The return of Carlos

Finally that day was here when Carlos, our gardener, came back to France. His mother did not want to go with us because she "gets car sick." So we went on to the train station and waited. We got worried because a train that came from Paris had just left by the time he arrived and we thought that he had slept through his stop. Finally we called him and he was motoring down the railway with in ten minutes of Valence my mother and I both breathed a sigh of relief. He came through the doorway with the biggest smile I have ever seen on anyone. On the way home he would only stop talking to breath and to listen to our questions (fyi. Carlos does not talk much). His mother was working at a ladies house when he says he wants to drop buy and say hello. We take them back to there house and they invite us in for a drink and well thats about it.

Katarina stop buy

One night my mother and I are sitting watching a movie and all of a sudden we get this phone call. It just so happens to be our long time friend Katarina Ferrati and she announces that she will be coming over the next day. So she arrives and we head down to lunch. We have a very nice lunch with pizza and spaghetti. Then we come back up to our house and I get to work and Katarina and my mom start to work on French conjugations. The funny part of this is that Katarina plans this whole day out for my mom and her on Wednesday and we schedule stuff for later that month (you kind of have to know Katarina to get how funny this is). I bet she would change a month of planning just to hang out with us.

my first rugby match

I finally got my license so I would be able to play for my rugby team. Just to tell you this blog post will be short because well my playing time was kind of short. But here is a picture of what I did get to do.

Ok maybe I just took a picture of my head and put it on the body of one of my favorite rugby teams New Zealand. But back to the rugby match. I got in for a total of 5 minutes and then I hit some really big guy and made him stumble, I would call that a pretty good accomplishment for my first match.

The departure of a father

The night after our Roman transformation we slept the night near the Lyon airport. The next morning we woke up and we went off to the airport to say our tearful goodbyes. Once we got there we parked and my Mom and I were very curious about how we get out of the airport parking lot. We went to this nice lounge and got a very nice breakfast. Finally it was time for Dad to go, I probably said good buy to him about 7 times. He went through the security doors and we walked off. With in the first five minutes we (as my mother would say) were looking for the best view in the airport, which in other words means we were lost. We found our way back ok, and even had time for a photo shoot.

Gaul

For those of you who do not know the city of Vienne, it is a city outside of Lyon that was once a huge Roman city. So naturally we had to go. This was the first trip we took our four legged friend on, and honestly I do not think he was content. He had to stay in our four wheeled vehicle the whole time, and occasionally got out to walk around a parking lot.

Yes, I took my rugby ball. I have gotten very attached.

Our first destination was the very modern looking museum of an ancient city in Gaul. This museum was INCREDIBLE, you actually got to run around and climb on ancient Roman ruins. Here are some pictures.

Me sitting on Roman couch people would lay and eat here

Corinthian column

My ancient jungle gym

Probably one of the few pictures you will find of my Mom and Dad (together) luckily I caught them in the act ;-)

The most interesting thing I deduced from this ancient Roman city is that the Romans really new how to live. For example the Romans had public baths that were not only for cleaning but they also had gyms for working out and they had a neat system to heat the baths. Another example, their houses had basements and to get to them you would go through a tunnel, break your back getting through the little door, and probably not help your back by doing whatever you needed to do down there. While in the out door section I accomplished 3 things.
1. Successfully saw an ancient Roman city with out hurting myself or any other of my fellow explorers
2. Probably climbed on, over, around, and through every single wall in that city.
3. Saved a kitten from the jaws of death
The second section of the museum was the indoor part where they had artifacts and models from the Roman society. Here are some pictures (that we probably were not supposed to take).

This is a painting of two Roman wrestlers

Wonderful mosaic


A model of a Roman port with a sea monster

Wonderful mosaic 2

This museum also has the biggest mosaic in the world, but by that time the man said no pictures. The next post is of this same trip, just a different experience.

Turin and Brionson

Our second excursion out of our little department of Isere was to Turin, Italy to see the ancient Egyptian artifact museum. The voyage to Turin was gorgeous. We were in a valley high up in the alps and the clouds rested right up on the tips of the mountains.



Ok so maybe not right up on the tips, but you get what I'm trying to say. Also on the way to Turin we went through the tunnel that leads from France to Italy, that was pretty cool. After you peak over this hill on the auto route you can see the city of Turin.
Turin is a gorgeous city and if I had the choice I would stay there all year. It has such a great atmosphere and the architecture is gorgeous. We did not have our faithful GPS Marge, so we got lost within the first five minutes of entering the city.
After navigating the cities every nook and cranny we finally stopped at our hotel in a really sketch part of town. To put an image into your mind about how sketch sketch is here is a description for you. It was grubby, as soon as you walked out of the nice part, the only thing you could here was drunk Italians, there was a guy dressed as a girl who would stand on a corner of a street and then would disappear with random guys. Oh and our hotel, do not stay at the Hotel du Mondi in Turin. I wish I had taken a picture for your benefit. If you have ever stuffed three people into a cardboard box then that is pretty much how big our hotel room was. Oh and the view was... hard to describe, so here it is.

