On your left, French cows.

So, the purpose of going to france was to visit my god mother who now lives in the same house that has been in her family in a small city called audincourt. Its in the North East part of France. We flew into Basel, which is on the french, swiss and german border. My godmother came and picked us up, and it was about an hour and 30 min drive back.

First thing we do when in france, is make my favorite apple pie! here is me, showing off the cake that we made. french style. i used to have them made for me when i was younger all the time!  here on the right is what the house looks like.  on the left is my godmothers sisters house, and she lives on the right. 

so, the highlight of this trip was the “musee de la pince”, or , Pliers museum.  now, the funny thing is that every time we would visit, we would go to the museum of pliers, and, we would never go.  then it kinda turned into a joke, because she would threaten us that if we didint behave, we would be going to see the pliers.  so, this went on and on, and finally, this year, we decided to make it a reality.

So, here is the name of the museum on the left.  now, to get there, its pretty close to audincourt, but its high up in the mountains, in a little city called montecheroux.  The history is that this was the birthplace of a certain type of pliers, in which one of the handles went thru the middle of the other handle, so that they were interlocked with each other.  the other style of making them was to just combine to halves.  Here on the right, you can see the progression of them from the original pieces to the final pliers.

it was pretty fun, not a very big museum, but still, they had a very impressive collection of pliers.  as it was winter, we had to book a private tour.  the only problem was the guide spoke no english, so..  i understood about 50% maybe.  noa understood even less.  anyways, after, of course my godmother had relatives living right next to this museum, who would of thought!!,  and, so, we went there for tea and cake after.

Other exciting things that i took pictures of are, some of the city of Audincourt, a wheel of cheese, in case you have never seen what those look like, and, the church where i was baptized.  here is actually the place where i was baptized to the right here.

Lets see, we also drove 2 hours to the city where i was born, Epinal.  we visited the house that my parents used to live in, and i remember it being a 10 story apartment building, well…  this is it to the left here… 

yeah…  its only three storys tall.  go figure.   anyways, we were visiting friends that we have still living there, and so, we had lunch with them after, and then we walked around the city some.  one of the other places we went and saw was the hospital i was born in.   well, this is something that i have never seen before.  and here it is below.

ive also got a picture of the citys old oringinal walls, which was pretty cool too see, because later on, we saw a painting that clearly showed where we had walked, and where the old city used to end at the city walls.

Anyways, we only spent half a day in Epinal, but it was great to see everything again.  overall, we only spent 5 days in france, but it was really an action packed time,  between seeing all these things from my past, to pliers, to having a party with all my godmothers family and friends coming over and me making quesadilla’s (mexican crepes) and having really great fondu.

the audincourt gallery is here and the epinal gallery is here