Christmas parade Siesta Key

Soon as thanksgiving and blackfriday are out of the way in the US, attention turns towards Christmas. In Siesta Key that meant a Christmas parade.

All the local services (fire engines, ambulances police/sheriff and lifeguards), clubs (karate, scouts....) and businesses (hot air balloon, shops, restaurants, estate agents, etc...)arranged a float. It gives you a little snapshot into the local area.

Really pleasant to enjoy a Christmas parade without shivering, it was in the mid twenties.

Kids quickly figured out that the more they cheered the more treats and gifts they got given.

They cheered a LOT!! 

One thing's for sure, Americans know how to make a parade a festive occasion!

Make that Christmas a festive and colourful occasion.

Just a regular front lawn at this time of year...

Education on the road

While we didn't take the decision to pull the kids out of school lightly, homeschooling full time is still a big jump into the unknown.

I'm not going to go into our reasoning now, but I mention it because today I had one of the more fun learning/schooling day of our travels so far.

Me and the kids set off after breakfast:

After some castle building/sea defence construction I sat on a beach chair for a well earned rest. In the meantime the kids decided to start drawing and writing in the sand. 

Your's truly

My beautiful wife...

They were at it for a good hour.

Ali, GG and I standing on a hill looking at the sunset.

Fred's spelling can be a bit difficult to decipher most days, but today he correctly spelt "this is Alice". Very proud dad!

After lunch I set them up to do some drawing, cutting etc.. which resulted in making some xmas decorations.

A really good day, although as I write (9pm) they're still refusing to go to sleep (sigh!)

Arrived in Florida

We've arrived at Siesta Key in Uncle (Alice's) Jason's apartment. What a spot!

The apartment is in a small(ish) block, facing almost due west into the Gulf of Mexico with a direct view of the beach and sea. Could not ask for a better place to hole up for a month.

Below is the view of our first sunset:

We've already settled into a sort of routine; beach in the morning, lunch in the apartment, followed by a bit of downtime, before either going swimming in the pool in the afternoon or doing an errand or two. 

La plage:

The beach is rated one of the best in the US, it's extremely fine white sand, apparently all quartz. One of the main benefits is it  doesn't retain too much of the sun's heat - perfect for delicate feet. 

On our first beach day a pod (3-4) of dolphin's swam past 20m from us, we thought the kids would be exited! but apparently after our close encounter with Dante on St. Kitts not so much.

Only concern at the moment, is that this part of Florida is prone to red tides (harmful algal blooms) so we're keeping a close eye on the number of dead fish on the beach for signs it's on the rise.

Barcelona

View from our Airbnb in Barcelona, right in the old town (El Born). Apparently the hotels in Spain have managed to coerce the gov to pass a law, that in effect bans airbnb there.

I don't want any more tapas

Really nice stores and galleries throughout the old part of town, this gallery (Art 01) is in the Gotíc area.

This cafe was right next door, really nice atmosphere and staff. I recommend the vegetarian quiche.

Approaching the Plaça Real

Typical street near our apartment.

Monastery turned cafe

The markets are amazing

Paris visit

On our way to Barcelona to catch the cruise, we stopped by in Paris to see family, particularly the new generation that we'd not yet met. We stayed near Republique in a great Airbnb.

First night's dinner at a really nice indian right on the Canal St Martin (with an appropriate family name).

Next day we took a walk/scoot around Le Marais. We didn't stop here for lunch but will do next time, loads of little eateries, the food looked and smelt amazing.

Quick rest stop for a barquette fraise or six

Took the metro on our way to dinner...

Couldn't come to Paris without visiting the Eiffel Tower. I've alway preferred it at night.

As Ali remarked on the day, the nice thing about the Eiffel tower is they've really left it on it's own, no other tall buildings in the vicinity which makes it all the more impressive.

Next day we had a delicious coffee and cookies at Steele Cycle wear and coffee shop

Dinner with family in the evening was followed by a scoot round the local skate park at 1am (where do they get their energy from?)

Last day in Paris Before the train to Barcelona, we went to the Palais Royal where amazingly the kids found a tree to climb.

Couple of days in the New Forest

After Ali's course we booked a couple of days in the New Forest.

We got really good weather and the autumn colours were fantastic.

These photos were taken on a really nice walk following the Tall trees trail (couple of miles long and buggy friendly).

Few days in Chiswick Oct 2015

When I grew up in Chiswick I don't think I really appreciated quite how good a location it was. On the tube line with easy access to London, green, lots of playgrounds, beautiful parks (take a bow chiswick house) and a superb foodie high street.

For the first few days of our stay I for once took advantage of the great museums a short tube ride away...

