It's the journey

I've been needing a vacation and Seb has to take some time off of work. It's kind of a forced vacation thing his company is trying on for size so they don't have to fire masses of loyal employees.

Rather than spend four days arguing over tiles in the house or the leak in the toilet that keeps coming back, we decided to hit the road. I love roadtrips. I hate those dvd players glued to the backseats of cars. Agh they make me crazy. Kids are supposed to ask "are we there yet?" a hundred times. It's a rite of passage. Yes roadtrips are where family memories are created.

To save money we waited until Seb had to take one of his trips to Toulouse. He had the choice of flying or driving but sweet, crazy husband chose driving seven hours with two kids and a wife this time rather than relaxing on an airplane 45 minutes. He's brave and he's wonderful. We based ourself in Toulouse for three days using Holiday Inn points (thanks to all that time in the hotel last year!) and then we used days off to drive around the Haute Garonne region. It's a beautiful region and I couldn't stop taking photos. I took well over 500 photos and then mooned over them the entire trip reviewing and reviewing in the car "ahhh, ahhhh, ahhhh" until Seb made me put the camera away becaue he was so tired of hearing the click of the shutter and the oohing and ahhing.

I hope everyone gets to visit this part of France one day. You don't know France until you travel. It's so amazingly diverse that you can't just say "I like French people!" or "I don't like France." or make such sweeping generalisations because you can't imagine how different each corner of the hexagon can be from the other.

These are some of the photos in montage format because I couldn't possibly pick one or two photos. Click on the images to make them bigger.

We started out in Toulouse. Brick walls and light blue wrought iron. I loved the city! It was especially beautiful at night when I would run out to get our dinner while Seb babysat the kids.

We spent the second day in the medevial city of Carcassonne. I've always wanted to visit this city. It's like stepping back in time. We got to go in the winter when it isn't so busy and we really had the place pretty much to ourselves which is what you want in a place like this (so you don't feel like you're at Disneyworld).

After Carcasonne we decided to take a tour around the area and stumbled upon some nice trails. We took a walk which lead us to a windmill (apparently they get LOTS of wind in this region--windmills are everywhere). The forest was wonderful with pines and rocky terrain like a true mediterranean forest. At the top we had a great view and Little S loved seeing the windmill which reminded him of The Island of Sodor from his Thomas the Train books. We also went driving in the mountains nearby and saw snow which was funny because I didn't really think of this as a ski region but it is.

Finally we ended our third day at Rocamadour which is another famous medieval city that's apparently just as famous as Carcassonne (ask a French person--it's what Seb said but I'd never heard of it). It's main attraction is its history as a famous religious pilgrimage site. I think I liked Rocamadour even more than Carcassonne because it was smaller and more intimate and that's more my style. It wasn't quite as glossy as Carcassonne either and I liked that parts of it were crumbled and looked abandoned. That view approaching the city is just amazing, whew! It's well worth visiting a full day if you're in to medieval cities and churches.

We vowed to do more travelling as a family and more road trips. Most of our fun was in the crazy drive there and back.