Chartres, Bordeaux, Andorra, and into Spain

Our departure from Paris involved a bus ride out to Charles de Gaulle Airport followed by a rental car pickup and then a couple of hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic getting out of Dodge.  It was the first day of the Paris Air Show (50th Anniversary) and the place was jammed with traffic.  Eventually we hit clear sailing on the interstate (equivalent) and before too long we were in Chartres.  

Chartres is home to the Chartres Cathedral.  The cathedral is considered one of the most architecturally important building of it's era and also offers an amazing array of stained glass.  The cathedral is absolutely huge.  I am not sure about the interior dimensions, but I would say the ceiling is conservatively well over 100 feet in height.  

Our plan post-Paris was to make our way south towards the wine country of Bordeaux. We hoped to visit some vineyards and maybe do some biking.  However, the rain was relentless.  We camped in Bordeaux and after two days of packing up wet tents, we were moving on to dryer pastures.  The weather appeared to be better south of the Pyrenees in Spain, so that is where we headed.

Near the southern border of France, we saw a sign for Carcassonne.  It triggered a long-forgotten memory for me of having been to Carcassonne in 1989.  I recalled that it was a medieval walled city and well worth the visit.  We headed that way and actually arrived to a rain-free zone in southern France.  The ancient walled city goes back 2500 years in history.  We found a terrific campground within walking distance of the walls.  Camping has been our saving grace here in western Europe. We toted these tents around since South Africa and did not use them at all for the longest time.  However, Europe is super pricey and the tents have allowed us to stay on budget.

Speaking of budgets.  Here comes a little bit of bragging:  we made it through a week in Paris with an apartment in the first arrondissement for $275/day for 5 people. That includes seeing all of the major sites and usually 2-3 of those sites per day.  It was not easy.  We don't have a lot to report from Paris on the various quaint cafes scattered around the city. We ate at the grocery store. Just like we do at home. 

Next we crossed the Pyrenees Mountains that separate France from Spain and we stayed two nights in the principality of Andorra.  Andorra is a bit of a novelty for passport stamp collectors - much like Lichtenstein. It measures 470 square km so it is similar in size to Ouray County.  The entire country is populated in a narrow valley high in the mountains. It looks as if it is a major ski destination.  Lots of higher end developments ala Aspen or Vail.  We enjoyed some fine weather there and did a nice hike up in the mountains.  Also, it seems that most of the campgrounds in Europe have concrete (outside) ping pong tables. So we bought paddles and balls and have been ponging it up on a regular basis.  A nice addition to our daily routine. 

We left Andorra a few days ago and after a windy, circuitous drive we ended up in NE Spain on the Costa Brava.  We passed though a town called Sant Joan de les Abadesses, which we concluded was honoring Joanie as Saint Joanie of the Bad Asses.  Nice to be recognized.

Yesterday, we were wrapping up a long day in the car when we stumbled upon a great find: Sigüenza.  Joanie had predicted earlier that day that we would find a cool village. She was right.  We were just trying to make miles towards Segovia and we ran into Sigüenza in the Guadalajara province.  What a neat place.  Population of around 5000.  Great looking castle on the high point in town as well as a spectacular cathedral.  No campground, but we found and affordable hotel.  We rented bikes today and cruised around the neighboring countryside.  Sigüenza has the classic narrow cobble-stone streets and seemingly very few tourists.  We are glad to be here.  

Carcassonne at night

Carcassonne, France

Stained glass at Chartres Cathedral

Chartres Cathedral

Pyrenees Mountains

Joanie of the Bad Asses

Riding bikes in Sigüenza, Spain

Castle at Sigüenza

Paris post from Audrey

The Catacombs were made at the end of the 18th century! The Paris Catacombs are the world's largest Necropolis. Bones from all the city's cemeteries would be stored in limestone quarries! At the start of the 19th century, the Paris Catacombs were open to the public. Some visitors included, Francis I of Austria, who went in 1814, and Napoleon III, who visited in 1860 with his son. 

 The Vincennes castle started out as a hunting lodge built by the Capetian Monarchs in the 12th century. At the start of the Hundred Year's War, John the II initiated work on a keep close by, which his son, Charles V completed about 1370. At the time of Charles V death, the construction of the Holy Chapel had just begun. Further building work marked Louis XIV's sporadic presence (1643-1715) before he finally settled in Versailles.

Audrey 

Arc de Triomphe

Eiffel Tower

Hall of Mirrors - Versailles Palace

Sacre Coeur

Versailles

Video compilation: Prague to Paris

Oui, Oui...Paris! Day(s) 1-3

We are in Paris!!!!!!! It is so amazing! We have been here for 3 whole days and we have done a TON! I guess I’ll start from the very beginning…

We drove from the Burgundy area of France starting at 6:50 AM. It took about 3 hours driving time to get to Charles De Gaulle aeroport. It took a little while to get our rental car dropped off, find out the city bus beta, wait for the bus, and drive into the city. We got dropped off at the Paris Opera. It is an amazing building! The roof is decorated with golden statues and under each statue is an engraved French word. For example, they have the English translations of choreography, singing (I think), and music. I was in awe.

