9/27-29/10, Mon-Wed

This week has been busy, starting with recuperating on Monday from the weekend, and making plans for this upcoming weekend in Nice! I did feel a bit like I died and went to Meijer on Monday night. We found a Super U in the  next village over that is larger than the others and offers a great selection of many foods and some other items like you would find at a Meijer. So exciting. Now if only I could find Diet Pepsi.

Laundry, cleaning, unpacking and repacking, cooking, running, and trip planning has filled in many of the hours of these past three days. Today we did do some fun shopping in Strasbourg where I got a wonderful book on Cooking in France with delicious recipes and pictures. I want to make a real French Tarte while I'm here. There are some other recipes in there I would like to try and will let you know as I do how it goes. A preview is Creme Brulee, Chocolate Souffle, Crab Souffle, and French Onion Soup.

I also broke down after more price comparison shopping and bought the Long Champ backpack I've been wanting. Now I will have it for this weekend in Nice! I only wish I would have purchased it the first time I came so close because the Euro to the Dollar was much better than. The Euro has taken off since we arrived (of course). If only we could see the future.

The weather for Nice looks fabulous for this weekend. Sunny and 70's, I hope it's right! Eric took this Friday off, his first day off since we've been here, so we have reservations on the night train Thursday night and will arrive Friday at 9am in Nice. The sleeping accommodations on the train look interesting, so we'll see how that goes. Will take lots and lots of pictures and post Nice early next week. Until then, God Bless.

9/26/10, Sunday in Paris

Little bit of a slow start this morning with some complications with luggage lock up and Taylor's metro ticket. Once these were resolved we were headed for the Louvre. Taylor, the master of maps, not only toured us about the city yesterday but also kept on us track with the metro. Now she had the map of the Louvre in hand and we followed her off to see the Mona Lisa.

I've seen the Mona Lisa before and something about this painting still catches my attention. I think it's her look of wise serenity.

Napoleon the third's apartments were amazing. Everything from the floor to the ceiling and in between is dripping with artistry, and the chandeliers were exquisite.
I did not see these the last time I was here and really enjoyed this part of the Louvre.

Venus de Milo, the statue that is believed to be Aphrodite.

This was by far my favorite statue. It is of Amphitrite, the Goddess of the Sea. She is holding a shell and has a child with her who is also holding something from the sea.

It was amazing to look around and realize most of these statues were outside for years and years. And the creation of them, I can't imagine. So many artists and so much time spent. Really is astonishing.

With sore feet and great admiration for the history and brilliance of those who created these marvelous paintings and sculptures, we enjoyed some time shopping in the gift shop, and made our way out of the Louvre through the Pyramid.

We easily found our way back to the train station, retrieved our luggage much easier than the drop off, and waited for the TGV back to Strasbourg.

Paris was busy, easily traveled, the food was wonderful, and the sightseeing memorable. It was so nice to share with my hubbie, and again with my daughter.

9/25/10, Saturday in Paris

Up early to catch an early train to Paris. Arrived in Paris just after 9am and headed right to our hotel just outside of the city to drop off our luggage.

Found the hotel, a Best Western, with  no problems. The staff was very nice, we left our luggage, freshened up a bit and headed back to the metro to discover Paris.

First stop, Notre Dame. As we approached the plaza in front of Notre Dame, there was a wedding party coming through, honking horns and stopping to snap a couple photos in front of the Cathedral.

The plaza was full of tourists and it was slightly chilly, but a nice day to view this grand Cathedral.

We walked around the side to the gardens and then walked around to the other side where Taylor was able to point out the Hunchback sitting atop the Cathedral. It was much smaller than I expected.

Taylor had us touch Point Zero in the Plaza in front of Notre Dame. It seems that means you will return again someday. It's working for her. This was her third time here! Check out those Burberry kicks, pretty cool huh! Thanks Logan.

