Our home for the week was an amazing house in Vence, France. Vence (pronounced Vah-nce) is near Nice and is a historic medieval walled city. The house was on a hill overlooking both the medieval city as well as the modern city. The old town was very nice and had one of our favorite little restaurants with great food.

Also nearby was an amazing old town called St. Paul de Vence. Just driving in was an experience with the most impossibly narrow streets I've ever seen. Even our tiny rental car had to have the mirrors folded in to not scrape.

However getting there was quite the experience. Leaving Chicago a freak storm hit just before our flight was to take off. We were delayed about an hour which was bad since we had just over an hour layover in Dublin leaving us very little time to catch our connection to Nice. Upon arrival in Dublin we learned that French air traffic controllers went on strike and our connection couldn't wait for us because they were afraid they'd never go. By the time we got there all French airspace was closed. Air Lingus got us on a flight to Milan, Italy and arrange for a bus to take us the 3 hours to Nice. Unfortunately the 3 hour bus ride turned out to be over 6 hours, partially because it's far and partially because by law the driver had to take a 45 minute break every 2 hours. We finally got to the house after 30 hours of travel at 5am, just in time for sunrise.


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