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Bordeaux

Jun 5, 2013   //   by Eva   //   Blog  //  1 Comment

Walking the rainy streets of Bordeaux. We were making up our own sight seeing tour, where the churches were once inhabited by giants, hence the large doors (Judah) and the fountains were in memory of the dance parties that used to be held every day on those squares (Yannay).

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for dinner to Spain

Jun 5, 2013   //   by Eva   //   Blog  //  1 Comment

 

 

The basque town .......was just on the border.  While waiting for the rest of the family to arrive some took the opportunity to dance or sprint.

The basque town Hondarribia was just on the border. While waiting for the rest of the family to arrive some took the opportunity to dance or sprint.

 

Basque architecture

Basque architecture

With the London Kaplans in St Jean de Luz!

Jun 5, 2013   //   by Eva   //   Blog  //  Comments Off on With the London Kaplans in St Jean de Luz!

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Up and Down the Tallest Sand Dune in Europe, Dune de Pyla

Jun 2, 2013   //   by David   //   Blog  //  2 Comments

 

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Rome

May 28, 2013   //   by Yannay   //   Blog  //  Comments Off on Rome

Day 1:

Drove to the hotel and had our first glimpse of Rome

 

A monument dedicated to Vittorio Emanuel II containing a memorial to all the unknown soldiers who died during WW One

A monument dedicated to Vittorio Emanuel II containing a memorial to all the unknown soldiers
who died during WW One

 

Wall of Rome

Wall of Rome

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After putting our luggage down at our hotel, we went for a walk to explore the city and see some sites.

The sights that we went to see were a Pantheon where Rafael is said to be buried (it closed before we could go in), Colonna di Foca (column of Phocas), the Trevi fountain and Palazzo Odescalchi. We also saw a shop selling Pinocchio figures and clocks that were similar to the ones we were given in our childhood? The difference is that ours weren’t clocks. On ours, if you pulled the string they would play lullabies.

The Pantheon

The Pantheon

The clocks

The clocks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shopkeeper is making another pinocchio

The shopkeeper is making another pinocchio

Colonna di Foca

Colonna di Foca

 

 

 

Saniela and Avia at the Trevi fountain

Daniela and Avia at the Trevi fountain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Palazzo Odeschalchi

Palazzo Odescalchi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we went to a food market. There was a selection of many different unique types of pasta, sauces and some fruits and vegetables. The next thing we saw was absolutely magnificent. We saw Borromini’s perspective. Borromini’s perspective is a corridor that appears longer then it is using the art of perspective. It is a fantastic optical illusion appearing 37 meters long with a life-sized statue at the end but is really only 8 meters long and the statue only 60 cm high. Borromini managed this by having the floor rise while the pillars shorten creating the illusion. Close by was a big square which used to house chariot races. Nowadays people are selling all kinds of art there, and many street performers are brilliantly performing there. The next thing that we walked to was the pantheon that we went to the day before. This time we went inside. The building was twelve sided and on one side was Rafael’s grave. Rafael was a very famous painter who painted in the renaissance. He was during Michelangelo’s time and they were fierce competitors. One of his famous paintings is the School of Athens.  The pantheon was quite nice but I enjoyed the next thing that we went to more. We went to San Luigi dei Francesi which featured three of Caravaggio’s paintings. I had never heard of him before and was amazed by his work and his skill on shade. The paintings were, in my opinion, absolutely brilliant.

Part of the food market

Part of the food market

Borromini's perspective

Borromini’s perspective

 

 

 

Daniela's picture of the Pantheons cieling

Daniela’s picture of the Pantheons ceiling

 

 

 

 

 

The inside of San Luigi dei Francesi. There are three corridors. This is the center one

The inside of San Luigi dei Francesi. There are three corridors. This is the center one

 

 

 

Piazza Navonna: The square that used to accommodate horse chariot races.

Piazza Navonna: The square that used to accommodate horse chariot races.

