Sunday, October 31, 2010

Gorge du Verdon


Hello Everyone!

This blog entry is about our holiday in the beautiful Verdon Gorge.
We left for the gorge with great expectations and excitement. The depth of the gorge in places is 500 metres deep and the deepest gorge in the world, second only to the Grand Canyon. We started a walk at Chalet de la Maline which is 893 meters high and descended to 555 meters at the river were we ate afternoon tea. It was amazing to be walking through all the wildlife. There were quite a few hills of just gravel! From the top of the gorge it looked like an awfully long way down to the river and when we arrived at the bottom it look just as long to climb to the top! In total it took us two and a half hours to walk the whole track.
As we drove along the gorge, we stopped at numerous look-outs to look at the views. At one we saw quite a few rock climbers who where abseiling down the cliff and then climbing back up. Even though there were safety bars on all the cliffs I still didn't feel safe! It was such a long way down.
On one of the nights we stayed in a castle in Trigance which overlooked the tiny village below. I enjoyed sitting in front of the fire and reading my favourite book. In the rooms there were small beds because in the 13th century people always slept sitting up.They were scared that their lungs would drown.


We climbed up to a church over Moustiers, which is another town we stayed in. There was a gold star hanging between two cliff faces, over the village. A 13th century crusader put it there after he did something that the royal family approved of. he won a battle and promised he would hang a gold star above his village if he should return alive.
While we were up there we saw two mountain goats looking over the church and when we tried to leave a bunch of goats were standing in a cave and stopped us from leaving! So we had to leave via another path! It was a great few days.

Au Revoir
Sean

Monday, October 25, 2010

Friends and Caves

Hello everyone!
Winter is definitely here. The top of Mt Ventoux now has snow!

We started last weekend with a trip to Isle sur la Sorgue where I ate a cafe liegois from Isabelle's. That's the name of the ice-cream. It's a huge ice-cream with two scoops of coffee ice-cream, coffee sauce, coffee and whipped cream. It was so huge! We also had a look at the antique markets. I find it amusing that you are always guaranteed to find antique keys from doors in France. It was so cold that when we climbed back into the car that there was frost all over the windows!

We then drove to the Thouzon Cave. We entered into a small corridor which snaked it's way down into the ground. It was surprisingly warmer inside the cave then outside! Outside it was 10 degrees and inside it was 13 degrees! It was discovered in 1902 by two men excavating for a quarry. Inside there are numerous stalactites and stalicmites. While we were walking we saw them everywhere. They looked like macaroni entering and leaving the earth. We also saw tree roots from where trees have reached down from the earth above searching for water. We also passed small deposits of water from where it had gathered up over time.

On Wednesday I had Corentin, my friend, come over and play at my house. We raced cars on my electric car track and went to the local skate park with our bikes. We ate pasta for lunch and ate crepes in front of the "I Robot" movie.

On Saturday I went to Corentin's house in Malemort du Comtat. We kicked a soccer ball around at the oval near his house and played Soul Excalibur 4 on the Xbox 360. We rode on the bikes to the skate park near his house and went on the jumps too.

On Sunday we went to the Vide Grenier in Mazan. I bought Star Wars Battlefront 2, Brothers in Arms 4 and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on the PS2 for 9 euros and I bought a cool skateboard for 3 euros!

Serge, Isabelle and Raphael came over to our house to play Risk in the afternoon. I won after a two hours of battling. We also ate "Gauffres" or waffles in French with cream, ice-cream and chocolate sauce.

Au Revoir!