Natural history museum

F&G have their moment but occasionally they can be so cute together

London transport museum

Kids had a good time, but it was really expensive (thanks Dad)

Clearly the london transport museum inspired F

Chiswick house in Autumn

Returning to Blighty for a couple of weeks Oct 2015

After a great month in Chamonix we set off back to London. After our America trip we have an aversion to long drives and since we don't have work/school to get back to, we decided to take four days for the trip with no more than three hours driving per day.

Day 1 Bourg en Bresse (chicken country)

It's a pretty nice town, and the chicken really does taste different. Not sure I'm prepared to pay more than the price of a good steak for it on a regular basis though.

Day 2: Onwards towards Dijon

Bread in France has an almost religious significance. 

Dijon is just stunning! 

We'd never been there before, but will definitely be coming back. 

The town center is a UNESCO world heritage site and you can see why.

The chouette that GG is standing on is part of a two mile, very well laid out town centre trail. The kids did the whole thing on foot (unheard of) and loved running ahead and finding signs on the road.

Dinner at a great Italian (little Italy)

nice local roof

Day 3 Reims

Reims is a regular stopping point for brits heading south or home as it's only 2 hours from Calais. The Cathedral is spectacular but the kids seemed restless, so instead we took them to a local park just south of the canal in the hope of finding a play area. We were well rewarded; the parc de Leo Lagrange is brilliant. It has a small kids section, a mid kids section (below) and a huge skate park. 

Day 4 Ferry - Canterbury

Waiting for the ferry

Canterbury cathedral

Home for the night. These great six man pods at YHA were clean, spacious and comfortable. If I still had a garden I'd be putting one in.

Chamonix Sep-Oct 2015

After our rather hectic trip around North America, we were really looking forward to spending an entire month in one place. We'd never been to Chamonix in Sep/Oct which is the off season, we hoped for some decent weather and that some things would still be open.

First day in Chamonix and the view is fantastic (as usual).

I've been going to Chamonix since the age 5, it feels like home.

The huge white Massif du Mont Blanc completely dominates the valley.

Even when in the centre of town between tall building, you turn a corner and there's the snow and ice

We got pretty lucky with the weather during our stay, when the sun was out it was really pleasant. 

Although it did occasionally rain.

The valley floor offers loads of easy outdoors activities, here we're at the Moraine d'Argentiere. Moraine is the term for huge jumbles of rocks deposited by glaciers as they retreat, in this case the glacier retreated some time ago and the area is a local government owned park/forrest.

The rocks are great fun for the kids (big and small)

They've also set up a full on kids play area, but we spent most of our time on the rocks or damming the stream.

Pretty much all the lifts were closed until the winter season but we did manage to get up to les Houches.

The valley has gone/is going through a huge construction boom but you can still find the old farm houses dotted around.

Climbing rocks was definitely the favourite activity of this trip, broken up by long walks to give us some exercise.

The views are just amazing, you don't have the sheer rock walls of Yosemite but you get a much greater jump in height. It's late summer in the valley all the way to mid winter 3,800m higher up.

Talking of views, even the local Carefour (tesco's/walmart) has great scenery.

Halfway through our stay Granny and Grandpa came for a visit

They occasionally got off their phones...

... to join us on nice walks.

By far my favourite photo of this trip! Looking towards the Grands Montets ski area as the afternoon shadows cross the valley.

You get pretty sunsets here too. This is the Glacier du Bosson

L'Aiguille du Midi - you can visit the top by cable car, takes around 20min, 2,800m up. It's quite a view!

Les Drus

Vegas and the Grand Canyon Sep 2015

From yellowstone, we drove back to Salt Lake City with only one slight interuption...

...and flew to Vegas.

I'd never really been to vegas and I had very low expectations - unlikely to be family friendly, probably really tacky, expensive and generally not my thing!

I was very much mistaken, it was fantastic.

The strip is right by the airport, we were staying at Mandalay bay (to the left of the pyramid/luxor)

Ali managed yet again to befriend the check-in staff and we got bumped to a suit the size of a good sized two bed apartment. Don't know how she does it!

The view from our room.

Biggest selling point of Mandalay Bay is the swimming pools apparently by far the best on the strip. In all there are at least 8, one is a huge wave pool with a sandy beach, the best from our perspective was this one which flows like a river round and round in a big loop.

We got the kids some floats and happily swam here for 3 or so hours of each day.

Vegas does of course have bright lights, over the top glitz and replica historic buildings but it's really well done and the kids loved it. Particular mention goes to the mini Venice in the Venician which is quite something. Otherwise the lobby of our hotel was luxurious for a very reasonable price (compared to the rest of our trip) and there was loads of free stuff to do particularly in the evening since all the casinos put on a free show outside (erupting volcanoes, fountains, etc...)

Having struggled to find decent/varied/spicy food for good chunks of our trip, we found Vegas a haven of quality.