We bought some sandwiches for lunch from a vendor next to the Cathedral and ate them on a park bench in this park on the back side of the Cathedral with the local pigeons. While we were waiting for our sandwiches we saw two girls in their upper teens go running by, with long skirts flowing, and screaming with a man chasing them. He did not look happy. We found out they were gypsies and he was a street entertainer and they had just helped themselves to his income from the day. Wow, that was crazy.

From Notre Dame we headed across the bridge over the Seine River in search of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. It is located in the Latin Quarter and Ernest Hemingway was known to frequent the original store.

We did a bit of wandering trying to locate the store but the Latin Quarter was full of activity, with shops and places to eat down small alleyways. It was a fun search.

The original is on the left and the newer one is on the right.




We spent over an hour perusing the books, the pictures on the walls and taking in the quiet and surreal feeling of this old bookstore. It was fun to wander through and take it all in. Taylor purchased a gift and I bought a book that will be perfect reading while here in France.

We made our way along the Seine River enjoying the scenery of Paris along the way. We were working our way towards Avenue Des Champs Elysees and to the Arc De Triomphe. 

Eric thoroughly enjoyed his pain au chocolat (no e) with his double espresso at a cafe where we took a break on our way.

Taylor had Creme Brulee and it was delicious. I know Lindsey and John, wish you were here too.

We walked down Avenue Des Champs Elysees doing a little window shopping along  the way. Taylor and I popped into one of the stores and it was jammed with shoppers.  We did some people watching and then we arrived at the Arc De Triomphe where we  walked around a bit and took lots of pictures. 

I loved the flower carvings in the top of the Arc.

We found this really neat English Pub to eat dinner on the way to the Eiffel Tower. It was a micro brewery and the food was superb!

We ended our walking tour of Paris at..... you got it.... the Eiffel Tower. 

Taylor enjoyed her cotton candy while we walked around and took in the Eiffel Tower

While waiting for the Eiffel Tower to light up at dark we relaxed in a nearby cafe with a little nighttime snack of macaroons and cappuccino. Good thing we walked miles and miles today!

After a successful day of Paris sightseeing we arrived back at our hotel exhausted. Eric stepped out onto our patio and what a view. We had no idea we had a view of the Eiffel Tower and the city lights of Paris. Awesome! Great day!

Tomorrow the Louvre.

9/24/10, Friday

Little rainy today, but still had a really good run. Taylor went to Strasbourg to meet up with some of her friends from her exchange group. I spent a good part of the day preparing for our upcoming weekend in Paris.

9/23/10, Thursday

This was a really great day! Beautiful blue sky and warm sun today with a forecast of rain and cold for the next week,  so Taylor agreed to ride bikes with me to start our day. I found a bike path on a loop through villages and beautiful scenery  that is just about an hour long.  It's an easy, flat wonderful ride and a nice break from running for a few days. So we rode the loop, and I could tell Taylor was having the time of her life, then made lunch and prepared to take our bus/tram ride into Strasbourg for some shopping.

We were on a mission to find the H&M. Everytime we have been in Strasbourg we see many people carrying H&M bags and have been watching for it. Taylor looked it up on the internet and mapped it out. She's so good at that. We found it right away and realized we had walked around it many times we were in the city and never realized it. It's in a rather large mall, but from the outside you don't really realize there's a mall there. It looks like a big hotel. I was beginning to feel a little at home especially when I saw a little kiosk that was selling popcorn! I miss popcorn! Then we noticed that same kiosk sells corn cups. Yes, that's right, little cups of sweet corn you eat with a spoon. I really don't have the corn thing figured out here. Everywhere we go whether driving, running or biking you see large corn fields, yet you cannot find fresh sweet corn in the markets, so it must all be field corn. Anyway, next time we go back to that mall I will be getting some popcorn. We had a great time at the mall, Taylor made some purchases for herself, we also noticed that there were as many shops for men as for women. I think men are much more into fashion here. Just as we were headed into a candy store our phone rang and it was Eric calling to tell us he was headed into the city to meet us for dinner.

