Paris, always

The city of eternal light, love, food, couture and lots of other well known phrases. Marlene and I travelled to celebrate her birthday, even though we travelled in September. The trip, only a week in length started by flying to London then taking the Eurostar to Paris. We reversed the order on the way back. Although a long day, from landing at Heathrow, taking the Paddington Express to the city, a cab to St. Pancreas  and waiting for our train, the Eurostar is well worth it. It's fast, smooth and efficient and lands you right in the centre of Paris at Gard de Nord. Make sure to book well ahead if possible otherwise the price of tickets can easily run up quickly. Also  remember about the security checkpoints that you have to pass through before boarding. I lost my new knife that I had bought in Austria, as I forgot about it until it showed on x-ray and was confiscated. It was a stupid mistake on my part, forgetting that you need to clear customs like anywhere else.

We had a ParisPass while here, which included the ubiquitous tourist boat trip down the river. It's actually a nice way to see the city from another point of view and it was a beautiful day as well. Near the turn around point of the ride, Jardin Des Plantes and the Natural History Museum on the Left Bank. Notre Dame from the back ahead of us..

The gardens behind the Trocadero, that cascade down the hill to the Seine and the bridge over to the Eiffel Tower. Down by the street there's lots of hawkers and tourist junk for sale. Beware of pickpockets in this area everyone said.

We stayed in the 16th Arrondissement, at the Hotel Plaza Tour Eiffel [www.plazatoureiffel.com/en]. A small boutique hotel on a side street, rue Grueze, just a block from the Trocadero and views of the EiffelTower. The area is very nice, quiet at night and with lots of  cafes, restaurants, shops and places to wander. It's also very close the the metro at Trocadero, so you can transit anywhere else from here easily. The hotel was typical of lots of Paris hotels, smaller rooms, but very nicely  furnished and with lots of nice staff and amenities. Breakfast was included in the price and was a huge spread with lots of choice. The neighbourhood is close to many things and everything else is easy to access. We could walk to the Arc de Triomphe easily.

 With only five days, you really can't see everything, it could take forever, so we just picked a few and spent time in these places. Notre Dame and the Left Bank, with the Luxembourg  Gardens, which were  fantastic.  A huge area to relax and enjoy the sunny day with all of the Parisians.

The back of the Palais de Luxembourg, the gardens here are stunning and huge. It's a vast green space in the city.

The Fountain of the Medici's, build by the famous Italian family from Florence. A calm tiny grotto area  by the Palais de Luxembourg.

It's definitely a city for walking. Along the Seine, through it's entire length on both sides are great walkways, away from cars and surrounded by green space in many cases. This is the walk from Place de la Concorde down towards the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower.

The flying buttresses of Notre Dame Cathedral, most visitors spend all their time in front and inside but the architecture of the building from the exterior is amazing. There's also a tiny pocket garden at the back of the Cathedral that's worth the visit.

One of our favourite museums was the Musee D'Orsay. Built into a totally renovated train station, it's amazing collect of artwork focusing on 19th century painting on the 5the and sixth floor is worth the visit. There's also a nice cafe on the 6th floor to stop and relax for a while. the Museum is huge and  could take a full day and beyond to enjoy. Take it in small chunks and it's a nice place to visit.

The Hill of Montmarte, in the 18th arrondissement gives you a wonderful perspective on the city, and where the Basilica of the Sacre Coeur os located.

We spent the good part of a day wandering this district, which has a diverse selection of things going on, from the garment and costume area, to some of the original village area, the only vineyard on the city proper, some very upscale residential areas, nightclubs and of course the Cathedral of the Sacre Coeur.  We went early on a Monday morning, and it was still packed with tours and tourists. It's a  beautiful building and worth a visit. Make sure to take some time to wander around the area. We ran into an elderly lady who had lived her entire life in the village and  showed us some amazing  things  you would probably never find yourself. Make sure to save your metro ticket to ride the funicular up to the level of the cathedral.

The back streets of Montmarte

Paris is an amazing city, wonderful food, shops, markets, huge amounts of history everywhere, great architecture, efficient Metro system, generally friendly  people and very helpful, lots of green spaces and places to just walk about.

Amazing Oaxaca

Located in a high valley of the Sierra Madre mountains, just a hour by air from Mexico City,  Oaxaca is the quintessential traditional Mexican city. A combination of history, culture and food mixes together to create a wonderful small city, full of museums, amazing restaurants and cafes and shops full of crafts and art from Oaxaca state and beyond.