 

 

 

A person making art using graffiti at Piazza Navona

A person making art using graffiti at Piazza Navona

A person looking like a statue in Piazza Navona

A person looking like a statue in Piazza Navona

 

 

The first thing we did was go to the Ancient Rome museum which was in the south part of Rome while we were in the middle so we had to drive. That was the first time we saw the greenness of the city. Before then, most of what we saw were buildings and streets, and not many trees. The museum taught us a lot about the Romans and their rulers. We learnt how the romans made a wall pointless, saw the structure of he coliseum and also saw a replica of the arch of Titus. After the Ancient Rome Museum we went to the Coliseum but didn’t go inside and tried to see the real arch of Titus but unfortunately we weren’t able to because when we got to it we were at the exit and not the entrance so we decided not to go around. On the walk between the coliseum and the arch of Titus we walked by the arch of Constantinople. After getting disappointed by not being able to see the arch of Titus we walked back to the hotel. On the way, we passed Chiesa de Gesu and decided to go inside. For a few days I had been asking my dad what the church was called with no answer and we decided to check it out. We weren’t disappointed. Inside, the moment you looked up, you are amazed at the art on the ceiling. The art looked so 3D that with we couldn’t differentiate if some things were paintings or statues. The foreshadowing was spectacular.

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Drive to the Ancient Rome Museum

 

The Arch of Titus

The Arch of Titus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Map of Rome (I couldn't get the whole thing)

Map of Rome (I couldn’t get the whole thing)

 

 

Avia, Daniela and I at the coloseum

Avia, Daniela and I at the coloseum

 

 

 

 

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The arch of Titus

The arch of Titus

 

 

 

 

 

 

On this day we had a late start. At first we went to Palazzo Pamphilj which was built by Pope Innocent X nephew and looked at the paintings. Everybody had a picture they had to look for in the Palace. Daniela was the first to find everybody’s picture except for hers which she found second. Most of the paintings were by people I didn’t know but some I did and the people I did know were Caravaggio and Breugel. There were also some sculptures by Bernini which I thought the detail put into the sculptures was astounding. After the Palazzo we were hungry and went looking for a restaurant. Finding a good one took a while but finally after hours of looking, we found one. The restaurants name was Wanted. When we went in and sat down, the table next to us got their food and one of the people got a pizza with thinly sliced ham. I mistook the ham for salmon and ordered the salmon pizza. A few days before, I had ordered a salmon pizza and it was mostly just pizza crust, with a bit of over-cooked salmon on it and I didn’t want that to happen again so I wasn’t sure about ordering it but seeing the other guy have the delicious looking “salmon” pizza I decided on that one. When the food arrived, I got the same as the other place that we went to a few days before gave me. Pizza dough, and a bit of smoked salmon on it. The only difference is that it wasn’t as over-cooked. I was disappointed that I didn’t get what I wanted but luckily my family didn’t mind giving me some of their food. My dad chose to order pasta with a walnut sauce, my mom and Avia shared a pizza margharita and Daniela chose Gnocchi with tomato sauce. After lunch we went to San Pietro in Vincoli to see the sculpture Moses by Michelangelo. Moses was sculpted for Pope Julius II’s grave. I thought the detail on Moses was superb. The sculpture was like it was real. You could see the outline of his calve muscle and the cloak was also amazingly done. I thought everything was amazing about the statue except for the rays of light on his head. I thought that they were too short. Later, we found out that Moses was supposed to be higher up so we’d be looking at him from below and then they’d look like rays of light. After we were done admiring how realistic Moses looked (especially, in my case the leg and cloaks folds) we went to our new apartment. When we arrived there we were half an hour to early so my dad, Daniela and I went looking at the neighborhood while my mom and Avia stayed with the bags. When we got back to the apartment, nobody was there. My mom and Avia were inside. We went inside and got comfortable, got the internet code and Avia and I started playing cards. We only played a bit because there was a mop in the closet and Avia wanted to try mopping the floor. My mom taught her how to mop and she started mopping. That was Avia’s first time mopping the floor. There was also a small supermarket next to us and we looked if there was any grape juice for Shabbat. There was only wine so my dad came down later and chose the wine we were going to have for Shabbat.

