Paris, France

We left for Paris on the Eurostar from the new St Pancras station early Friday morning, to meet up with John’s parents who had headed to Paris on Wednesday. The Eurostar was such a treat to take; easy to get to, quick check in time, pretty scenery to watch out the window, and seats with head rests that prevented me from my habitual head bobbing whilst sleeping.

I know I keep raving and gushing about cities, and that is not going to stop with Paris. It was so beautiful! I loved the monuments and Parisian buildings, and I loved how they were completed by the cities layout. The open streets and the well planned monument locations allow for perfect sight lines of the places of interest around central Paris.

We dropped our bags off at our hotel in the trendy Bercy area of Paris (it reminded us of Kits in Vancouver), and then we took the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe. We climbed the stairs to the top and took in the view of the city; the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, financial district, Champs Elysees, the Obelisque, the Louvre. A huge traffic circle (the intersection of 12 streets) surrounds the Arc and we spent several minutes studying the French traffic circle etiquette. I guess it didn’t really surprise us that the yielding rules were the opposite of England.

From there we walked to Trocadero, an area overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Enroute we grabbed two pain au chocolates, and once in Trocadero we had a coffee at a café with full view of the Tower. (Was paying EUR10 for average coffee worth the view?) We spent the afternoon hoofing it around Central Paris, hitting most of the sights on the west side. We capped it off with some crepes before heading to the hotel to meet up with Ken and Lindsay. (France is not good for our health – we eat way too many pastries and crepes.)

We had a lovely dinner with K&L and got caught up on all their Paris adventures. They were having a great time exploring. We also had some fun discussions about the US Presidential primaries.

On Saturday morning, John went to the Louvre with his parents. They wisely took tours once inside which showed them the highlights of the massive museum and gave some explanation of the art (helping with John’s non-existent art appreciation). The highlight for him was learning how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I went to the Louvre several years ago, so on my sister’s recommendation I took a train to the Chateau of Versailles. The massive palace and the huge gardens really were impressive. There is a large silver collection in Louis the XIV’s state apartments of the palace, several pieces of which came from Rosenburg Castle in Copenhagen, which we’ve been to.

With precision timing, we all met back up in front of the Louvre in the early afternoon and walked east along the river to see Notre Dame Cathedral. The Parisian buildings along the way were equally interesting to look at. From there we split up; Lindsay went to a decorative arts museum and Ken went back to the Louvre. John and I wanted to check out the exhibit everyone was lined up for at the Grand Palace. We looked in the window and figured it was some sort of light show/exhibit. It turned out to be a large exhibit on trains, sponsored by the national rail company. The French seemed fascinated - we weren’t. A fashion show of French rail uniforms throughout the decades? No thanks. The most interesting part was that you could go into old trains, but there was an hour line up for each one, so we skipped that. Then John got yelled at by a security guard when he knocked over a barrier while trying to take a picture, and was told “This is not your home”. Great. We left. Now if the exhibit had been airplanes and airports, John would have been there all weekend.

Later on we walked through Place Vendome, a ritzy square where I can picture Posh Spice et al congreting at fashion week. Near the grand Opera House we found a quaint piano bar and had some drinks and French Onion Soup.

We finished the night off by going to see the Eiffel tower lit up. On the way, we had one of our funniest/embarrassing tourist moments to date. At the piano bar, John pulled out his pocket Metro guide and figured out the trains we needed to take and where to connect, to get from the Opera House to Trocadero. Once in the station, we double checked our route by consulting a large metro map on the platform wall. We were all staring at it, loudly trying to figure out where we were. We could see the green line we needed to be on, but the station names were all different. Just as we were about to give up thinking we were at the wrong station, a French woman took pity on us and managed to explain to us in French that we were looking at an advertisement, not the Metro map! We were so embarrassed but we sure got a good laugh about it. We were all chuckling, including the kind French lady, all the way to our connecting stop.

K&L of course got an early start on Sunday and they were out exploring a huge, intricate garden in Bercy. We rolled out of bed a few hours later and walked through the garden ourselves, and then along the river. It was nice and sunny so we went back into Central Paris to see some of the sights one more time before catching the train back to London.

Thanks for the fun weekend K&L and thanks to all John’s family for coming to visit us over Christmas. It was great having you here.

Scroll down for Portugal’s blog. Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/weatherills/sets/

Albufeira, Portugal

After a lovely Christmas in London with John’s parents (Ken and Lindsay), grandma (Pat), uncle (Trev) and our Aussie friends Andrew and Jess, John left with his family VERY early on Boxing Day to fly to Portugal. They flew into Faro on the southwest coast of the country and did a short drive into the Algarve to Albufeira and our villas. They were busy the first few days exploring the towns in the area and walking the local beaches. After working those few days, I gratefully joined everyone on the 29th.