We always had an interest in this city, primarily because it was the source of many of the crafts we had previously bought while travelling in Mexico. The wooden alebrijes, those wonderful brightly painted, fantastic creatures carved from wood, the Oaxacan woven rugs and tapestries from the Teotitlan del Valle area, are some of our favourites. But there is so much more to see in the city and surrounding valleys. Santa Maria del Tule, has the famous Tule tree located in the  main square of the town. Considered the largest tree in the Americas, it is an enormous presence in the square and well worth the visit. Monte Alban just outside the city is the original home of the Zapotec culture and is a beautifully preserved archeological site on top of a hill. It is huge, amazing and popular location for many visitors.

Looking across the main square in Oaxaca, hot and hazy and usually packed with people

The Templo de Santa Domingo, one of the most beautifully preserved Catholic churches in Oaxaca. Rivaling some of the beautiful churches of Rome it is located in the central area of the city, an area identified and protected by UNESCO as a world heritage site.  

The interior of the Templo de Santo Domingo

There are so many amazing small museums in the city that are all worth a visit. The Textile Museum, the Museum of Oaxacan Painters, the Museum of Contemporary Arts [MOCA], the  Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca, the Oaxaca Photographic Centre, the Pre-Hispanic Art Museum Rufino, Museo de Filatelia de Oaxaca, and many others. Just wandering around is the best way to see the place.

The courtyard of the Rufino Tamayo Pre-Hispanic Art Museum, [www.rufinotamayo.org.mx] this is an amazing collection of artifacts and artwork collected by  Rufino Tamayo, and donated back to the city. All housed within his former residence. One of the nicest displays of artwork in the city.

This is El Arbol del Tule a 2000 year old Montezuma cypress tree which is considered one of the oldest, largest and widest trees in the world. It's located in the town's centre growing in the plaza and the atrium of the church Santa Maria de la Asuncion which is to the left of the image. The main road was reconstructed around the square as there were concerns that pollution and vibrations from the traffic might damage the tree.

We stayed at a a small hotel/bed and breakfast in the centre of the city. Casa de las Bugambilias, located on Avenida Reforma, is a small eight room casa that is run by the mother of the chef, Pilar Cabrera, who has La Olla Cafe [laolla.com.mx]downstairs. The hotel is delightful, perfectly located and has an amazing breakfast served daily. The staff are all excellent and helpful. La Olla has excellent food next door and also offers cooking classes for those that want to get a sense of Oaxacan cuisine.

Roof top at Cafe Olla

The courtyard of Casa de Las Bugambilias

Looking towards the Templo de Santa Maria and the mountainside convert venue in the distance. View from Cafe Olla

One of the pools at Hierve el Aqua, Oaxaca State, Mexico

The cascading frozen waterfalls of Hierve el Aqua, which is actually solid deposits of limestone that have trickled down over many many years. There are only two sites in the world that have this unique geological formation, the other is in Turkey. Very dry mountain forests everywhere, all the way down to the Pacific.

Monte Alban, the site of the Zapotec hilltop town dating back almost 1200 years, looking down into the valley with Oaxaca city below. There is a very nice museum, cafe and shop at the entrance to the archeological site itself. There's no need to go on an organized tour here, you can easily take a taxi from the city and walk about yourself. There are also guides for hire at the site, if you need one. It's very hot and dry here by the afternoon when it starts to get very crowded.

A beautiful city

This was a city that Marlene always wanted to visit, and who wouldn't. It's a one of a kind place, unique, ornate, crowded, expensive, but so serene and different from every other.

Flying into Venice, the watery city, on an early fall morning. This gives you a sense of scale of the city , it really is quite small and easy to get around it all on foot or by vaporette. The huge cruise ship docks are up front and the Lido is at the far back of the image.

We  stayed at the far end of the Castello District, also know as the green or leafy end of the group of islands. Hotel St. Elena, a renovated and restored monastery  was our base. It was an excellent hotel with a nice breakfast as well as a very good restaurant. It was located only a minute or two from the St. Elena stop for the vaporette, so an ideal location for us. We could easily walk about 20 minutes to get to San Marco square along the edge of the water and over a few bridges. We did get a pass for transportation while there as it is  a very economical way to move about. Single boat fares are very expensive for tourists.

The hotel was in a residential area so it was quiet at night,  but only took a few minutes to get to areas where there were lots of restaurants etc. The park and pavilions of the Biennial were close by and the focus was on architecture this year, and alternates with the visual arts which will be next year 2017. There is food everywhere in Venice so you'll  never go hungry but finding good quality food is sometimes a challenge and takes a bit of exploring.