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On Sunday we were going to meet up with some friends of my dad’s that lived in Rome. We arranged to meet at the ghetto for lunch. Getting bus tickets was challenging but we finally found a place that sold them. Then, we had to wait for the bus. We waited, and waited and waited but no bus came. Finally, we chose to stop waiting for the bus and walk to the ghetto even though it was quite far. We arrived there later but had a great meal and a delicious dessert. After saying goodbye to our new friends, we took a peek at the synagogue that was about one hundred to two hundred meters ahead of us. After taking a peek of the synagogue, we went to the capital museum to see a sculpture of Medusa by Bernini. On the walk, we passed a theater that looked a lot like the coliseum. The moment we went inside the museum, we looked for the sculpture of Medusa by Bernini. We couldn’t find it, even when we looked in the room it was supposed to be in. Finally my dad found a small sign in the room that the Medusa was temporarily somewhere else. This day was the last day that it wasn’t there the sign said. The Medusa sculpture was the reason we had come to the museum and to find out that it wasn’t there was a bit of a shock. We complained but they said that there was a sign but we didn’t see one. Not when getting the tickets and not when we left.

 

Monday:

This was the day that we did mostly homework. In the morning we moved to a hotel. We we arrived at the hotel, our rooms weren’t ready for us so we looked around the area a bit and looked for a place to eat. We asked a local where he usually eats and he told us. If we wanted pizza we’d have a bit of a walk but if we chose pasta the place was really close. We chose pasta and we followed his directions. We ended up at a place with a surfing theme where we had really good pasta of two different kinds. I think white pesto and walnut sauce kind of pasta. When we were done, we walked back to our hotel and since the rooms still weren’t ready, started doing hwk in the lobby. When we were told our rooms were ready I stayed downstairs and did work but my parents took the bags up. I don’t know what my sisters were doing then. I did homework most of the day and stayed down doing homework while everyone was upstairs. At night, everyone went downstairs again. We brought my dad’s computer because he was going to show us a video on carbon dating, I had mine in my with me, and Avia brought the Mac down. My dad’s videos didn’t seem to work so instead I showed them a video that I watched that taught me about it. When we had finished, we went upstairs and got ready for bed. We got in bed and when while we were trying to go to sleep I asked Avia where my iPad was because she was the last one to have it. We looked for my iPad but we couldn’t find it anywhere. My dad’s phone and Daniela’s iPod were also missing. We had been robbed. We reported it to the hotel and went to bed.

 

At 9 in the morning my dad and my sister heard my dad’s phone’s alarm ring in the room beside us. We told the hotel but nothing was done. In the afternoon we went to the Vatican and had a tour of Vatican museum. We saw many paintings by Rafael including the school of Athens and some sculptures. We also saw an entrance using perspective and knitted artwork. The knitted artwork was truly amazing. In the end was the Sistine Chapel. At the beginning of the tour our guide explained about the Sistine Chapel and the pictures on it but she took too long and didn’t leave much time for the rest of the museum. She explained about the Sistine Chapel at the beginning because you were not allowed to talk when you’re in the Chapel. The tour was supposed to be for an hour but because of the long beginning, it took one hour and a half to two hours and she was in a rush to finish. Our guide wasn’t with us at the Sistine Chapel. You’re not allowed to take a picture of the Sistine Chapel so I don’t have one but there were a lot of people in there at one time. The room was crowded. Looking up for long periods of time was quite hard which made me imagine how Michelangelo felt. I couldn’t believe I was seeing the Sistine Chapel and I still can’t believe that I saw it. What I found interesting was that he only painted scenes from the Old Testament and not the New Testament. Some of what he painted was Adam and G-d, Adam and Eve, the creation of the sun and the moon, Ezekiel, and Daniel.  The pictures from the New Testament were by other painters. After going to the Vatican museum we went to see Mary and Jesus, another work by Michelangelo. Previous to seeing the sculpture face to face, we saw some postcards of it in the Vatican Museum. I thought that the sculpture looked disappointing compared with the postcards the we saw in the Vatican museum because a they were quite far away so I couldn’t see as much detail as in the postcards. The sculpture of Mary and Jesus was in St. Peters. Then we went out into the piazza. That was another beautiful site.  Took bus back. Old gentleman walked us to bus stop and directed us.

 

Police did nothing. Asked the people in the room to if our electronics were there and to search their own room. Left hotel for Tuscany.

