Sommerferien !!!

Summer vacation and another great road trip crisscrossing Europe. This time we went West.

First stop Basel with a quick jump into the local pool.

Karl and Henri just love hanging out with their cousins (Anna Lynn pictured, Max pushed to the edge due to formatting problems).

Next stop Versailles, where the boys turned into mighty gunslingers showing off with Napoleon's pistols.

Of course we went to the hall of mirrors.

We also took plenty of family pictures with the works of this year's artist in residence Olafur Eliasson.

Great stuff. Although no match for the works of the sun king.

Final destination was Brittany.

Two weeks at the beaches! What's not to be thrilled about.

Even when the weather didn't hold there were great excursions along the coast.

And if nothing else you can always go crabbing (disclosure: we only caught one live crab, it still was fun).

A few days in the British portion of the family joined in. The boys immediately went in to high energy mode (pictured in this wave running competition).

There was always plenty of sand to be cleaned off.

There was even a quidditch competition.

And more crabbing.

Had I mentioned that the loot was slim? But Ivo (Ivo Shivo as he's known) taught the kids how to make Gnocchi.

Yep, this was the general mood out there.

No matter how high the waves.

Dinner was served in style...

...in the end the group grew into a crowd with the arrival of Jasper and Oskar (and Till and Jeanette, not pictured, who actually hooked us up with the great bungalow that belongs to Till's mom).

We sure wanna go back there soon.

And as an added plus the geographical middle between here and there is the great region of Champagne. Where you can overnight like kings and a queen!