Happy 1st of August, you guys!

Can’t believe how fast this year is going, is it crazy to think that there is just four months until Christmas?! 😮 Is it possible to slow down time somehow?!

Sorry for the last week’s silence around here, it was a crazy week! The renovation in our apartment is finally done…YAY!!! So last week we painted our bedroom and put some things in order around here, also, I did a ultimate cleaning around here, there was so much dust in here after the construction worker sanded practically every wall…that kind of dust that goes into the tiniest little space…I spent two days just to clean the entire kitchen, cleaned every cabinet and drawer, and had to scrub the floors to get every spot of paint out….but it was worth it, now my kitchen is flawless!!! We still have a lot of things we want to do around here, buy some furniture, paint the living room and maybe the entrance hall…we were also thinking of putting a little colour in the kitchen as well…but now I’m changing my mind about that, I think that I want to put a lot of plants and some nice pictures there, but I still don’t know…let’s see how it will turn out. So in the end, it will still take some time to share the pictures around here…baby steps, you guys 🙂

Besides that, I want to finally share the story and pictures from our little trip to France, I was totally procrastinating this post, we uploaded the pictures from the camera a while a go, truth is, I was feeling a little bit lazy to write all about it, since there is so many details and things that I want to talk about….if I knew you (reader), we would probably spend days talking about it…hahaha

I don’t know how exactly to begin this post, so I’m going to tell you the reason that we decided to go to France, and a little bit of our plans before going 😉 (sorry if this turns out to be a huge post…haha).

It all started because Rafael had to take some days of vacation until April, and since he worked so hard to earn some extra bucks with freelance jobs, we decided to travel. This was our first trip like this, basically our honeymoon…but it was really hard to decide where to go, since we are in Europe and everything is so close to each other. First, we started thinking about Greece and visiting Athens (we really enjoy going to museums and visiting ancient sites), but then Rafael decided that he wanted a more chill and relaxing vacation, clear his head and leave the problems behind. So we thought about going to Italy to enjoy the weather, little cities and the food (of course)…but Rafael and I have this dream trip to Italy, where we would spend a month there, rent a trailer and discover the country from north to south (including Sicily). So we don’t wanna go there to visit just one city, we want the whole package! hahaha Then we started thinking about France 😀 now, I’ve been a french enthusiast for years! I love the language, movies, food, fashion (seriously, how do french woman always look good?!). But Rafael always had doubts regarding France, as foreigners you always hear things about other countries, and we always heard that french people were arrogant and that they didn’t like to help tourists that spoke in english. Well, from what I learned in my little time in Provence, I can say that those rumours are NOT true! After watching My Summer in Provence, we decided to give it a shot! You may think, why not go to Paris?! Well, we already live in a big multicultural city that never sleeps, so we wanted something different…calm and quiet, and that was what we exactly found in Provence 🙂 Btw, there is a new movie called Paris can wait with Diane Lane, Arnaud Viard and Alec Baldwin that will totally inspire you to go to Provence, you must watch it!

Since we decided our destination, it was time to define our trip…after doing a lot of research, we discovered that Van Gogh lived in the city of Arles, and also in Saint Remy de Provence, his most famous paintings are from there, so obviously we had to go there and visit. We were going to stay in France for a whole week, we booked a flight with Easy Jet (always low budget around here…hahaha) from Berlin to Marseille and decided to rent a car at the airport and drive to Avignon, where we would stay for five days, and then come back to Marseille and stay there for two days then catch the flight back home. We read a lot of comments on the internet saying that the best thing you could do, if possible, when visiting the region of Provence, was to rent a car, because you could discover the little roads between one little city to another and really appreciate the view. And let me tell you, those people were totally right! It was the best choice we made! We were a little bit scared of booking a car through the internet, because Rafael doesn’t have a german or international driving’s license, he just has the brazilian one, and we didn’t know if it was valid. But we decided to take the risk, and thank God, there were no troubles at Europcar, his brazilian one was valid! The previous days before our trip was a little bit tense, the weather forecast said that is was going to rain…I was almost crying, I hate when that happens….but then I thought, at least I’ll be crying in France! hahahaha In the end, it rained just the first two days we were there, and it didn’t stop us from doing anything!

Our first picture in France, driving to Avignon happy as can be in our cute little Fiat 500! Rafael is a really good driver, very careful and attentive, he said that it was easy driving in France, no trouble at all.

We made our hotel reservations through Booking.com, in Avignon we stayed at Hotel du Blauvac, a charming little place in the city center, it was the former residence of the Marquis de Blauvac in the 17th century. The manager, Veronica, was really, really nice and helpful, she spoke really good english and gave us restaurant tips, told us where to park the car (that was a little bit tricky to find before we went to the hotel, but we managed to get by). We stayed in the smallest room of the hotel, since it was just the two of us, our room had a mezzanine, the bathroom was downstairs, and the bedroom upstairs, we found it a little awkward in the beginning, but got used to it really fast, we had a great time there, would definitely go back!

I think that I already wrote a lot for this post, what do you think?! hahaha

I’ll share some pictures of the charming little city of Avignon on the next post, so stay tuned!

xx