France

Fountain at the Palace of Versailles near Paris

I see it has been a long, long time since I last wrote to you.  I'm sorry about that!  We have been so busy doing fun things.  After we left London we moved on to France.  We took a ferry (a boat that you drive your car, or in our case, our campervan on to) from England to France.  

The Eiffel Tower in Paris

Once we were in France we went to a campground in the northern part of France.  We saw a little town called St. Aubin Sur Mer--which made me think of Ryley!  The campground we stayed at had amazing food.  The French make delicious meals and we have eaten some wonderful things.  The cheese they make here is especially good!

Anne at the catacombs

We visited Paris for about one week.  Paris is a big city with amazing museums in it.  If you like art, Paris is the place to be.  Paris was really busy because the school children had a 10 day holiday at the end of October (when we were there).  We saw many famous paintings, such as the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci.  We also visited these cool catacombs that are underground.  The catacombs are where old bones of millions of people are buried.  You can walk through the catacombs--they're like a giant maze.  During World War II resistance fighters hid out in the catacombs.  Did you know about that Jeffrey?

St. Martin Vesubie--street drain!

After Paris we went to the French Alps to do some hiking.  We went to this little village called St. Martin Vesubie.  We stayed in an apartment in the old, medieval village and every morning we would get up and walk to the baker's to pick up some croissants and petit pain au chocolat for breakfast.  Very, very yummy.  We drove up super steep, windy, narrow roads to get up high into the mountains.  Then we would go for a hike.  Lots of times we saw mountain goats.  There was snow in the mountains, up to about 1 metre deep.  Anne made a movie trailer about our walks, I'll post it so you can see it.

Mountain Goat

How did your progress reports go?  I know you all did your best!

Mountains near St. Martin Vesubie

London

Hello from the gigantic city of London!  There is so much to see and do here.  Today we visited Westminster Abbey, where Prince William and Kate Middleton got married.  Then we went to the Tower of London where all sorts of gruesome things happened.  Do you want to know about them?  I'll give you a hint--Two of King Henry the VIII's wives spent their last days at the Tower.  

Also I saw the crown jewels.  I saw the Queen's crowns and the world's largest diamond!  When you want to see the crown jewels you are on a moving sidewalk and you have to be a fast reader to know what you're looking at, because the sidewalk just keeps on moving.  It wasn't very busy today, so we went back and did the moving sidewalk twice.  That's why I got such a good look at the world's biggest diamond!

I'll send photos soon--I get back to my campsite and don't always have time to download photos so it'll be a day or two.  Hope you're all doing well!!

The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

Hello everyone!

We have been on a hill walk up Ben Lomond.  In Scottish, Ben means mountain.  Ben Lomond is 900m high--which is actually very high.  It was terrible weather.  It rained and then it stopped raining and then it rained some more.  The thing that made it really difficult though was the wind.  It was so windy!  Sometimes the wind actually knocked us over.  We almost turned back several times, but we stuck with it and made it all the way to the top.  Here is a picture of Anne and Kate at the cairn at the top of Ben Lomond.  Can you see how foggy it is?  Usually there are amazing views from up there--you can see the beautiful Loch below, you can see all sorts of hills around, you can see Glasgow and Stirling and even a bridge near Edinburgh (the Forth Rail Bridge)--but on this day the only views we got were of our boots!

Highland Cow on Conic Hill 

Hello everyone!  I'm so excited that I got two comments on my last posts!  Jessica and Hailey sent me some comments and so did Ryley!!!  Ryley is doing well at his new school, but I'm sure you all miss having him in your class.  I am missing all of you.

Views of Loch Lomond from Conic Hill

I want to tell you about the little hill that I climbed the other day.  It is called the Conic Hill and it had amazing views over Loch Lomond.  Loch is the Scottish word for lake.  You can see from these photos that the views are so nice.  Also, I'm putting in a picture of a Highland Cow.  There were lots of them on the side of the path.  Aren't they cute????

My family and me in the mist at the top of the hill.