We have only been out to dinner a couple times since we left home simply because we are living on one income right now and hmmmm our bills at home didn't go away.  Imagine  that. Anyway we decided this was the perfect opportunity because the weather was ideal to sit outside. Eric asked for a couple recommendations at work, where his co-workers have been wonderful sharing information, and he met us with those in hand. We headed for Petit France to check out the recommended spots. On our way Taylor stopped in a small shop to stock up on her post cards and we looked around a bit. While we were in there Eric spotted a menu for an Italian place that was just down the alley and had good prices, and a good looking  menu. We all voted yes and decided to save the recommendations for another time.

We had a wonderful meal, Eric had a pizza and Taylor and I had pasta dishes. We were having a really good time and I was thoroughly enjoying my meal. Now I have to explain what happened next. Taylor and I can never eat our entire meal so we typically share a meal back in GR, or we get our own and take the rest home for lunch the next day. That is a no no here so we each ordered our own dish. Of course, we each only ate about half our pasta and were stuffed. Now, I grew up in a family of 5 kids and then I was a stay at home that raised 3 kids on one income, so you have to understand that throwing away food, especially delicious food, is just not in my make-up. So I did it, I told Taylor I needed to take my leftovers home for lunch the next day. She was not happy with this at all. It is just way to American, but being the good daughter that she is she attempted to ask the waitress when she came to clear our dishes. Disaster struck. This darling, poor young waitress had no idea what we were asking. She thought I didn't like my food and she looked quite distressed. I felt horrible for her and I felt so bad for Taylor who knew this was not a good idea and was terribly embarrassed. So I will not do that again. I learned my lesson, I promise.

When we got home we were able to Skype with Logan and Whitney and get caught up with them, which was wonderful for me.

Great day with lessons learned!

9/22/10, Wednesday

Great day! The sun was shining (again) when I got up and Daniel had the bikes available to us. He is headed for a week's vacation in Greece so he put the bikes out for us while he is away.

I got my cleaning done, packed up the camera and off I went. Taylor wanted to relax and read so I headed out on my own.

I first wanted to get some pictures around our village.

This is the Post Office.

The bakery where Taylor buys our bread for dinner almost daily.

 The church. The churches stand out in every village.











Some of the houses in our village very typical of all villages

This one was very modern.

I headed for the bike path that leads to the next village over called Lingolsheim.  Once there I just kept following the bike paths from village to village (oops I forgot the map) enjoying the scenery.

 Many little rivers along the paths or most likely the same river winding all around.

Lot's of people on the bike paths today. Maybe because there was not a cloud in the sky. Also, Daniel said the kids do not have school on Wednesdays.

A couple fisherman enjoying the day.

Beautiful field of wildflowers along the route.

I found my way home with no problem and enjoyed every minute of my ride. Will do that again real soon!

9/21/10, Tuesday

Taylor and I headed for the Strasbourg train station to schedule some more of our weekend trips. We were able to get good reservations for this weekend in Paris. I'm really looking forward to going there with Eric since he was not with me last time I was there. Will take lots of pictures.  We were however, shocked to find that even with our Global Eurail passes it would be an additional 600 to 650 euros, almost 1000 usd, to travel to London where Taylor really really wanted to go for her upcoming 20th birthday. I felt bad saying no, but yikes, that was not happening. So we are set for Paris this weekend and Nice the following. We are planning a 4 day weekend to Italy when Eric has All Saints day off here. That will be next to schedule and will be soooooooo cool.  All Saints day is Nov 1, so we just happen to be in Italy for my 50th birthday! Eric wants to go to the Porsche Factory in Stuutgart, Germany for his birthday weekend so we will drive there for Oct 16, and then on the 17th, go on to Rothenburg, a neat old walled city Eric has wanted to show me.