It was beautifully sunny every day of our trip. The sun high in the sky beating down on us felt so good after a few dark months in London. It wasn’t beach weather but we usually stripped down to t-shirts by mid afternoon with highs of 16 or 17. It really cooled off at nights though.

John picked me up at Faro airport and took me straight to the old Moorish capital of Silves where we met his family for lunch. Silves had a Moorish fortress and a busy food market. As we have said before, we love traveling in the winter. One of the perks is that the locals venture out and you can see more of what life is like when a place when it isn’t overrun with tourists. Locals were getting their food from the market and wandering through the streets at Silves. They all had their winter coats on, while we foolish tourists were in t-shirts. We all enjoyed a huge lunch in Silves of local fish and Portuguese chicken.

We were staying in villas in a golf resort. Our apartment had balcony facing the south sun, overlooking a pool and palm and cork trees. We spent our mornings there drinking coffee and reading. We felt quite at home in our villas, making and eating dinners, and playing Cribbage and Pentago. We also got our first Bridge lesson.

The small part of Portugal that we saw was similar to neighbouring southern Spain; the inland was less rugged and picturesque but the coast made up for it. The beaches and cliffs were stunning. On my second day there John, Ken, Pat and I went to the southwesterly tip of the country. We ate lunch on the sunny patio of a restaurant overlooking a beautiful beach and cliffs (big highlight of the trip). We drove along the cliffs, past the surfer vans and the big fortress. We stopped at one the lighthouses and admired the sheer drop to the water below. The cliffs and surge of the ocean took my breath away, not to mention the fishermen perched precariously on the edges, tied to the rocks and casting down to the water.

On the last day of 2007 (Happy Birthday Sarah!), John and I drove inland to the cute town of Alte. We walked to a waterfall that John’s family had discovered earlier, explored the town and then enjoyed a coffee on a terrace overlooking Alte’s valley. We tried a local delicacy, which looked like a tasty Beaver Tail style pastry. It disappointingly turned out to be a sweet potato concoction. We should have gone for the Portuguese tart. Later in the afternoon we hit some balls at the driving range at our resort. Much to John’s chagrin, they wouldn’t let us on the course because we didn’t have golf shoes.

We started the New Year’s celebration with drinks and appies at Pat’s villa and then we walked to our restaurant for dinner. Chef Chico and his family did not disappoint; the meal was excellent and great value. We finished the low key evening back at the villa where we tried out the fire place. We were told it might work – it didn’t and we smoked ourselves out (but noted that no fire/smoke alarms went off. Safety first in Portugal). Trev and his girlfriend where the only young ones at heart; they headed into Albufeira along with thousands of others for what we heard was an excellent fire works show. We watched the top of it from where we were and watched some of the spectacular London ones on TV.

We were happy to have a fairly mellow evening as we left for London early on the 1st. It was a nice, slower paced, relaxing trip to end off the year, and it was wonderful to share it with the family. Thank you to John’s colleague Octavio for providing us with lots of tips on his home region. Scroll down for Christmas in London blog. Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/weatherills/sets/

Christmas in London

We had a busy December after getting back from Prague.

John has a new InterVISTAS colleague in the UK; Ian and his wife Sarah, who joined us in Prague and live in Bristol. So for the InterVISTAS-EU Christmas party, John and I went to Bristol and we all went out for dinner at a bangers and mash restaurant (very English). We stayed overnight with Ian and Sarah and they toured us around Bristol the next day. Parts of the city are really beautiful and grand. It is on a breathtaking gorge and the old buildings took me back 100 years. Where were the horse drawn carriages and men in top hats? We also went to the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum and learned all about the good and bad of Britain taking over the world.

We froze our butts off playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament on Sunday the 9th, and then counteracted any benefits of the physical activity a week later with a big Christmas lunch with the team.John’s parents arrived on Dec 14th and his grandma and uncle four days later. They roamed around London and England at record pace. We have managed to cross a few London things off our list with them – the Natural History Museum, a historical walking tour of the square mile of the London City and the Museum of London.

A highlight for me was on Dec 23rd when Jess, Lindsay (John’s mom) and I went to St Paul’s Cathedral for a carol service. It was an incredible experience. The Cathedral is so impressive but not excessive. We lucked out and got seats up in a gallery so we could over look the proceedings. The boys choir paraded through in their traditional robes and sang with heavenly voices. It certainly wasn’t like carol services I had been to in the past; it was much more traditional. The carols were ancient, the program quoted composition dates hundreds of years old. The only carol we knew Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I knew the words to O Little Town of Bethlehem but the music was from the 1500s.

