All that we could see in St. Malo

 A few years ago a friend highly recommended the Pulitzer prize winning book, All The Light We Cannot See.  The book was set during WWII and much of it occurs in the town of St. Malo, France.  Ever since I read the book I longed to see St. Malo.  Lucky for us its only about a six hour ride from Brussels!

On our way to St. Malo we did a speedy stop at Omaha Beach in Normandy.  We plan to go back and spend more time exploring all the WWII sites, but this was just a preview.

 Below is the sculpture that is on Omaha Beach.

 The American Cemetery, it had been so long since we have visited that they now have a visitors center!

 The sculpture that looks toward the rows of crosses.

We stayed in a tiny town in an old stone cottage which had been a stable but was totally redone into a cute house.

Our cute little house!

 Charlie loved the fact that the farmer down the way had a really nice swingset and when we went to check it out, in French he said something like, "It is possible"...so Charlie became a regular!

Where every 8 year old boy belongs!

He also had cool donkeys right next to the swingset so we had fun feeding them some apples.

St. Malo is an old walled city and we had a blast walking the walls and going out to the tidal island right next to it.  We read that the walls were over 25 feet thick...here we are about to go through them..

This is walking along the ramparts...look how much room we have to walk!

There was a vacation week carnival set up...here is the "American Circus" funhouse

 The ferries from England pull in here...see the one to the left.

Should we launch him?

From the beach with the walls behind me...

It was low tide so we walked to the first of two tidal islands...the one to the right...

Sisters!

From the island, the town is behind us...

There was a tidal swimming pool complete with diving tower...we wanted Kelly to swim it and show the video to her swim coach, but we figured she would be sick for the rest of the season...

Goofy sister picture!

Charlie wanted me to put this picture in because he thought the merry go round with a seat was very cool!

A final view of the city before we headed out.

 Our next stop was a little beach town to the North called Dinard, which had a promenade walk along the sea.  From the walk you could still see St. Malo in the distance, the walk came with some pretty scary warning signs and no guard rails...

These actually rivaled some of those scary signs from our Africa days!

Charlie waiting for the tide to come in and splash him!

Beach houses on the cliffs.

The cliff walk got scary for me to watch as we headed back to our car, Charlie had no fear and I was just happy to get him back to the car dry and in one piece!

Sunset on the walk...

Carnival-Belgian Style (not New Orleans)

In French class at school Charlie learned all about Carnival and how it is celebrated in this one Belgian town called Binche.  It happens to be an hour from our front door, so after all of his excitement about it, we had to go see it for ourselves.

There are many different parts to the festival but it seems to revolve around the "Gilles", which are the men from the town that dress up in an elaborate costume and do different things for each day of the festival.  We went on Mardi Gras, (Fat Tuesday), but it there were activities on Sunday & Monday too (and various other things in the weeks ahead).

The Gilles dress up in beautiful hand sewn costumes, they stuff themselves full of straw.  In the morning they wear identical matching wax masks and they walk with a small bundle of sticks to chase away the cold.  We arrived nice and early...and we needed them to chase away the cold...it was cold but at least the sun was out...

They have lots of bells on the costume, which make lots of jingles and they wear wooden clogs which sound cool when they stomp/dance together on the cobblestone streets.  Here is a video so you can hear what it sounds like...very neat!

Special cakes for sale in the bakery-how cool!

There are also other groups besides the Gilles, we found a few of them.

One thing Charlie knew is that none of the participants can move unless they have a drummer drumming them.  We followed this one little guy to his car...drummed by his father.

Charlie got caught up in the spirit and we had to buy him a few instruments.  On the table behind him you can see the yellow flowers that people carried or wore on hats.  I am not sure what kind of flowers they were...but surely a flower of spring!

A good big sister!

We also followed one small Gille to his house, he was drummed the whole way home for lunch and his grandparents were there to greet him.  I didn't get a picture of him, but here are some other boys dressed up...

In the late afternoon, the Gilles go out with wooden baskets full of oranges and throw them to the crowd.  Some Gilles also wear gorgeous ostrich feather hats.  We missed the orange throwing part because the kids didn't want to wait around for hours to see it and by the time Greg and I got back for the night part...all we found were oranges everywhere in the streets.  The oranges are supposed to bring good luck.  Since we missed the oranges this year, we will have to return to get one next year for the luck!

The guy behind me looks like maybe the long day is starting to catch up with him.  Some of these guys start getting their costumes on at about 4 AM!

