A Visit to La Taillede

A few weeks ago the kids had a long weekend and we decided to take a much needed family vacation for three nights. Usually we hop on a plane and visit another country, but we are nearing the end of our long renovation project and neither one of us was ready to deal with much travel or travel expense. I had heard about a wonderful place in the French Pyrenees from a friend of mine, so I was thrilled when they had room for us.

La Taillede is an old Catalan farmhouse that has been lovingly restored by the owners. The house has been beautifully designed into several different holiday accommodations. We were fortunate enough to stay in the Gite Canigou, which has a private hot tub and more space than we could have ever needed.

We did not want to travel far, so La Taillede was perfect as it is only about 1.5 hours away from Girona. We reached the town of Corsavy, France and then turned on this teeny dirt road. You know you are headed somewhere fantastic when traveling on a dirt road:

 And at the end of the dirt road...another world.

I mean, does this photo not make you want to wear long skirts and carry water from some ancient source? Is that just me?

The views from the farmhouse were nothing short of superb:

 The kids wasted no time and began enjoying what may be the most beautiful trampoline view of all time:

 This gate led to our private front door. Pure bliss. Our phones did not work and wifi was by request, so we did not request it. 

 Our front door and private terrace. I basically sat here for nearly four days and read and slept in the sun. I can't imagine anything better.

 Sunrise from the kitchen window:

We arrived on Thursday afternoon and spent the afternoon just wandering around the property. The kids loved checking on the goats, chickens, sheep, donkeys, etc. Being on a farm is such a fun experience for kids.

On Friday morning we packed lunch and our hiking gear and drove through beautiful autumn foliage to a nearby mountain. Our plan was to hike about 10km, but it included several long climbs so I carried the hiking pack in the event Aurelia needed assistance.

 The day could not have been more perfect for a long hike.

 As you can see, this was not an easy hike! We are slowly trying longer and more difficult hikes and so far the kids are loving the adventure.

 We hiked for a couple of hours and then took a break for lunch. We were on top of the mountain gazing down at the world and it was an incredible spot. I was so proud of Aurelia (she did it all solo) and Eston for completing the hike without complaint. I love that they are enjoying hiking so much as it is such a great family activity.

And after a long hike...a long hot tub!

 Saturday was another gorgeous sunrise. We slept so well at La Taillede. Rory and I averaged 10 hours a night and we felt so refreshed waking up every morning.

 We went down to the village of Ceret on Saturday morning. Ceret is a gorgeous little French village with a fantastic art museum. This area also produces most of the cherries for Spain and France.  I have wanted to go to their market for ages, so it was fun to wander around town and check everything out. I was over the moon when I found pomegranates! My favorite thing in the world and I am planning a return to buy more. Aurelia is my little cheese monger and she was in heaven at the market. We bought a few things to bring home to enjoy.

 We left the market after filling our basket with some gorgeous fruit and cheeses. We then headed to the Gorges de la Fou. This site has been on my "must do" list since we moved to Girona, but we just never made it happen. I am actually glad we didn't because the kids are now at the perfect age to enjoy this outing! The walk was only 5.5km, so it felt quite short compared to our hike.

 Walking through the gorge was incredible. It was a warm day and we we entered the gorge the temperature dropped quite a bit and the rock formations were just amazing. Highly recommended if you are in the area! 

 We spent Saturday evening wandering around the farm and just enjoying the beautiful surroundings. What a peaceful place.

We drove back to Girona on Sunday morning and all of us felt truly relaxed and renewed. Usually we leave vacation feeling a bit worn out, but we were able to really rest and explore on this trip without worrying about work and school and such. 

Of course, now we are back to real life! Rory went to his first training camp for the new team, we celebrated Halloween and we are mere weeks from moving to our new house. 

Verona and Lake Como!

Well, I have completely dropped the ball with a post for our August vacation. I managed to post about half of the vacation and then we returned home and that was the end of that. So...the rest of our vacation!!

We spent our final day in Belgium watching the last stage of the Brinkback Tour. The kids were able to see the famous Muur climb and we arrived early in order to get a good spot. :-)

We left the race as soon as Rory crossed the finish line and hightailed it to the Brussels airport where we boarded a flight for Milan. Aurelia was psyched to get to Italy! We landed late at night and just stayed at an airport hotel to save our energy. The next morning we rented a car and drove to Verona, one of my favorite towns in Italy.

Verona is a great choice for sight seeing with children as the town is quite compact and the public transportation options are vast.  You can take local buses anywhere and it is super easy. 

 I have not been to Italy in August and I don't think we will ever make it a point of going back during that time...SO MANY TOURISTS. Yikes. We decided to just go with it and found lots of places off the tourist path.

 The local tourist train is great for kids. We also saw the old arena in Verona and toured several of the famous churches. 

 Juliet's balcony!! As we approached the balcony a young man was up there proposing to his girlfriend. Eston and Aurelia thought this was absolutely amazing. We recently watched a film that had several scenes in Verona, so they were thrilled to see familiar streets and places.

 On our last night in Verona we had a fabulous dinner at a restaurant with a gorgeous view of the town. The kids loved the hike to get to the restaurant and it was so nice to relax and watch the sunset from such a vantage point.

