Because We Can

  Today we were traveling to Barcelona to begin our two week Rick Steves Spain and Morocco Tour. They say it is 16 days, but since it doesn’t begin until 5 PM the first day and ends immediately after breakfast on the 16th day, it is really a two week tour. Enough of that, what is interesting was our train trip.   For one thing, we were taking three different trains. For another it was raining cats and dogs all day long, with the occasional lions and tigers thrown in for good measure. We had about a half an hour for our two connections, but when our first train was 20 minutes late, it sure didn’t start off so good.     With the lousy weather there sure wasn’t much to see out the window. Then we ran into some luck, our next connecting train was also delayed 20 minutes, so we had no trouble with that connection. That was at Narbonne, France, and there it was actually raining hippos and elephants, plus the wind was blowing the rain nearly horizontally at times. Th...

    There are churches and then there are churches. This is the one in Albi France. The one built after the Roman Catholic Church massacred and slaughtered thousands of Cathars because they didn’t believe as the Pope wanted then to believe. To show the power and might of the one true Church, this church, that was more fortress than church, was built. Actually it was to make sure the Cathars toed the Papal line, as much as it was to worship in, though there weren’t a whole lot of Cathars left after the Pope’s butchers were done. Sorry, but history is history, unless it gets rewritten by the victor, as is often the case. Then years or centuries later the real facts come out.   I always love how Catholic Churches display Adam and Eve. The Bible says they were naked but you never see them that way in these churches. Makes one wonder what all else they cover up with their so called faith.   No cover up here, just the plain good food. When Linda eats raw salmon i...

  As is often the case, it is not what you look for, but what you find that is the most interesting. Earlier we had found the old bridge we were looking for, and it was most interesting, but then we walked through what might might be termed a part of town where tourist don’t often go, climbed a set of stairs and found another bridge.   It turned out this bridge led to the university, and we had a great time walking around the “campus'’. Then we stumbled on this church. Well that might not be exactly true. I saw the back of this church and circled it until we found the entrance. It turned out to be very interesting, and included the usual huge pipe organ. I can’t imagine why every organist in the US wouldn’t want to take a tour that visited many of the great churches of Europe to hear the organ being played. Every one we have ever heard has been so spectacular, and we just stumble on them being played.   This one gave us a real laugh. She was dressed on top like th...

  Off to see some of the sights of Toulouse, we followed along an old friend. The Canal du Midi may not be navigable through Toulouse, but it runs right in in front of of our hotel. The only boat on this section was a permanently moored restaurant, but that still brought back many pleasant memories of canal boat trip of a few years ago.   I have a fondness for stained glass windows, and they are certainly easy to find. Just walk into one of the many churches and look up.   I have to hand it to Linda, she has her own things she is fond of, such as this mounted Koala Bear in the Natural History Museum. Will not bore you with the dozens of other photos she took, but I will say that this museum puts most of the ones we have seen in the States to shame. Plus most of the exhibits were in both French and English. Why is this woman smiling? Because after a walk in the rain (we did have our umbrellas) we literally stumbled upon a little restaurant that had baked chicken...

Linda just couldn’t leave Les Eyzies with saying goodbye to Cro-Magnon man, especially since we walked right by the discovery site on our way to the train station. So while I watched the bags, she disappeared up this dirt lane and around the corner. She was gone  a long time and I sure was relieved to see her finally round the corner. I had also been relieved to see the bags were still there when I had returned from my own little neighborhood excursion. Who knows, maybe Linda was relieved to see me still there when she returned, as she knows my propensity for wandering off. As the clock on the station shows, we were once more leaving at a rather early hour. We weren’t the only ones, as I counted 14 people at the station when the train finally arrived. Finally arrived being the key phrase here. We were not scheduled to arrive at Toulouse until just a couple minutes before one o’clock, but not on this train. We had two connections as part of this trip, both of about 15 minutes. ...

Life isn’t just the big things, sometimes it is stopping to enjoy the aquarium in the entrance where you are staying. Or maybe it is a framers market in a small town in France where the vendors set up on the side of the road and no one minds. Maybe it taking a road out of town, and discovering that the fence alongside the road is made of concrete. Maybe it is walking through a cemetery and noting that a number of the graves have reference to a death that took place during World War I. There were over 16 million deaths in WW I, a little over 100,000 of which were Americans. You can not go to any town in France without seeing long lists of deaths in Guerre Mondiale. Armand Delat died in the battle of Verdun. There were over 1,000,000 casualties in this battle of which some 260,000 where killed. We look at the Battle of Gettysburg as being so horrific, yet there weren’t even 260,000 engaged in the battle. Gettysburg lasted 3 days, Verdun nearly a year. In the end neither meant ...

Breakfast at Mme Bauchet’s, a real honest to goodness French breakfast. And did I ever slather the butter on the most awesome baguette before piling on the preserves. Add in orange juice that is nothing like that in the States, a warm croissant, and coffee to die for, that is a real, even if it is less than a make it to lunch without getting hungry, breakfast. I believe that Linda, the no meat fat woman, would admit that even a greasy piece of bacon would make it even better. I know it would for me. There is more to that breakfast story than meets the eye. It was served at 7:45, an extraordinarily early hour for Mme Bauchet as we were to learn, but with good reason. You see, we had no reserved tickets for the cave tour, and we needed to be in line by 8:30 to have any possibility of getting tickets. Each day they allow people to reserve a set number of tickets, which are done many months in advance, then at 9:00 each day they sell the remaining tickets for that day. Our host insist...