Mom and Nick came to visit in the end of March, and I got to spend two lovely weekends with them. The first weekend they arrived in Montpellier, so we spent a few days shopping, touring the city and, of course, eating. Nick did some visiting of the more tourist-y parts of Montpellier on the day that Mom and I did our shopping (since it's not really his thing).
I don't get a chance to eat out much, so it was nice to get to go to the few restaurants I know about and also explore some new ones. We ate some delicious French food, and also learned that the French do not know how to make iced coffee. This spring weather has been making me seriously crave Dunkin' Donuts' iced coffee. I know, I know, I'm in Europe so I should enjoy their coffee, but there's just something so satisfying about Dunkin's and their iced coffee on a warm day.
After the weekend, Mom and Nick took off in their little, fuel-efficient rental car to Avignon, where the spent the week touring around Provence while I was in school. On Friday, I took a quick, easy train ride to Avignon to meet them. The first afternoon we walked around Avignon and went a little ways out of the city to see a giant, beautiful garden that used to be the regular strolling ground of bishops. We had a nice picnic and walked around. Everything was just starting to be in bloom, so the country-side around us was a bright, light-green and a lot of the flowers were just starting to come out.
After the garden tour we had a nice dinner in the centre of Avignon.
On Saturday, we drove to Aix-en-Provence, another sweet, Southern French city. We walked around and enjoyed the warm weather, did some shopping and stopped into a small art museum. It was fun to see another city that I've heard about for awhile, but never visited. There was not a whole lot to do, but it was a nice few hours spent there.
Sunday we took another day trip to l'Ardèche. This is a region of France where there is a huge gorge/canyon. There is a long road that winds and twists along the top of the gorge, with lookout stops every few miles to see the view of the river and the valley below. There were some pretty incredible views.
We also made a stop to visit one of the 700 caves that have been discovered behind the cliffs of the Ardèche. It was really cool to see real stalactites and stalagmites and go really deep into the ground. It's pretty astounding what nature can do over hundreds of thousands of years.
Near the end of the gorge, we happened to drive by a natural stone archway, which apparently is shown in the move Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I haven't seen it, but Mom and Nick have, and they recognized it right away, so we had to stop to take some pictures and soak up some sun.
On Monday, en route back to Montpellier, we stopped at Pont du Gard, a really old, huge Roman bridge. We walked along with a whole lot of tourists, American, French, Spanish. The parts of Southern France I've been in are not too touristy, so it was kind of a surprise to see so many foreigners.
We ended up getting to have two goodbye dinners in Montpellier, because Mom and Nick got stuck here an extra night, due to strikes at the airport. Not so great for them, but it was nice to spend one more evening with them before they took off.
Wonderful to show off where I've been living to them and to travel to some other really great parts of France that are so close by but that I haven't had a chance to see.
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