After we got settled in to our apartment, we decided to get an activity in and go to the catacombs. The walk there took about an hour and we were able to spot Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Musée D’Orsay from far away. When we thought we were in the area, we started looking around. My mom spotted a line in front of something and pointed it out. But my dad said the iPad mapping function was indicating differently. So we walked around for about 5 minutes trying to find it. Well, apparently, the iPad was disoriented because that line was for the catacombs! But they closed at five so we still had plenty of time. Well when we got there, the line was gone and the gates were closed. Then we looked at the sign a little closer and realized that the last admission was at 4! We got there at 4:03. So everyone was pretty annoyed. We took the Metro back. And that completed our first partial day in Paris.

The next day, we did three museums: the Rodin museum, Napoleon’s Tomb at the Invalides, and the Musée D’Orsay.

The Rodin museum was all about Augustus Rodin. His most famous work of art is the Thinker. Most of his sculptures are made out of bronze. Some other famous sculptures of his are the Three Shades, and the Gates to Hell. The Gates to Hell consists of most of his sculptures miniaturized on a double-door feature.

Napoleon's Tomb was very... big. It was a fancy trapezoidal design made out of polished stone. The actual sarcophagus was surrounded by colossal angel statues. Each of the angels was holding something: a trumpet, a feather, a lyre, a book. I think that there were twelve of them. You first looked at the tomb from an encompassing balcony above it. But then you could go down to the crypt and look at it close up. This museum also doubled as the Musée L'Armée. There was something like 4 floors of dioramas of French rifles, battles, uniforms, saddles, horses (fake), etc.. In the basement was an exhibit on Charles DeGaulle . The Ch. D.G part of the museum was very dark and hi-tech. what I mean by that is you got a free audio guide that automatically started to play once you got in the area of the film/timeline. Well I don't think it was working as well as intended. Once you reached an area, you had to stay in one place or else your audio guide would go to a different recording. The army section was pretty much just more and more of the same stuff. It was not very interesting to me.

The Musée D'Orsay is located in the old train station. There are many famous masterpieces there such as Starry Night by Van Gogh, Whistler's Mother by Whistler, and a mini replica of the Statue of Liberty. There are also some of Rodin's plaster molds. It was very cool.

I should probably just let you digest that before we give you more material....

-Kenzi

Audrey at Mona Lisa, Louvre Museum

Chateau St Vincennes

Frederick Chopin's gravesite

Napoleon's apartment. Louvre

Rock in the catacombs

Rodin's Thinker

Stained Glass at Ste Chapelle

Venus de Milo, Louvre Museum

Swiss Alps to France

We continued to enjoy our stay in the Goms Valley for 4 nights.  Following a day of hiking, we rented bikes and went on a 50km ride up through a high valley that feeds the Goms Valley.  We were on paved dedicated bike trails for 3/4 of the ride. If only we had something like that between Ouray and Ridgway...

We never did get to Zermatt to see the Matterhorn. That's OK. We have seen plenty of pics over the years. Naturally, it would have been great to see it up close and in-person. However, it was not worth giving up a day of sunshine to be stuck in the car to go see a mountain.  Maybe next time.

Our departure from the Swiss Alps had us heading north towards Paris. We stopped in Burgundy for 2 nights in the city of Beaune. It features a neat walled 'old city' that is primarily pedestrian-only and covered in cobblestone streets.  We visited the wine museum and then did a drive through the Grand Cru vineyards.  Pinot Noir is my favorite grape and Burgundy is the area that made that grape famous.

We are now in Paris.  We have been going a million miles/hour in the City of Light and have much to report.  Expect a blog post soon from one of the kids.

Castle in Burgundy

Paraglider in Goms Valley

Swiss Alps, Goms Valley

Grand Cru grapes - the world's finest

Wine press (vintage) - Burgundy

5 countries in 48 hours

We left Prague in a driving rainstorm and it persisted through that day and into the next.  In fact, the innkeeper in Bad Abbach, Germany informed us that record rains had caused the Danube to reach 8m above normal. An all time high.  Just perusing CNN.com today, I noticed that there are flood alerts throughout Hungary along the Danube.  Suffice it to say, NE Europe has been and continues to be very, very wet.

But fear not for us, as we adjusted and escaped the liquid sunshine and have been basking in proper sunshine while scrambling around the Swiss Alps.  It has been awesome!  More on that in a moment.

Prior to crossing from Czech Republic into Germany, we made a stop in Plzen.  Any of you beer aficionados out there know the significance of Plzen?  Anyone? Buehler? 

