Trip to the Provence pt 2

Dear Blog..
The second part of our trip to the Provence..

First of all, I forgot to mention in the last post, that we went swimming in the ocean too! On the day we went to 'Aigues Mortes', we drived further to 'Set', a small little village next to the Region of the provence.. The parkingspaces were very close to the ocean, so we could almost jump into it!.. The water was soooo cold! (for my standards that is..) but when I got used to it, it was okay.. There were big waves as the weather was changin a bit.. There were more clouds and after an hour we left Set.. But still, Mic swam very far and even very long under the water.. (I was a bit anxious though).. He even managed to bring me back a lovely shell which still had a little creature in it. Unfortunatly it died quite fast... It was really a long time ago I went into 'Ocean water' as it is very salty.. The salt in my mouth was a total surprise, it was almost 10 years ago I even went swimming in an ocean, so yeah.. it was quite surprising.. Thankfully there werent any jellyfish, I hate them jellyfish! Yikes..

Then.. when we finally left 'Noves'.. for Annot (bout 4 hours and more drive normally) we decided to ride to our next destination next to the coastline.... We even drived through 'Marseille', a huge city! And it was a bit too crowded so we fast got out of there.. When we saw we did too much time doing the coastline, we then went through land to Annot.. and somewhere in the afternoon we got there. Annot is situated in Alpes de Haute and is one of the other regions of the provence.. (in the North East somewhere)

The camping was called 'La Ribiere' and is located near Annot, a small little townsvillage.. The camping was a 2** camping. Not having a pool, but next to a small lake ... http://www.la-ribiere.com/
Annot and the region itself is quite rocky and there are a lot of mountains, so much different then Noves.. And the best thing, no Cigals or bugs whatsoever!
Just calm and quiet little place.. The owner was very kind and helpfull and we got our spot (unfortunatly in full sunlight with not (mucht) shade, but no biggie, as we werent staying for days on the camping and just riding around during the day.
The best thing about this camping was:
- hot showers!!!!!
- very good rules on the sanitary and the toilets and showers etc..!
- the gardens were kept nice very good..
- good pizzas.
- refreshing little river next to camping, we could even swim in it! But it was sooo cold!

We had to pay 30 euro's via Paypal (60 in my case.. ) and had to pay about 40 or a bit more for the rest of our stay. It was about 16,50 euros per night, for 2 persons/1tent and 1 car.
We had some lovely weather.. Ahh.. it was soo good! :)
Actually we didn't do to much in that region, cos we already done soo much. But still we did a few things, what i'm going to sum up.

• Digne les bains: Huge markets with lots of stuff! Nice souvenireshops..
• Les Penitens de Mées: Actually this is a Rockformation that's 2km long. I'ts some kind of pointy rocks next to eachother. Lovely to see, that's it.
• Sisteron: woow! Lovely city, there are a couple of cities located on top of mountains here, bus Sisteron is the niciets one. This is a very romantic place :D
• Lake Castillon: We passed a lovely lake a couple of times before we went closer to the 'beach', looks like this was some gorgeous blue water we could even swim in! And offcourse we did! We went there a couple of times, to work on our tans too :P (and no kidding, I burned myself quite badly from the first time there!) We rented a pedalo and went around the island floating there :D It was soo good! I sure wanna go back there! It was crowded every time went there. http://www.provenceweb.fr/e/groupes/verdon/lac4.htmLook at that blue water! :D
• Castelane: a very crowded city! The first time we went there, there was no space whatsoever! The second time, we had more luck. I bought a very lovely souvenir for me, my mother and brother! It was in this shop where they selled poterie, made of this kind of clay only find in that region! I was really into it, as I thought it was really beautiful, even Mic buyed a vinegar bottle (I think it was) http://www.castellaneverdon.com/index.html. Castelane was actually the beginning point of the 'Gorges Du Verdon', a route into the mountains of Verdon (about 113 kms long) and with great sights! We stopped a couple of times to get the niciest picture!
  The beginning of the Verdon (the river that crosses the Gorges)
• Gorges Du Verdon: Wikipedia says it's the biggest canyon of Europe, and the second biggest of the world! (right after the 'Grand Canyon' from the USA).. we did the tour with our car, and thats really the best way too do it. It's long, starts in castelane and takes you to 'Moustiers ST Marie'. The mountains, the lake that goes acrosse it. It's really magnificent! The curves around the mountains are sometimes a bit dangerous, so watch out. If you want, you can even do some bungeejumping! Really! On our way, we found a large crowd on one of the bridges and they were bungeejumping.. brrr..! frightening! I could never do that!
High in the mountains!

