The Honeymooners

We officially took our honeymoon, albeit 3 months after the wedding, to Nice, France and surrounding Mediterranean places. We stayed in a studio apartment in Cagnes sur Mer and ventured around from there. It twas lovely…

(mind you there are a lot of photos here)

CAGNES SUR MER

The outside patio of our hotel

A very windy day with a lot of waves

pretty pattern at the grocery store



HAUTE CAGNES

This hill is Haute Cagnes (very close to our hotel), we walked up the first night and had dinner at the top.


The chateau at the top


Restaurants

Créme brulée dinner

NICE

Old Town

Pig found in Oldtown

The beach (obvio)



Cours Saleya Market

Johnny pulling out a magic sandwich for snack time

View from top of Colline du Chateau

Waterfall at the top

View of the harbor

Cours Saleya

MONACO

Walking up toward the Palace

The Palace

Old buildings nearby palace (church on the right where Grace Kelly was Married)


Grace Kelly Grave

Views from the top

More views

ANTIBES
We rode bikes from Cagnes sur Mer to Antibes—this part of France was definitely not made for bikes since bike paths would suddenly come to an end on the middle of the highway. Quite an adventure.

Old Fortress, walked up yet another hill

Swimming to cool off


VILLEFRANCHE


ST. PAUL
Our final days before rain washed us out was in another small village on top of a hill. This one we had to take a bus to and afterward we walked back down and visited another village celebrating Medieval days.

St. Paul is the old city on the top of the hill

Lovely views

Within the city

This lady is making crepes above all the Nutella

Eating a crepe!

At a nearby village in the petting zoo. I had to fight my way through the screaming five year olds


People in the streets

Parade (pa raw duh)

In July, John and I met up with Wietske in Utrecht to see the traveling theatre, Parade. During the summer Parade goes all over Holland creating a nice beer garden and lots of little indoor theatres to go inside.

Me on the back of the bike, while John concentrates on not getting us into an accident.

Juggling hats anyone?

The best beer in town

Here is a video I took of one of the shows we saw…

Randumz

So besides being sad over our little hamster we have been busy doing lots of other nice things.

For one, Uncle Kenny and Aunt Jean came to Amsterdam! I think they met just about everyone in the city and we could hardly get them to leave to see anything else.

Fourth of July was celebrated in Hilvesrum with Hema Hotdogs, an Iowa tshirt, John Deere hat and some red white and blue sported by myself. Photo credit Ken Shapiro

After Jean and Kenny, we went to Scheveningen (the sea outside The Hague) and celebrated a party for our friend Julia.

The party was a bit of a surprise for Julia and her and some friends/family were driven on the beach to the party on police cars.

I also painted our closet dreamy green...

And I saw this out our apartment window. John thinks it may have been a funeral.


And last but not least, there are plenty of crazy bikes here but I've never seen a four seater like this before.

In memory

So we got a hamster to try out our parenting skills. We named him Hammy / Koetje (little cow). Pets can never seem to just have one name. Well Hammy was a good little hamster but unfortunately his life was a short one and he was a member of the Pertijs household for about 3 weeks. We had a funeral for little koetje and buried him in the woods. He came to our house on our bike and also left to be buried on the bike. He was a real trooper. I guess we'll have to try our parenting skills one more time with another little guy.

John looks on lovingly. If he only knew it would be the last time…