Caves, Pirates and wild rides

As small trains had been an important part of our trip so far we decided to see some miniatures as well. Le Jardin Ferrovaire at Chatte is a backyard railway on steroids this helped to make Wednesday a more child friendly day where Harrison could practice his photography skills and Angus could closely critique the modeling skills. From Chatte we moved on to St-Antoine-l’Abbaye where we found “Miripili, L’Ile aux Pirates” this pirate adventure theme park gave us a great adventure out in the sun where the boys could go mad and just be themselves. This was a good break from historical tours for the boys even though they seem to be lapping up the information from all the tours we have been on.
Now we had been told that Chambery is a beautiful city and that it is worth a visit so on Thursday we made our way to this historic city. It’s very close to Crolles so an easy trip saw us parked near the tourist office and ready to catch yet another petit train around the historic part of the city. A wonderful place steeped in history and worthy of a much longer visit. Of course another positive came out of this visit, Harrison found pamphlets for a theme park and some caves with limestone formations, hmmm there may be some ideas there.
Friday came and we thought that we would link two destinations today. St-Nazaire en-Royans was on the way to the caves so we drove there and sat at an open air café by the river and under a huge aqua duct to enjoy a simple local meal. After a very relaxed lunch where the only thing we could hear was Angus talking, we made our way to the Grotte de Choranche (caves at Choranche). Now there is nothing Judy likes more than a good cave, no heights involved, unfortunately to access these caves you must make the trip up one of the most harrowing cliff side passes that we had driven so far. I’m not sure what is more disconcerting, driving the road or talking to someone who has their eyes closed for ten minutes while maintain a death grip on the sides of the seat. The caves were quite spectacular and what they lacked in size and number of formations they made up for with the sheer beauty of the subterranean lakes with their almost impossibly clear water. Although the tour was in French we did our best to understand and even had a chance to discuss Jenolan Caves with the guide who was quite impressed that we would know anything about them.
Ah, Saturday, a rest and homework day. Everyone is very tired and there is a lot to catch up on before venturing out again, not to mention the day is a bit ordinary weather wise.
You know kids are not always the best travelers but Harrison and Angus have been fantastic, they haven’t whined once about anything we have done on the trip so far and have asked for very little, so when Hazzy asked if we could go to the Walibi theme park there was no way we could refuse. This is an interesting place it is in a town called Walibi and uses an orange Wallaby as its mascot while also calling itself an Australian theme park. The confusion continues with tomahawk rides and African river adventure rides. Of course we took advantage of our Australian status in the park and said G’day to everyone, Hazzy even called a few people cobber and made extensive use of “how ya goin mate”. The day was huge we all had a very good time with Harrison loving the caterpillar roller coaster and Angus enjoying crashing into everyone on the dodgem cars. Hazzy even managed to encourage Judy to go on the giant waterslide, with Judy saying all the way up “the things I do for my children”