France: Paris, Marseille, Gordes, Gargas, and Avignon

France was absolutely incredible.  The historic architecture, the wine, the cheese, the Mediterranean sea, the laid back culture - it was even more amazing than we thought it would be.  

A lot of people helped give ideas for our trip so I wanted to paste our itinerary below.   If I were to plan another trip back I think we'd spend even more time on the small towns along the Mediterranean like Cassis and Sanary sur Mer, but otherwise we thought this plan let us see a ton without feeling too rushed.  

• Day 1: Travel day:  Flight from Omaha to Newark, then Newark to Paris 
• Day 2: Paris:  We spent the afternoon in Paris, visiting Notre Dame, stopped at some wonderful cafes, and eating at a restaurant near the Eiffel tower for dinner
• Day 3 - 5:  Marseille:  We met up with my friend Angel in Paris and visited the Louvre before getting on the train to Marseille.  We spent 3 days in Marseille drinking lots of wine overlooking the old port, taking a boat ride and snorkeling to beautiful white beaches, and taking an electric bike tour around the city.
• Day 5:  Cassis, Port Sanary sur Mer, and Gordes:  We rented a car from Marseille and drove to an incredible winery on Cassis and ate a delicious lunch at a fabulous restaurant called Hotel de la Tour in Sanary sur Mer.  We stopped at a random beach and took a nap in the sun.  Definitely one of my favorite day of the trip.  
• Day 6: Gordes:  We visited the beautiful hill-top town of Gordes where we had lunch and then went and visited the Sequence Abby before making our way to our bed and breakfast.  
• Day 7: Gargas and Rousillion:  We woke up and had an incredible breakfast and it was such a beautiful day we decided to spend the majority of it laying by the pool.  We stopped at a great winery on our way to the next bed and breakfast and had dinner in the hill-top town of Rousillion 
• Day 8: Avignon: We drove to Avignon and walked around the city before going on a wine tour to the southern Coute de Rhone region
• Day 9: Paris:  We took the train from Avignon to Paris and stayed in the Red Light district at an awesome hotel right next to Moulin Rouge.  The hotel had an awesome private spa in the basement that was completely private. 
• Day 10:  Travel day 

Here is a link to a spreadsheet with our detailed itinerary with all the hotels we stayed.  Can you tell I'm a little OCD about the planning?  :)

Snowmobiling in Yellowstone

Day 2: Right as the sun was rising we entered into Yellowstone park on our snow mobiles.  We were the only two people on this tour (Yellowstone Year Round Safari tour) and the snowmobiling was crazy fun.  I guess the most comparable feeling is being on a jet ski.

The park was gorgeous with all the snow and the steam steam coming up from all the thermal features - you really started to feel like you were in another world.  Also seeing the herds of bison up close on the snowmobiles is an indescribable feeling, we could have watched them all day.  We also saw a few bald eagles and another coyote. 

Also - sometimes people ask me about photography on our trips.  All these photos were taken with my phone and then just adjusted a little bit in Lightroom if they needed fixing.  

Yellowstone in January

Day 1:  According to the internet about 3 million people a year visit Yellowstone, but only about 1% of them visit during January.  We actually have so far found in a beautiful time to travel here, maybe because we lucked out with unusually warm weather so the streets were easy to navigate.  We stayed at here (VRBO that we would highly recommend) and came into Yellowstone in the North entrance and drove into the Lamar valley (headed toward Cooke city).  

The highlight of the day is when we saw what we thought was a wolf right in the middle of the road (turned out later to be a coyote).  Lots of beautiful wildlife and the scenery was stunning.