Can You Stand Just a Little More?

The ride over to Venice was fun and gave us a great view of the city by water.

Venice was very interesting. Easy to get lost - and we did but also easy to get found.

We were there for a couple of days - the highlights were St. Marks Basilica, the Frari Chapel (my favorite - more masterpieces including Donatello, Canova, and Titian), and the Doges Palace. These photos are of the Doges Palace from the water and one of the arches to St. Mark's Basilica - note the Byzantine styling.


On our way to Reutte, Austria we traveled through the Brenner Pass and stopped at the Zugspitzblick - a scenic stop with a view of the highest peak in Austria or Germany.

Austria is beautiful - rolling hills and beautiful lakes. On one of our days there, we hiked from our hotel in Austria, over the border to the Bavarian area of Germany to tour Neuschaunstein Castle. This is the castle built and lavishly furnished by King Ludwig. It is the castle from which Walt Disney modeled the Cinderella castle. Once we reached the property, it was a 30 minute hike, seemingly almost straight up to reach the castle.

We also had the good fortune of riding on the luges once we left the castle. Everyone really enjoyed this despite the fact that Hollywood ended up with a metal burn on her shoulder!

After Austria it was on to Switzerland. Our motorcoach traveled through the countryside, past the tiny country of Lichstenstein (sp?), past Bern, Zurich and Interlaken and into the Lauterbrunnen Valley. From the valley we took a train up to the town of Wengen, where we stayed for 2 days. This picture is taken from my hotel window. The view was magnificent. On our second day we took a gondola up the mountain to Mannelichen. From there we hiked with the group for about 1 1/2 hour to Kleine Scheidegg. The best part was when Hollywood, GMan and I opted to take a remote path back to Wengen. 3 more hours, practically straight down (or so it seemed) by foot.







These photographs say it all, don't you think. This was one of the very best days in my whole life. This day was worth more than I can say. We saw several waterfalls and heard and saw two actual avalanches. Switzerland was the best of Europe for the three of us. On the night before we left, we were treated to a genuine Alphorner teaching us how to blow the Alphorn. Everyone got a chance and really loved hearing this native music.
Brave Hannah.

From Switzerland we traveled through the French countryside, through small towns like Auxerre, Besacon and Dijon. We stayed in a lovely french country manorhouse in the small town of St. Faugeau. We had dinner outside on the lawn and we were entertained by music. The kids played badminton and soccer and we all danced.This is Mary and Jen, our tourguides with our motorcoach driver, Richard. It was the last night Richard was to be with us so we had a little celebration. Lots of singing and dancing and a lot of good food.

The teenagers actually had a really, really good time.

Our trip concluded with two days in Paris. We were able to see so much including St. Chappelle with its beautiful stained glass and the Cathedral of Notre Dame - magnificent inside, more masterpieces! We had dinner at a sidewalk cafe in the Latin Quarter. Gman almost had a stroke when I asked for ketchup with my french fries. Parisians do not use ketchup on fries - they use some type of mayonaisse - yuk! The waiter was kind enough to find some for me but not before contorting his face and expressing his disapproval.

The kids visited Mont Marte one afternoon while I tried my luck at shopping on Rue de Rivoli. I bought just a few things because every store I went to had a line at least 10 deep to get into the fitting rooms. I was told this is very common. I am not that patient.

We visited the Louvre Museum - two hours cannot begin to satisfy your desires here. We must go back. We did see the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory and Leonardo's Mona Lisa.

On our last evening, we had a dinner with our whole tour group. It was so nice to be able to meet all of these wonderful folks - very nice families. After dinner some of us took a cruise down the River Seine and saw some of Paris' highlights from the water.







The Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral from the River. This last picture is of us and two of the families in our group as we exited our subway train.

I could not have been happier with the tour. It was a Rick Steves' Family Europe tour and despite the fact that the euro is so high against the US dollar, I would do it again without hesitation. Thank you to all who made our trip possible including David, Eugene and Dan!