Cathar castle

The next day we went to the Cathar castles in the mountains.  Finding these places is difficult on the windy back country roads.  We came across a village where we stopped for lunch.  There was a several hundred year old windmill and bakery which sold really good rustic French bread.


 We wandered around the tiny roads of the ancient village.


 

A few minutes down the road, a castle seems to grow right out of the cliffs.

That's a long way down...this was confirmed by the crazy guy standing on the edge.  We took his word for it.

There was a falconry demonstration which was really interesting and exciting.

There was even a vulture who came down to check out this guy laying down. Did you know vultures have zoom vision that enables them to zoom in on potential prey so determine if the animal is dead or just sleeping? 

A nice cool breeze came through this window.  We decided to enjoy this spot for a while.

From the highest tower the view over the lower castle and the surrounding valley was impressive.

The stairs were really rugged after a thousand years and polished by tourists shoes.  Mom who does not like high places hiked bravely to the top of the eagle's nest.

Our mobile home was surrounded by sand which the kids played in whenever we were back at the camp.   We gave them ice cream before playing and the result was a sticky, dusty mess.

We got comments from French people who recommended we promptly wash the children. As you can see, their suggestions fell on deaf ears.  These boys were painted and ready for battle and had no interest in a bath!

At the end of a high paced week...

After a brief rest, Jonas noticed waves and got his second wind in order to stomp on each crashing wave.

At the end of many of the days we enjoyed a very nice meal of Mediterranean salads (tomatoes, cucumbers, Feta or Italian Motzerella, olives and fresh baguettes to soak up the remaining olive oil and vinegar used as salad dressing) fresh provencal melons and of course Magnum bars (our favorite ice cream bars).  We would visit the farmer's fruit and vegetable stands on the way back to get the main ingredients.  Yummy.

Our home away from home for a week.   We had a great time but were surprised at the end to find that we needed to deep clean the whole place before leaving.  The lady was so shocked when she did the walk through when we were checking out.  My bad...must have been lost in translation where I understood that paying lots of money for a place to sleep exempts you from any cleaning.  Having had experience with cleaning checks at BYU we were able to surface clean the place with napkins in 30 minutes and passed!

We really appreciated Mom and Dad coming out to visit again this year and we had a great time.  It is always so fun to share adventures with them and have them enjoy time with the boys.  With all the driving I got to talk a lot with Mom which was wonderful. Thanks for coming!