(Posted on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes) Back in September, we spent a couple of days in Lourdes. It was at the end of our second week in France - we were there from a Saturday afternoon to a Tuesday morning, having arrived from a week in this great gite outside of Montignac. How did we get there? We drove, of course - this being the part of The Trip in which I had wheels. I do enjoy travelling by train, as well, but there were times I regretted not having a car later - not in Paris, of course, but in Italy. (I had not obtained an International Driver's License before leaving. You don't need one to rent a car in France, but it's required in Italy. I hadn't planned on driving in Italy, anyway, but once we arrived, I wished I had - I would rather have had a car for the couple of weeks before Rome.) (There's a smaller, regional airport that serves Lourdes, in case you want to fly straight there.) So we left the gite on Saturday morning, … [Continue reading...]
Getting to and Staying in Lourdes
(Posted on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes) Back in September, we spent a couple of days… [more]
Other Paris Museums I
There are other museums in Paris besides the Louvre! You've heard of some of them - and some perhaps… [more]
Tooling through Alabama
Three recent day (or...early afternoon) trips: 1. Sloss Furnaces. One of the places I… [more]
Digs, Part 1
So, where we did we stay, and how did I find these places, most of which turned out to be gems? Second… [more]
All Righty Then
Here's our trip: (Click on it for a larger version) CRAZY. Forgive the non-interactive,… [more]
7 Quick Takes
--- 1 --- As I said, we’re back, and here are some quick takes before I settle down to do more… [more]
Other Paris Museums I
There are other museums in Paris besides the Louvre! You've heard of some of them - and some perhaps not. With a month in Paris, we were fortunate enough to have plenty of time to explore a variety of museums, large and small. Some lived up to the "hidden gem" hype, and some didn't. A couple amazed me. The two museums that most tourists turn to after or even instead of the Louvre are the Musée d'Orsay and L'Orangerie. I'll be honest and say that while the d'Orsay building is a stunner (a converted train station across the Seine from the Louvre - sort of), I found it almost unbearably crowded and the Impressionists holdings...not amazing. Not as amazing as I had expected, at least. I appreciated seeing what Rouen Cathedral canvases of Monet that are there, had completely forgotten that Arrangement in Black and Grey No. 1 - aka - Whistler's Mother - hung on one of its walls - and was completely moved by Monet's Camille on Her Deathbed and could have remained … [Continue reading...]
Doing the Louvre
But first...should you? No, it's not a crazy question to which the answer is an astonished, "Of course! In Paris? You have to do the Louvre!" Do you know what? When you travel, you can do anything you want. ANYTHING! There is plenty to do in Paris, the Louvre takes a good chunk of time, even done minimally, and if you're not that interested in art, period or have other, less crowd-afflicted destinations that interest you..no, you don't "have to" do the Louvre. We met a family - a couple and teen daughter - who had spent 4 days in Paris and concluded that they didn't like it. That it was the least favorite part of their 6-week European trip. Why? Partly because they found it dirty (I didn't - and they were from New Zealand, which I concluded must be very clean), and partly, I think, when they told me what they'd seen, because they tried to cram all the popular and iconic tourist activities - incliding the Louvre - into those four days, they didn't know how … [Continue reading...]
Tooling through Alabama
Three recent day (or…early afternoon) trips: 1. Sloss Furnaces. One of the places I drive by almost every day, sometimes twice. It’s a relic of what brought Birmingham into existence: the confluence of coal, iron ore and limestone that made the steel industry possible here. It’s interesting to know that after the business was [...]
[Continue reading...]Digs, Part II
The Paris apartment was the first accommodation I pinned down, way back in March or April. Partly because those accommodations go quickly, and secondly so I would have a greater incentive to stay in the game and not back out. I had never been to Paris before and studying the map still didn’t give me [...]
[Continue reading...]Digs, Part 1
So, where we did we stay, and how did I find these places, most of which turned out to be gems? Second part first, please. Researching vacation rentals gives (gave) me a weird sense of satisfaction and pleasure. Note the past tense. That’s because, not surprisingly, this trip pretty much satiated me on that [...]
[Continue reading...]All Righty Then
Here’s our trip: (Click on it for a larger version) CRAZY. Forgive the non-interactive, Paint-produced map. I tried a couple of online map-making tools, and got extremely frustrated. The best one let me make the map and then demanded 10 bucks a month to preserve it. Google Maps wouldn’t cooperate. Couldn’t do lines [...]
[Continue reading...]7 Quick Takes
— 1 — As I said, we’re back, and here are some quick takes before I settle down to do more thoughtful blogging: We’ve been back three days now, and I’m finding that our body clocks are more challenged by re-entry into the US than they were by transitioning to European time three months [...]
[Continue reading...]Back from being Booked Solid
Well, we’re back. It’s all just very, very strange. We were gone for almost three months, had all kinds of adventures, saw some of the great sites of Europe, burrowed as deeply as we could into French and Italian life for the very short time we were there, it seemed as if it were going on forever… [...]
[Continue reading...]7 Quick Takes
Still here…. — 1 — As I’ve mentioned a few times, I really enjoyed Padua. After visiting Venice, I was glad we weren’t staying there, not just because of the Acqua Alta, but also because Padua was such a lively place, and lively, not with tourists, but with ordinary people. Perhaps too lively the morning [...]
[Continue reading...]
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