On Christmas Eve day, John’s parents and grandma kindly got to work for me in the kitchen – coffee cake, nuts and bolts, xmas dinner prep, xmas eve dinner. Thank you! What a treat!On Christmas morning we opened our stockings, beautifully made by John’s grandma, and ate a hearty breakfast. John’s family did a lot of shopping at the London markets and they found some really lovely gifts – I was impressed by what they found. Our friends Andrew and Jess brought the turkey over midday and we all went for a walk through the local parks. We spent the afternoon reading, playing games and visiting and then sat down for some more eating.

Thank you to all our guests for making it a special day. I was exhausted by the end of the day, and I had lots of food help. I have much more appreciation for all of our family members who have put on Christmas in the past.
John and his family were off early on Boxing Day to catch their flight to Portugal. I worked a few extra days and joining them on Saturday.

Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/weatherills/sets/

Prague, Czech Republic

After going to the mother of all Christmas markets in Vienna last year, we decided to see what Prague had to offer this year. Prague's been on our to do list since we got to Europe, so we took a long weekend and checked out the city with Andrew & Jess and Ian & Sarah. Unfortunately Leah was pretty sick for the entire weekend, so she is getting a break from blog writing...

So the logistics planning for this particular trip turned out to be exceptional. We flew out of London City airport, which is a painless tube ride from Ealing, and more importantly, security processing takes about 12 seconds. LCY is pretty much a business airport to serve Canary Wharf and the City, so it was extra quick on Saturday morning. We flew on Swiss Air, which meant being treated far more humanely than we're used to with Ryanair & Co. Assigned seats, free beer and Swiss chocolates, what more could you ask for?

We arrived in Prague on Saturday evening and took the metro to the Hotel City Bell, which was a great find by Jess - huge rooms, a good buffet breakfast and walking distance to the city center. We dropped our bags and met up with Ian & Sarah at the pub across the street, and set about reducing our APB (average price per beer). The Czech Republic brews some excellent beer, and pints are about $1.75, compared to $6.50+ in London.

We headed over to the Christmas markets, which were closed for the evening except for the grog stand. We didn't know what grog was, but decided that everyone had to have one (except Sarah, who's pregnant). Turns out she was the lucky one. Grog is rum & hot water, and it's pretty nasty. We all gave up after a few sips, except Andrew, who easily won Grog. Andrew found us a great restaurant for dinner, we had a night cap at the pub next to the hotel, and then hit the sack.

Sunday we took a 4-hour(!) walking tour around Prague. The city is quite beautiful, particularly the architecture, and the Old Town is in excellent shape. The highlight of the tour was probably the guide, a student-looking guy whose habit of long-winded explanations was pleasantly offset by his general wierdness. His best move was reciting some obscure fact about Prague, and then saying "Yessss" with an arm pump as if he's just scored in sudden death overtime. "Czechs became disenchanted with the church after the 30 Years War, so we're mostly athiest now. Yessss" (arm pump). "Corpses legally belong to the City of Prague, so we can take your organs without your consent. Yessss" (arm pump). We spent our 20 minute lunch break at a traditional Czech restaurant called McDonald's, and then continued the tour up to Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral, which look down over the city.

We were pretty well frozen by the end of the tour, so we found a cafe in Wenceslas Square to warm up with a coffee. We then headed in to the Old Town Square to check out the Christmas market. It was absolutely packed, and didn't really have the same authentic types of crafts as in Vienna, but it was a really nice atmosphere. We picked up a couple of things, and tried the rolled up sugared bread (called trdelnik we think), before heading for dinner. Dinner was traditional Czech dumplings with meat, sauce, cranberries & cream. After dinner we picked up a few beers at the grocery store and played cards back at the hotel, where Ian destroyed us in his first ever game of Diminishing Whist.

Monday morning we went to the Museum of Communism, one of the attractions that didn't get a "skip it" from Arm Pump the tour guide. I thought this museum was actually really interesting, but I think my travel companions were less impressed. Favourite facts: a) the Prague memorial to Stalin took about 300,000 person days to build in 1955 before being demolished in 1962 after a collective change of heart towards Stalin, and b) the entire national hockey team was tried and imprisoned after the communist takeover (for what exactly, I'm not sure)...

