Our children arrived in France on July 28th. What a sight for sore eyes. Randi and I couldn't wait to hug them. They were all exhausted from the long trip here and from the beer in the Amsterdam airport. They thought they all looked horrible but they all looked great to us.
We let them adjust from jetlag for just the one day and then rented a Citroen C8 van and took them on a European "Road TRIP!!" And not just a little weekend drive in the country...oh no...it wasn't over there. Nothing's over until we decide it is!
Did we stop at just seeing the French Riviera ? ...no! Did we stop after then driving to Cinque Terre Italy ? ...no! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no! I'm on a role now. How bout after we then drove to Barcelona Spain ? You're damn right it was over then...2600 kilometers sounds like a lot more than 1600 miles but either way it was enough driving for Dad. But I will add that I had been posturing for over a couple weeks to not go to Barcelona but everybody was up for it when the time came...and they were all right. We were all glad we went. The whole itinerary turned out to be a success and we never hit any of the July/August holiday traffic we had been warned about many times by our French friends.We spent the first 3 nights in St. Tropez. We chose the location for it's beaches and were not disappointed with that or our hotel choice. However, the size of the yachts and big money being throw around was a little too glitzy for us...but we kinda knew that going in. We had kind of a high-brow spot on St. Tropez's main beach area the one day where we had rented lounge chairs and umbrellas. It was right next to the Nikki Beach (private) valet area, where they will take you and your luggage to and from your yacht to shore...I thought about just paying to have them drive us all away from the shore, circle around some usually large watercraft and back...I could hit the beachhead with style. Chris liked when he ordered a drink after lunch and the waiter told him to "go back to your mattress"...apparently he wanted Chris to get back to his reclining position and spare him the difficulty of carrying the drink there himself.
Our hotel was called the Hôtel L'Orangeraie.
It was really a beautiful spot, in a mansion that was converted to a hotel. The rooms were very comfortable, the breakfast was good and the pool was nice. The service there was excellent as well. The pool boy, Jullian, became friends with the whole family it seemed and is even Facebook friends with Randi now...nothing wrong with her being friends with the pool boy right?? We had a beautiful rooms with huge windows that looked out over the pool and to the sea beyond. 
The kids had a room for 4 with a large stone balcony overlooking the pool. We would love to go back there someday and recommend the hotel highly to anyone going there.From there we drove just a couple hours to SanRemo, Italy...just over the border from Monaco. We stayed there for just one night at the Ariston Montecarlo Hotel. We liked it there, even though room #72 was quite a bit nicer than room #73 (like it was built in a different era). The pool there was huge and deep. I talked to the pool boy there...he was more of a Bill Murray type guy...he said "that pool is more like a lake than a pool". The hotel had free bike rentals and the town
has a nice path next to the ocean and away from traffic. The boys met a friend there named Max. He was staying there with his family from Holland for 2 weeks! He was near the end of his time there and Max was well connected by that time with the downtown area. He convinced his Dad to drive them downtown and they convinced me that they were ok going and would take a taxi back. I don't know the whole story but they went to the Casino there, they didn't have much money left for a taxi and ended up walking, sometimes running, like 30 minutes back to the hotel.
Then we went to what everyone agreed was our favorite location, Cinque Terre, where we stayed in Manarola. The Italian food was wonderful. The people were great. The towns were beautiful and interesting. The hiking trails were amazing. We took the easy hike called The Lover's Walk between Manarola and Riomaggiore the one day and we took the train to visit Monterosso and Vernazza the other days. 
The train was a locally run, very unreliable, Petticoat Junction kind of setup. The one day we took it half way to Monterosso when it stopped half way there in Cogniglia. The train engineer came inside our car and we all assumed he was going to check our tickets but instead he yelled a couple sentences of Italian at everyone in the car. We were all sitting right by the door with this blank look of 'me no understanda the wordsa comin outta your moutha" on our faces when the guys finally yells "Get out!!". We understood that. We waited for 10 minutes for another train because that one had to go back in the direction from whence it came???...we don't know why??...we were told to get out...we got out...no big deal...kind of amusing.Our gang had a lot of fun there...staying up late and hanging out with the local kids from the town. By the time we left my daughter Alli was being romanced by the 'pizza boy' ...she said he was picking flowers for her and eating fruit off the trees :) My step-son Josh was falling in love with Jasmine, one of the waitresses there. My step-daughter Brooke was playing tamborine for a local band at the bar.
Chris was still makin "good karma deposits" with the girls....that's a term the boys told us. We called them 'the bankers' after that. The longer we stayed there the more we liked it. No one wanted to leave.From there we went to Aix En Provence and stayed in a beautiful old country home... very romantic, nice pool...but no air conditioning!!..and the bed was about two feet too short for me!! But we enjoyed walking through Aix that night. The kids were able to experience the typical French restaurant experience that we've had many times here...where they seat you right away and then put you in a virtual isolation tank. We sat for maybe 15 minutes without getting anything, including water and we were all very thirsty. We finally got their attention when we got up and walked out. I was proud to see that none of us were ashamed to go to a Chinese restaurant right next door. I knew it was the right move right away when they immediately gave us water with two bowls of ice!! as well...nobody! gives out ice here. We had reservations to stay at that hotel for two nights but after the night of bad sleep we all made a quick decision in the morning to not stay a second night but instead leave for Barcelona a day early.
Barcelona was great. What an interesting and beautiful city. The old Gothic Quarter area of the town is really cool. The beaches were really nice and not crowded. The different works of Antoni Gaudí are all incredible to see. We've seen a lot of churches since we've been here but nothing like Gaudi's La Sagrada Família. 
He designed it to have 18 towers, 12 for the 12 apostles, 4 for the 4 evangelists, one for Mary and one for Jesus. It's still a 'work in progress' that they hope to have finished by 2026, which would mark 100 years since his death but most people think that is still optimistic. The only existing copy of his last recorded blue prints were destroyed in 1938, during the Spanish Civil War. So now the continued design of the church is a WWGD...what would Gaudi do...kind of mode. It's really incredible to see how he incorporated nature's angles and curves throughout all his work. The other incredible thing about our stay in Barcelona was our very modern and very nice hotel which we stayed at for $59 a night!! We couldn't believe it. The kids all were asking us why we were spending so much money on a hotel like that and we were telling them that it was the least expensive out of all the hotels we were at. I talked to the lady working there about it and she said their prices fluctuate a lot. They are 15 minutes out of downtown and across from their convention center. She said this next weekend there is a convention there and that same room of ours would be $300 a night. We hope to visit Barcelona again and hope to stay there for $59 again. The boys again had a late night, going with some girls from England to a pool party...not a regular pool but the 1992 Olympic pool party. I think the young bankers may have made a withdrawal that night??Finally we had a couple days in Toulouse together. We did some shopping and spent more money, buying the kids some clothes...and tried to make time stop. We are staying the apartment now, with the lights off...letting our checkbook recover.