The great sand crocodile: from 10am to 10pm.

May 27, 2013   //   by David   //   Blog  //  2 Comments

Zoom out twice on the map below.

Angeles-Sur-Mer as the name suggests is on the sea, the Mediterranean sea, close to the Spanish border. It Catalan country. Here the beaches are pebble but no deterrent for Avia from building the beginnings of a crocodile on the beach at 10am. By 11am, crocodile still unfinished, we had to leave. We had a date with Carcassonne, Toulouse and Jean de Luz, on the Bay of Biscay. It took all day but by 10pm we had arrived in St. Jean De Luz. Avia insisted on completing her crocodile. We went to the beach; 10:30pm; the last rays of the sun barely visible on the horizon; restaurants shuttering up; bars the only sign of life; Avia built her crocodile on the beach. Then we went to sleep.


View Larger Map

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10am – Argeles-Sur-Mer

10pm - Saint Jean de Luz

10pm – Saint Jean de Luz

Working it in the rain.

Working it the next morning in the rain.

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Avia showing her crocodile to Ariella and Timara when they arrived on the next day.

 

Horses on the Carmargue

May 24, 2013   //   by David   //   Blog  //  6 Comments


When I was at high school I was inspired by this poem of wild horses on the Carmargue, a marshy area on the beach in the south of France.
The Camargue horse is an ancient breed of horse indigenous to the Camargue area in southern France. Its origins remain relatively unknown, although it is generally considered one of the oldest breeds of horses in the world. For centuries, possibly thousands of years, these small horses have lived wild in the harsh environment of the Camargue marshes and wetlands. We drove the distance to see them. Here’s why:

camargue-horses

In the grey wastes of dread,
The haunt of shattered gulls where nothing moves
But in a shroud of silence like the dead,
I heard a sudden harmony of hooves,
And, turning, saw afar
A hundred snowy horses unconfined,
The silver runaways of Neptune’s car
Racing, spray-curled, like waves before the wind.

Sons of the Mistral, fleet
As him with whose strong gusts they love to flee,
Who shod the flying thunders on their feet
And plumed them with the snortings of the sea;
Theirs is no earthly breed
Who only haunts the verges of the earth
And only on the sea’s salt herbage feed-
Surely the great white breakers gave them birth.

For when for years a slave,
A horse of the Camargue, in alien lands,
Should catch some far-off fragrance of the wave
Carried far inland from this native sands,
Many have told the tale
Of how in fury, foaming at the rein,
He hurls his rider; and with lifted tail,
With coal-red eyes and catarcating mane,
Heading his course for home,
Though sixty foreign leagues before him sweep,
Will never rest until he breathes the foam
And hears the native thunder of the deep.

And when the great gusts rise
And lash their anger on these arid coasts,
When the scared gulls career with mournful cries
And whirl across the waste like driven ghosts;
When hail and fire converge,
The only souls to which they strike no pain
Are the white crested fillies of the surge
And the white horses of the windy plain.

Then in their strength and pride
The stallions of the wilderness rejoice;
They feel their Master’s trident in their side,
And high and shrill they answer to his voice.

With white tails smoking free,
Long streaming manes, and arching necks, they show
Their kinship to their sisters of the sea-
And forward hurl their thunderbolts of snow.
Still out of hardship bred,
Spirits of power and beauty and delight
Have ever on such frugal pasture fed
And loved to course with tempests through the night.

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Pezenas

May 23, 2013   //   by Eva   //   Blog  //  Comments Off on Pezenas



collage Pezanas

Nice and St. Paul de Vence

May 22, 2013   //   by Eva   //   Blog  //  Comments Off on Nice and St. Paul de Vence

 

The flight into Nice was beautiful.

Without realizing we spent 5 hours at the galleries in st. Paul de Vence. st.paul de vance collage We visited Ephrussi’s house built in ancient greek fashion, which seemed quite uncomfortable to live in but fascinating now as a museum. Then we drove in pouring rain and traffic jams through Monaco.  -And to the girls delight our neighbour was a horse.

May 22, 2013   //   by Daniela   //   Daniela, Photo of the Day  //  2 Comments

sunset in bora bora

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