Lake Garda

Oo la la. It brought back memories of when we went to Lake Como 3 years ago. Just so peaceful when you look over the lake. It's a different feeling compared to when you look at the sea. Caught the sun as it was going down as well.... It was really pretty. It was a fairly long drive from San Remo for Dave of about 4hrs which he did on his own. I could'nt chip in as I was feeling blue that day with the stuffy nose and the HEAT. So as soon as we checked into the hotel, we took a nice nap before we set off in seach for our meal.

Sunset...





Next day, we woke up for buffet breakfast, then had a nice relaxing walk around parts of the lake and then we did a little drive around the lake and found some much longed for pasta for lunch (spaghetti vongole and tagliatelle funghi) before we parked the car back at the hotel and searched high and low for a shady spot to sleep at the lake! we had our towels to lie on and also a pillow to lie on for a nap... haaa.... What a nice chilled 2 days at Lake Garda...



Interesting recycling bins...

Nice/Monaco/San Remo

Nice, a sea side town, was strewn with restaurants. It seemed busy when we were there, possibly a favourite spot for tourists to hang out? Perhaps people seeking warmer climate flock to the south of france for the sunshine.... We parked in a multi storey car park for a couple of hours, walked around a bit, caught a glimpse of the beach and then picked up some pizza and had it on a shady patch of grass (the chairs facing the sea were all taken up by people).







Moved onto Monaco, the much hyped up town where apparently it is one of the world's most costly neighbourhood? It felt like HK esp at the mid levels where the town was built up on a hill. There were stairs (no elevators) taking you up and up from the harbour front. It was a really nice walk from the top where we parked the car on the street, all the way to the harbour where the yachts were anchored and then we made our way up the other end. To our surprise, we managed to locate our car!













To prevent burning a hols in the pocket, we drove an hour more, leaving France and landed ourselves in San Remo (Italy) for the night. The border check point was empty, so we just drove into Italy like that! Cool. It didn't take long to get the feel of Italian driving culture.....

Heading towards Italian border....



Border crossing ....







Where we stayed in San Remo...

Arles/xx/xx

XXX - A mini Paris?









Am I big or what?



Arles - A mini rome?!!









XXX what town is this again?

Carcasonne to Montpellier

Carcasonne is absolutely amazing! UNESCO listed world heritage site, it is such a beautifully restored medieval town, making it feel as it was some Theme Park. The person(Eugene xx) who planned this 13th century town's restoration took 50 years, he was the same person who restored the notre dame. Imagine the amount of educated gut feel you needed to have to predict what the ruins would have looked like before and how best to restore it. I never realised how difficult it is a job to restore something that so many of us just carelessly visit and enjoy!













By night...





After abour 2 hours of walking through the castle and parts of the doubled walled city, the heat wave took over us. We went back to the car and had our korean spicy cup noodles and some fruit for lunch. Yummmm.... more predictable than french food and maybe better suited to our tastes budds. There's just more satisfaction when there's chilli!

Drove 1.5hrs onto Montpellier where we will spend a night. Quite a pleasant hotel, so thats good news. It was too hot to head out so we had an afternoon siesta till 645pm. Decided to chill today and keep dinner simple so we picked up some dinner from the supermarket which happened to be just behind the block! So convenient! Pumped up our tank, got some prawns, bread, milk, snacks, fruits, ham, salad, tomoatoes) and had a sumptous meal.

Souillace to Rocamadour/Toulouse/Carcasonne

Had a lie in as usual, spoke on skype to folks in GP and started our journey at about 1030am. This hotel in Souillace turned out to be better than expected. They gave us this massive room with one double and 2 single beds but charged us for a double room. It was relatively quiet though located close to the railway station. Am not sure how tourist get around without a car if they arrived by train..... maybe they have bicyles to get by cos we did see some Americans riding. I think the Dordogne river is nice to explore by cycling or kayaking which we can try next time when the kiddos are big enough.

From Souillace, Rocamadour is just 40mins away. Rocamadour is quite unusual, the village being built on the edge of the cliff, with a catherdral of the black virgin. Used to attract pilgrims in the past but not so much these days.

Before our trek, we sat down and had some bread with the smoked duck breast, truffle infused olive oil and truffle balsaminc vinegar! Lovely.









Village...







It was super duper hot too... felt like 30 degrees! The heat felt like it was penetrating your skin. Gosh, I think I've climatised to the cool and winter-ish weather.

More walking....







Someone looking tired...



Enjoyed the few hours of trekking up and down the village with a few pit stops at benches in between to catch our breath.









Finally walking up and out....



Some perched for a view...



The view...



Next pit stop - Toulosse, a fairly huge city. We were a little tired by the time we got here after the heat wave! But we carried on and walked around for a couple hours in the square, had some snacks and attempted to have an early dinner but most of the restaurants/cafes we wanted to try were not opened till 730pm! So we thought we continue our journey to Carcasonne where we will be spending the night and we might as well pick up dinner there.

What we remember of Toulosse :-) ...

The ice cream with the long queue...



Pretty Bickies....



Carcasonne medieval city is amazing even at night! Well lit and just so grand, so special as if it was a man made theme park! We will browse it more the next morning.... so off we were to a yummy dinner and back to the hotel.

By night...