Ian & Sarah had to head back to Bristol, so the rest of us had a leisurely lunch and a final cruise through the Christmas markets. We didn't get any snow unfortunately, but the rain held off until we were enroute to the airport. A few more Swiss chocolates later and we were back in London. All in all a successful trip - beautiful city and great company!

Bled, Slovenia

We still love Slovenia! We went to Slovenia the first time about a year ago and we wanted to go back so we could explore the Lake Bled area and the national park in the Julian Alps. Slovenia is “mini-Europe”. It has beaches on the Adriatic, old castles, historic cities, beautiful churches, caves, and the Alps, all crammed into its tiny borders, and the bonus is that it is still relatively undiscovered and great value for money.

We arrived midday Friday the 9th, and while John had a meeting with the airport I got my weekly Economist reading out of the way and continued devouring The Wolf of the Plains (a great new book about Genghis Khan).

We got to our destination of Bled later in the afternoon. Lake Bled has an island with a church on it and a castle high up on a cliffs of its shore. John found us this great hotel, outside of the town and right on the lake. We had a view of the castle, the church and all the rowers skimming across the water. The hotel was really good – clean, neat atmosphere and delicious local food. Friday evening we bundled up and walked around the lake. That worked up our appetites for a dinner of local food and then we hit the sack very early.

We spent Saturday exploring different sights in the national park, which consumes the northwest corner of the country. My friend Barb was the one that originally recommended hiking in Slovenia. First we went to the famous gorge, but unfortunately, the trail was closed, so we weren’t able to see much of it. The trail was mostly made up of boardwalks along the gorge walls but they were damaged in a big storm.

We took on a tiny gravel road through the park (non stop beautiful scenery) to a waterfall, which we hiked up to, and then we picnicked at the base of some stunning mountains. By mid afternoon, we were at the north end of the park and we thought we would take the only road that went across the park. It looked like a quick cut through, but our map didn’t show elevation. We started to go up and up and then we came across a sign that told us about the road. It is called the “Russian Road” as it was built by Russian prisoners of war in 1916. It goes through a very high mountain pass and it is closed during the winter. The sign advised of the road’s 50 hairpin turns (switchbacks), 25 on either side of the pass. The road, the turns and the spectacular mountain scenery took our breath away. So did the cold air and snow when we got out of the car at the top of the pass. The route certainly exceeded our expectations!

By the time we got to the bottom of the pass, the sun was setting. We flipped a coin to decide our route back to Bled, either around the north end or south end of the park (going back over the Russian Road was not considered). We chose the north route which took us through Italy. The Italian border crossing was really cool. It was at the top of another pass, lower than the Russian Road one, and it had fortresses in ruins on either side. We eventually made it back to our cozy hotel in Bled, where we enjoyed another great dinner and early to bed.

On Sunday, we drove to Bohinj Lake, another beautiful sight. We had the urge to do a bit more physical activity than the day before so we walked around the lake which took about 2.5 hours. The sun was shining, the lake was like a mirror, the air was crisp and the ground was covered in autumn leaves to kick our way through. At the end of the walk, we had a coffee on a café patio over looking the lake.

Driving to the airport on Sunday afternoon, we were talking about how it was such a perfect weekend -- fresh air, amazing scenery, long sleeps, yummy food, good value, and decent flight times. Of course, we jinxed ourselves and our flight was four hours late leaving. Aside from that, it was such a lovely weekend getting back to nature. Slovenia is definitely worth a visit!

Normandy, France

Our latest long weekend away (Nov 2-4) was a patriotic remembrance trip to the Normandy and Picardie regions of France: we visited Canadian World War I and II Memorials. The weekend objective was to cram in as much war history and pastry as possible.

We switched things up a bit transport wise and, we took an overnight ferry over to France, departing from Portsmouth to Caen. After a drink at the bar, we settled into our little cabin. Everything was compact; the upper bunk where I slept pulled out of the ceiling, but we had a private bathroom and shower.

John is ever the good driver, and once in France, he easily transitioned to driving on the right side of the road but from the right side of our English car. We drove to Deauville, a summer beach town for Parisians where John had a business meeting with the airport. The town had some amazing castle like houses. With all those roof angles, we kept thinking that they made construction much more difficult than it needed to be.

We drove south along the coast to Courseulles Sur Mer, better known to Canadians as Juno Beach, where the Canadian troops landed on D-Day to start the battle of Normandy. In the new historic centre on the beach, we learned about the invasion: the preparation, the strategy, how they learned from mistakes at Dieppe, the luck, the successes, the casualties. We learned about how the troops advanced farther into Europe and we gained appreciation for how “all consuming” the war was back in Canada. The little details and the personal stories hit home and made history come to life.

