Oh, all the things I've seen ... !!

I'm back home, although not for long. I'll get to that. Just let me say that I've had a wonderful trip and I'm so happy that we didn't just talk about this, but actually made it happen. :-) Anne Ida, thanks for sharing this great experience with me. :-)

It's only been a week, but I've seen so much ... !!!

I've seen my first ever pancake tortoise in real life. It looked fascinating, even more so - unsurprisingly, of course - than in the pictures that I've seen.

I've seen an animal I never knew existed, the Himalayan newt. These little critters were just too adorable. I wanted to break the glass down and take them with me. This picture doesn't even do them justice. I have a video coming up that will show what I mean much better. Just too cute for words. :-)

We've seen the Canal du Midi, a marvel of engineering which nine days ago neither one of us (ie, Anne Ida and me ;-) even knew existed.

We've seen strange and wonderful flowers and plants. :-)

We've seen kangaroos!! :-D

We've seen not one, not two, but three amazing cemeteries, whole little cities of the dead. As un-Norwegian as it can possibly get.

And of course, we've seen the gorgeous, beautiful, amazing, astonishing old town of Carcassonne - la Cité.

This was our first glimpse of it. I had the great good luck to be able to take this shot through the window of our plane, even though I wasn't sure when I would see it or even if I would, and I only had a moment in which to take a picture. What a sight from so far away.

And even more impressive up close. We've seen it!! :-D

And of course, we have played Carcassonne in Carcassonne ... !

The trip home was kind of exhausting ... it took so long, even though the distance isn't that great. We had to change planes at Stansted, that awful, awful place, and our stopover was about four hours. (Actually more like five, but we got delayed in France, big surprise.) So, not long enough to leave the airport and actually do anything, but long enough to get soundly bored. And since they constantly changed the gates on us we didn't really get to settle down to wait anywhere either. Plus of course we had to wait in long lines lots of times. What fun. We left our hotel at 11:45am, yet by the time we touched down in Sandefjord the time was nearing 10:30pm. Whew. Fortunately Anne Ida's parents were waiting for us with their car ready to whisk us off to their cabin just outside of town. It was great to get to stay the night with them and not have to go all the way to Oslo ... we wouldn't have gotten there till past midnight. So it was good to put that off till today. We took the train back to the city and I got home at about 4pm. Whew, again. The turtles were fine, the little guys were happy to see me and Raphael quite skeptical (although he did come out into the living room to look for his dinner eventually ;-). I'm kind of sad to have to leave them again so soon. They may not miss me, but I miss them. :-)

My vacation isn't over, though - I'm leaving tomorrow for another week, or thereabouts. I will be spending it at our cabin in the mountains ... so I've got my fingers crossed for nice weather. I'm sure it won't be anything like what we had in the south of France, of course, but I'm hoping for a few sunny days at least. :-)

A few blog posts will probably pop up, but apart from that I really will be incommunicado this time. Kind of a relief. And as picturesque as that landscape is, I don't think I will be taking more than 2,500 pictures and videos in a week ... o_O

When I get back I will finally have time to check out everybody's blogs and whatnot. Thanks for stopping by here. I hope you're all enjoying your summer. :-)