Biot! We still think it's cool, so there.

Today we blew off school activities to go to Biot. It was Saturday after all. Our 7 day bus pass was burning holes in our pockets, so I looked on the map for the farthest, coolest place we could go using our local bus. Viola- Biot! 

Boys in Biot

We went to a Festival of the Templars there last time and my kids fell in love with Biot. Trip advisor says don’t bother spending more than two hours there because there is really not much to see; but this Medieval town high above the Mediterranean, just inland and east of Antibes, looks like a perfect sand castle. 

We did the embarrassing mommy walking tour, where I read aloud from the guide and make the kids pass up really cool looking stuff so they can see all of the stuff in the guide. Like the kittens Samuel found. And the public garden and ampitheatre that weren’t on the map. 

And the playground behind the church with the amazing view.

Well, we got most of the tour done. We had an awesome meal and spoke a ton of French with the lady at the museum and the waitress. I helped the woman in the museum translate some key phrases for her because she doesn’t know much English. “Across from” makes no sense to her— why is it a cross? Apparently she needs to give directions a lot and as I mentioned before, visitors from other countries don’t speak French, but do speak English. I am surprised at how many French people speak no English at all. I was always under the impression that they learned English in school and knew the basics at least.

Really I need to find another word for charming.

We were headed off the map again to scope out the remains of a volcano that produced the rocks that made the kilns that baked the pottery and glass for which Biot is marginally famous, when the thunder sounded and we decided to call it a day. 

House from 1531

Empty vessels in Biot's museum of archeology

We’ll see the volcano next time. I understand it is some volcanic rocks on the side of a mountain in the back of a Biot neighborhood. If you use your imagination, it looks like part of a volcano. It’s a French volcano, what do you expect? Who ever heard of such a thing!? 

Funny post script—

Yesterday I stopped by the grocery after picking the kids up from school so I didn’t have my grocery bag. They wanted to run ahead to the apartment which is just around the corner, so I gave them the key and asked them to leave the gate open so I could get in. Our place is on a locked interior courtyard. The boys like to play video games when they get home before I get them to do their dinner chores, so they went straight inside and got plugged in.

A well meaning neighbor locked the gate, so I couldn’t get in. I tried reaching them on their iPads without success, so I was left to throw frozen peas up to the windows, hoping they would hear the ping ping ping on the windows. Well of course they didn’t, but one of them finally saw my text and came down to let me in. Thank God I had frozen peas; produce is expensive here! 

Naturally people were walking by as I was throwing the frozen peas at the windows and trying to call the boys. In English. I don’t think they noticed :) Bizarre Americans!!