Chateau de Chillon, Montreux, Switzerland
Mont Blanc is somewhere in the background, Chamonix, France
L'Abbaye de Senanque, Provence, France
Kylie's birthday, Paris, France
Arc de Triomphe, Paris, France
Dom, Oscar, Caroline (played tennis at UTM), and Ruby, England
With Anna (also played tennis at UTM) and Caroline at Caroline's place, England
We can't rotate the picture on the blog but this is Maisy, Anna and Troy's cute daughter. We'll add a picture of the Linton family in the next few days.
We're sorry that we haven't been able to update our blog until now. A lot has happened in the last two weeks. We also haven't had easy access to the internet.
After three awesome days in Zermatt, Switzerland, we went to Montreux, Switzerland. The Swiss speak French in Montreux since it's close to the French border, as opposed to speaking Swiss German in Zermatt. So we were back to saying "Bonjour" and "Merci." Montreux is a beautiful city on Switzerland's 'Riviera' on Lake Geneva. We were there for just the afternoon until the next morning so we saw Chateau de Chillon, which is smaller than some other castles in Europe. It rained that day so we were very happy when the sun came out the next morning, just in time for us to see the mountains in the background, take some good pictures, and catch our train to Chamonix, France.
We spent just under two days in Chamonix. We stayed at a cool B&B with views of the French Alps from our window. Our goal was to see Mont Blanc but it was M.I.A. (Missing In Action). The weather made it impossible for us to see Mont Blanc until the morning that we left. We saw the Alps but didn't know which mountain was Mont Blanc so we snapped a bunch of pictures with the hope that it was in the background.
We caught the train from Chamonix to Avignon in the Provence region of France. This was a very exciting day because we met Kylie and Jon in Avignon. They arrived a few hours after us so the following ten days were wonderful. We toured Avignon, Arles (where we saw the cafe featured in Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' painting), nearby hill towns, and the wine area. Some of these towns were featured in the movie "A Good Year" with Russell Crowe.
We spent 3.5 days in Provence and the rest of our time together in Paris. People either love Paris or they aren't too keen on the city...we love it! The city is amazing with fantastic sites, scenery, buildings, parks, and food. Some people weren't impressed with our attempts at speaking French but most people were nice to us regardless of our ability to speak French. We did the usual tourist activities - Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Versailles, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame Cathedral, Orsay Museum, Napoleon's Tomb, Arc de Triomphe, and the Rodin Museum. And we celebrated Kylie's birthday. It was so nice to celebrate Kylie's birthday together in this wonderful city. Of course it was very sad to say good-bye...again...but at least all of us left Paris at the same time so one sister didn't feel like she was leaving the other behind.
We then went to Blois, France, for a couple of days. We toured a couple of castles, including the Chateaux de Chambord. Some of you might be familiar with the pink Chambord liquid that can be added to champagne.
Now we are in England, staying with our friends Anna and Troy, their 9-month old daughter, Maisy, and their dog, Fred. We went to university (UT Martin) and Melissa played tennis with Anna. It's cool to stay with them and finally be in England since we have wanted to visit our English friends from UTM for a long time. We saw Caroline, Dom, their son, Oscar, and their newborn daughter, Ruby, today. Caroline also went to UTM and played tennis. We're really enjoying catching up with our friends and being in an English-speaking country where everything feels familiar although we haven't been here before. We're going to visit the sites in London and meet up with some more friends the next few days.
It's been nine weeks since we left Sweden so we've really enjoyed being around family and friends again.
