I am so excited to share some more Europe photos with you today! In case you missed it, here was part one!
St. Paul de Vence
This was one of our optional excursions that I was super excited about. It was the most amazing little village set up in the mountain that was just so breathtakingly beautiful! It was also really amazing to hear about all of the history behind the village. One of my favorite stories (and really, the only one that I can recall pretty well) is the one that revolves around the cannon. I can’t remember exactly what had happened, but there was some battle that the village won, but the people who had helped fight the battle didn’t get anything to take home with them to show that they won the battle. So, there was this plan to come steal the cannon in the middle of the night, but the Mayor of the village found out about the plan and asked all of the villagers to eat cherries and put all of the stems in the cannon. When the night came for the others to steal the cannon, they fired all of the cherry stems at them, and since they still had some cherries on it, it stained their clothes so they thought they were injured and ran away! Only about 400 people live within the ramparts that were built hundreds of years ago, but all of St. Paul de Vence has about 3500 people. I know I wouldn’t mind living there!
Monaco & Fragonard Perfume Factory
Monaco was a really neat experience! It is definitely a high-end town, and we saw where the grand prix had just been held! We also saw the royal palace so that was pretty neat too 🙂 Afterwards, we stopped at the Fragonard Perfume Factory and had a tour of how they make all of their products – everything is handmade and hand painted! Also, it was cool to find out that the “noser,” the one who makes all of the scents can only work 2-3 hours a day and can’t eat anything spicy or have alcohol because it could mess up their smell. I would not be able to give up spicy food! We got a bunch of sample sticks that are now taped into my travel journal, making it smell very nice 🙂
Paella Experience
This was an optional excursion also, and it was one of my favorites of the trip. We met up with a local chef and went to the market in Barcelona where he bought a bunch of the fresh ingredients we would need to make Paella! He also showed us how to make Sangria, which I found out I quite enjoy! The chef was SO funny and did so well with all of the kids and made us an amazing meal while he showed us how he made it, and I don’t even care for seafood! Definitely worth the extra money to go do – you can’t get an experience like that if you just go to Barcelona.
Flamenco Night
This was also one of my favorite excursions! Those flamenco dancers have such strong legs and are so good! The night was filled with some more sangria, an amazing show that ended with Luca pulling all of the adults that went up on stage to dance! So much fun 🙂 Also, the male flamenco dancer looked just like Aro from Twilight, and I love that he went to each table and “cheers”ed with everyone and personally thanked us all for being there!
Barcelona
Oh Barcelona – such an amazing and beautiful city. I even overcame one of my fears and rode a bicycle through the city for two hours! Our guide was hilarious, so it was rather enjoyable 🙂 The city overall was just amazing and I had so much fun exploring it! We got to see the outside of La Sagrada Familia (talk about having a bunch of history behind it!) and Park Guell which was the amazing failed project that shouldn’t have failed – it was brilliant! On the very last night after dinner, I finally got a chance to run down to the beach to take some photos and collect some sea glass! It was everywhere!!
To see all 560-ish photos of my tour of Europe’s Mediterranean Coast, click here! 🙂
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