We are home with a little help from our friends

We've are back in Philly.  A warm welcome awaited us as Joyce met us at the airport and brought some dinner and breakfast goodies so we could crash upon arrival to our place.  The lights were on and a great bowl of fruit awaited us thanks to Anna and David, who had been looking after the plants and the mail.  Jim picked up his steel guitar from Richard's house today and Miguel arrived last night with car and cat so all is now complete. We are still trying to find things since we had only lived in the new place 2 months when we left it for 3 months.  It is almost like starting anew!

We spent the last two days of our journey walking around London.  We thought we would simply be winding down but instead we ended up going to the theater and catching Bob Dylan's art exhibit at Halcyon Galleries.

London is in a festive mode and it was crowded.

We managed to take a long bus ride from Hyde Park which was popular because of the Winter Wonderland Village featuring Christmas markets, food and rides.

Our bus went by Selfridges,

the store featured in the the BBC program about the owner of the store (and which I enjoyed)

The #30 bus took us to Dalston Junction station near the Alcorn theater in north east London.  As we looked for the theater we ran into a beautiful fox walking in the alley off  Ramstead Street.  An amazing sight in the city!

 The play was about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and I found it well acted and in a beautifully intimate setting.

A trip to the National Galleries (I don't know why the blue rooster, but it was noticeable!)

and the Courtland Institute Galleries was squeezed in between Fish and Chips in Soho and St. James Park, among other places.








Three months was a long time to be away and we are looking forward to walking around without the bags.

I must say I think I will miss communicating with all of you on a weekly basis and hearing from you.  So the challenge on the journey that is about to begin is to figure out a way to keep in touch with all.











Hope you have a festive holiday season and that 2014 bring you joy and peace.  I am specially grateful for a new addition to our family as my nephew Nik and his wife Amy welcomed Isabella Charlotte Focht into this world on December 6.  Born at home in their apartment in Zurich she is already loved by folks in New Zeland, London, Salt Lake City, Maryland, Philadelphia and New York, to mention a few.

STAY IN TOUCH, PLEASE : )

Almost home

Last Tuesday we took a bus from Swanage, a coastal town in southwest England, at 9:30 AM and after a short ferry ride over Poole harbor, a train ride from Bournemouth to London, a tube ride (subway in London) to St. Pancras International train station and a 2 and 1/2 hour train ride that took us under the English channel, we ended up in Paris at 8 PM.  A short ride on the M4 underground (subway in Paris) took us to 53 rue Montmartre and the apartment where Miguel and his lovely girlfriend, Tama, were waiting for us with wine and cheese!  If the sentence seems long, imagine how we felt about the trip. Nevertheless, it was great to be with Miguel and Tama and Paris was, as always, a welcome sight.

We spent a good part of our first full day in Paris at the Musee D'Orsay, a museum with an unparalleled collection of Impressionist paintings.  We could walk there from the apartment on rue Montmartre, which is not in the Montmartre neighborhood but on the 2nd arrondisement.

Paris is divided into 20 administrative districts called arronidisements.  The apartment was near the Louvre and the Seine and surrounded by fun cafes, boutiques and fun things to see and do, even in winter and with little sun.

After the museum we explored the neighborhood of Montmartre located in the 18th arrondisement of Paris and had lunch at a lovely cafe by a park which features artists and their renditions of Paris life and scenery.

A stop for coffee takes a new meaning in Paris.

We ended up having dinner at an ungodly hour, for Jim and I , 9 PM, and packing for our trip to Le Mont Saint-Michel which took us out of the city for the next 2 days.

It is difficult to describe Le Mont Saint-Michel, a place of pilgrimage in southern Normandy.  More explicitly, what was a chapel on a rocky outcrop in the sea in the 8th century became a village with an amazing abbey on the top and managed to resist invasion by the English during the One Hundred Years War.    That should give you an idea of the fortification side of things there,  But it does not provide a glimpse of the inside of this amazing place.  Though quite a tourist attraction with all the usual souvenir shops and overpriced restaurants, the ramparts, nooks and crannies and the magnificent abbey are worth a visit.

We stayed overnight on le Mont Saint-Michel and, although the famous 14 foot tides did not happen at this time of the year, it was a special place to spend the night.

   

According to the information office,  the structural composition of the town on the island follows the feudal model of God on top, then houses and stores surrounded by protective walls.

We rented a car in Paris for this trip.  Driving through Normandy was nice when we took time to explore some of the villages off the main highways.  Otherwise, the train ride is much nicer than driving as the trains go through villages and remote areas of interest.  At times on the highway we felt we might be driving in the USA.  Gas and rest stops looked pretty much like the ones at home.  AND, driving back into Paris on a Friday night at 7PM is not for the faint of heart.