In the evening, they walk with the empty orange baskets and no masks. We did find one guy wearing the ostrich feather hat still...its the giant white thing you see below...

Much of the activity took place in the Grand Place here is the Town Hall building.

Whenever we walked among the festival goers people were greeting each other or shouting out to their Gille.  It really was an amazing local tradition that was cool to see!  It is a UNESCO Designated Festival and now I know why!

A Love Bug Parade

We survived the Superbowl...between the outcome and the hours we had to stay up to watch it here...that was an accomplishment!

Charlie was caught up in the spirit and baked a Tom Brady cake, he free-handed the cutout of the jersey, and I said, "Charlie I didn't know you were such a talented cake decorator", and he said, "I didn't know either!".

If you look closely you notice some crumbs on his lips...he had to test it too!

Down the street from our house is the Parc de Cinquantenaire, which has a few museums, one of them is Autoworld...they have a new exhibit on VW bugs and to kick off the exhibit and celebrate Valentines Day, they had a Love Bug Rally and parade.  We walked down to check out the cars...mainly because I am a lifetime Herbie fan.   There were about 5 Herbies there, Charlie says we found the real one!

The real Herbie...according to Charlie!

Katie approves of these eyelashes!

More eyelashes-who knew they even make those??

I like the luggage rack!

Not sure the rest of the ski gear would fit-but very cute!

Heading home-our quest for Herbie complete!

Just a beautiful house we passed on our walk...the houses really are very cool here-giant front doors and super high ceilings!

It's Carnival week here in Belgium (which is a huge deal in some of the towns).  We are excited to go see it in action, Charlie learned about it in French class and that prompted me to do some research to see where to go...stay tuned!

Hanging in the Hague

Katie had a basketball game in the Hague, so we thought it was a good excuse to head up there on a Saturday...the bit we saw of the school was pretty.

Charlie and I headed for his favorite skatepark and look who else lives in the giant park in the center of the city?

 We stayed and watched the reindeer for quite some time...when we were frozen we headed for the restaurant to warm up, lucky for us the restaurant is also in the park.

 You can bring your dog into the restaurant and they even bring them a dog treat!  The treat came in a little glass bowl...here is Louna cleaning up the crumbs. 

Charlie LOVED his giant pannekoek and that he got to put on as much powdered sugar as possible!

We walked around the city a bit here is a traditional fish place...we also found an English bookstore, it was a treat to check out all the books in English...you don't realize how much you miss it until you are surrounded by books you can read again!

We found a few winter flowers and some cool buildings...amazing mix of architecture here!

Greg and the girls went to the Escher museum, here they are recreating a drawing!  They all gave the museum a thumbs up...even Katie who wasn't too sure she wanted to go.

It's only about a two hour trip to the Hague and we were happy to have gotten to visit again and see a little more of it.  I am most excited to go back and see the tulips, but we need a few more months for that.  I also want to go inside one of the windmills at some point..here is one from the road-you really do pass bunches of them! 

Arles and Nimes...two more Roman stops on our way home

We read that the weekend market in the town of Arles in Provence was supposed to be great, so we made a beeline for it.  It was a few hours drive and we made it with a tiny bit of shopping time before it shut down.  No photos-too busy shopping!

The linens, flowers, food, all were beautiful and fun to look at!  Greg opted to go see the Roman Coliseum instead of shopping and he was glad he did...he liked it better than the next one we saw in Nimes.

 Here is the inside..

 We met up with him outside...

 Cool houses all surrounding the Coliseum.

This one is so cute with the colors!

Our next stop was only a few minutes away, the town of Nimes.  To our delight there was a ferris wheel right next to the coliseum there and the kids said if we went up we'd be able to see inside.  We thought that was a brilliant idea.

You have to love dog-friendly Europe...even Louna got to ride the Ferris wheel...she is a pretty brave little dog!

 Greg thought that this one didn't charm him quite as much as the other one, maybe because the stones are more restored?

From there we headed for home and stopped one last night in a cool town called Beaune.  It was an old walled city with ramparts and a moat.  We arrived late and left early...but we want to go back.  They even have a famous wine auction there as its the heart of the Burgundy wine region...so maybe I'll go and stock up the cellar!  (no photos but next time)

All in all a fabulous adventure to the South of France!  I am happy to finally finish writing about this trip it has taken me forever as I've been job hunting again.  My contract with USAID ended yesterday...  that is one downside to this lifestyle...always starting new jobs for me!