"I'm on a horse."

7/5


Today started early -- we were up at 6:30 and out the driveway by 8:00.

First stop: horseback-riding!

My horse, Rasquel! (Spelled phonetically, because I don't know how to actually spell it... And that's French phonetics haha.)

"I'm on a horse."

Rasquel likes his hair braided. I could feel it.

Our fearless leaders! The little girl was our actual guide, leading the horses along the path. She was super adorable and once she realized I knew French (since I was right behind her) she started explaining all about the differences in riding styles in France versus America... to be honest I didn't catch a lot of it... Not exactly vocab we studied in school.

Hard to see, but that's a flamingo. They live in Africa in the winter and come up the Mediterranean Sea to southern France in the summer.

This area of France is super marsh-y.

We drove a little bit further after horseback-riding to this seaside town, where we visited the cathedral. It holds one of the most famous Black Madonnas.

This Black Madonna is the saint for the gypsies, and once a year in March they take her out of the crypt of the church and march her around the streets in honour of her.

Ariana took this picture, unfortunately Blogger couldn't figure out how to flip it, so alas.

Never seen Kinder Eggs like this before! I bought one. It was delicious.

I really had to restrain myself from buying this... I've never seen knock-off Nutella like this before, it looks delicious...

After grabbing sammiches for lunch (and in my case, a GIANT nectarine and a thing of yogurt) we scampered on over the beach. The water was FRIGID, like you could feel your toes going numb after only a minute. But it was so invigorating! Emma, DeAndre, and I swam out to this rocky... path peninsula thingy (Nasir ran out along said path peninsula thingy to join us) and it was great fun.

Then we rented a peddle-boat (I didn't want to risk my camera getting wet so alas no pictures were taken), but we went all the way out to the buoy and the boat had a slide on it so we braved the freezing waters again. And only after we had heaved ourselves out of the water and laboriously clambered over the railing back into the boat did we discover the ladder that flipped down so you could just easily climb back up... So we all jumped back in again.

A successful day at the beach.

You can't really tell here but I got massively tan today. And I didn't get a chance to flip over so my back is like a whole different shade. :P

Also, I bartered with this lady at the outdoor market for a necklace; she asked €5 for it and I got her to sell it to me for €3. I was so proud of myself! I'd never bartered before! :O

We finally meandered back to the car at the designated hour to get ready to go home (2 hour+ drive).

Nasir and DeAndre bought water guns for the pool.

Spotted on the drive home. I love the architecture here.

Maybe it's just me, but I found a pumpkin carriage on the merry-go-round quite amusing.

Ancient Roman aquaducts.

I know this isn't a particularly visually pleasing picture, but I just wanted to get a shot of this. I mean, the Romans built that... Just think home immensely old it is. It's incredible.

Again, one of those moments where we're driving and suddenly... oh look a castle. A castle, just chillin'. I love France.

Mountains, Gandalf, mountains!

The kids stopped to take pictures in the sunflower fields. I was riding with Chandri, Ariana, and Julia, so we kept going, but I wanted to put a picture of it up, because even from the car they were awesome. Unfortunately Blogger's being dumb right now so it won't let me upload any more than this one...

"Hello, I'm here."

We pass this building all the time, I finally got a picture of it.