Dordogne, France

We made the decision to head southwest to the Dordogne. It is a stunning river valley filled with lush green valleys, castles and villages perched upon steep craggy cliffs. We have spent our first few days here on the east side walking, picnicking and playing in the river. We even got lucky enough to enjoy a little village party where every street corner had a different band playing music. It varied from something like a school marching band to a jazz band. After a few days, we headed on towards the west and the more spectacular side of the Dordogne. We went canoeing in the Dordogne River which was a great way to take in the views. We stopped along the way and the boys played in the river and skipped rocks. We even had the very special privilege of coming upon a swan’s nest filled with their young. It was as big as a king size bed.... amazingly huge, and filled comfortably with 6 or 7 young and their parents!





We have been very lucky with where we are staying and are able to relax a bit while we are here. We have a beautiful view from our room (the boys actually have their own room!) and we have enjoyed ‘dinner’ on our terrace in the evenings. The boys have spent a lot of time splashing around in the pool and we’ve had a nightly family ping pong competition. When we are able to drag the boys away from all the fun here, we have enjoyed walking around the gorgeous villages and sampling the local cusine. This area’s speciality is duck and foie gras (which I’m starting to think is the speciality everywhere in France!). Bart is loving it, as these are some of his favorite foods!

Route du Vins Alsace, France

We made our way to France driving from Holland via Belgium and then through Luxembourg. We’ve spent our first few days in France enjoying the Alsace region. Located close enough to Germany that it takes on a combination of the two cultures, sometimes it’s hard to remember where we are. Here, the menu’s have foie gras and sauerkraut side by side, and, seemingly, equally loved. The region is the stuff of fairy tales. Every village seems even brighter and lovelier than the next. Half timbered houses on cobblestone streets are draped in flowers and nestled in the base of green valleys. From the villages, grape vines cover the hillsides up to where ancient castles top the peaks. It’s a beautiful place to walk and take in the scenery. We’ve spent many hours walking through villages, vineyards, and hiking steep rocky crags to get to medieval castle ruins. The boys love exploring the old castle ruins and would spent hours climbing, jumping and playing, if we let them.








There are more than 400 pairs of storks living in Alsace today. That is a huge number, considering that, because of environmental changes, in the 1980’s there were only 2 pairs left. Alsace has set up breeding and research centers, which account for the increase in their population here. They spend their summers in Europe and winter in Africa living beside the elephants and lions. Storks are not only known for bringing babies, they are also believed to bring luck. It is a much beloved bird here and we spotted many nests on the tops of church steeples and rooftops. We were very excited when we spotted this family on top of the church steeple. We’ve read the book The Wheel On The School by Meindert De Jong which is a cute story about village school children in Holland trying to get storks to come back to their village to nest. That’s probably what made it so exciting for us!






There are paths for walking everywhere, which makes it easy... they just aren’t very well marked, which makes it interesting. On one our our walks through the vineyards, we found a pear tree with the most beautiful and sweet pears hanging high in it’s branches. The boys decided to conquer the challenge of picking pears for our snack. The challenge... wading through rotten pears, that had fallen on the ground and were now covered in yellow jackets. We’ll they succeeded and climbed the tree and managed to get a few pears for us to enjoy.