France and Italy

Pre trip night out: I met Rachael and Vanessa at Vinopolis for a wine tasting (which for anyone who has been there knows that its wine, beer, rum, champagne) and evening out. If you are ever in LN, you must go to this place! Afterwards, we went for food- although the mission wasn't executed too well because we ended up with just some small cheese plate. Deciding that additional food was needed, we wandered around a bit and found a pub that should have still been serving food...not so much. Made some new friends- americans working here in LN- and hung with them for the rest of the evening (steak beer...that one is for Chicago Todd).

Day 1: we left London for Paris to begin our adventure around France and Italy.

Day 2: we started the day with a walking tour of the city. Our guide was entertaining and did a great job of showing us around and giving us the history of the monuments etc. Way to go Nottingham for sending stray students to Paris for course credit. After the tour finished, we went to a wine tasting--random French white and red wines with a Champagne tasting. What was completely random was that we had 8 other people in the tasting who were from FL. Two were even wearing Gator t-shirts (It's good to be a FL gator). After our tasting we went back to the hotel to get ready for the night and join our bar crawl. Fast forward through a fun night out and potentially 1 or 2 too many drinks.

Day 3- off to Versailles for a bike tour. What an amazing town. We had time to shop in a little market and pick up food for our picnic later in the day. We got bread, cheese, wine, chicken and dessert :-) We then road around the town and saw the palace- what a place! The hall of mirrors is incredible...very French and ornate. Upon arrival back in Paris, we went to catch our train to Avignon. Well....this is where the fun begins. Our train ended up being sold out (what happened to the trains being wide open?!?). After several hours pondering about what to do we decided to stay another night in Paris.

Day 4- I like to call this day....what the hell are we doing day? After doing some research we decided that we'd head out to Normandy to see the beaches. We booked a hotel and train and within a couple of hours, we were off. We spent the afternoon roaming around Caen and then headed out to the beach for dinner. What a spectacular sight! We had a truly amazing dinner

Day 5: off for a tour of the beaches. All I will say on this one is you must go out there. It's hard to describe, so just take my word on this one.

Day 6: Avignon- we got there around lunchtime, so we went into town for lunch and sightseeing. We had probably the best lunch imaginable. Between the rose wine, apps, meal itself and dessert we basically in heaven. This crumble dessert was one of the best things I've ever eaten!

I will post the remaining days tomorrow...for now, au revoir!