Today I walked to the bakery for croissants alone. It was nice to do something alone since the kids and I spend so much time together.Some pictures I took on my walk:

The city is surrounded by mountains so they’re everywhere you look.

Poppies grow wild in France.

The local compost heap. Lots of apartments means it’s hard to compost on your own. They have this public compost and they use it in the community garden.

After packing a lunch we took the bus to centre ville.Then we stopped in the Jardin de Ville for some play and to eat our lunch.

Nova and Esme got some help from Tahys to smell the flowers.

Then it was time to take the téléphérique, which is a cable car system, to see the fort, La Bastille.

The above two photos are our view from the téléphérique.

The view at the top is amazing. Nova loves seeing the mountains. We rested here and took in the view.We explored a man-made cave used for protection during battle.Then we went to a really interesting museum about the history of soldiers in this area and how they invented downhill skiing.After that it was time to walk down. It quite a hike and Boise’s 93 year old mother was with us. It was an hour and a half walk on steep and uneven ground but we made it down safely.

This nice stranger named Florian walked with us a while.

I caught these two in a sweet moment. Asa wanted me to delete the picture but I just couldn’t.

Snack break on the way down.

Looking back at where we were once we made it to the bottom.

It was almost 7pm when we made it down so I let the kids have their promised ice cream (they asked for one when we got to centre ville and I said, “sure, later” and they didn’t forget!).We wanted some real food too so we tried a place called “Oriental Wok”. Our first sign of trouble should have been that they served fries. Well we gave them a try but we didn’t like it much. We ate some even though my meal was served over spaghetti noodles and they boys was served with béchamel (flour based white sauce) on top. When the man came to give us the check he wanted to know why we didn’t eat more. I explained that we were American and we were expecting soy sauce based sauce and it was different than we expected. I told him we appreciated the experience even if it wasn’t what we expected. He said the problem was it wasn’t supposed to be Chinese, it was Oriental and the flavors and ingredients are influenced by lots of Oriental countries like the Philippines and Egypt. This is where he lost me but Cal’s response made me laugh, “Wait, so they eat spaghetti in the Philippines?”