Because of a malfunctioning boiler in the apartment above ours on 53 rue Montmartre, and a subsequent leak, we had to move on Friday night to a new apartment, this time at 227 rue la Fayette on the 10th arrondisement. The move was done quickly and we were installed in a beautiful 2 bedroom apartment for the last 2 nights in Paris.
Jim and I spent the last day in Paris back in Montmartre where we found the last remaining working vineyard in Paris, as well as the Moulin de la Galette,a mill that has been around since the 17th century and appears in many of the Impressionists paintings.  

Unfortunately, my camera's battery died and I only have one more photo from Montmartre and that is of the 4 of us taken by Maurice, one of the owners of Au Visage Lepic, a small and wonderful restaurant that gives merit to Paris' reputation as a gastronomical mecca. 

We are bound to London for 2 days and home.  Will probably send one last blog with final thoughts and close this line of communication for good. It has been fun but it can't compete, as I see it, with the personal touch.   

Southwest England walk

We took a break from the European continent and traveled to Southwest England, a place that has many connections for us through literature. We arrived at the town of Okehapmton at the edge of Dartmoor National Park on a Sunday and had a nice dinner that night at the White Hart Inn, "the only worthwhile eatery in town", according to Janie Ramsay, in whose house we have a lovely and large bedroom.

 Janie is a potter and you can see her work at https://theartonlinegallery.com/artist/janie-ramsay/  Beautiful stuff.  We met her often in the kitchen over breakfast or some of our simple salad and pasties dinners.  We also joined her at a rehearsal of the West Devon folk choir she is part of and ended up joining their practice session as their choir leader insisted anyone can sing.  (www.wrenmusic.co.uk)  This folk choir is only one of the many production of Paul Wilson, a veritable whirlwind of activity, and the choir director.

This beauty of this town in Devon lies in its proximity to Dartmoor and the moors.  But here, as in all of England, there are public footpaths in and out of the town and connecting towns to each other that are truly a joy for those of us who like to walk.

The paths that led us to the moors sometimes followed an abandoned railway path, led us to country that was refreshingly rough to us.  The castle gardens can get a bit stifling for these two American oldsters.  The footpaths go through fields where lambs, cows, and horses graze.

     

 

There is evidence of people populating the area of Dartmoor national park since around 3500 BC.  Over the centuries, the land was heavily used for many things - agriculture as well as quarries- and eventually, the railways as well.  There are some small villages still in existence in the actual park and we visited Princetown, which is dominated by its prison, which has an interesting history. (. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Dartmoor)

A bit of trivia:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Hounds of the Baskervilles at the Duchy Hotel in Princetown.

We spent one day riding around a local bus through the moors and 3 days on the footpaths.  The weather in the moors is very changeable.  We had wet weather only 1 afternoon despite the fact that this is the most common weather in these parts.  One morning I watched a snow shower come down hard and quick and within minutes it was over and the sky cleared.  The result was a beautiful sheen on the geraniums and other flowers that are still in bloom.  

One beautifully sunny day we walked to the village of Belstone.

 A small enclave of thatched roofed cottages with a great pub where we had some warm soup and cheese tart washed down with the local draft beer.  It was lunch on a Thursday and the pub was populated by people our age and older.  Two tables down was a group of women, probably in their eighties, were having a great time.

This walk was particularly fun as we had to climb over stiles between fields to follow the footpath to the village.  At one stile we had to share the steps with a group for very determined Dartmoor ponies.

 They can be seen everywhere in the moor and they are very small.  They followed us for a while hoping we had something to add to their lunch.  

We ended the week at Swanage, in the island of Purbeck, after an absolutely gorgeous bus ride from Exeter along the coast and its many towns. Wymouth, Lyme Regis and a village called Corfe Castle (Images for village of corfe castle) were some of the most memorable ones.

Actually Purbeck is not an island but a peninsula, and it is quite a majestic place in this season.  We are told by some natives that in the summer "it is crowded with folks covered in tattoos". But this weekend, it was just fine.

We walked on the South West Coastal Path which is, according to Wikepedia, England's longest marked long-distance footpath and stretches 630 miles from Poole Harbor in Dorset, near where we are, to Minehead in Somerset, a place we visited many years ago.

A castle, this one a rebuilt one at Durlston, complete with a cafe and an exhibition space featuring local artists.  Beautiful work and amazing views of the Isle of Wight and other cliffs.

The sunny day and the views of the sea proofed to be what these travel-tired bones needed.

We ended the day with a trip to the Black Swan Pub.  Great atmosphere, cozy fire, fine food and a fun dog.  What else could one ask for.

