Alemann Adventures

 Chambord The Chateau de Chambord is the most impressive castle in our region. Built by Francois I, he only spent about 42 days there in his 30 year reign. It's architecture was inspired by Leonardo Di Vinci and inside is a double helix staircase. We haven't been in on this trip but the gardens are free to explore so we have visited a handful of times just for a walk. Fun fact: the castle and grounds were sealed off to the Nazi's in WW2. So as they poached most of France's deer population, 90% of the countries red deer now descend from the Chambord stags. We also managed to find the castle webcam which has taken a photo every 10 minutes for years. If you look on their website at the right time you will see us doing some weird poses. We've have felt so fortunate to live in such a beautifully stunning part of the world, not only the architecture but the forests too. A bonus is that on the drive home there is a chocolatier so it has become part of the trip to stop and ...

 London November 11th (Remembrance Day) is a public holiday in France so we took the opportunity to have a long weekend away. We were all pretty tired from the traveling the week before but our time here has been about making the most of every opportunity so off we went to London for a few days. It was a good time of year to go, the Christmas decorations were up so we got our first taste a Christmas in winter, yet everyone was still going about their normal routines so it wasn't as touristy as it could have been. Day one we visited the Tower of London, Hyde Park and Harrods. Day two was wet so we spent a lot of time in the Natural History and Science Museums, visited and interactive Minecraft experience and caught a West End Show in the evening - Hercules. Day three we explored on foot, feeding squirrels in the park, Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Westminster, Damian Hirst's gallery, South Bank, Leicester Square, Hamley's and Selfridges. We really enjoyed every second of it...

 Valencia We had a couple more days of the school holidays left so went a bit further south to Valencia. It was a 12 hour drive back to Chemery so we only had one day to explore. We made the most of it, seeing the old town, newer Science and Arts district and stopping to see the Gulliver playground and the Holy Grail (as part of an interesting tour of the cathedral.

 Port Aventura Portaventura World Spain - by James Yes, another theme park believe it or not. I will try and summarize it as much as I can but it was just so cool considering it’s a theme park doing its bear minimin while it's for sale. Get ready for our experience at Portaventura. Portaventura has three different parks one of which is a waterpark which wasn’t open the time we were there.  We did a lucky dip on which hotel at the park we were going to stay at. We got El Paso, which is a Mexican theme and had an amazing buffet breakfast. On the first night we were there we decided to use that time to enter Ferrari Land which is the other smaller theme park out of the other two and only opens at night. The main attraction here is the iconic Red Force. A roller coaster which launches from 0 to 180km in just 5 seconds and goes up to a height of 112 meters. ( I sadly lost my phone at the top cause it fell out of my pocket, but somehow one day after that we got it back without a scr...

 Barcelona It's the French school holidays again (they only did 7 weeks and now have another 2 weeks off) so we are on the road to Spain. A different sort of holiday from the summer as we stayed put in the same place near Barcelona for 9 nights (after a couple of nights on the way at a trashy family resort). We stayed in a lovely 3 story apartment as part of a house swap agreement. The complex came with 2 pools but we were the only ones who swam as it was too cold for the Spanish. As well as swimming we had a good rest, went to the beach, played in the nearby park and visited the center of Barcelona a few times. These trips included visiting the MOCO Museum to see some of Banksy's art as well as other artists'. Visiting the Sagrada Familia - the most awe inspiringly impressive church we've ever been too. Walking around the historic areas and seeing the Magic Fountain do it's thing. Unquestionably one of our favourite cities to visit and we're glad we took some t...

 Andorra James now has a new favourite country in Europe! We spent one night in Andorra on our way to Spain. A much bigger country than we expected seeing as it has roughly the same population as Rotorua. The hotel was a typical ski resort looking place, and run by a former Eurovision contestant! With only a day we visited the capital, walked around a bit and saw the famous Dali sculpture. We then hiked up a mountain, because why not! The country is definitely set up mainly for the winter season with cable cars and ski lifts everywhere - just not operating when we were there. Each region also has a giant wooden creature set up a mountain to encourage kids to walk, so we found Andy along the way. Everyone is encouraged to carry a rock up the mountain and 'feed' it to Andy so of course we obliged (there was a hole in his back to add rocks to). Such a beautiful place and very inexpensive to visit, well worth a visit!