After Juno, we drove further south to the American cemetery at Ohama Beach, where about half of the American troops landed. The cemetery is in a stunning location overlooking the cliffs and the beach, and the sight of 11,000 white crosses marking graves is powerful.

Saturday was our “non war” day. We grabbed some croissants and coffee and started our drive up to the town of Arras. We stopped midday in the city of Rouen, which was where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. We explored the town centre, which is home to several churches, a Cathedral and wall to wall half timbered buildings.

It was dark when we arrived in Arras and our first impressions that it was a bleak and industrial city. But, once we navigated our way to the centre of town, we were pleasantly surprised to find two large squares buzzing with activity and surrounded by well restored historical buildings. Our hotel was right on the main square.

The night before in Deauville, we got ripped off with a tourist meal for dinner. Feeling very upset about this rookie travel mistake, we bought a baguette, cheese, meat, tomatoes and olives and enjoyed a homemade dinner in our hotel room. We also bought four bottles of wine and beer because it was so cheap, and played a few games of crib.

Sunday we went to Vimy Ridge for the Canadian Remembrance Day ceremony. The formal ceremony took place in front of the impressive monument, with the bugle and bagpipes, veterans and dignitaries and laying of wreaths. Restoration of the monument was completed in the Spring of 2007, in time for the 90th year anniversary of the battle that took place on the ridge, when four Canadian divisions working together for the first time were successful in taking the ridge. Interesting fact - Hitler was at the inauguration of the Vimy Memorial in 1936. During WWII, he stationed guards at the site to protect it.

The Vimy memorial is 110 acres of land that the French gifted to Canada after WWI, and includes the memorial itself, two cemeteries, the trenches and tunnels, a museum and lots of forest. It is a beautiful plot of land with a great view and lots of maple tress. The ground is covered in bumps and craters from all the trenches and explosions. It looks like a mogul course on a ski hill. You can’t walk on most of it due to un-detonated explosives.

Canadian University students work at the site and run tours/provide info. We started talking to a student from Steinbach and he gave us a personal tour of the trenches – amazing that the Canadian and German front lines were only 25 metres apart. Trench warfare sounded grim but the tactics used were very interesting. We were able to tour the ten kms of tunnels run that under the Canadian trenches, which were used to bring troops to the front for the battle of Vimy.

After Vimy, we drove up to Calais and then took the quick ferry back over to England. My brief descriptions of the history of the events don’t do them justice. To visit these sites and learn more about what happened in the Wars was a very powerful experience. We really recommend it.

Venice, Italy

A year after doing our first weekend trip, to Carcassonne, France, we did our first day trip to Europe, to Venice. John found Ryanair flights for 4 pence all in (about 10 cents), so how could we not go? We took the first flight out in the morning and the last flight home at night.

It was such a treat to suddenly find myself, in the middle of the week when we would have normally been working, in a vaporetta (transit boat) going down the Grand Canal. The sun was shining, the water was sparkling and the buildings were stunning! I was pleasantly surprised by the magical feel to the city. What they say about Venice is true.

We cruised down the Grand Canal taking in all the classic Venice sights. We ended up at Piazza San Marco, where we weaved our way through the crowds of people and pigeons, past the Doge’s palace and into the Basilica. The Basilica’s ceiling was covered in gold but what we found most fascinating was the floor. It was covered in intricate stone mosaics but due to subsidence it was extremely wavy. Next, we went up the bell tower which gave us a great view of the city and water.

To see as much of the city as possible we followed parts of three walking tours in our guide book. We walked along the big canals, through back streets and squares, past docks with gondolas departing full of passengers, into the shopping districts, and over big bridges and quaint bridges.

We sat at a café in a sunny square and enjoyed bicerin, a Venetian specialty drink of coffee, chocolate and very rich thick cream. The bill was EUR 13, which is cheaper than if we had had them in Piazza San Marco. We went to the old Jewish ghetto which used to house 4,000 people on an island the space of two city blocks. The buildings were the same height as buildings in the rest of the city but they had extra stories crammed into them. About four hours after the bicerin, we finally had enough room in our bellies for some Italian gelato. We strolled to the end of a canal with our gelato and sat and watched the sun set (how romantic). After stopping for a glass of prosecco at a bar we headed back to the Grand Canal and saw Venice lit up at night.

We had a lovely day in the magical city of Venice and we got everything done that we wanted to do – pics are posted on the website. The one day timing was perfect and it prevented us from spending an crazy amount of money, ‘cause Venice ain’t cheap baby!