I just wanted to post the rest of our trip pictures.. since we will be traveling home soon, I dont want to risk losing our pictures again! Unfortunately we had a problem getting our train passes for England.. at the moment they are lost somewhere in the mail system. So, after much debate we have decided to just stay in Angers. It will be cheaper in the end and if we do end up getting our tickets in the mail we will get (most of) our money back. One week from today and we will be leaving Angers for good! Very sad. We have really had a good time here.
I left off in Nice. We left Nice around 5 am on a Thursday and headed for Marseille. We got there at 8:30. This day was insane. I still get tired thinking about it. So, we tried to get out to see the Calanques, or the "Fjords" of France, however since we only had 3 hours in town we didn't have time to make it to see those (next time!) So we just ran around the city. We reluctantly paid 6 euro to store our bags at the train station, but thank goodness we did.
Ok, Now for more pictures! We have SO many. Our memory card (2 gig) is full!
So, like I said we had 3 hours in Marseille. First we ran up to a park we saw on the map. It looked like it had an impressive monument in it. We accidentally took the long way around, but it ended up being worth it.
All the lions (there are 4 of them) had some animal that they had killed. Go lions.
Then we saw a boat fire. I felt like a jerk taking pictures... Luckily the street cleaning crew was parked very close and they got a hose going long before the firemen got there... but not soon enough to save the boat.
Then we hiked up a hill. There was a fort.
The view from the hill was nice. We could see the harbor and the sea.
There were tons of boats in the harbor!
A Strike! This is the only one we've seen in France. It was just a little one, with old people and some kind of 1950's German polka music playing. They were protesting the rising age of retirement in France.
By the time we got past the strikers and to this monument we had to run to get back to the train station ("gare" in French) to retrieve our bags and to catch our next train.
This is me, happily back at the train station on time with breakfast in my hand. :)
The veiw from the gare was quite impressive
Next we went to Nimes. This is the city near the famous Roman aquaduct in France. We had 2 hours in this city, so again, no time to get out of town to see the sights. There was plenty to see in the city though.
The Roman arena. It is much better preserved than the Colosseum in Rome. They had advertisments up showing some pictures of the reinactments they do of gladiator fights and chariot racing. It looked pretty cool!
La Maison Carre (The square house)
This park was huge. We were carrying our bags with us the whole time and at the top of the big hill, which is hidden by trees in this picture, is an old Roman watchtower that we decided to hike to.
I felt victorious!! Kennan felt like he was going to die.
A view from about halfway up the hill.
This next part of the story gets good. We had a train changeover in Avignon. I knew the Papal Palace was there so since we had 40 minutes we decided to go see the sights. Avignon still has a city wall all the way around it. It is a beautiful city with about a million tourists on the main road alone..
We hurried out of the gare and found the tourism office and got a handy map to guide us in our search.
The city wall
We had our packs with us and we speedily walked to the bridge which was the farthest point. We looked long enough to get a picture!
"Smile! No one will know that we are in such a hurry!"
The Papal Palace. Wish we could have seen more!
At this point, we are standing here and we now had 10 minutes to get to our train. Keep in mind we had already been through 2 cities and have been walking/running for 5 hours. (thats not including time we spend on the train) We had somewhere around 1/4-1/2 mile to go with our packs on to make our train. We actually ran. (As much as we could!) I thought I was going to die. The sidewalks were so full of tourists we had to run on the road. It felt like an eternity! We used all of our remaining energy running toward the gare, and amazingly we made our train with about 2 minutes to spare!
This is us, exhausted, smelly, sweaty and totally sick of moving... but on our train!!! Woot. :)
We trained through this area and all you could see were vinyards. Cool! We ended up successfully making it to Annecy that night. We stayed with a nice girl who lives there. She is on the olympic committee in Annecy. They are trying to get the winter olympics there in 2018. And that ends the craziest day of our trip!
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