Summervacation 2007

Last year we couldn´t take any time off, because of exam/new work, so this year we wanted some real vacation and went down to Southern France for 2 weeks!! On our way down to the south we stopped for one night in the dordogne. That´s a very pretty area known for it´s foie gras. We went to Sarlat, a medieval town and had a wonderful dinner.

The next day we passed Rocamadour, a christian place of
pilgrimage before we went to Albi. Albi is known for it´s hughe brick cathedral.

The next day we went to Toulouse for 2 days. I really liked Toulouse, it´s full of young people, has nice tapas bars, nice stores hundreds of little tiny streets and we saw the new Airbus 360.
Holger was totally excited about that, I have to admit, the plane is really big and seeing it flying around, you would think it´ll fall down because of it´s size. It looks really heavy, too. Well it didn´t fall down and we hope it will never do.

After our great days in Toulouse, we drove to the Pyrenees. We spent the first night near Font Romeu, a ski resort, to get used to the altitude. I always have problems with sleeping in the mountains, the air is so much thinner. Also not good: drinking in the mountains. After only one beer I was pretty drunk. That made the pizza we got beeing pretty good. But we also started hiking. Right after we found the little place we stayed in, we got our hiking boots out of the car and started walking around. First we just walked along the street. That seemed boring, so we wanted to walk over a meadow. Unfortunately there we electric fences around it. But we found a place to get over it. Not thinking this through, we crossed the meadow, but couldn´t find a way out - electric fences. So we had to cross a little creek - easy for us not knowing that right behind the creek, the whole ground was wet. So our feet stuck in the watery ground for minutes before we could find a way out of there. With wet feet and dirty clothes we finally managed to find a spot where there was only a regular fence to cross. The next day the

adventure began - not yet. Right when we were ready to go, Holger grabbed in his pocket and found the keys from the hotel room. So we had to drive back to the hotel first. An hour later we finally started. First it went high up a skiing slope and then up and down to our refuge on lake boullioses. It took us 5 hours to get there. I´ve never been in a refuge in the moutains before. The room was very simple but the food was awesome. We got a 3 course dinner every night. You have to go to bed really early, like 9:30 pm and have to get up very early, because you can hear everything! So around 6:00 am the night was over. We had high embitions for the second day - pic carlit 2.989 m. In the beginning we had to pass lots of lakes, they were so beautiful. Unfortunately it was really windy and cold, we did´t have the right clothes for that kind of weather. So we had to turn around. But it was a great experience.After the mountains we drove to the sea for one week, rented a house and had a great time at the beach.
It was warm and sunny - perfect weather. The most interesting place at the côte de vermeille was the little town Colliour with it´s medieval castle and lots of fine restaurants.

On one of the last days we went to Carcassonne, that´s a big medieval town wich is completely intact. Of course lots of tourists. But if you are ever in France, you have to go to Carcasonne.