Louvre and Notre Dame

Paris

Our last day in France. We just finished a light lunch after a 3 hour tour of the city, and now we are waiting for the bus to take us to the Louvre. It's been a great trip but we are ready to come home! See y'all soon!

Beaune

We spent most of the day on a bus, but we did stop for a couple hours in the Burgundy region in a town called Beaune. We arrived in Paris at about 6:00 and are now heading up to our hotel room. Sightseeing tomorrow.

Cormatin

Today we visited a small village of 900 people. It is kind of a fairy book town, very picturesque with a castle and moat and what was once a drawbridge. The wood paneling and artwork was amazazing!

Lyon

This is the town that Blake is coming to serve as Mission President in a couple of months. They didn't mention that on our tour though. This is the 3rd largest city in France.

Vienne

This town is famous for the very well preserved Roman temple dating back over 2,000 years that is still in use, as well as the ancient Roman theater where they hold the annual world famous Jazz festival. This is also where the Pope and French King met and proclaimed the end of the Knights Templar and ordered them tortured and killed.

Tournon

Just a short stop to this small town this morning. This area is famous for it's wine. I'm afraid it's wasted on us.

Viviers

Small town of about 4,000. Very beautiful setting. Another town very preserved from the 17th century.

Avignon

Palace of the Pope.

Uzes

This whole town looks like its still in the 18th century!

Roman aqueduct

Anniversary

Arles

Nice

In Monte Carlo

Arles

We spent the day yesterday in Arles, or the Little Rome as they call it. It has a colliseum, theater, and used to have a forum and circus as well as baths. It was really great! We also took a tour about Van Gough and the mental assylum he stayed in here. We´ve got to catch a bus so I´ll try and write later.

Slow connection

The connection on the boat is slow so we will publish pictures as we can.

Yay! We have WiFi

Well, it's been a hectic couple of days but it's been mostly fun. The flight from SL to Paris was nice except for the cat next to us that meowed for the entire 9+ hours. From Paris it was a short flight to Nice. It was rainy and foggy on the ride from Nice to Monte Carlo where we stayed at the Fairmont hotel over looking the sea. It is a very beautiful city. They were preparing for the Grand Prix which runs right out front our hotel. Monday morning we took a bus tour along the French Riviera to Nice and then spent a couple of hours walking around the old town. Very neat. The afternoon was spent on a bus to Port St. Louis where we boarded our home for the next week or so. We're having a wonderful time and hope you're all doing well also.

We head to the airport in about an hour! Just finished lunch and visiting with the kids and Grandma and Grandpa Miki and Loraine. I put this map together so you can see our tour route since I've had so many questions about it.

One of my tasks this past week was to update our last will and testament. We told the kids that Kaiya gets Aurora, Tristan and Clay get Miki and Shayli, and Kelcie gets everything else.

Everyone have a great week!

Getting ready....

Hi all!
We head out one week from today so I thought I'd set up a blog so that we can share our journey with those of you that may be interested in following along. We'll update it every day or so once we are on our trip with our stories and some pictures so check back often.