 After Verona we hopped back in the car and began our drive to Lake Como. We made a stop in the old city of Bergamo:

 Hotels in Lake Como in August are a lot of things, but cheap is not one of them. However, I was dying to visit and we managed to find a small family-run hotel that was perfect. The view from our room was spectacular:

 After we checked in we immediately put on our swim stuff and headed down to the lake. All of the beautiful people in the world hang out here on on gorgeous vintage boats and it was such fun to people watch!

 Our tiny hotel in Lake Como is well-known in the area for its restaurant, so we were excited to be staying there and able to partake of the food. We sat down for dinner and our server (owner's son) told us that the chef would be more than happy to bring the kids pasta with tomato sauce. Eston's jaw dropped and he replied, "But I wanted the duck!" Aurelia was pining for the homemade ravioli with goat's cheese, so our server was pleasantly surprised. Aurelia keeps calling herself a foodie as she loves trying anything and everything on anyone's plate. We were served course after course of local and fresh food and it was so nice to just climb the stairs to our room and not have to go anywhere!

The main reason for our Italian stopover was so Rory could have a meeting with his new team in Milan, so we had to sadly say goodbye to Como and head back to Milan. I drove us the scenic way through Switzerland and we stopped off in Lugano for lunch:

Well, I had intended to include more detail about our trip, but there went that idea! At least there are photos, right??

Taking the Kids to Antwerp, Belgium

We spent about 24 hours in Antwerp and I wish we could have spent at least two days. What an incredible city! We had a long list of things to see and do and I knew we would not be able to accomplish everything, so I decided that each of us would choose a museum and those would be our morning activities. 

Aurelia's choice was the ModeMuseum, a fashion museum. I thought it was a bit of an odd choice and actually tried to talk her out of it, but in the end it was such a fantastic museum! We walked in and the lovely front desk lady handed each child a set of pencils and the "treasure hunt." Turns out the museum has clues all over the museum and kids can hunt for them (while learning a bit of the history of Belgian fashion) and at the end there is a treasure box!

I was not allowed to take photos in the actual museum, but the kids had so much fun collecting each clue. The clues were related to a number and at the very end that number was needed to unlock the treasure box. I was a bit taken aback when we finally discovered the treasure box--it was locked and so secretive! How fun is that?! The museum is quite small and it took us about an hour to see everything and collect the answers to the clues.

 Next stop: The Museum aan de Stroom. The museum was a twenty minute walk through the city, so we were able to see a few sights on our walk over, which was perfect. The building itself is pretty fantastic and the kids could have just marveled at the view from the foyer, hahah. We chose a few of the most interesting sounding exhibits and spent about an hour and a half in the museum. Things were not as interactive, so Aurelia reached her limit after this time. Older kids could definitely spend a few hours in here.

 My choice of museum was the Red Star Line Museum. This museum was super interactive, which was great. It tells the story of the Europeans who left Europe via Antwerp and sailed to North America (USA and Canada). We learned about immigrant families from the past and current families and there were recorded stories and photos and videos--super informative and we all enjoyed this museum. I forgot to take photos, whoops!

 We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city and exploring churches, shops, small squares, etc. This is such a great city and I am sorry we couldn't spend more time here.

 Antwerp is a compact city and kids can really walk everywhere, which is great. We probably walked over 10km on this day (with breaks for food and such). There are public transport options as well, but we were happy to walk and explore.

Kids in Maastricht

August is vacation time! After a few schedule changes I ended up taking the kids to Belgium and the Netherlands for a week. We saw a few of Rory's races and had a blast exploring the area. The weather was absolutely dismal, but we didn't allow that to dampen our spirits. 

Maastricht reminded me a bit of Boulder. It is a university town with a thriving cultural scene. Lots of cool places to have coffee, fun shops, etc. We drove from our hotel in Belgium and parking in the center of the city was not a problem (though the price kind of surprised me after cheap Spanish prices).

You can see most of Maastricht on foot or by bike. We spent the morning walking around the city and we were not disappointed. I wish we could have spent another day or two exploring the city, so we will have to return in the future.

 Near the town hall we stumbled upon a market with all sorts of things. One portion held the daily food market. I am always interested in seeing other markets and I can't help but compare them to our fabulous Mercat de Lleon in Girona. The Maastricht market had clothes, fabric, flowers, baked goods, etc. It was fun to wander through and the kids found some cute little felt keychains made by a local woman and they bought them to add to their keychain collections. 

 I adore bookshops and libraries. I just can't help myself in a bookshop. Maastricht has a Dominican church that was built in the 13th century and is now the Selexyz Dominicanen bookstore and it is really worth a visit.

 The children's section had plenty of English books and I allowed (haha) the children to each choose a book. Then we wandered over to the adult books and Eston had to remind me that we were limited with our suitcase weight, so I should exercise caution when purchasing books. The shop also has a great cafe, so it is a great stop with kids after waking around town.

 We found these statues near the Sint-Janskerk Church. The church has a tower and you can climb about 459 (we started to lose count) very narrow stairs to the top of the tower. Highly recommended as it has a great view of the entire city. Aurelia made it up on her own (age 4) without issue, but be aware that the stairs are quite steep and narrow.

 My kids could have spent the day walking along the river and marveling at the boats and the houseboats. We tried not to be too stalker-ish, but it was too tempting to take a peek in the boats! We loved this area of the city.