from France with love – activities #2

posted in: Event, Featured, Uncategorized | 18

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Welcome to the next part of  from France with love, this part features the activities we did during the vacation. I actually only wanted to make one post of it, but now it will be three parts of my vacation, I hope you don’t mind. Afterwards we will be back to figure business.

The unofficial first activity was to find the next big supermarket, we had a Super U for the daily needs in town but when searching for more we had to go to Hyper U which was 40 km away, but they had nearly everything from booze to bread. I bought my first maccarons there *lol*

As first activity we visited Nice, finding a parking lot for the Van in the narrow and cramped streets turned out to be impossible on this certain day. While such narrow streets have a certain charm in combination with the architecture it’s kind of bad when you go there by car. Anyway the white beach with the blue water is a lovely sight and I would have loved to take pictures.

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Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of about 1 million on an area of 721 km2. Located on the south east coast of France on the Mediterranean Sea, Nice is the second-largest French city on the Mediterranean coast after Marseille. The Nice area has a natural beauty and mild Mediterranean climate which came to the attention of the English upper classes in the second half of the 18th century, when an increasing number of aristocratic families took to spending their winter there. The city’s main seaside promenade, the Promenade des Anglais (‘the Walkway of the English’)owes its name to the earliest visitors to the resort.

palms! palms!

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Umi Ga!

After the stressful hunt for a parking lot in Nice, we decided to drive to Cannes, another famous city near the ocean, in this region the weather already turned bad that day. The trip to the coast turned out not that satisfacory in my case, but it is definetely worth a visit when it’s not super crowded at noon. I would suggest to go there by bus or bike in case you are nearby.

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at the bay

ships

 

The next activity was the visit of La village des Tourtoises in Gonfaron is an animal park and rescue center in one, only dedicated to turtles. It takes care of injured and sick turtles, but they also breed the animals. Dad proved that you can turn a 60 km ride into a two and a half hour tour when missing the right road. It was burning hot this day and our mood wasn’t the best.

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The park offers informations about turtles and what can be done to preserve them. Turtles are an worldwide endangered species who suffer from shrinking habitats in the nature, car accidents while crossing streets and animals like rats or stray dogs.

The whole park is about 3000 hectares wide and offers space and care for around 1500 animals.

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Thanks to the Provencal climate, the turtles can be kept outside in wide compounds which are close to the natural habitats for breeds around the world. I liked the places of the swamp turtles the most. It’s good to see that these turtles are in good care and in a appropriate environments. In contrast the roads for the visitors with the shaky wood planked stages had an adventurous flair. The visitors can also take a look at the hatchery, nursery and the turtle clinic. There also was an interesting sideattraction about the prehistoric evolution of reptiles.

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The park is not the most modern one, but if you like the nature and love turtles like me it is definetely worth a visit. Dogs are allowed “Le Chiens admis en leisse” that was actually the only new sentence I’ve learned during this vacation haha.

As last official activity we did was visiting Les Gorges du Verdon, the Verdon Canyon is a unique site in Europe crossed by the river Verdon, you may find on this site the best advice in order to visit the Verdon country in advance. Located in the midst of the region of Provence, Alps. Crossing over the departments of Var and the Alps of Upper-Provence.

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There you can drive along  the canyon on a dangrously narrow winding road, it’s a bit scary since the canyon is 700 m deep, but you are rewarded with a fantastic sight.

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We also visited the lake nearby called “Lec de Sainte Croix” the blue water was just beautiful, pedal boats can be rented at the shore.

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This is our dog Paula, as russian breed she is not a real fan of heat, but she dislikes to stay at home even more.  In La village des Tourtoises she hurt her leg a little, but had no serious injury, despite her compact size it’s a tough dog. Paula also swam in the pool 😀

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This kind of nostalgic architecture could be seen all around the area, I don’t know how it is in the inside, but from outside it’s mediterran style is quite charming.

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There was a cute little dishes shop nearby. These price chalk boards looked so adorable I just had to capture these with my camera. The shop owner spoke no word english and we spoke no useful word french, still we got a very kind and friendly service

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Red poppy fields was a common sight at the sides of the road, what are they doing with it?

In summary that was a great vacation, we had 12 days of nice weather with around 27 °C and the luxury rented house was a nice place to stay, swimming in the pool, sunbathing or watching anime at night, it was awesome and very relaxing. The daily trips were a bit exhausting with the curvy roads which could also be used as Rallye Stages, but I loved the really nice scenery which was full of intact looking nature next to the roads and the always present mediteran flair.

I often heard that French people were arrogant in terms of their language. Of course ot everyone understands or speak english, but the French people of the countryside are very nice people and understanding. You won’t starve with very bad french skills, but knowing a few phrases would be an advantage to be honest.

it was sad as I realised that the vacation is over  (☍﹏⁰)

I would encourage everybody who wishes to discover the south of France, to do so, it’s lovely.

