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Archive for January, 2007

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Paris, London, then Home

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

We’re now home! We got up at 5:30 am, London time, took the Tube and the Docklands Light Rail to London City Airport and had a 45-minute trip on a KLM City Hopper plane to Amsterdam. From there, we flew non-stop to Minneapolis-St. Paul, arriving at about 3 pm, Minneapolis time.

We’ll write more about Paris soon, but we’re really tired now, having been up for almost 21 hours!

Tim and Dan

Nice and Arles, France

Friday, January 26th, 2007

Ok, I tend to be slow when I write these and take up a lot of time on the internet. I’ve got a short amount of time so I will get to it.

Dan here. Thought you might want to read a little about Nice and Arles. Here it is.
When we arrived in Nice (pronounced Niece to us English speakers), I was surprised how warm it was. I wasn’t expecting it to be as warm as Sicily since it is farther north. Nice balmy 60’s to low 70’s is a great way to start a city…in January…winter. So, we checked in and then walked the beach at night. NICE…No pun (if that is what you call it) intended. Even though it was dark, the Prominade des Anglais (English Prominade) is so lit up and the buildings (all high class hotels and bigwig bars) were just as lit, the water was blue. There were many people. Some where swimming, some playing guitar, running, walking, fishing, you name it. We saw a lot of cool places that night. Next day found us walking all around Nice but mainly we went to 2 modern art museums. This is a fresh change for us. We have seen so many baroque, gothic, whatever paintings of every kind of Jesus and Mary picture from so many different time periods, I am sorry, but I am burn’t out on them. A modern cut up and stuck to a wall cello is great. The day after that we went to Cannes (as in art, movie and musical festivals). It is a touristy place with a nice look out but we didn’t stay long because it was raining pretty hard. We then went to Monaco. Great, old buildings were to be seen everywhere. They are all very upkept. Everything seemed new and built last year. The Montecarlo Casino is a beautiful building. It also has a great walking terrace outside in the back. I liked Monaco.

On to Arles. This is a friendly, quaint, seemingly smallish town in Provence. It does have a Roman amphitheater which they still use for bullfights. They also have other Roman ruins that are really fun to see. The best thing was a museum that had really well done models of all the ruins in the city. It was great to see the representation of what they were like way back when.
We also did a day trip to Avignon. This city was, at one time, the headquarters of the Catholic church during the late 1300’s to early 1400’s. This was a fantastic place for architecture. Huge castle, big churches, monuments, cool intact city walls, statues, all of which were very ornate and, at the same time, big, heavy, and tough! This was a functional fortress city! Cool! Oh, by the way, Arles is MUCH colder than Nice is. I have got on all my layers, including long underwear!
Well, that’s it for now. We are currently in a warmer Paris.

Write more later,
Dan

Florence and the Cinque Terre

Friday, January 19th, 2007
Our visit in Florence was short (two nights), but a good mix of what we like to do and see in any city: visiting museums (the Bargello, with mostly sculpture), visiting churches, having one good meal out to try the local foods, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Palermo and a touch of Florence

Monday, January 15th, 2007
Well, guess what? We are now in Florence after two and a half days in Palermo. Okay, on to what we did there. The first night we got there we wandered around for awhile. The city has an energy level ... [Continue reading this entry]

Sicily

Thursday, January 11th, 2007
OK, we're on pay internet again, so this will be quick. The train and ferry trip to Sicily went fine. We spent two nights in Taormina and spent the day hiking in the hills above Taormina and the Mediterranean Sea. We ... [Continue reading this entry]

We Leave Naples Tomorrow

Sunday, January 7th, 2007
When Dan and I were trying to figure out where to stay to kill some time before activating our final two-month rail pass, we knew we would be coming from Rome and wanted to head to southern Italy.  So, the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Map Updated

Friday, January 5th, 2007
The map functionality provided with our site was fixed, so I was able to update our map -- YEA!!

A Naples New Year

Thursday, January 4th, 2007
Dear readers, ... [Continue reading this entry]