Hanging in the Calgary airport after an enjoyable flight from Paris. The flight from Madrid to Paris on Air France went well and the room at the Crown Plaza near the CDG airport was surprisingly nice!

Carmen and William’s wedding, The event this whole trip was planned around, happened yesterday. It was absolutely EPIC! An Uber took us to a shuttle, which took us to a converted, 16th century convent. The ceremony was beautiful and brief, after which there were tapas and drinks, followed by a multi course dinner and drinks, then dancing and drinks and more tapas. We stumbled onto the shuttle at midnight, poured ourselves into another Uber and fell into bed. Best time ever!

We went on a fantastic tour that included 4 tapas restaurants and a flamenco show.

Elliot found us a very cool place to have lunch where we ate great deal of typical Spanish food: ham, cheese, bread, seafood, olives and wine. Except for the wine, everything is heavily salted. Thus the need for more wine!

Hideki found a water park the size of a small city. The climb up to the top of the slides was long and hot but they were incredibly exciting on the way down. Pretty hard to take pics there though!

Why are travel days so tiring? You’d think 30 min sitting on the subway, three hours sitting on a train, and 15 minutes sitting in a taxi would be restful. Maybe what made it tiring was getting a 14 yr old out of bed at 7 am in order to catch the subway, the the one hour wait in the train station, walking around downtown Madrid in 30 degree heat with all our luggage while we waited to check in and being dropped at the wrong address? But it all worked out. We are in our beautiful place in Madrid and it is such a green and beautiful city. We have two days to hang out before the wedding, on Saturday, before flying back to Paris and then home!

Today we rambled down L.A. Ramblas, found the market (why didn’t we go there sooner?!) and ate all kinda of delicious things while a very loud thunderstorm raged outside.

Then the boys and I went swimming again while Lisa got her hair done.

And tomorrow we take our last train trip to Madrid!

The beach was pretty perfect today: imported sand, clear water and scorching sun!

Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia made me wanna be religious again!:)

Long day of travel, but We made it! Pics tomorrow!

We pretty much just roamed around this area today, on foot (where we met the donkeys) and in the car-to Givors (not too interesting) and Vienne (where we saw some cool Roman ruins and a medieval church). The drive back to Dargoire – through the vineyards of the Rhone region-was gorgeous!! we all feel quite sad to be leaving Dargoire and our lovely hosts.

After a midnight walk, a very late night and a long sleep-in, we packed up ham and cheese sandwiches and hiked up to the church at the top of the hill and had a lovely picnic lunch looking out over the towns gardens and farms.

Then we packed up and drove into Lyon to visit an outdoor pool. Here we had to buy new swimsuits which conformed to a 1903 law about swimwear attire. Seriously.

buying swimming suits from the swimming suit vending machine.

Finally, dinner at a university district bar. Great burgers! And hideki did all the ordering!!