Bordeaux and the Dordogne, France

We came back to France to have christmas with our relatives. They live in Bordeaux. We did the last bit of christmas shopping in town then drove all over the Dordogne region which has medievel villages. Some of them are built into the hills and mountainsides around them. One of them has caves high up where the troglodytes lived.

 Bordeaux

Bordeaux Cathedral

Dordogne Region (not sure which village)

 We stayed in Domme in a very old chateau, with our cousins and spent most of our time in Sarlat because a lot of places did not have anywhere open to eat. The Dordogne region only serves duck in their restaurants. Yuck.

The playground at Domme

Domme

This village was in a movie called Chocolat

Chocolat village

We had christmas in Claouey with our cousins and lots of other relatives. The french open their presents late on christmas eve and they don't have santa sacks. Their christmas lunch has lots of courses and lasts for hours. The adults just sat at the table eating all day.

We are leaving Europe in two days!. Going home.

Salamanca and San Sebastian, Spain

We stayed at Salamaca for a night on our way out through Spain. Salamanca is a university town and the universities are in very old buildings. We visited the Salamanca cathedral which is actually two cathedrals built in the same spot. The old one and the new one which was joined to it 500 years ago.

The town library

A hall in one of the Univesities

The cathedral

The first top of the cathedral

Salamanca square

Salamanca has a really nice, very large public square and old narrow streets.

We also stayed in San Sebastian which is on the border of France and Spain. San Sebastian is in the Basque region. When we visited they were having a festival of St Thomas andeveryone was dressing up in their traditional costumes. The squares were so busy that we go trapped and it took a long time to get through from one side to the other.

San Sebastian 

The crowds in the streets

some men in their costumes

kids in costume

Portugal

We visited Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal for two days. Lisbon has a big bay separating the city so we took the ferry in to the old city, one of the days.
The Portuguese don't speak Spanish so we had to learn Obrigado (please/thank you) and hello. Most Portuguese speak English though and are really friendly. The old part of Lisbon was nice but overall, there was not much to see in Portugal. They make a really nice Spinach and Chickpea soup.

We saw this on the way in to Lisbon

The guards at the presidents house

The old bridge

Not sure what this was, there were lots of interesting buildings like this.

Our favourite department store

The president's house at night.

Seville. Cordoba, Ronda

We stayed in Seville in a very loud hotel room. We went shopping in El Corte Ingles, the best Department store ever! We bought lots of clothes and our christmas present.  We also watched Flamenco dancers which was not as interesting as we expected. They dance really fast but the singing is not good.

Seville Cathedral

We drove out to visit Cordoba which has an old cathedral which used to be a Mosque. Before the moors built their mosque, it was a Visigoth church. Now it looks muslim and catholic. It was huge and really interesting.

Mezquita/Cathedral

Mezquita/Cathedral

 We also visited the Alcazar at Cordoba and saw the gardens and the old fortress.

Alcazara gardens

Mosaics in the Alcazara

We also visited Ronda which is a hill town and was the last city to become catholic. Before that it was moorish. It has a huge valley running through it and we visited a church, the Arabe Puente, the Arab baths (which were closed), the old palace gardens and the mines. Ronda is very pretty.

Nuevo Puente is one of the bridges through the middle of town

The other side of Ronda

The bottom of the mines 250 steps down from the Palace.

Valencia, Granada and Marbella, Spain

We stayed in Valencia for a day to break up the journey and just walked around the historic centre. The place where we stayed was leaking.

The bullfighting ring at Valencia

Just a nice building

We stayed in Granada and visited the Alahambra which was first inhabited by Moors (Arabic). They were very decorative. After the Moors, other palaces in different styles were built at the Alahambra and some decorative gardens.

Alahambra

One of the rooms inside. Lots of tiles and sculpted walls

One of the inside gardens

View from the top of the Alahambra

We also visited Marbella and walked around their old city centre and saw a little church which was really pretty inside.

We also did a lot of shopping, which was our favourite part.

Barcelona, Spain

We stayed in a really nice apartment right in the middle of the city near a church called Sagrada Familia. It was designed by Gaudi who seems to be a favourite architect but it was never finished. They have been working on it for over 100 years and are still working on it.

This is the school Gaudi built for the labourers kids

We visited Gaudi's apartments and also Parc Guell which was designed by Gaudi. Parc Guell is up a really steep slope, so steep they have lots of escalators on the streets. Mum found out later they also have a funicular, which would have been good to know on the day.

Gaudi's apartment block

The terrace on the apartment roof

Gaudi's lizard

Parc Guell

Our friends and our Nana met us in Spain and we visited MontJuic Castle and went up there in a cable car. We also visited Peublo Espanyol which is a mini village which has buildings built in the styles from all over Spain, as well as craft, food and drink from all over Spain. We also visited the Science and Technology Centre which was great fun and had a mini rainforest in it.

Montjuic castle

Watching our friends ahead of us in the cable car

Peublo Espanyol

We also saw where they had the Barcelona Olympics

Monacco, French Riviera and Carcassone - but especially Killer Whales

After leaving Italy we came back to France and stayed in Aix-En-Provence which is a small pretty town. They had christmas decorations up and stalls and rides in the city centre. Lots of small french towns have this.

We visited Antibes which has Marineland there. At Marineland they have Orcas, dolphins, seals, sea-lions, sharks, polar bears and other things. We watched the seal and sea lion show which was not that interesting. We went and watched the dolphins but got there too early and the dolphins came up to the sides where we were and started performing for us, jumping up on the platform, somersaulting. It was better than their show. But best of all we saw Orcas which are Amelia's favourite animal. They had a 5 day old baby as well.

We visited Monacco which is full of rich people. They have a royal family there and lots of casinos.

We went to St Tropez which is very pretty and has lots of yachts. Because it was cold there wasn't much to see there but we bought some coats.

We visited Arles which is where Vincent Van Gogh lived. He cut his ear off and went a bit mad and we visited the hospital where he stayed and visited the cafe that he painted. It was snowing that day so we also got to have snowball fights. The snow was the best bit of the day but it was freezing!

Van Gogh's cafe

Van Gogh's hospital

After Arles, we saw an old roman aqueduct and visited Orange which has a roman ampitheatre which they still use. Then we visited the Papal palace at Avignon as well as the famous bridge.

The Aquaduct. We were so cold!!!1

The ampitheatre

Papal Palace

We also visited Carcassone, a fortified city with a castle in the middle. It gets very cold in Carcassone so we didn't stay very long. Just long enough for Dad to have a lunch of frog legs, snails and fois gras which is duck liver. Yuck!

For our last day before Spain we visited Collioure, a port town with an old fort. They were having xmas celebrations there so they had ice sculpting, camel and pony rides, lots of stalls. But it was too cold to enjoy it properly,