and then we were like yeah. let's go to france.

this is an attempt to get back into blogging.  

(read: i'm once again single and now have time for this thing so 

let's raise our hands together and say YES) 

so back in july i visited christine and paul because they were living in germany for a few months and who wouldn't want a random friend coming to stay with you for ten days of it!? Obviously not them.  

the morning after my arrival we jumped in a rental car and road tripped down to the south of france for some tour de france. christine wrote a detailed post about all of that but we all know i was just there to take pretty pictures and have no idea what i was actually watching.  

 look at that happy girl watching them cross the finish line!  they are cycling lovers 4 lyfe and it was fun to see them so happy to see their favorite thing in, as they say, the flesh. 

 it was raining super hard so the photos of this portion are full of lots of umbrellas.  look at that happy guy!  

 while they were going crazy over all their best cycling friends, i was just L O V I N G this beautiful mountain town with it's magical fog and greenest of green everything. 

 by the time we got to our hotel (that cute yellow guy above!) the sky had cleared and it was just the best.  christine really nailed it with this random tiny town, it was so beautiful! we had the best room with the best view and ate a delicious dinner that included mashed potatoes in the shape of a pear!  i'm not really sure how it can get much better than that. 

 even though it was so tiny it had a massive cemetery which is a thing we both oddly love.  

(i have a feeling it's an east coast thing.  it's hard not to fall in love with all the cemeteries because they are so old and interesting and mostly beautiful) 

 major self-timer win going on above 

 (insert heart eyes emoji here)

 selfies with giant cameras are hard but it needed to happen.

 the photos above and below represent the 100 other photos i tried taking out the window while we drove from place to place because everything in the south of france is exactly what you would think it would be - incredibly, incredibly picturesque and pretty pretty pretty. 

 i had my heart set on going to a town called colmar.  a friend had recommended it and i fell in love with the google image page i frequented before my trip and it was only about 30 minutes from the tour!  so we made a quick stop and even though it was charming and really great looking - i loved everything else so much more because it was all a big surprise where this looked exactly how i thought it would!  funny how that happens. 

 just a candid pic of paul and i and some trees in giant pots

 (this picture mostly happened for the man dressed in the american flag behind us) 

 i saw a path leading up one of the mountains nearby and just really wanted to have an aerial view of yet another perfect city.  it did not disappoint. 

right??

 and then all of the sudden the race was happening so i had to stay up there.  

then a series of creeping the elderly photos happened because apparently that is my thing. 

and then all of the sudden we were back on the road looking at castles and vineyards and green pastures alllll the way back to germany.  i felt highly satisfied with this little roadtrip and could have left europe that day and felt good about it.  all three of us just felt genuinely happy and content the whole trip which is always a special thing.  those little baby towns and french mountains lifted our hearts and i'm grateful they didn't mind me tagging along.  it definitely goes down in the history of my life as one of the best weekend trips i've ever done!

 (and i've had some pretttttty good ones so that is a little meaningful)