In the #3 post I will show you what kinds of figure photography I’ve done. stay tuned!.

18 Responses

  1. Nopy

    I plan to visit the Mediterranean at least once in my life and when I do southern France will be on my list of destinations. Your pictures look gorgeous, especially all of the ones by the water. I’d never heard of a turtle park before, but it sounds and looks interesting.

    • wieselhead

      Cool, you shoiuld not forget about that plan, the southern regions have a lot of appeal.
      Thank you, I think it’s important to capture such moments, when it is possible.
      It’s completely dedicated to turtles, a good place for turtle fans, but touching is forbidden.

  2. Pinkcheeks

    I love this post because of the turtles! 😀 So cute! I love turtles.

    JK. 🙂 Great landscape shots! Especially the lagoon and the view on top of the road. I envy you for visiting France (which is second to my list of places-to-visit-before-I-die) and it seems like you and Haruka did have fun! It’s quite refreshing to see the countryside and the red poppy fields are gorgeous!

    Thanks for sharing your awesome adventure with us! 🙂

    • wieselhead

      Yeah turtles are kawaii, once I had one at home.
      It super worth a visit, you should love it, don’t die *lol*
      Good that have brought Haruka along, she’s a great poseable figure

      Thank you ^_^
      Im glad to receive so much positive feedback for a kind of unusual post on this blog.

    • Pinkcheeks

      Haha I feel the same too when I got the urge to post something on the blog that way off the theme, like I wanna post something about girly stuff (think about makeup) but then it’s kinda like an odd one out of the toy photography blog I’ve just started building. XD

      ..but on your case, hey, of course who doesn’t love traveling with figure photography on the side…and made you YOU of course! Good job my friend! 😉

      • wieselhead

        It sure is a little odd to do it, but it is liking giving a little more info about yourself, but I would never write abou political stuff for example.
        Well make up isn’t really my topic, but Im sure a few of your readers would like it, maybe you should run a second blog hehe.
        Thank you very much, it was a lot of fun.

  3. hoshiko

    The lake is gorgeous, very blue, very clear. Yeaps, I like those building design as well. There’s this old historical essence to it. And your dog is soooooooooooo adorable!!!!

    • wieselhead

      It looks really Im wondering if there were many fishes, when the water is so clean, I should have brought a fishing rod XD
      It’s lovely isn’t, the outer painting is so nice. Aw you think thank you, it’s a funny dog I love the dog.

  4. feal87

    What a nice place to stay! To think that it’s not that far away from me considering that I’m in Italy…:D

    *looks forward to the figure photos*

    • wieselhead

      Yeah thats correct, it was really wonderful there.
      I bet you have nice places in italy as well, actually I would like to see italy next.
      Im working on it, right at the moment ^^

  5. asdfghjkl

    France looks really nice….kind of interesting how you take photo’s of the natural scenery rather than the city and architecture.also it is kind of interesting that you take photo of spider and turtle…

    • wieselhead

      Well, you have a point. The place where I stayed was in the middle of nowhere countryside, to there wasn’t really an interesting city to take pictures of, Marseille maybe, but my dad didn’t want to go there, he said it is full of criminals XD. I had liked to go there 🙁 On the other hand Im more interested in nature than cities.
      Haha seems like it appears weird that way, but I had my fun for sure.

  6. kixkillradio

    That’s a really nice place to visit. I love those nature landscape shots and the turtles! <3
    I enjoyed reading all of your vacation post, thanks for sharing! ^_^

  7. Fabrice

    Oh my god! you passed through Barjols which is one of the places my dads family is from and also near Cotignac and Carces! lol Man this is so weird!

    You should have stopped at Barjols or did you? Its really a beautiful place and one of the essence of provence
    example pic http://www.flickr.com/photos/complicitytheory/7073805013/

    Also I use to go to Gorges du Verdon during my summer visits when I was younger, its so beautiful, I should really try and go back one day.

    Nice pics!

    • wieselhead

      Oh thats interesting haha. no we missed this as we drove trough with another goal on shedule.
      It looks nice, but I only saw it from the streets, maybe next time.
      Oh it’s funny that it feels so close, I didn’t knew you were there that often, how did u survive the many roads? lol.
      thank you 🙂

  8. Miette-chan

    Oh this sounds pretty neat, I thought you were only spending some time in one place. I suppose if you travel to another country you do have to make the most out of the opportunity. May be I should travel a bit now that I have the time, shouldn’t be too much of a wallet breaker if I keep within Texas. See what you did? Now you got me in a travelling mood.

    • wieselhead

      We more or less stayed in one place, only a few one day activities in an 200km radis in the area, there wasn’t much to explore in the little town we had our house.
      Yeah that is a good idea, haha Im to blame XD Traveling is fun, don’t forget Nanoha Dollfie

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