• Moustiers Sainte Marie: Yeah.. that was the farest point of the Gorges, it was a really lovely city, with lots of history and is famously known for it's star that's hanging between 2 rocks (something to do with crusaders who had put it there sometime ago..) ahwell, it was just lovely! We also saw a lot of 'faience' pottery, famous for this region (but really expensive).. I would really recommend this route, it was gorgeous and took almost a day to do it.
• Antibes: yeaaaah!!!!!! Marineland is located in Antibes!! We got there very early (got to wake up at 6 in the morning) and drove about 2 hours to the coast, to Antibes. Yeah! We did the VIP tour in Marineland, a tour 'after the curtains'. We were in a group of 10 and there even was another Belgian couple with us! We saw a lot of things, we heared a lot of things and got to ask questions at the zookeeper... We then got the chance to do some tricks with the sealions (even in the water) and I got to touch a dolphin!!!! :D whaa :) that was really awesome!!! http://www.marineland.fr/. We got our breakfast (and stupid me forgot my rings on the dolphin site, so.. this always happens to me! We met with a lovely Dutch girl, who was training to be an orcatrainer as well!! (I was sooo envious!) and got the chance to be soooo close the the bassin of the killerwhales (even during the show) My camera was on the whole time! I even got a wee bit emotional, as this was my dream to see a killerwhale for real.. really had to fight against my tears :).. I then saw all the shows the rest of the day and did a lot of shopping (so many killerwhale things!) and walked around.. it was really crowded.. Marineland is actually one of the 4 themeparks around Antibes, and almost lying next to each other.. We stayed at Marineland till 11oclock, grabed something at the Quick and it took about an hour to get back to our camping.. aaah... what a day! I recommend the VIP tour to everyone!! Except, it's very expensive.. it's about 169 euro's (but totally worth it!) and it's only for people about 12 was it? (or at least for persons over 1meter and a bit..) I really loved the killerwhales, they are soo gorgeous.. I just love them.. After the second show Mic came to a conclusion the killerwhales only had about 5 bassins (aquarium) for them to live in and thought that was quite sad.. I thought that too eventually.. ah well, luckely there aren't any more killerwhales catched to stick in seaworlds or marinelands.. Except the Dutch trainer mentioned about the killerwhale found in the Netherlands: she thinks it will be trained eventually, cos it was starving at the time they found him, the fed her and nurished her and she probably will come to Marineland.. I recommend Marineland, as it is the one and only parc/zoo that has 4 killerwhales. And I got on picture with them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D whiee.. now next is going to Vancouver Island to see them in real nature :)

The next days (only 3 days left) we really didn't do nothing much. Going around, went to the city, went to the restaurant and gone to the local market en a couple of times to Lac Castillon.. This was really a very good destination and I loved it too bits! On our route back we had some trafficjams as there were a lot of accidents. When we got home, we had to get used to our normal lives again.. ooh!! too bad.. I want to go back. :)

This was my review of our holiday at the Provence... hope you liked it! :) My picture can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/sara.korbi#!/album.php?aid=2073334&id=1145875319 and

http://www.facebook.com/sara.korbi#!/album.php?aid=2073339&id=1145875319

xxSara