Paris

We took advantage of Andrew's half-term break and took a trip to Paris!  We were there for 5 nights and we crammed a lot into each day.

We took our car through the chunnel, with about 3 hours of driving on each end, so it was a long day.  And then once we realized that our international roaming wasn't working properly on our phones so we had a hard time contacting our Air BnB host to get access to our apartment but we eventually got everything working.  Because we were right in the city, there was no/limited parking nearby so after we unloaded our luggage Aaron had to spend some time getting our car parked and then walking back to the apartment.  So we didn't get to see much of anything on our first evening except what we saw from the car on our way in.

But the next morning we got started and didn't stop until it was time to head home several days later!

Day one:
Notre Dame (Cathedral and Bell Towers)
Bus Tour
Arc de Triomphe
Eiffel Tower

Day 2:
Louvre
Musee d'Orsay
Maison d'Auguste Rodin a Meudon
Pantheon

Day 3:
Sainte Chapelle
Garnier Opera House Tour
Musee Grevin (Wax Museum)
Chocolate Museum
Montparnasse Tower 56th Floor
Eiffel Tower at sunset

Day 4:
Versailles

Day 5:
Luxembourg Gardens
Drive home

It was a packed week and we really wore the kids (and ourselves!) out but it was really fun.

*See this post on our travel blog here!*

Devon

As soon as our car came in and our household goods were delivered, we headed out for a vacation before school started.  We decided to head down to Devon, along the southern coast of England.

We stayed in Torquay, within walking distance of both the beach and the center of town.  The weather was perfect the entire time we were there so we got to do a lot of fun things.

We spent one day exploring Dartmoor National Park.  There are a lot of narrow roads and the horses, cows, and sheep roam freely around the park.  We did some hiking and climbing on the tors and even saw a small stone circle.

The next day we did a "round robin" tour of the area for the whole day.  We took a bus (open top) from Paignton to Totnes, a river boat from Totnes to Dartmouth, a ferry from Dartmouth to Kingswear, and a train from Kingswear back to Paignton.  We had quite a bit of time in both Totnes and Dartmouth to explore, visit some castles, eat good food, and we even saw a (very loud) stunt flying demonstration.

We spent the bulk of the next two days at the beach since the weather was so nice.  It was a rock beach and the water was very cold but we had a lot of fun and the boys spent some time finding sea glass.

On our last day, after we checked out of our holiday apartment, we headed over to Kents Cavern.  It's an old cave with guided tours that had a lot of excavation done back in the Victorian times.  We didn't take many pictures here since flash photography wasn't allowed but it was a pretty cool thing to see.

We came back to a house full of boxes waiting to be unpacked but it was a really good trip to take before the school term started.

*More details and more photos on the Kimblers Abroad blog.

Gloucester Cathedral

We went to Gloucester Cathedral on one of our first weekends here in England and it was a great daytrip.  (For a more detailed post about the trip and more pictures check out this link HERE.)

It started out with a bus ride to Gloucester and then a short walk to the Cathedral.  We had lots of time to walk around and explore.  We saw some Harry Potter filming spots (and a couple of fun pigs) before we headed down into the crypt (Sherlock filming location).  Apparently there's a Doctor Who filming location here too but I need to figure out exactly where that one is.

We finished off the trip with some Cornish Pasties and then a bus ride home.