the illustrated entry

So I uploaded a whackload of photos this weekend going way back to France...here are some highlights.

The town at the base of Mont St Michel:



Macarons d'Amiens...we bought a bag of these in Amiens and slowly worked our way through them. They don´t look like much but they're so delicious you think you could eat 10, but they're so rich two a day is actually the limit.


A canister of Anti-Gas ointment from a WWI museum:


These stones were very sad, part of a memorial to the unknown dead of WWI. We visited another small military cemetery nearby which had stones that ran the gamut...sometimes it would list the full name and regiment and date of death, others had only regiment and date of death, others had country only, some had date of death only and no country even. This would all have been based on the information that could be recovered from the body at the time.


This is what the land looks like at Vimy Ridge...most of it is planted with trees and has signs cautioning people to keep off the land because of the possibility of unexploded land mines.


That little sign stuck in the ground marks the spot where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.


A lot of the buildings in Rouen´s old city look like this.


More from Carnival in Tolosa, Spain - I love the look on this girl´s face.


Nuns at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.


Sunset in Barcelona:


Crazy-looking seahorse at the Barcelona Aquarium:


Aww, look at them. So compatible:



Gaudi´s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona:



Alicante - we tried to climb this and got about halfway up to discover that all the gates were locked and we couldn´t go any further. Mom and Dad later took the lift up to the top:


The Alhambra in Granada:




Las Fallas is a festival that happens every March in Valencia. I belive that people make giant papier mache figures and then at the end of it all but one are burned (the one that´s saved is voted on by the people). It´s a huge huge party. I wanted to go but it´s impossible to find accommodations on short notice so I didn´t end up going until Monday, the day after it ended. At the hostel we met people who had come in a few days earlier and either slept on the beach or didn´t sleep at all so maybe that could have been an option.
Anyway, this seems to be the one that survived this year. It was out in a square on Monday (and for at least the next couple of days...I don´t know long it stays out) - the square was thronged with tonnes of poeple taking photos. They were mostly elderly, I don´t know why...maybe all the younger people were still recovering from the night before?