some pictures

First, my parents and I spent a few days in London with my grandma "Nonna" and my cousin Rachel, of whom I have absolutely no pictures, although she was quite prominent in the trip (I do have pictures of nonna). Then, my mom and I frantically tried to plan our vacation, seeing as mass floods of historic proportions had rendered our planned destination of the Yorkshire Dales somewhat less viable. Our Day of Hardcore Planning included trips to about 3 travel agents and a stressful few hours in a downtown bookstore leafing through travel books trying to determine where we could go that would be fun, interesting and didn't require the use of a rental care (because my mom didn't want the hassle of driving in a foreign country, although she's probably the best driver I know...) Spontenaity is not my dad's best point, and he thought we should go walking somewhere in southern England and be done with it. This point was highlighted when he called British Airways and determined that flying to Marseilles (southern France's biggest city) the next day would be *insert ridiculously expensive fare here*. But we were not deterred, and went next to another travel agent, who advised us to go to a budget airline's website (Ryanair), where we booked two round trip tickets leaving 2 days later to Marseilles for about $200. Success! We also booked 2 nights in a hotel in Aix-en-Provence, a city that looked "very pretty" we thought. And the remaining 5 nights would have to be booked on the way. And my mom agreed to rent a car.



The above was our first night in Aix-en-Provence, in an outdoor cafe at maybe 9.30 PM , when people were just starting to have dinner. We were out late after a nightmare parking experience. Absolutely insane. I think of parking in Aix to this day and I get chills.

This next picture is me next to Aix's main fountain, but Aix had a huge amount of fountains in its beautiful little squares.



The rest will come in the next post.