Plzen is the home of Pilsner Urquell.  One of the Czech’s finest beer offerings to the world at large and an personal all-time favorite of mine.  I had to go. A bit of a pilgrimage, if you will.  What better thing to do on a rainy day than tour a brewery? Finishing it off with the requisite sampling room at the end.  It was a great tour and there was a certain completeness to our Czech itinerary with that final stop. Beer is after all, the national symbol of the Czech republic. 

From Plzen, we crossed into Germany and eventually pulled over in Bad Abbach.  Our objective was to get heading towards southern Bavaria.  The following day we made Füssen which is the home of Bavarian King Ludwig II’s castle, Neuschwanstein. This is the same castle that Disney used to model their animated castle. I had seen it on my own European tour in 1989, but it was great to visit it again despite the foul weather.

We still hadn’t figured out our lodging when we wrapped up the castle visit at 18:30.  We decided to cross over into Austria (5km away) and see if maybe the lodging was less expensive. Little did we know that we crossed over into some Austrian ski area and the prices for guesthouses were appalling.  After about 6 different stops, we finally found something for 50 Euros per room and it was not much to speak of (translation: shared bath).  The next day dawned clear and we had a better understanding of why the lodging was so pricey.  The scenery was fantastic. Mountains on 360 degrees. 

We drove over a high mountain pass and enjoyed really stunning views of the Austrian Alps.  Later that day we went through Lichtenstein, which was a nice tick on the countries-visited tick list.  And later still that same day we finally stopped in Switzerland in the small alpine village of Andeer. That made 4 countries in 24 hours and 5 in 48 hours.  Whew!

The weather was fair and we found a nice campground in Andeer. What a relief to be able to camp.  Without camping, Switzerland would have broken the bank.  Oddly enough, we did not originally have plans to visit Switzerland for fear of the high prices.  However, because the weather was nice we figured we should take advantage of the window of opportunity and do some hiking in the Alps.  And that has been our program for the past 4 days.  Being able to camp has made it tenable. We have enjoyed splitterlicious weather and the hiking has been absolutely superb. 

We spent 2 nights in Andeer and are now on our second night in Reckingen in the Goms Valley.  We got to Reckingen while trying to make our way towards Zermatt.  We still have yet to make Zermatt, but could not pass up on the Goms Valley as we were driving our way through here yesterday afternoon.  It was one of those deals where you are driving along with a different destination in mind and yet everything in your bones is screaming, “what do you think you are doing numbskull?  This place is off the charts spectacular! Pull over and pitch the tents!”  So we did. And it was a good decision. 

The forecast is for more bluebird skies and we are going to continue to ride this weather out in the Alps until it is time to report to our apartment reservation in Paris on 12 June. 

Berg Heil!

Austrian Alps

Pilsner Urquell world HQ

Village in the Goms Valley, Switzerland

Hiking above Andeer

Lichtenstein

Neuschwanstein from bridge

Neuschwanstein from valley floor

Prague beer festival

Scenic Lichtenstein

High alpine village above Andeer

Wow!  Bluebird skies in the Swiss Alps

Prague and the Czech Republic

Well, it is raining...again...after enjoying 6 months of pretty well uninterrupted flawless weather, we have met our Waterloo here in Prague.  Cold and rainy. Yuck. The upside is that we have a great apartment near the Old Town Square and Charles Bridge.  Prague is a terrific walking city with cobblestone pedestrian-only streets in the Old Town area and fantastic architecture.  The city was largely unaffected by World War II insofar as the architecture and as a result is a very well-preserved example of many different periods of architecture.  

The Prague Castle sits high on the hill overlooking the river and is the largest ancient castle in the world dating back to 870 AD.  We have managed to stay busy despite the foul weather, but admittedly are missing the sunshine we became so accustomed to on this trip.

Cousin Lydia joined us for the last half of our Prague stay.  She is studying in Lyon, France and her short break coincided with our Prague stay.  Pretty neat to be able to hook up with family while on this trip.  Lydia pointed out that she has yet to visit us in Ouray, but managed to see us in Prague.  

Today is our last day in Prague.  We may battle the rain and head out to the Beer Festival.  Tomorrow we pick up a rental car at the airport and have about 9 days to get to Paris for our next one-week apartment stay. The kids are really looking forward to Paris.  We will likely head south to see some of the castles in southern Germany and maybe do some hiking in the Dolomites, weather depending.  Also, Joanie has never been to Venice, Italy, so me may try to squeeze that in as well.

Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov

Charles Bridge - Prague

Jewish Quarter cemetery

King Charles peeing on the tourists

Old Town Square

Prague Castle

Prague architecture

Rock soldiering up

Wenceslas Square - Prague

with cousin Lydia on the Charles Bridge