moulin Rouge AND the "red-light" district. It is also the home of many artists. As well, in an attempt to clear the riff-raff, the Sacre-Coeur was built.  We walked to a new area behind the large church... for info on Sacre Coeur see our previous blog. I wanted to talk about the new find! We saw the last remaining vinyard (it's tiny) and one of two remaining working windmills but the BEST part for me was to see the artists, some of whom sell their art in the vending booths along the Seine, were actually working on their paintings. They are BEAUTIFUL (some of them anyway. And I absolutely fell in love with one Paris Street painting being completed by an Asian French artist named Kenny. I would have loved to have had his painting but they were WAY more money because of course they are properly mounted and it would have been much too difficult to transport it home. It was a gorgeous scene and I would have loved to see it hanging in my dining room.

As you can see it was a BEAUTIFUL sunny day. Looks like the only nice day for weather for our whole trip.

This is me at the middle of the hill leading down from the artists district back into the bottom of the barrel ... I mean the less neat, clean and tidy area overrun by thieves, beggars and gypsies otherwise known as Montmartre.

We took the metro back to our hotels to freshen up before our group dinner. It was yummy - I had chicken and it was so tasty... :) I love Paris! I love the food, the atmosphere, the culture, the attractions, museums the cobblestone streets, the old architecture... I could do without the drunks, which I will tell you about in a moment, but I do love this city and hope to be back some time just to take it all in again three days is just not enough time to really enjoy Paris.

We had our group dinner. As i mentioned it was tasty...then most of the group went off to the Eiffel Tour while I stayed behind to ensure the sick student could get there if she needed to. Turns out all is good, she is healthy again and was just fighting a bug - for that we are ALL very thankful. Anyway, the group had gone on without me and Matt said he'd meet me under the tower so I hurried my way there with my student in tow. We arrived (quite late) to the tower and I was afraid we'd missed our group. It wasn't very busy at the tower and I didn't see them, but as it turns out, they were JUST getting ready to load into the tower so we made it just in time. And As promised, Matt was waiting for me with three tickets to take me up the tower.

I have to say, I loved the view from the Arch de Triomphe. It was beautiful and breathtaking...but being at the top level of the Eiffel Tour has brought me to tears TWICE. I don't know what it is but the experience just knocks my socks of. I'm just crazy about it!

As you can see it was PRETTY WINDY up there - a warm day but a chilly wind. The view just took my breath away!

The evening ended with a long walk to the Metro and a couple of trains/transfers to our hotel in Chatelet but it was fun and I'm so glad the student was finally well enough to take in some of Paris's sites.

We have bed checks and packing to do as we leave for Avignon in the morning nice and early on the TGV 6111. :) I'm excited for that.