Rollerblading the Promenade des Anglais in Nice

We got a gorgeous sunset to rollerblade the famous promenade in Nice...

 One of Kelly's artsy pictures....I think it would be good on a tourist brochure...

Also taken by Kelly.  Katie and Kelly did sneak in to check out the fancy famous hotel.

All smiles as we head to catch our train back home...I didn't take photos of the meltdowns when the train was almost an hour late and everyone was sick of standing on the platform!  

You can't have it all right?

Cap Ferrat Walkabout

We had a walking day and explored Cap Ferrat on foot.  It was nice after many days in the car!
We started on the top left corner of the map and got to walk down as far as St. Jean Cap Ferrat.  It was a beautiful sunny day, which is a treat compared to gray Brussels!

We got a kick out of seeing random orange trees and even picked some the night before!

The girls and I stopped at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, while the boys continued to the beach.  The villa was constructed between 1905 and 1912 by Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild, she was an heiress to a banking family.  She had no children but built a beautiful villa, and filled it with all kinds of things.  Here is a writing desk that belonged to Marie Antoinette.  It said it had a hidden compartment too..this one is for you Joyce!

 She was a bit eccentric about her pets, she even had a wedding between two of them.  They played a snippet on the audio tour from a Boston newspaper describing the wedding between the dogs...here are the dogs chairs from one sitting room.

 I thought Mary Houchins would get a kick out of where this vase was from!

 Her house was smack in the middle of the isthmus, and very high up, so from all of her windows she had gorgeous views!

It's not only the Bodenhoffer house in Norwood that has a Loggia...she had one too! It overlooked her incredible gardens.  Here is the view from the Loggia..

The gardens were designed to look like a ship, she had taken a cruise once and wanted it to remind her of that. 

Kelly and Katie thought it would have been great to be one of her friends as she had great parties and the guest room had the most beautiful view!

View from the guest room window-not too shabby!

Katie crossing through the stepping stones in the large fountain...it even had a water show!

 Under a cool old tree in the garden...

Here is her fancy games table...I think we need one for the New Hampshire house!

The view of the house from the garden.  I think what was most incredible about it all was that it was still fully furnished with all of her treasures. It seems like many grand old homes in the U.S. that you can tour are empty or have replicas of the furniture they used to have inside, this one had it all!

 Here is how we found Charlie at the beach!

 Now you can see why all the movie stars buy houses here...look at the views!

A cool whale's tail bench overlooking the boats!

We had to take a picture of this boat...a long way from home...just like us!

A Day in Monaco & A Fireworks Show

We stayed in a little town called Villafranche Sur Mer, which means tax free town by the sea.  Long ago they wanted people to settle there so they made it tax free-not sure why they needed any incentive?  It was a beautiful town right between Nice and Monaco and directly North of fancy Cap Ferrat.  Kelly and I took an awesome morning walk down to the beach and little town.  Here was our morning view...

We took the winding, hilly crazy drive to Monaco and drove some more trying to find the Prince's automobile collection.  Charlie isn't much of a museum guy but we thought he would like this.

These were the racing ones, but there were hundreds of different cars in there, most of it was lost on us non-car people, but Charlie really enjoyed looking at them all!

We met up with the girls and enjoyed the Christmas market down by the harbor, lucky for us it was still going on.   They had a giant ferris wheel that the kids took a spin on..

Love this picture Kelly took of Charlie on the ferris wheel!

Besides the cute market and beautiful harbor full of fancy yachts...they also had an ice skating rink which we were prepared for and we brought along our own skates!

 A few yachts in the harbor!!!

Somehow this just had to go on the blog!

Kelly didn't skate but took a photo journey to the casino which was quite a hike up the hill.  Here is what she found on her adventure...

 The casino...

 Christmas decorations outside the casino..

 Map of all the fancy shops, Kelly didn't think her babysitting money would go very far in any of them!

Love the lemon tree with Gucci in the background!

Just a beautiful building!

We headed out from Monaco, caught a beautiful sunset...

We also got to drive through this-crazy huh?

We made it back to the tiny town next to ours for their annual fireworks. It was a different type of fireworks show, it was all low fireworks set to music on the town square.

As we waited the crepe guy made the kids some wonderful crepes and they had mulled wine for the adults!

We had taken a picture of the town bandstand and joked that it was the last night of the bandstand's life because as the fireworks show went on we thought for sure it was going to catch fire and burn down!

 The bandstand/gazebo in the background..before the show..

The bandstand/gazebo covered in fireworks burning from the top down...crazy but really cool looking! The fireworks show was a very fun way to end our great day!

On the Bridge at Avignon...we were dancing...

On our way, we passed the bridge at Avignon.  It was in a beautiful old city, another gorgeous church at the top of the hill.  I really liked the Madonna at the top...

Here is the famous bridge...

I was proof that the marketing worked...I wanted to stop and see it all from the children's song...

I was proud of the two that actually danced!

This dragon gate latch on the bridge was very cool...little guy has a great view watching the river!

Our next stop was the Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard.

We really didn't know what to expect but were pretty blown away by how amazing it was.  

This placard summed up everything I was thinking about it...

Here is a bit more to wow you with its design (from Wikipedia):

The bridge has three tiers of arches, stands 48.8 m (160 ft) high, and descends a mere 2.5 centimetres (1 in) – a gradient of only 1 in 18,241 – while the whole aqueduct descends in height by only 12.6 m (41 ft) over its entire length, which is indicative of the great precision that Roman engineers were able to achieve, using simple technology. 

Here it is..panorama shot..

If you look closely you can see the kids on it...Greg took this shot!

We finally managed to drag Greg from his Roman ruins...and make a beeline to our place which was still hours away at the coast, we were way behind schedule...shocking for us, huh?