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,

Pompeii, Naples and Amalfi Coast.

Pompeii is an ancient city that was wiped out 2000 years ago by a volcano, Mt Vesuvius. Pompeii was buried under 6 metres of ash.
We visited Pompeii and although it is ruins, it still has some frescos on the walls, mosaics and even petrified people. Pompeii is a pretty big city. We walked down the roads and we could see the old cart tracks in the stone. There were lots of houses, shops and temples. They had two theatres and a huge forum and lots of admin buildings and a graveyard. Pompeii was pretty cool but there are lots of stray dogs.

Pompeii houses

In the Temple of Apollo. They had lots of temples 

Some of the statues they found. They had lots of statues, pillars and jugs

One of the frescos in a house

The Grand theatre

The entry to a gym

A public seat?

An entry to a house

One of the petrified bodies

We stayed in Naples which is the second largest city in Italy but we hated it. It was really dirty and the hotel we stayed at was really old, the shower didn't work and the electricity didn't work. We left early and went to see Amalfi but it was so stormy that it wasn't pretty and the hotel we stayed at didn't have food so we were a bit hungry because there weren't many places to eat nearby.

Rome and the Vatican

We stayed in Rome for five days. We spent all of our time visiting the ruins. We saw the original roman Senate, old marketplaces, Augustus's mausoleum (he was a roman emperor over 2000 years ago). We saw the spot where Julius Caesar died when he was at the theatre. This place has lots of cats living there. They are not owned by anyone. Rome has a lot of cats and people look after them but they don't own them.

This is where JuliusCaesar was killed

An ancient marketplace

We visited the colosseum where gladiators fought and lions ate christians. This colosseum has rooms underneath it where the animals, slaves and gladiators lived and where prisoners were kept.

The Colosseum

Inside, you can see the old rooms under the floor and the steps where people sat.

We visited the Pantheon where lots of famous roman people are in tombs. The most famous is Raphael. The Pantheon was dedicated to Marcus Agrippa who was one of the Emperor Augustus's generals

The Pantheon

We went to the Spanish Steps where there are lots of people selling fake handbags. While we were there, the police were chasing them and they were running up and down all the steps trying to escape. It was funny. They came back pretty quickly after the police had left though.

The Spanish Steps. People always get in the way of photos.

We visited the Trevi Fountain which is huge and really pretty with lots of sculptures. If you thrown a penny over your shoulder into the fountain it is supposed to bring you love.

The fountain statues

While we were walking around the streets we visited a little church and it had a Michelangelo statue of Jesus at the altar.

We went to see the Vatican where the pope lives. We saw more paintings by famous artists. Raphael had rooms there.  Michelangelo painted the Sistene Chapel with lots of stories of God. It was really beautiful but you were not allowed to take pictures and you were supposed to be really quiet. Our favourites were the painting of Michelangelo's skin and the one of Gods finger touching Adam's.

Some of Raphael's paintings. 

The Stairs in the Vatican. They are a double helix stairs like Leonardo's design

We also visited St Peters Basilica where the Pope gives a mass every Sunday. They have a huge square out the front where they have hundreds of seats for people because they couldn't fit into the Church.

St Peters.

The Square

St Peters also has a Michelangelo

The Vatican is guarded by the Swiss guards who have really silly looking uniforms.

The Swiss Guards

Inside St Peter's are the tombs of past popes like Pope John Paul II and St Peter who was the first pope.

Tuscany

We stayed in Florence for four days and visited Pisa and Siena which were near by.

Florence has a lot of statues and art from very famous artists. We saw Michaelangelo's statue of David which was huge. We saw paintings by Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Botticelli, Raphael and lots of other artists. Some artists were really gory, we liked those paintings. We visited the Uffizi which is a famous art gallery and another gallery. We visited the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens which were very large and had lots of interesting statues and had royal cats. Lots of them. Inside the Pitti Palace is a lot more famous art. The Pitti Palace was owned by the Medici family who ruled Florence and were also related to the French royal family.

Florence has a famous bridge, the Ponte Vecchio which has a lot of jewellery shops on it. Italy has lots of handbag and shoe shops. They are everywhere.

Statue of David

Boboli Gardens

Boboli Gardens

Vecchio Piazza

Us on the Ponte Vecchio

We went to see the leaning tower of Pisa. We climbed to the top and looked out over Pisa. The leaning tower started leaning when they started building it but they still built on three more storeys.

The view from the top of the tower

We visited Siena which has a famous horse race every year. They race round the Piazza and the riders are allowed to do whatever they can to win even hit the other riders. There are lots of injuries, especially to the horses which is not very fair.The Piazza is very large. We climbed the bell tower which was very high and had lots of stairs. Everywhere has too many stairs. Siena is on a hill and they have an escalator from the bottom to the city centre (five escalators) which is lucky because it is really steep.

The Basilica in Siena

The town Hall at the Piazza with the bell tower we climbed.

The Piazza where the horses race

Venice

We stayed in Venice for four days. We took a water taxi there because you cant drive over. We took a ride on a Gondola around the canals and looked at peoples houses. Our hotel was on the Grand Canal near the Rialto bridge which is very famous and has lots of shops on the bridge.
Venice has a carnival every year and they dress up in costume and wear masks so Venice sell a lot of masks. Some are really cool and some are crazy.
Venice also makes glass ornaments so there are lots of shops selling masks and glass things. Our favourite was a huge glass person from the painting "The Scream".
We visited the Doge's palace (the Doge was royalty) where we saw the golden staircase which has a lot of gold leaf on the paintings on the ceiling, and the bridge of sighs where the prisoners would cross and have their last look at Venice before they were imprisoned. We also visited the prisons.
We walked around Venice a lot. Venice is pretty but they have horrible food.

The Bridge of Sighs

The Piazza

Venice canals

The Rialto Bridge near our hotel

The golden staircase in the Doge's Palace

Lombary, Northern Italy

We drove through the Alps to get to Italy and stopped to play in more snow.
We stayed in a village called Tremosine which is very high up very scary roads that made mum whimper. We looked over Lake Garda.

Our view from our apartment.

We visited Lake Como which was pretty.
We went shopping in Milan. They have a pretty nice shopping mall called the Galleria. We also visited the Duomo, a famous church in Milan. We tied to find Leonardo DaVinci's painting The Last Supper but couldn't find where it was.

Inside the Galleria in Milan

The Duomo

We went to Verona which is where the story of Romeo and Juliet starts. The story was written by William Shakespeare who is English. In Verona we visited Juliet's house and her balcony where Romeo looks up at her.  There is a door there covered in padlocks and people also used chewing gum and bandaids to put their name on the wall. The alley into the house is covered in graffiti where people write their names and their girlfriends or boyfriends names.

The padlocks. You can see the chewing gum too.

Juliet's balcony and house

We also saw a 2000 roman ampitheatre where families used to come and watch gladiators fight and christians get eaten by lions and tigers. This was family fun 2000 years ago.

 The Ampitheatre

Inside the ampitheatre

Italian streets are really narrow and hard to drive down because of all the shoppers.

We visited a really beautiful church for St Anastasia. It was really rich. There was a service on but no priest. They just had a recording.

Inside St Anastasia's