We spent our last day here walking from Studland to Swanage.  We wanted to see Old Harry, an outcrop of rocks that is worth walking for, I think you'll agree:

And then we had Cream Tea at a lovely Tea room.

We are winding down our trip.  We travel to Paris and meet up with Miguel and Tama on Tuesday and then return to London for a couple of days before we go back to PA.  We will be happy to leave our bags in the closet for a while, but I don't know for how long.  Traveling is such a learning experience!

Missing the sun

As it turns out, we have not seen a fully sunny day since October 28th in Zurich  Had some sun in Vienna, Budapest and Prague but not enough to call any a sunny day.

Our week in Augsburg did not include any sun at all.  While it did not rain much, we had cold gray skies throughout our visit to Bavaria. We chose Augsburg because it is one of the largest towns in the Romantic road and sort of in the middle so we might travel from there to other towns, which we did.

The Romantic Road was actually marketed as such after the second world war, but it loosely follows an old Roman road linking some of the towns.  Like so many of the places we have visited, this town has a long history, but unlike other places it has not needed to be totally rebuilt due to war devastation or other natural disaster.  Of course WWII did  cause damage to many old buildings and some of them were rebuilt.

Augsburg was the place where the Lutherans proclaimed their definitive statement of faith, called the Augsburg Confessions.  There is quite a bit of the medieval town still standing and we were lucky enough to live near one of the preserved walls and canals.

Jim coming down from our staircase to the common area          

            

     The neighborhood was an interesting blend of restaurants and small local crafts people shops, as well as boutiques.    

On one of the canals we found the kayak below, which was 'dressed' as a gondola and was called a Kanondel - a mixed gondola/kayak- The town prides itself in having more bridges over canals than Venice.

Since it was rather cold, we did not spend our days walking around as in the past few months.  We spent part of each day in the apartment resting and reading as well as finishing plans for the next leg of the trip   We had one warm room and that was the kitchen.

Cozy and simple but homey enough to be cheerful despite the lack of sun. Eventually I bought a heavy sweater, a hat and gloves for Jim and went off on our explorations.

The Schaezler Palace

Because of the cold, the fact that we were there on weekdays, and we are not in the Christmas season yet (the streets and shops are getting ready for that now), there were few tourists in these parts and we were able to have the local museum to ourselves.  A large palace
full of the work of local painters except for some remarkable Holbeins and a couple of rooms with some interesting Italian masters from the Renaissance. The Schaezler Palace also included the Rococo room, a large hall full of mirrors and chandeliers that invited one to waltz.


The Fugger family's name is everywhere in this region.  Fugger, the Rich, was a very successful banker in the 16th century and among the things he created and have endured is what they call here "the Oldest Social Settlement for poor people in the world" and it is still in existence.  There are some 147 apartments in The Fuggeri, a church, a cafeteria,a park surround the apartment and a museum to tell the story.  We did not go in because the information from the tourist office was very clear about the history.  I understand some 157 people live there paying less than 1 Euro per month for rent and taking care of their utilities.  They must say 3 prayers a day for the Fugger family and pay a small fine and enter via a special gate if they arrive home after 10 PM!  It turns out Mozart's great grandfather, who was a craftsman, lived there.

We discovered wonderful paths outside the city gates and found an amazing restaurant to try some typical Bavarian food and drink. The Weinbaeck would be a great wine bar during the summer as you can see from the pictures,but in the winter, the basement cave-like eating area was totally what we needed.

Adding to the touch, the music being piped in during most of our dinner was Cuban music!!!








We decided to take a train to Nodlingen, there should be an umlaut over the o, a town on the Romantic Road that is located on a meteorite crater.  For centuries they thought it might be a volcanic crater but NASA and other scientists in the 70s made the final findings that it was formed by a meteorite.  There was a very informative little museum that we visited that would have enchanted the scientists of the family.  I enjoyed it even if I did not quite understand a lot of the information.

Lodingen also boasts about having one of the only totally preserved town walls and we walked on them and followed them all around the medieval section of town.

The town featured in Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory scenes from the sky (town roofs) was shot here.

Neat as a pin the medieval section had the feeling of being a show piece.  We enjoyed it anyway as we seldom see buildings like these in our neck of the woods.

A beer garden complete with mural    

We packed up our bags and will fly to London and spend the next week in Southwest England first in Devon and the Moors followed by a few days on the Dorset coast, also called the Jurasic coast.  Much to learn about all that.  Will keep you posted.

Meanwhile enjoy some interesting things we found along the way in Augsburg.

A building on St.Moritz Square

A street name

An interesting way to grow cabbage

Smoked fish to buy at a fast food store front