Where in the World is Fiona? France!

In July, Fiona spent 10 days in France. Our first stop was Nice, a beautiful city on the French Riviera. We got to stay in a really fancy hotel with a pool and a view of the Mediterranean Sea. Fiona did a video tour of our hotel room for her friends:

After that, we went to Caunes-Minervois in southern France for a week and stayed in the same place as our friends from England. Here’s what Fi had to say about that stop:

We’re staying with my mom and dad’s friends, Grant and Ellen and Violet. And so Violet is a little girl, she’s about three, and we’re playing with her, we’re in a little cottage and… there’s not very much of it and… there’s a lot of mosquitoes!

During our week in Caunes-Minervois, we took a lot of day trips. Here’s some of the cool stuff we did:

On Monday we went to Minerve, a medieval French village with an old castle, a huge cave and a beautiful little town where we treated ourselves to pizza and ice cream after our explorations.

On Tuesday we went to Carcassonne, famous for its medieval citadel. The castle is HUGE and we had a lot of fun walking through it. Fiona says:

I liked it, it was lovely and I got something from it! I got a tiny souvenir. It’s a crown.

On Wednesday we went to visit Gouffre Géant de Cabrespine, an incredible limestone cave. Our tour was in French, so Fiona had to learn about the cave from an English audio guide. Here’s what she found out:

Alright, so there were stalactites and stalagmites. Stalagmites are things that grow from the ground and stalactites grow from the ceiling. And the water helps them to evaporate—helps them to drop the stone onto the ground so it formulates a big, weird-shaped tower. Bats [also live in the cave]. We didn’t see any, but I got to see [pictures of] bats and they were so cute!

Thursday was Bastille Day, which is a little like America’s 4th of July. Most places were closed for the holiday, so we spent a lazy day hanging out in the pool.

On Friday we went to a wine cave called Terra-Vinea in the town of Portel des Corbières. There was a little train to ride to the cave, a light show, a tour about the history of wine making and a wine tasting at the end. The whole experience was kind of weird and a little long, but still pretty fun.