No more France :(

We left France on Monday after four fantastic weeks. Paris is an amazing city and I wish we'd had more time there - greedy I know, considering we did get just under three weeks in Paris itself. There's always more to do. They'd just set up Paris Plage (beach) along the seine (river): they ship in lots of sand, set up water features for the kids to play in, bring in trees, and there are heaps of activities. Patti took a free in-line skating lesson there. I think it's for the people who have to work and can nopt get away from Paris for the summer holidays.

In our last French week we took in Montmatre (where Moulin Rouge was filmed). There's a very cool cathedral on the hill (Mont means mountain). There's also a famous market where there are lots of artists. We had a good look around and went to the cafe where Amelie was filmed, as well as a stroll through the red light district (where the Moulin Rouge is).

Have I noted already that we went and watched the final stage of the Tour de France? They race around the centre of Paris. We were set up on a corner with an OK view, but really had no idea what was going on and still don't know who won (though I hear that can take a while before anyone truely knows, after the drug tests...).

We did a trip up the Canal St Martin from the Bastille to the Parc de la Villette. THere were lots of locks and turning bridges to get us through. It was quite interesting and a pleasant ride. THe weather was pretty fantastic. We spent some time in the Parc, but most of the follies were closed for renovation or just clased off to the public. I went on by myself to the Pavillon de l'Arsenal which is the architectural and urban museum of Paris, with a history of the city and a couple of interesting exhibitions: one about housing from about 1900 and two that were competition entries for big developments within Paris - it'll be interesting to see if they go ahead - one was for the redevelopment of Les Halles.

We also finally made it to Versailles, followed by an excursion out to Poissy to see Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, which was a bit of a mission to get to, but well worth is. Versailles was beautiful inside and out. The gardens (and buildings) were very extensive. Villa Savoye is a modern house from the 1920s which contrasted well with the earlier visit.

I had a day out on my own and did a tour of Stade de France (stadium built for the 1997 soccer world cup, but the rugby world cup final will be hosted there). It's a pretty impressive structure - very huge - seats 80 000 people. They were just replacing the grass when I was there as they'd been using it as a beach for the past fortnight (notice the trend). I then visited St Denis, the cathedral where the Kings and Queens of France are buried - it was pretty wierd as all the sarcophagai had carved images of their contents sleeping on top, and there were heaps of them. I then went and saw some Hertzog and de Meuron apartments, but couldn't get inside unfortunately as the facades of the internal apartments were quite different to the external ones. Also saw some other modern apartments, the Bon Marche (world's first department store, and built by Gustave Eiffel) and went up to the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where lots of famous people are buried. I unfortunately ran out of time beofre they closed so only found Edith Piaff and Oscar Wilde.

We went to Eurodisney on Thursday. We arrived at 9:45am, it opened at 10, we went to Walt Disney Studios in the morning, did all the scarey rides and went to the special effects show, made it to Disneyland at 3:30pm and stayed until after it closed: about 11:30pm. Braedon made me go on all the roller coasters. We did space mountain last which just topped everything off - I dodn't think even Braedon wanted to do any more after that. We again did all the scarey rides, plus the teacups (which B made spin so fast I felt a bit ill) , it's a small world, the Lion King musical, the Buzz Lightyear ride (which B loved as he got to shoot stuff), ate over-priced themed food, and attended the parades and fireworks. It was quite a late night, so we got up really early the next morning and left town for a few days...

We did a trip down to Lyon then to the south: Aix-en-Provence, where we stayed with friends. Our TGV unfortunately stopped right in the middle of Lyon so we payed a huge amount of money for the airport bus to go and see Calatrava's station. But, thankfully it was really fantastic. We then wandered around the old city of Lyon for a while. We had to climb sooo many stairs! The not so old cathedral and the really old ruin of a Roman ampitheatre where really high up on a hill. They were preparing for a concert at the ampitheatre so we sat for a while and listened to some rock music rehearsals in the sunshine before they kicked us out (I think we needed tickets...). We caught the TGV down to Aix-en-Provence where we stayed with Shaun, Heidi and Maia in their beautiful home. They were great hosts. Shaun took us out the to Pont du Gard (Roman aquaduct) and to another aquaduct built in the 19th century, where there where Roman ruins of an ancient town at the top. We saw a bit of the countryside and the local Provencal towns. They had a pool, so we spent a little time in there, which was a welcome refresher - I think I was getting withdrawal symptoms from being out of the water for so long.

On Monday we really just had to pack up our stuff, clean the apartment and head off. We went up to Amsterdam for a few days. Another beautiful city. We booked a guesthouse which turned out to be a rather large (on the european scale) apartment that we had all to ourselves. We went out for a very nice dinner at a local restaurant off the beaten track the first night. We also witnessed the shop windows through the red light district. The following day we went to the architecture centre and then visited the roof of a Renzo Piano building, and browsed around the island area by the train station that is currently under development - the library was pretty cool and looked like it had recently opened. Shopping was quite good in Amsterdam. We visited a couple of museums, both of which were quite good and not too overly extensive: Rijks Museum and Van Gogh museum.

From Amsterdam we took the overnight train to Rostock, Germany, where we are now staying with Andrea, who was an exchange student at my high school 10 years ago. We spent today at teh old fishing village and the neighbouring beach. THere is a big ship festival thing on - 230 big old ships are in the harbour and they sail around during the day. Today they were shocking the whole cite by firing canons. We went for a walk after dinner to the markets and fairground that go along with it - pretty huge.

Anyway, France treated us well and we enjoyed our stay there. We did not have any run ins with the supposedly rude French, in fact I think they were extraordinarily polite, and as long as we had a go at speaking French they looked after us pretty well.