Camping in the wild

In order to earn their Primitive Camping Badge for the girl scouts Mia's group had to camp one night with no electricity, and no running water. Luckily they didn't have to camp in the woods but could pitch their tents in a garden that the parents of one scout own in Ziegelausen in the east of Heidelberg.

After setting up the tents the girls planted lots of pollinator friendly bulbs for their Take Action project

Then they started a camp fire without any and made t s'mores

Then a major downpour started and it rained off and on all nigh. Luckily the rain alomost stopped in the morning and the girls had some fresh muffins for breakfast a mother had made in the morning and brought out to Ziegelhausen

Exploring Avignon

The next day we took a walking tour based om a map with Mia as tour guide. There were may nice corners to discover

Old tress

We stopped at a café to write some postcards

Then it was time for a nice crepe for lunch

The second part of the tour took us to some old watermills

Cooling off with some bubble teal

At the end we took a boat across the river to enjoy the view of the city from the other side

 

Mia had an exciting book to read

The next day we too the TGV back to Mannheim from the modern train station

Pres le pont Avignon

In the early morning we took a budget TGV from Lyon to Avignon that took only about an hour for the 230 km trip

After a breakfast at the Avignon train station we checked in at the really nice hotel just outside the city walls and explored the city.
One of the first stops was of course the famous bridge but since they charged a fee to walk on it - half of it was destroyed in a flood many centuries ago -  we just watched it from the river bank.

Close by the the medieval palace who was the seat of popes from 1309 until 1376

The line was not too long so we bought tickets for the tour 

 The courtyards and the building was really impressive

Especially some of the paintings were impressive. An interactive tour guide via an iPad explained the different places and had some nice virtual reality featureds

View from the top

The papal garden - a good place for a break

 Back to the old town

 
It was a hot day so relaxed a bit by the pool of the hotel across the street from the old city walls

Old an new Lyon

 We started the day the one like before - with a pain au chocolate, sitting outside a bakery

Th

Then we walked to a farmers market across the Saone river from the Old Town 

 

 

Then we took the metro to a more modern part  of Lyon with the famous market

The architecture style from the 70'ies is called brutalism: Plenty of concrete

The food market is named after the most famous chef from Lyon Paul Bocuse

It started to rain and we stayed for a very long lunch

When the rain had stooped we wen t to a modern museum at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone - apparently quite the romantic place and well suited for a wedding proposal

She said "Yes"