The Dorsoduro area of Venice has lots of nice small  cafes and restaurants that are easily accessible and  walkable. There are lots of smaller hotel in this area as well. It's  on the opposite side of the Grande Canal  from there Castello district, which has all of the  very swanky and expensive  hotels and cafes as well as lots of smaller  tourist class places.  The Dorsoduro district also looks  across the  water to  Giudecca island which has a fabulous Hilton hotel  built inside a renovated flour mill. 

From our stop on the vaporetta at St. Elena we could go one stop to the Lido and a whole new world. This is part of the mainland and the  beaches of the Adriatic Sea. The Lido is a  very residential area with lots of  very green areas as well as a nice selection of restaurants and shops on the Main Street that leads to the  Sea. Prices are cheaper here and worth the  boat ride over for dinner or a gelato or Aperol spritz.

A modern watery sculpture located on he walkway just outside the entrance to the Bienniale grounds. The tidal actions covered and uncovered it as the day went on. We could find no indication of who the sculptor was or when it was installed.

We spent five days here investigating all the nooks and crannies we could find, visiting as many of the touristy sites that were not too crazy busy and several side trips to some of the other islands as well. We went to Murano, as the hotel, made arrangements for it's guests to have a free shuttle over. As is usually the practice, we were taken directly to one of the glassblowing studios, shown around the workshop then given the hard sell on the glass ware. We did buy a few small paperweights, but they really wanted you to buy the big expensive and somewhat gaudy stuff instead. We had a great time, the weather was beautiful the whole time, as  we were glad we went when we did. The city is sinking, it's evident everywhere, it's also being overrun by day tourists from cruise ships and tours that move in and out of the lagoon, on a regular basis. There is growing animosity amongst the residents about these huge ships and what they actually provide for the city. Lots of protests on the water each time on of these behemoths leaves port.

Our original plan was to take the train to Verona from Venice and explore this city but it was almost impossible to find a place to stay during our dates due to the start of the opera season in the city, so instead to took the train up through the Italian Alps and into Austria and spent four days in Innsbruck. There could not have been a greater contrast.

One of the most beautiful train rides we've taken, up through the Brenner Pass into Austria, where everything is so perfect and organized and efficient. Even the fields look like they've been cut by hand with a mover. It's hard to believe that the landscape can change so dramatically in only four hours.

We chose Innsbrucke as it was a simple train ride from Venice, and Marlene wanted to see some of the Alps. I had been to Innsbrucke  many years ago and only had vague memories of it. We stayed right in the city centre in a very old 16th century hotel,  Gasthof Weisses Rossl, a beautiful location and full of history. Innsbrucke is a city of contrasts, there is loads of old historical buildings and history in the centre but also many very contemporary examples of architecture. It's a sports city for sure, having hosted the Winter Olympics twice, but its also full of arts and cultures well.

One of the beautiful sunsets alongside one of the many bridges that cross the Inn River, one of the two rivers in the city that gave it it's name. The Brucke is the much smaller and less significant river close by.

We took advantage of the  Innsbruck City pass and rode the  hop on hop off bus around  the city and  around the countryside seeing all of the sites and there are lots. We rode the Nordkette Cable car, to the Alpine Zoo, then up to the top on the Hungerburg cable car to the Seegrube mountain complex, then another cable car to the  final Hafelekar station at the very top. It was amazing clear and the view was fantastic,  a lovely restaurant at the top and lots of places to walk and hike. The Austrians are very fit people and you can see many of them walking, yes, walking up this mountain as you take the lazy cable car ride to the top. We also went to the site of the ski jump venue from the Olympics which is in a  nice park area not far from the downtown and you get the other side of the view across the valley. All beautiful.

After four days it was back to the train station and the same ride in reverse back to Venice. It amazing how different the view can be going in the reverse direction. This time we got off at the main station for Venice on the mainland and stayed at the Hotel Bologna. Nice modern hotel across from the train station and within easy access to the bus to the airport the next day. Great trip, want to go back and see some of the other places in this area that we missed, another trip I guess.

Gotta start somewhere

This is the first entry for this blog that follows my adventures. I will try and only post stuff here that doesn't  fall into the other pages content. Therefore it will focus on living on Prince Edward Island as well as the travels of Marlene, Andi, the black Labrador and I.

I took this photo just a day or two before the mustard disappeared, plowed under. It was a great yellow colour that glowed as you passed  by. The field was located on the way to Hunter River, near Oyster Bed Bridge, Prince Edward Island.

And if you turned around 180 degrees  across the road the opposite field was just as yellow. And it disappeared as well. The view is looking northward towards Cymbria.