We went to the Païolive woods today. There are lots of cool rock formations there and they said the path takes about an hour to walk through plus stops.

We went to the tourist office first to get our route map. I also stopped at a bakery for a baguette to bring along and on impulse, bought this thing that’s like a cold pizza with a white sauce, cheese, onions and lardon (uncured bacon pieces). Maybe one of my French friends knows the name of it. I think it began with a “t”.

Anyway, we arrived at the woods and found some nice boulders to sit on in the parking lot and eat the cheese bread and our other snacks we brought. We carried in bottles of water, cherries and Oreos (emergency provisions) and left the rest in the car.

Asa took this picture while we ate our light lunch:

Then we headed in and promptly took a wrong turn but we got straightened out and back on track. The kids loved the rock formations and loved climbing them (the first 10 or so anyway).

Asa took a picture of this caterpillar he found on top of the rock from the previous picture.

Behind Nova is a natural bridge.

There was lots of climbing to do even if you just stayed on the path. For example, the kids are on the path here.

Watch out for holes. In the above picture we were on top of a cave. Below is looking up from inside the cave.

This interesting juncture of tree and rock.

Cherries are in season and we have been eating them daily!

Then we arrived at the animal garden where the rock formations look like animals with a little imagination.

Elephant

The kids also spotted lions, monkeys, birds and a turtle but these weren’t as obvious as the elephant.

At this point they had had enough of the stones but alas we still had about 20 minutes of walking back to where we left the car.

They found an area where people had been stacking stones.

And we met another stone arch.

There were some side paths we could take on the second part of the hike (to explore some small caves and to see a rock that looked like the virgin Mary) but we skipped those in favor of finishing the hike.

We made it back to the car and headed back to our hosts’ house. We went to the neighbor’s house to swim but the water was a bit cold so only Cal swam.

Impromptu sand toy sword fight

Asa’s belly looks like a face!

Also we took the short cut to the pool which involved scaling a steep hill (down on the way there and up on the way back). Diane’s older son carried Nova, Esme and Asa down. He wasn’t going to swim and kindly brought Cal his shoes since Cal forgot them and had to go down without them.

We spent the evening at home relaxing and I made sure to catch the sunset again. Their house is on the top of what they call a hill (to me it’s a mountain). Their driveway has a frightening grade to it (maybe 20% or more – it’s really something else to drive up it!) but the view from their house is worth the climb.