We are leaving Nice and heading on to Italy to the Cinque Terre. We won't have Internet until we get to Florence in three days, so don't worry about us not posting the next few days. Au revoir, France, and bienveneto, Italy.

The Hotel Le Corbusier is everything we hoped it would be. Spacious room furnished in mid-century style with a gorgeous view of the Mediterranean Sea. We slept so comfortably here. We stopped in Nimes yesterday and ate our picnic lunch by the Roman arena ruins. Made me anxious for the real Colosseum, less than a week away. The ruins were closed that day because they were preparing the fireworks for the town's Bastille Day celebration today. Of course, if yo...

Yesterday I let Chad sleep in while I ventured out in Barcelona to take care of our laundry. The woman at the launderette offered full service at a good price, so I left our clothes and brought Starbucks back to the room. Chad had been saying the past couple days how he missed American coffee and we've both been way less caffeinated than usual. At noon we checked out of our hotel around noon (did I mention in a prior blog how beautiful and spacious and perfect...

I'm going to try and put into words how amazingly awesome last night was, but know that words just can't do it justice. The jubilation of the crowd (we estimate maybe 100,000 where we were on the Placa Espanya in Montjuic Parc, but hard to tell) when Spain scored that late goal was incredible. The celebration following, with flares and singing ("Yo soy Espanol, Espanol, Espanol") and dancing and screaming, was indescribable. After the match we took th...

Hola from Barcelona! The first week of our vacation has been such a whirlwind I haven't had time to blog or upload photos. But we are taking a slower pace in Barcelona. I love Barcelona. It is a beautiful city, very spacious feeling, and the people are really nice and laid back. We drove all day yesterday, from Mende, France, to here. It was a gorgeous drive through the French countryside. We circled a couple towns on the map we drove through that we'd li...