Our reason to come to Vegas was it's proximity to the Grand Canyon.

So we rented a car and another painfully long 5-6hr drive later we arrived.

The area around the Grand Canyon is a high plateau, with scrubby pine trees, it just does not prepare you for the sudden gouge in the earth that is the Canyon.

Even by the Grand Canyon the kids decided climbing a tree was more interesting.

It's all about the changing colours at sunset

On the way back to Vegas we stopped to have a look at the hoover dam from the bypass bridge they recently built. You'll notice the low water level here too.

From Vegas, it was time for our flight back to the UK

Yellowstone Aug 2015

We spent the night in Salt Lake City then drove up through Idaho up to Montana. It didn't look to far on the map when looking in the UK, but it really was a long 5 hour drive. Distances in this part of the US are just on a different scale.

In addition to big sky scenery (like below) we also drove through HUGE lave fields in Idaho - I got a bit excited!

Finally we arrived at Yellowstone under canvass.

Home for the next few days

It was really comfortable

The view at breakfast

The next day we spotted our first Bison within an hour of entering the park!

Then we arrived at the first hydrothermal area on our route. 

It's a really weird landscape, with trees killed off by the heat/chemicals in the water.

A hot spring.

The orange stuff is algal mats, these extremophiles have evolved to thrive in the hot water.

Mud pots

And a Geiser!!!! Some of these only erupt occasionally and dramatically, this one was going pretty much continuously.

After lunch we went to see old faithful, it erupts every couple of hours or so and the water shoots up to 30ft. 

Because of it's fame you kind of have to see it, but really it was my least favourite place in the entire park. There were loads of people crowded into a kind of amphitheatre, with a large hotel/lodge and in the end the eruption of water was pretty underwhelming. 

At our next stop there is a famously colourful and very large hot pool.

Climbing up to the pool you could see the excess water joining the river system before making it's steady way to the Pacific. 

You're very rarely alone in Yellowstone, and we were there out of season.

The colourful pool

We found this pool just by the side of a road. There is so much hydrothermal activity in this park (they say more than anywhere else on earth) that you can come across a hot pool like this and the only notification is a "danger hot water" sign - in any other country it would be a major tourist attraction.

A more rarely erupting Geyser, it did not blow while we were there. 

The reason for all this hydrothermal activity is that Yellowstone is located on top of a super volcano. It has not erupted for several thousand years, which is a good thing, since were it to do so it would blanket half of the US in a thick layer of ash and probably cool global climate for several years.

In the photo below you can see the outer wall of the enormous caldera.

We thought this was a moose originally but were later informed it was an Elk.

Looking from the UK Yellowstone looks big but manageable, so we set ourselves up to stay in one side of the park and just drive round each day to the various sites. In hindsight this was a mistake, the park is immense (8,900 square km) equivalent to the Lake district, the Cairngorms and Snowdonia combined but with only five roads in and two roads shaped like a figure 8 (the north and south loops) running through the middle. 

We found out that a popular way of visiting the park is to book a night at each of the entrance points to the park and see all the sites on the way to the next hotel - we would definitely do that next time.

We were based by the West entrance. On the first day we did the western half of the south loop. On day two we did the whole of the North loop!!! in all that was around 4-5 hours of driving.

Day two: we found some lovely sulphur smelling pools

The water coming out of the ground is not only hot but mineral rich. At Mammoth hot springs calcium carbonate is deposited gradually in these step like formations.

On our third day we did the middle section of the 8 and down part of the western part of the south loop.

We had a close encounter with a Bison, they are REALLY big.

For me, Yellowstone had always been about the volcanic activity. The hydrothermal activity definitely lived up to expectations but we also got incredible scenery which I'd not been really aware of before going.

Here you can see the river carving through rhyolite deposits with a thin band of lava very near the top.

More rhyolite with two bands of basalt

The grand canyon of the yellowstone - The yellow rhyolite is likely where the park got it's name.

Looking back the other way down the grand canyon. The waterfall sits on a layer of tougher basalt.

Juvenile Osprey preparing for it's maiden flight.

We tried to make it down to the main lake but the road was closed off. With no way through we turned around and were promptly caught in a Bison induced traffic jam. An entire heard decided to use the road so everyone stopped while they lumbered their way along.

With a mixture of everyone (including ourselves) taking photos and the bison being in no hurry we were stuck for a good hour. Apparently in season these traffic jams can last a lot longer.

After a while in Yellowstone, steam coming out of the ground at random points along the road seems pretty normal. Looking back on it, it's extraordinary.

I would really recommend Yellowstone Under Canvass to anyone visiting, it was really well set out and we met some really nice people by the fire pit in the evenings.

Yellowstone was by far my favourite place on the US part of this trip.