Parlez vous Francais..

As I mentioned, we found Munich super family friendly.  We settled into our cheap deal hostel for a week and spent some days doing school work and some out and about.  We learned about Hitler and his rise to power; some stories about the resistance of the Munich locals as well as the atrocoties committed at the thousands of concentration camps set up around Europe, when we took a day trip to Dachau. 

Michael finally had his dream of seeing a “real” castle fulfilled when we went to Neuschwanstein; and we sang along to the soundtrack on a day trip to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour.

Caitlin celebrated her entry into the teens by spending the night before her birthday in a tent with 100 other backpackers.  Really it was a giant marquee with a wooden floor and you got your own sleeping mat and blankets.  This came about because our hostel had one night without availability so we had to move out for a night and then come back the next day.

Caitlin designated the activities for the day, which included going to the movies to see Toy Story 3 in 3D; ice creams at McDonald’s and a trip to Pizza Hut for dinner.

Bienvenue a France

Finally we had to move on and we decided to go west through the Black Forest to France – first stop Strasbourg.  This is such a beautiful place, with a river running through the middle of ancient old timber frame houses – a mixture of French and German.  That is one of the things that has always amazed us on this trip – the invisible line between countries; even more invisible in Europe because of freedom of movement.  One minute everyone’s speaking German, the next we’re clicking over to French.  Time to see if any of our French study will pay off.

There are no “sights” as such to see as we wandered south through Dijon, Lyon, Avignon and finally Marseille.  We simply moved along looking as we went.

 Marseille is a massive port in the south of France.  It has a very high populations of Arabic and African immigrants so it has a very different flavour.  Reminded us a lot of Naples. 

By the time we had arrived here, we had been moving every day or every second day and were a bit bored so decided to stop for a while after getting a great deal on a couple of Citadines apartments.  Citadines has always been out of our reach, mainly because they will not allow 6 people in their family apartments.  We had completely run out of options so we decided to risk “hiding” 2 of the kids.  It really was hilarious when you think about some of the other places we have stayed around the world and the tiny rooms all 6 of us have crammed into.  At Citadines, we took 2 apartments that were strictly for 2 people each, with an interconnecting door.  We doubled up on everything we would need – 2 kitchens, 2 double beds, 2 sofas, 2 tables etc etc.  It was absolute luxury!  We just had to make sure that we didn’t get caught having 4 children when we were supposed to only have 2.  We never left or arrived together and always made sure we were never seen together.  Very secret spy!

Spending a few days here allowed us to rethink our itinerary again – the beauty and the pain of flexibility – and we decided to do spice things up a little and side track to Morocco and then head north through Spain.  Time to start ”travelling” again and not just drift!