We made it to Tampa airport. Of course we stopped for our celebratory Bloody Mary’s plus we ordered Irish soda bread.
We then flew to Atlanta to catch the plane to Paris. We are now sitting in Charles DeGaul airport waiting for our flight to Ljubljana. We have a 7 hour layover and we are all tired. Will check in again when we reach our destination.
Category Archives: France
Veitsch, Austria to Bristol, England
We took a train from Veitsch to Vienna. In Vienna we boarded an Austrian overnight train to Frankfurt. Nice train and we shared the compartment with 3 very nice women. The conductor woke us up and brought us breakfast. Breakfast was a piece of bread, a croissant, butter, jam and tea or coffee. We changed trains in Frankfurt to go to Brussels. In Brussels we got the Chunnel Train to London via Lille, France.(Recap of countries- Austria, Germany, Belgium, France and England.). Once we were in London we had to take the subway to the train station that would take us to Bath, England.
But I got ahead of myself. We had about 6 hours to spend in Vienna. We had prepaid for a hotel so we checked in for a few hours. Naturally we went walking around and found a mall – see pic. We also decided to eat because we knew we would be traveling for a long time. See pic of our last meal in Vienna.
Back to Bath, England. When we got to Bath we could not find a place to stay for the night. Apparently there was some Jane Austen celebration going on and it was packed. We then got a bus and traveled on to Bristol, England. We found a place to stay and went to look for food since we were tired and hungry. We lucked out again. We fond an Italian restaurant that had really good food. Marsha had bruschetta and I had pâté for appetizers. Marsha had spinach and ricotta ravioli and I had penne with spicy sausage. See pics.
In the morning we went back to the bus station to explore our options of getting to Ireland. Again we were lucky! We could take a 10pm bus (that includes the ferry) and arrive in Dublin at 10:30am. That left us with the whole day in Bristol. We headed out to see the town. See pics. After we walked the entire downtown we decided to have an early dinner since we would have a long night of travel. We went to a restaurant called “Slug and Lettuce”. Marsha had a veggie burger and I had Thai tikka chicken. All was good. We are now in the hotel lobby after retrieving our luggage waiting to go on the short walk to the bus station.
I almost forgot!!! I had my first English breakfast at the hotel in Bristol. It had toast, croissants, muffins, crumpets, baked beans, baked tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, scrambled eggs, sunny side up eggs, ham, sausages(bangers), various cereals, yogurt, 2 kinds of fruit salad, coffee, tea and juice. I had my first crumpet and banger here in Bristol.
Also, as we were walking around Bristol we came upon a 5 lane bowling alley. Of course we had to bowl a game. The lanes are much shorter than the ones in the US.
It is now 2;45am and we are on the Irish ferry headed to Ireland from Wales. The ferry has wifi so I can send this message.
Côte d’Azure
Today we traveled in the opposite direction from Monaco. We went to Les Arc about an hour and a half on the train. It is not a happening place. There was an old town there and maybe some lavender fields but we didn’t have transportation or time to see them. We got back on the train and went to Cannes. It a much nicer beach than Nice – it has sand – we went in the Mediterranean – see pics. We could have gone in the nude, but where would we put our passports and money.
Ever since Marsha won in Monte Carlo she has been uncontrollable – now she is looking at high priced cars.
Cannes is really pretty boring-mostly expensive stores and a nice beach so we went to Antibes. This is a pretty nice town. Every other store is a yacht broker and Marsha was back to picking out her yacht. We walked through the town- again it was a hot day. I have many more pics on my camera. We walked almost to the next town on the ramparts and decided to have an early dinner since we still had to get back to Nice and the trains had been delayed all day. We found a place in the back of a tobacco shop/deli. I know it sounds crazy so I took a picture. We decided to have tapas instead of a meal and it was still too much food. All of the plates were delicious. We go to Milan tomorrow and plan to be at the train station early in case there is still trouble with the trains.
Nice / Monaco
The owner of our B &B is super nice. We were able to do laundry here which really helped since we could eat breakfast while our clothes were getting clean. We then went out to see Nice – we went to the flower/produce market. This is the European version of a farmers market. Then we walked to the ruins of an old chateau which provided us with a great view of Nice. Here are some pics of Nice during the day.
The last pic is from the top of the chateau. Remember every birdseye picture you see we got to the top by foot. No elevators. It is hot here just like Florida. We stopped for a cool drink in the shade and decided to go to Monaco. Again we hopped on a train. We decided to go to the Casino and they let us in!!!!!! We gambled in the Monte Carlo Casino. SEND MONEY we need some. Actually I lost and Marsha won. There are pics as we look at yachts to see which one she wants. There is nothing level in Monaco. It is either a steep uphill climb or a steep descent. We decided to walk across town to see the palace. Neither the casino nor the palace allowed pics inside but both are magnificent. See pics of Monaco
We are back at the B&B giving a rest before we go out to find a restaurant. We usually walk along reading menus and when we find a place that we both like, that’s where we eat.
We headed out in a different direction looking for food. We found a pedestrian are full of shops and restaurants. After reading approx 20 menus we found a restaurant that had squash blossoms. We ordered the appetizer for 2 and you can see that was more than enough food. But, there was a cheese plate on the dessert menu and of course we had to order it. All the food was fabulous!!! Of course we went for another walk for the food to settle.
We love your comments. Remember if you want them to appear on the blog please give me your permission to post them since I don’t know what info is put out there with the comment. I am also going to post a picture of our current room. It is big enough to have a serious party in it.
I had to take 2 pics of the room it is that big. Don’t know what tomorrow will bring but we shall see.
Interlacken to Nice
I am writing this on the train at the Milan train station where we had to change trains. It is amazing how many people take these long distance trains. There are 8 cars on this train each with 102 seats and they are all taken. We had to make reservations to get on this train and so did everyone else. Everyone is traveling with luggage so getting on and off trains is a treat. People also travel with children so they also bring strollers. Needless to say the train stations are very crowded and busy. Also there are people standing and some passengers bring their dogs. The announcements on this train are made in 4 languages- French, Italian, German and English.
After riding on trains for 6 hours we were at the station ready to change trains for Nice. Well, the train was cancelled and we eventually found one that would take us to Nice. So did everyone else from two trains. We were packed into the train and it was hot. Everyone made the best of this bad situation and we finally arrived in Nice. Now we are hot and tired and of course there was construction in front of the train station to make it difficult to follow the instructions to our B & B. we finally found the address but it looked like an office building. See pic. As we were checking around the corner for another entrance a woman came up and said “Are you looking for my B&B.” This was the place and the owner and the room are nice. We went out walking and for dinner. Appetizer-goat cheese with honey and time. I had penne with fois gras sauce and Marsha had a tomato and cheese tart. We then walked down to the beach. See pic. Beach towns are the same all over the world. We could have been in Daytona Beach or Atlantic City.
The beach here is all large stones. It looks like shoes are needed on the beach.