After our train station duties we took the tram and bus over to Germany. Just across the border there is a little shopping district where things are a bit less expensive. I was hoping to find a backpack for this weekend but the shops were not my style. Taylor did find an adorable little skirt and sweater at a shop that had some cute younger styles so that helped cheer her up a little from the London bummer.

Back home to cook up dinner and then we were able to Skype with Brandon, Lindsey and Carter. So good to see their faces. Really trying not to get homesick.  Taylor and I watched the new episode of Castle on hulu and off to bed.

9/20/10, Monday

Best nights sleep since we left home. Most likely from such a fabulous weekend. Had a bit of a scare on my run today with a white van, so I think I will change my route up for a bit to an area that is a little more populated and less woodsy. Scary!

Some laundry and groceries today. Made a big dinner, they have really good potatoes here. I'm really learning to work with my mini kitchen.

9/19/10, Sunday in Switzerland

This day was a blast! We started with a wonderful breakfast that was included in our hotel stay. So much wonderful food, so we filled up and said good-bye to Basel, heading for Zurich.  We made our way through Zurich to Schaffhausen where you can see the Rhine Falls, which are considered to be the largest waterfalls in Europe. This was so cool to me. 

Again, I was overcome by the beauty of the water.

The water was so powerful.

The most colorful, awesome rainbow hung over the bottom of the falls.

We were able to get really close to the falls. There was a couple of platforms that had us right out where the falls were crashing down. It was amazing. I loved it!


We tore ourselves away from the falls after a freaky ride back to the top in a glass elevator! Scary.






As we were making our way out of Schaffhausen, we found ourselves on a small wine route. How convenient. We were able to find a wine cave that was just opening for the day so we stopped in. It was a little winery named Heidi-Wy in a tiny village. They barely spoke English, but we were able to talk wine! Like tasting, yes, and Riesling, yes. They were very generous with their tasting and we purchased a bottle of Riesling, very light but complex, a bottle of Kerner, which was like a Late Harvest Riesling, very sweet and yummy, and a bottle of their red, which was very different from any red I've ever tasted and was made from a grape called Blauburgunder, very tasty. From there we headed back through the vineyards and wonderful countryside to Zurich.
I didn't mention that the weather prediction for the this weekend was to be rainy almost all weekend. We had beautiful blue skies both days and Sunday was clear and warm all day!

Once back in Zurich we survived more deadly city traffic, and found an area called Bellevue where we could park and walk to Lake Promenade. People in this country seem to love their outdoors and with the beauty of this country how can you be any other way. The Promenade around this lake was jammed with people, strolling, sitting and enjoying the beautiful lake, people watching, and the entertainers every few hundred feet. It was really neat to see. We walked a bit and got ourselves some lunch at an outdoor vendor who was grilling up brats. I had the most delicious potato salad with a hard cider that was very very good. We walked a bit and took in some sun and decided before leaving Switzerland we needed to see the Alps once more. 

We headed for another loop towards Chur which was East of the loop we did on Saturday. As we drove through the country side we saw people out biking, hiking, running and walking everywhere. I love the outdoor spirit of this country.  We wandered a bit around Chur, Taylor had a hot chocolate to beat all hot chocolates. I was able to purchase several Swiss Chocolate bars for gifts and personal use (of course) and we hit the road back to France.

The sun was setting in the Alps as we made our way out of Switzerland. Our weekend was a huge success. Eric traveled us safely through some of the craziest city traffic I have ever seen, we saw the most beautiful lakes, falls, and countryside, purchased wine and chocolate, and enjoyed some very good food. How blessed are we!

