Aix, Monaco and Italy for lunch - last leg of our road trip

These are cute family pictures that Erin sent me, Eloise is 6 months old and her little scowl just cracks me up!  

Ok, back to our road trip.  After we went to Avignon we headed to Montpellier, but I've been there a few times so I didn't really have anything new to share.  The next day we stopped in Aix-en-Provence, one of my favorite places!  I wanted to do a little shopping and bought myself a provence style tablecloth (which I have been wanting since the last time we were here) and a few little Christmas gifts - including one for Becky!

After we left Aix, we drove to Monaco.  I couldn't help but think about Dwight and Janine since I know they went there years ago.  It was a beautiful place!  We had a great view of the Mediterranean and wanted to board one of the many boats and yachts we saw while we walked around.

We ate dinner at a very authentic Italian restaurant.  This woman was part owner and cook and made Jeremy a beautiful salt cooked fish.  She took it out of the salt and deboned it in about 1 minute and it was as fresh as it comes.  I had fresh made pasta with a pomodoro sauce and chunks of lobster.  It was so good, and the view was just as awesome!

At the top of this cliff is where the Prince of Monaco resides.

Somehow we ended up walking through a tunnel to get to the other side where all of the large yachts dock.  It was party-town over there and we enjoyed seeing all of the huge boats!  We were hoping to see the Jolie-Pitt family or someone famous but no such luck!

Jeremy was especially impressed with the cars in our hotel parking garage.  Maybe if you know anything about cars you might be more impressed than me at some of these!  He mostly took pics for Rico and Michael to look at....

Our last day we drove to the closest town in Italy just to have lunch before catching our flight back to Paris.  We also thought it would be cool to wake up in Monaco, have lunch in Italy and go back to France in one afternoon.  We are weird like that!

Little cutie pie pictures from Erin this week...

Valence and Avignon, France

 After we spent the night at Lake Annecy, we headed south to Valence.  Jeremy found the most adorable B & B and we had our own little room on the property.  It was called "Laurier" or Laurel.  You could tell it was very old, but they had remodeled and decorated with a great mix of old and new.  Also, they had the cutest bathroom fixtures!  

This is where we had breakfast, which Jeremy and I agreed was the best breakfast we have ever had!  It started with a fresh-made smoothie and followed by local yogurt with fruit.  They also had a large assortment of the best pastries in all of France!

We went to McDonalds - we are American but it was still clearly French McDonalds...as you can purchase sparkling water and they give you a cup, because no one in France drinks from the bottle during a meal!

That evening we met some of Jeremy's distributors in Valence.  It was not our favorite town but did have a lovely little park.

Don't you want to get up to that hole in the rock?  It's very 
Lord of the Rings-y!

We ran into the sister missionaries and by some coincidence saw Katie Jensen (a friend from the U of U!)  It was so nice to run into her, she looked great!

That evening in Valence I was lucky enough to experience a once-in-a-lifetime meal.  The kind you see on chefy tv shows...with an amuse bouche followed by an appetizer, fish entree and then two desserts.  It was probably the best meal of my life.  My favorite things were the candy coated cherry tomatoes with a sprinkling of three pieces of salt, the fish over a red pepper sauce, the mini-macaroons and a raspberry napoleon with white chocolate mousse.  It was the first white chocolate thing I have ever tasted that I actually liked.  Jeremy was not as impressed, but I thought it was so much fun to eat there.  

The next morning we drove to Avignon, a medieval city with a wall that still surrounds the town.  Jeremy scored again with an adorable hotel...I am so spoiled!

Here he is working with the cutest little windows open to a beautiful courtyard restaurant.

The journey continues....to Monaco!