France, Spain and Italy

As we are getting ready to take the girls back to a country they have been to before I am feeling nostalgic for our old trips. I am so thankful that the girls love to travel as much as Andy and I do! The girls had gotten a little older at this point and made friends with two girls from France. They had been coming to our town each summer and they all hung out. We wanted to take the girls to France and include Italy and Spain. Again, we were camping, however we did stay with our friends in their home outside of Paris. It was so fun to be shown around Paris by real Parisians!

During this time in our lives, it was most economical to rent vans and camp, so that is what we did. We would rent our cars right from whatever airport we landed in. Tip: Cars in Europe are not as big as cars in the US. Even when we try to rent minivans, they are sometimes too small for the amount of luggage we have. It is perfectly acceptable to ask to see the rental before you begin. With 5 of us, plus luggage plus camping equipment it was worth paying a little more for the convenience of getting our car at an airport. Tip: DO NOT forget to let your credit card company know that you will be traveling out of the country. And remember, even if you do, they still sometimes block your card. We have been on many a rental car companies phone line getting our credit card to work in foreign countries. I will say that credit card companies have improved on this (or I have switched cards to bigger companies - not sure which it is).

From Charles De Gaulle we immediately left town, heading for Italy. Our plan was to do France last. We did camp on the way but our first city in Italy was Genoa. We only stayed long enough to camp the night, but we do have some fun pictures that show bars blocking the way to the beach! From there we went to Rome. Lots of sites including the Vatican, Colosseum, Trevi Fountain (the girls were big Lizzy McGuire fans), Pantheon just to name a few. If you want to feel accomplished, wear your apple watch to track your steps! Then it was on to Naples and Pompei. We stayed in THE most crowded campsite I have ever stayed in. To put up our tent, we were encroaching on the neighbors site. Luckily they had an RV and took it all in stride. It was on to Salerno so that we could drive the Amalfi coast to Sorrento. Then back to Rome and on up to Pisa where I of course made the girls take pictures holding up the Tower. My favorite campsite is somewhere between Naples and Pisa on the coast and I hope to find it again someday as I can’t remember what it is called or where it was located.

From there we drove the coast through Monaco toward Barcelona. We camped along the beach and one night the wind was so bad I thought our tent would blow away with us in it! Camping Barcelona was a nice seaside campground. We toured Barcelona and enjoyed our nights at the campground. We did not have much time in Spain as we were doing all of this in 2 weeks again so we headed back to France.

We stayed at some nice campsites on our way back to Paris and saw a lot of countryside on that drive. Our friends lived 15 minutes by train outside of Paris, so it was nice to park the car and ride the train or walk. We saw all of the Paris attractions including the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. Another great trip in the books!