9/18/10, Saturday in Switzerland

Up and out, and on the road by car to Switzerland. Planned 1st stop is the city of Lucerne to see Mt. Pilatus which is a famous mountain overlooking Lucerne. We came into Switzerland through Basel, where we had to buy a pass for our car to drive in Switzerland for $40. We made our way to Lucerne with no delays where we found the spot to take the cable-car up to Mt. Pilatus. We struggled a bit with the parking before heading to the ticket booth. The parking all over Switzerland was very confusing. You had to buy a ticket to put in your car whenever you parked. Getting that ticket out of the machines is not as easy as one would think. First we could not read a word on the meters and every place we parked the ticket meters worked differently. We had to ask for help at most of the parking spots throughout Switzerland, but many people spoke English, thank goodness. We made our way to the ticket booth for Mt. Pilatus only to find that it was $64 per person. Yikes........we learned very quickly after entering Switzerland that this is a very expensive country for tourists. Between the entry fee, parking, gas and food which we did not buy much of it was a little too pricey. This did not stop us however from enjoying the countryside immensely. The country is so beautiful we thoroughly enjoyed our visit. We decided to skip the cable car at Mt. Pilatus, and the 4 hour walk to the top, and move on to the Alps where we could drive ourselves around a loop Eric had mapped out just in case.

This was a very wise decision. The day was a bit hazy so we were not sure what we would have seen at the top of Mt. Pilatus anyway. The loop down into Switzerland through the Alps was fabulous. We drove through tiny little villages where people had homes with the most awesome views you can imagine. Everywhere you looked there were mountains with homes, vineyards, and pastures of goats and cows scattered about. As we drove around there were beautiful lakes with water an indescribable color of bluish green.

I'm not typically one who does well sitting in a car or anywhere for very long, but the immense beauty of this country took over my restlessness and had me in awe.

We stopped along the way to breath in the views and  stretch our legs.

We found a little cafe in a tiny hillside village where we stopped for a late lunch with a view of the mountains. I had Spaetzle with vegetables and mushrooms. Oh my gosh, it was like a gourmet mac n cheese dish floating in butter. The ultimate in comfort food and deliciousness. Again, a bit pricey and we paid $12.50 for water without realizing it, so this was our only real meal in Switzerland, but it was fantastic.

As we were dining a cow parade of sorts came down the hillside all decorated with the Swiss flag, flowers, and heavy leather straps with giant loud ringing cowbells hanging from them. It all seemed so perfect and natural for our surroundings.

We continued on around our loop enjoying every minute along the way!

Our next stop was Interlaken, a little village with some nice little shops. A few were still open, so we popped in and Taylor got a gift for John and Eric bought himself a new swiss army knife.

As we were strolling the main street a wedding parade came through honking horns and throwing candy from their cars!! How fun.

Interlaken also had a beautiful seafoam green lake. The Alps were socked in  so we could not see the snow covered peaks but they were still a gorgeous backdrop to the lake.

We left Interlaken and headed out of our Alps loop for Basel where we had hotel  reservations for the night. Eric was a master of the road on this entire trip. Especially in the cities where driving was insane. I told him I would have just gotten out of the car in the middle of the city, hopped on the 1st bus to the nearest airport, and obtained a seat on the first flight back to GR.  He not only survived the city driving safely, but was able to spot every "cool" car along the way!

We arrived in Basel and found the street where our hotel was located with no problem. The city of Basel had more pedestrians, bicyclists and cars quickly flying in every direction than I've ever seen. I was amazed by this scene. Like some kind of fast speed orchestrated dance where everyone knew exactly where to be when so as not to cause a catastrophe. And here we were in the middle of it all trying to get down the street to our hotel which was blocked off at both ends due to a festival that was of course happening right now where our hotel was located. After driving in circles a bit we found a city parking ramp where we parked and walked to our hotel. We checked in and made our way to our room. We thought our flat was tiny. Whoa, talk about tight quarters, but clean and nice. We were all getting hungry so we made our way to the festival where there was live music and lots of booths with lots of brats, sausages and other festival fare. Eric had a brat and beer and Taylor a chocolate crepe, and that was dinner. We watched a little of the live music, never even knowing what the festival was for because none of us could read or understand anything of the Swiss language. We proceeded to wander away from the festival and through the little alleyways in the area looking in shop windows until we were ready to tuck in for the night. Wonderful day!