France 2013

Do you know how to tell you are in Orleans, France instead of New Orleans, USA?  Taste the bread! The bread in France is heavenly and we enjoyed every piece.

We went to France for about a week in October. We rented a car and drove down to the Loire Valley and stayed in Orleans (famous for Joan of Arc). We didn't see a single thing about Joan. We spent our time roaming the countryside, instead. It is a good thing we rented a GPS, too, or we would have never found anything.

 This is the first (and only!) chateau we visited. The Chateau de Checonceau is considered possibly the most popular in all of France. We were lucky that this wasn't a holiday or summer time. The grounds and gardens were very nice and there were people, but no crowds. We ate lunch in the self-serve cafeteria since the restaurant was completely booked. The French take their food and restaurants very seriously. Apparently, a lot of people drove out here just to eat lunch! We had delicious quiche. It was really excellent!

 The chateau is built out over the River Cher. It looks sort of like it is built on a bridge, but it still had a complete basement and four floors up. The kitchens were in the bottom so the servants ran up and down stairs a lot. The kitchen and storage rooms took up the entire basement area. They were huge.

 This portrait of Louis XIV hangs in the Louis XIV Drawing Room. The room gets its name because he visited here exactly one time in 1650. Jim took about twenty pictures of it since this is in the textbook he teaches World History from. The textbook reproduction is pretty bad.

This is the Five Queens' Bedroom. It is named this because there were actually five different queens who used it at five different times. We wonder if it was once the "Three Queens' Bedroom"?

 This is the Cathedral at Vendome. We took a walk up to the castle and this is the view looking back down to the town.

 This is what is left of the Castle at Vendome. It has obviously fallen into disrepair over the last 600 odd years. It had some truly wonderful gardens, though. There was a flush toilet up in one of the watchtowers for the tourists!

 This is the Cathedral at Chartres. It is considered the best cathedral in France. It looks big on the outside and is unbelievably huge on the inside. It is impossible to actually take pictures of it.

Here is the one everyone wants to see: Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The problem was that everyone wants to see it. We were there on an off-season on an off-day and there were buckets of people everywhere. It must be frustrating to try to attend the Cathedral. They were holding Mass while we went through and the tourist stream doesn't even slow down. They aren't disrespectful; there are just too many people. 

 This is why Notre Dame got to be so famous. The so-called "flying buttress" allowed the medieval builders to make the walls higher and the windows bigger than ever before.

 Even here on the backside of the church, you can see that the outside walls are pretty because of the buttresses and decorations.

 This is the oldest rose window in the church. The windows have survived hundreds of years of pollution, wars and other disasters.

We had to cross the street and click in the middle of the Champs d'Elysees to take this picture of the Arch de Triomphe. This whole area used to be pretty junky and it is now the premier shopping street in Paris.

 There were so many tourists you almost couldn't see the monuments. If you zoom the picture, you will see that the entire top of the Arch is covered with them!

 Trivia question: What color is the Eiffel Tower?
Answer: When it was built, a special paint in "Eiffel Tower Brown" was mixed and the color has been used ever since. Growing up, you only see black and white photos and assume it is black. It is actually a very pleasant color.

 When you get close enough, you start to see how intricately decorated the Tower actually is.

 The elevators go all the way up and much of the structure is, of course, under renovation.

This is the Paris you will see in all the spy movies! Just after we got back, The Bourne Identity was on TV. If you want to see a lot of Paris, watch the movie!

Heidelberg Aug 2013

On our way from Seattle to Karachi (back to work!) we stopped over in Heidelberg, Germany for a couple of days. Jim had visited the place several time 40 years ago when he was in the Army.

This is the world-famous Heidelberg Castle (Heidelberger Schloss) as seen from the Neckar River. As you can see, Germany is working hard on its tourism by cleaning, repairing and upgrading a number of its attractions. 

This is the view looking down to the river and the Old Bridge from the castle. You ride a funicular railway up to the castle (or you can walk).

 

This is the Old Bridge over the Neckar River. The bridge and the river represent two of the four things you are supposed to see here. The other two are the castle and the Old Town.

We didn't take a picture of it, but the most unique tourist attraction listed was an extremely ugly bronze statue of a monkey on one end of this bridge. It was designed so you could stick your head up in it and have your picture taken. We didn't do that, though it was kind of fun watching the tourists lining up to do it. 

 

This is old town Heidelberg. The city was famous for its Universities and the "schlagende Vereine" (fighting fraternities). Part of their appeal was they would fight duels with blunt swords and face masks. If you did it right, you got a scar on your cheek (Heidelberg scar). No fights today; just tourists.

 

Inside the castle was the Pharmacy Museum. We like to visit small, unique museums. This one was a lot of fun with lots of herbs, scales, jars, bottles and stuff. Thank goodness for modern medicine!

 

We also found and visited the German Packaging Museum in the middle of the downtown pedestrian zone. The most interesting thing was the concept that people buy the package; not the product. This might seem odd until you start looking at a bottle of shampoo and realize that the package is what attracted you; not the contents. People who sell perfume have it even tougher. Their product literally disappears into thin air when you use it!

 

Heidelberg is definitely worth a visit if you are touring Germany!

Vancouver June 2013

We visited Vancouver, British Columbia, for three days to visit a former student. He is a Junior at the University of British Columbia.

We always enjoy visiting Canada and plan to keep going back.

