this is the images in the quarry

The Land of Lavender

Our last group trip of the term! We took a two day trip to Provence this weekend to Arles, Les Baux-de-Provence, Avignon and Chateauneuf-de-pape. All of that crazyness in two days! We boarded the bus early early Saturday morning and headed off to Arles where there is a great Roman amphitheatre. The city was founded in the 4th century (oh, that's old...) It is surrounded by a great wall and includes a very adorable Marche and the place where Van Gogh went insane.
The amphitheatre
hey it's me!
Wandering down the street
Everyone knows this painting by Van Gogh of the Cafe....
This happens to be THE CAFE that he painted!!
Church in the place de la republique
le marche! (aka market)
mmm spices
The yellow building in the background of this very cute little garden is where Van Gogh lived for 15 months and painted over 300 canvases there
.....and it continues.....
We then traveled to Les Baux-de-Provence where we witnessed the Cathedrale d'images. It was fantastic and the only way I can show you is with a video that I will post soon! It is an old quarry where the images of Picasso were shown on the giant rocks. It was soooooo creative
enormous quarry
Then after the Cathedrale d'images, we went up to the medieval section of the town where there is a castle at the top! It was very very windy too

The castle ruins
we had to...
more castle ruins in the beautiful mountains of Provence
looking at the city below where there was a wedding going on!
me again!
My roommate Jennifer and I! She's from Portland also

We watched them launch it too!
beautiful paysages as the french like to say
And then we arrived in Avignon, where we were to stay the night. Our hotel housed all of us (how nice of them....) and we were directly across from the Palais des Papes (Pope's Palace)
This is where the Pope stayed because of violence in Rome and then the Papal Schism.
Sarah, Molly (roommate) and Me!
Avignon view from the church

I found a nun!
This was the view from my hotel room!
On sunday we toured the palais

View from the top of the Palais of Avignon!

After our tour of the Palais we had some free time to grab lunch and wander around. We were not very lucky with our weather on Sunday and it rained ALL day - very very hard too! We traveled from Avignon to Chateauneuf-de-Pape where there were tons of vineyards! We tasted some wine and toured the wine museum. Afterwords, we headed on home. It was a very relaxing weekend and great to see another part of France.

2000 Steps - Cinque Terra

I went to Italy last weekend with a friend of mine, Grant. We had a blast climbing, what seemed like tons of stairs! We left early early Friday morning and arrived in Cinque Terra around 10am. When I mean early, I mean our train left at 4:30am!! It was great sleeping on a train and waking up in Italy... We arrived at our hostel and followed a young man up up up up up stairs to our hostel - which is where the view above is from! This is Riomaggiore, the first town.
Cute huh? These are 5 coastal towns located on the Italian Riviera - known for honeymooners and hikers - we joined the masses of American college students and Italian tourists for a three day adventure in this little region of Italy.
After getting to our hostel, we decided to begin the treck. We hiked the Via dell'Amore to Manarola which took us about 20 minutes. It was absolutely beautiful and quite adorable too. Lovers had written their names all over the walls of this walkway - and the cacti too!

These towns are situated in and around cliffs. Above is the bench which is famous along this walk. We reached Manarola and wandered through this little town - in about 10 minutes. But it was still cute!
So incredibly colorful too

Our next hike was from Manarola to Corniglia - about a 1.5h hike. Again, beautiful!
Manarola in the background!
See Mom! It's hard to explain!
So, we got to Corniglia, but as you can see from this sign, we had to climb a few stairs....

yes, that says 382 steps!!
Corniglia

We saved this hike for the next day
After being incredibly exhausted, we took the train back from Corniglia. We noticed the signs to the Marina in Riomaggiore and so we decided to check it out


Riomaggiore
:-D It is actually a national park too and this national park is completely eco-friendly. They use trains and eco-busses to get everywhere and have placed recyclables/trash cans everywhere. It is actually very refreshing to see this. We came back that night incredibly exhausted because we had been awake since 3am, we crashed and got up early to go hike from Vernazza, town #4 to Monterosso al Mare the 5th and furthest away town.
We got off the train to Vernazza and fell in love! This was probably the cutest - in regards to shopping that I had ever seen. It also had this great castle/tower at the top.
With views of Vernazza!
Then we began the trek UP! This is how I managed to get these pictures...climbing MORE staris!
In this picture you can see about how far away each town is from each other
Monterosso - where we were heading! We got pretty high up

The stairs that were going to be the death of me
Finally making it to Monterosso!!
Just stumbled upon this guy...
We was carved into rock!
My fascination with old men continues -

He was painting a mural on the side of a building - incredible
oh the Cats....they were everywhere!! We made some friends
Many many painters - I am excited to bring back some little drawings that I got while I was in Vernazza
There were fishermen everywhere too.
It was so much fun. We joked the entire time that we were on our honeymoon; apparently the place is a big honeymooning place. I didn't really realize how much of a hiking place this was, so I ended up wearing jeans the whole time...so suggestion - bring hiking clothes!!
Parco Nazionale Delle Cinque Terre