If your lucky you can see what our neighbors are having for dinner. So the hotel might have been a bad choice.

After we got settled in at the hotel we ambled over to the museum. We got are tickets and went into the first room. The first room stunned me and it was kind of a forshadower of what to come. Here are some of the better pictures I took while in the museum.

Egyptian picture

The head of Cleopatra

Egyptian Pharoh

Egyptian Pharaoh making an offering to the gods.

Me posing in front of a really cool sphinx with my Wake Forest shirt on.







After the museum we went to get some gelato an Italian specialty. That night we went to a very nice restaurant where I hit on the waitress.


Day 2
The next day we woke up and packed up from our crummy hotel singed out and went on our way back to France. We drove up the mountains and we came upon this great little town called Clavier where we ate lunch and where I played soccer. Then we motored on down to Brionson the highest city (key word) in all of Europe. When we arrived there we settled into our hotel and then we took a nap, then my Dad and I took a walk up into the old city. The view was gorgeous and we learned a lot of history, like there were 3 cities and they all supported each other in times of war. Also Brionson was a very important city because it regulated trade from France to Italy or vica versa. That nuit we went to the hotel restaurant and met a man who was biking from England do Sicily because he did not like to fly. He is now my dads official hero.

Day 3
On day 3 we woke up to a very nice breakfast, then we flew the coop. On the way home we had to stop like a million times to take really neat pictures.

Until next time folks, sorry if there are TO many pictures, this was one of my favorite trips.

W.

The Rugby World Cup

Not to long after we got back from the Dordongne I received a call from one of our friends Bernard Perazio saying that he wanted me to go to the Rugby World Cup USA vs. Samoa. It was absolutely amazing even though USA lost. I got on TV 3 times and a guy from AP wire took my picture. I don't have a picture of what I look like, but on my Dad's profile I do. 4 guys from the USA team pointed at me which was awesome, and I met one of the players families and they gave me an American flag. There is not much to say about what happened, because it's really hard to put in words what a rugby game is like. But to best describe it here is one word AWESOME, try and watch a game.

The Dordonga 2

Hello again, I hope you all were pleased with the last entry. Here is what happened after the second day.

Day 3

The third morning I think I woke up at a record time of 7:30. My favorite father and I went out and saw the dogs that the trainers brought to train for hunting completions. You might think that hunting dogs would be mean but they were some of the nicest dogs I ever met. They were the kind of dogs that when they needed to work the would crack down and do what they needed to work (play as the trainers would put it). After that we ate breakfast and bid the trainers adieu to go and work. The first place we went was the cave at Peche Merle. It was absolutely fantastic. You could not see the paintings very well but it was cool because it was the real thing. The second place we went was Rockamador. Rockamador is a big place where the pilgrimage goes through. Personally I was not impressed because it was a lot like Mont St. Michelle which is one of the seven wonders of the world.
This is a picture of the castle at Rockamador. Ok so it is pretty impressive, but if you saw Mont Saint Michelle than you would think that this is just a wannabe. After this we went to a fabulous gite just south of Sarlat. It was really nice, the grass was green, the flowers were in bloom, it was wonderful weather, and to top it all off we had foi gras. The one thing that I did not like about it is that it was not a good atmosphere and the lady who ran it was strict about where to play. That night my Dad and I went into the dining area to check our e-mail and to watch the RUGBY WORLD CUP. That match was France Ireland. I found out that Ireland has one of the coolest national anthems ever. Despite Ireland having the coolest national anthem ever the lost the match 25-3. Sticking on the topic of rugby, I am actually playing rugby for the little town that we are in. I have to say it is one of the coolest sports on earth. Back to the trip.

Day 4

On the fourth morning I woke up and we mozzied on over to the dining room, and just to our surprise there was an exquisite breakfast waiting for us. After b-fast we made our way over to the city of Sarlat. There we went to a market where we bought some more foi gras and saw many interesting things. I think it was one of the biggest markets I have ever been to. After the market at Sarlat we traveled over to Les Ezyies, a city with a prehistoric museum. It was pretty interesting, but it seemed kind of long. The rest of the day after that we really didn't do anything except go and have a delicious dinner.

Day 5

The morning of day five we did what any other person would do and wake up. After we had another scrumptious breakfast we packed up and moved out. We found ourselves stopping at a prehistoric "setup" I guess you could say. It was a lot like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. It had big dolls set up so they would show you what it was like to live in the rocks. Three really interesting things I learned there was that cave people really did not live in caves, they lived in overhangs on the rock. Another neat fact I learned was that cave people did not know how babies are born so they thought that women were the connection between the earth and the spirit world, thats why the carved the mother earth because they thought that a woman gave birth to the world. Here are some funny pictures of us at this place.

Can you say Christmas card


This is my WILD side