Our trip started at the beautifully renovated King Street AMTRAK Station in Seattle. The building was allowed to deteriorate quite a bit during the '60s and '70s. They put in a dropped acoustic ceiling and all of the carved plaster was painted and wall boarded over.

If you live near enough, the station is actually worth a trip to visit. It reminds you of the grand old days of coast to coast luxury trains.

This is the wall clock in the station. If you have been on the Seattle Clock Tour, be sure to go back for this one.

This was a common sight from the train traveling north. There was a good minus tide and it was the end of the school year. Every elementary and pre-school kid was on the beach in spite of the cloudy weather!

The view from our room in the Sylvia Hotel included this Flag Park.

All large cities now seem to have some kind of Farmers' Market. Vancouver is no exception. The market here is on Granville Island and is definitely worth a trip. Lots of shopping, tourists and food.

 

 

A tourist favorite is to go visit Gastown. It was called "gastown" because of Gassy Jack, a local celebrity seaman. You have to remember that "gassy" at the time had nothing to do with a gastrointestinal upset and a lot to do with the fact that he drank a lot.

This is a picture of the genuine, fully functioning, steam-powered clock in Gastown. The clock has been moved and renovated a couple of times and is once again in need of repair. The clock "chimes" with steam whistles and the steam power makes the clock works wear out quite quickly. Imaging living in a steam bath all your life!

If you went to the Vancouver Expo in 1986, you saw Canadian Place. This is now a Convention Center on the waterfront. The thing in the center of the photo is the convention center. The thing on the left that looks like a hotel is one of the two cruise ships in the picture. They are both on the Alaska Cruise route and come up from Seattle and make their first stop in Vancouver. The traffic for incoming passengers was really bad. There was an extra Mountie directing taxi traffic for passengers to get to the boats.

The view from Canadian Place is lovely. You can obviously catch a float plane to just about anywhere from here. Dinner cruise boats are also common.

We always try to visit small, unusual museums. This one qualified; it just wasn't open. They were having a meeting of the board of the local golf club and the museum was closed to outsiders.

We didn't visit the museum, but we got to go play pitch'n'putt in Stanley Park. Lovely course and a lot of fun. Jim got to meet a local skunk. He gave a friendly wave of his tail and left.

This is sunset from Stanley Park near our hotel.

Baden Baden, Germany

On our trip home for the summer, we stopped in world-famous Baden Baden in Germany. The most recommended thing to see or do there is to walk along the Lichtentaler Alle. It is beautiful park along a creek. It actually is heavily used and really a beautiful and relaxing area to walk, jog or bike.

 

All of Germany was in the news at the time because of the spring floods. We kept seeing local people with cameras taking pictures of the creek. This photo shows a tree which is usually well above the water level. As you can see, the creek was very high. In late summer, the creek is less than a foot deep.

 

Crossing the creek from the walking path to the other side are several very decorative bridges. They go to the expensive spa hotels and exclusive neighborhoods. We are sure that many weddings are photographed along the creek and on the bridges.

 

This is the actual spa we went to. There are three large, well known spas in this town dedicated to spas and hot springs. We went to the Caracalla Spa and spent a couple of hours wandering the many pools and waterfalls. We skipped the "clothing optional" solarium!

We went up on top of the Merkur (hill next to town) by riding the Bergbahn (cable railway).

 

This was a group of tourists being lectured while a group of bicyclists went by. Everyone was soooo polite!

 

This is Baden Baden from the top of the Merkur. We were actually a long way up.

 

One of the tourist sites is the house where Johannes Brahms rented two rooms. He was there on and off for many years. He was a working, travelling virtuoso and composer and so he didn't actually stay in one place for very long. He always came back to Baden Baden, however. He claimed he did his best work here.

The other reason he kept coming back to Baden Baden was Clara Schumann. He was obviously in love with the widow, but they never married. This is a birthday present he gave her. It is the original first couple of lines to what is now known as "Brahm's Lullaby".

 

We didn't just stay in Baden Baden! Off to Triberg. Triberg is a small town about one hour by train south into the Black Forest. You can't visit the Black Forest without seeing cuckoo clocks! Uli's workshop is famous for his hand crafted clocks. He always makes the top-ten list of things to see in this part of the Black Forest.

 

Here is his major competitor: The House of 1000 Clocks. They are equally famous, but NOT for hand-crafted workmanship.

 

This display is a German joke. The name of the town is "Triberg" and if you say it correctly and leave off the last letter, it mean "three bears". You see little groups of bears in threes all over town.

This is the Black Forest museum. It perfectly fit our "small museum" category. They always have fun, different and unusual items. You would not believe the number of clocks, hurdy-gurdys and semi-precious stones and rocks on display.

 

Triberg's "big" attraction is the "highest waterfall in Germany". If you are thinking Angel Falls or Niagra, you will be very disappointed. They didn't claim the waterfall was in a single drop!

 

The waterfalls aren't huge, but they are truly beautiful.

 

This is what the historic Black Forest looked like. Imagine it on a foggy or cloudy day as you march with the Roman Legions which were slaughtered here about 2000 years ago.

 

We took the church walk to the Pilgrimage Church.

 

This church was actually very large and kind of jumps out at you from behind a tree.

 

The inside is quite beautiful.

 

The German lunch is always delicious! We like to go to Germany on our way home for the "three B's". Most people think of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. We think of Bier, Brot und Bratwurst!