Our trip started with a MtA reunion in Paris! Mark Lee (French Professor) was in Paris for a week, Alexandra is teaching English in Paris this year and you know the other two :) Mark kindly brought us copies of the Argosy among other MtA treats.

From Alex's place we headed to this little fondu restaurant. It is tiny, only a few feet wide, and packed. If you want to get to the side of the table closest to the wall you have to climb over the table! But it had lots of atmosphere and we had all the cheese and bread we could eat.

Here is the inside of the fondu restaurant with Mark, Katja and Andrew on the left and Alex, Meg and Friedel on the right.

From Paris we headed to Marseille, on the Cote d'Azur. Marseille has a beautiful harbour and one of the first things we did was take a boat out to one of the islands. This is Marseille as we saw it, heading out to the island.

Another view as we headed out of the harbour, all blue skies.

More harbour....

Here's Andrew on the boat, just as we started to head out.

A wider view of the harbour.

And yet another harbour shot, this one from way up!!

Marseille has two big churches. The first one is this cathedral which is located close to the train station. It also hosted a manger market -- stalls and stalls selling nothing but figurines and manger sets.

Then there is this church -- Notre Dame de la Garde. It was so big we could hardly get it in one picture.....in fact, this is only a piece of it. It is built on top of a very high hill and on several levels, amazing!

This is the main street, leading down to the harbour in Marseille.

The huge staircase, leading up to the train station.

From Marseille we headed to Cap d'Ail -- a little seaside town just outside Monaco. Obviously we couldn't afford to stay in Monaco so we found a little hotel here, near the seaside, and walked to Monaco (only about 20 mins away on foot).

Cap d'Ail is also built on a hill and this is the view from the top.

The locals have found the easy way to fish. They just stick their poles in the rocky beach and sit back to wait for a bite -- some of them have 6 poles going at once!

One of the many gorgeous sunsets we saw on our five day jaunt.

This is a Russian Church in the middle of Nice -- it makes you feel like you've been to Moscow! Inside it's decorated with all kinds of tinwork.

Andrew saw his first curling game of the season on a tv in a shop window in Nice -- we sat there for about 1/2 hour dreaming of ice :)