Well - we decided to 'get away from it all' (or get into-it-all) for a while - and travelled to southern France (Avignon, Gordes, Perillon) and the "French Riviera"(Cannes, Nice, MonteCarlo, Menton, etc.) in our last 'bit' of time in Europe.  We also visited three of the bigger cities in (northern) Italy (Florence, Venice, Milan(o)) and a small city outisde Milan, where our sailing friend, Emma, from Hong Kong, now lives with her beau, Mr. Lello,

After our Swiss-Siesta a couple of weekends ago, though, we made some 'travel-light' decisions, and in light of being gone 10 nights - some other travelling decisions - most of which turned out to be 'right on' - unlike a lot of the decisions we sometimes make...  so here goes with our text / prose review and a few pictures along the way, in some degree of chronological order.

A brief "table of contents" - click on one to go directly to that section:

Avignon      Hmmmm...      Nice     Florence      Venice      Milan       Lecco        Stuart-Florida house ookie

Thoughts on:   things that follow-you when you travel,  (this)backpacking trip with laptop, (and/or go to Bill's Computer-Systems-Admin web-page and see the "Road Warrior" web-page), comparing France & Italy

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Avignon: On the train (TGV (Train Grande Vitesse (speed))) down from Paris on the 17th, we found a LOT of snow, as May had found the previous day (a Tuesday), that it had actually snowed in Paris - (which is supposed to be exceedingly rare).  In Avignon, we wandered extensivelyand stayed in the 600 year old Hotel de Mons - on the square. They even had a pretty good line (though their fax machine line) for dial-up.

Avignon was - like many European cities - at one time - a walled-city (picture of the gates with Ms. May). There was a lot to look and - & visit - an "A river runs through it" - with a HUGE river island (where we saw some people rowing on the river, and several sailboats with their masts down doing the canals thing like a lot of people do. My Mom's a great fan of carousels and so we took this picture for MOM...

Avignon has a "Hummer" (no, NOT one of those funny four-wheel-drive / military things that costs megabucks) but this BIG glass box thingie.  It's actually called a "Kide" (whatever that means?).  What it is, is this BIG glass box is about 12-15 feet long, about 8 feet high and about 6 feet wide and it goes "Hmmmmmm".  Now that doesn't sound terribly exciting, and it's probably not - except to the people who have to listen to it all day & night long. (well - it's not that loud).  However, the really REALLY NEAT part is this 'kiosk' about 20 meters away - and you go stand behind the kiosk and there's this big tv monitor and it's taking a tv-video-picture (real-time (well-almost)) of the "Hmmmmmmer"... SO - if you send your hunny to stand in front of the "Hmmmmmer", then you can see her in the tv monitor... - We'll that sounds boring, too, huh, - Well - then
if you're REALLY SMART -you put your hand on the tv monitor where it has a little pattern, and this is the
WOWie ZOWie batman thing... it then cycles through views of the similar things in about 4-5-6 other European cities, and you can see in pseudo real-time, what's going on in the squares of those other European cities?>?>>?!!!

pretty neat, huh!! - well - we thought so - there's nothing like this that we know of in either Asia or America,
so it must be a pretty "European" thingie????
 

AND _ WE MUST tell you that Mr. Bill's Admin Guru in Krakow (Cracovie as the French spell it), has one in
his town - and he didn't know there was (pseudo)real time video associated with it and he didn't know all these
other things about it - so we were ahead of the game with him! - Hmmmm (that sounds familiar?!)  However he
says that on 31 December -
 

Then we drove (in an Avis car with a cracked driver's side mirror and cracked windshield) a not-bad-at-all Opel Corsa - 5 speed (small engine), but handled very well - etc.   We drove through some of the mountain villages
(pictures attached)...   Some of these are quite interesting, and they all exibit a similar trait - on top of a mountain, in the olive & wine country.  We stopped in Perillon, to see a small gallery, and hike around a while in the Olive groves - something we'd never seen - lots of olives on the ground - very interesting stuff.  A couple of things of interest here were a mix of old & new, and a sleepy friend Ms May liked.

Then we drove on to Nice, where we stayed in a little hotel - again with a not-too-bad dial-up option...

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Nice is on the coast - and one of the four-five towns(Cannes, Antibes, Nice, MonteCarlo, Menton, etc.) of the "French Riviera".  This was a wonderful place / area - but there wasn't nearly as nice a beach after all the hype you hear about beaches. The Beaches in Florida are MUCH BETTER... - However, - one can tell there's a LOT
of MONEY hanging around here in almost all the areas.   We happened onto a number of dinghy sailing clubs
and one in Cannes was having a catamaran regatta - but we figured those sailing must have been polar bears, because it was certainly too cold for us - even if we'd have had dry suits!!!!...

Then we got a train from Nice to Florence - via a 1 hour layover at 0300 in Pisa (where the leaning tower is), and that was a 'real experience' - Ms. May, though, as is true to form - fell asleep most of the way - being that a train, like many other things, moves & vibrates, and I think it's a genetic thing with Chinese females that they fall asleep when  something moves & vibrates... -

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Anyway, It was after that trip that we arrived in Florence where it was not only colder than the south pole, but raining to boot, and we had no hotel reservation.  With everything we owned on our backs, but not in our back-packs - we wandered off in search of hotel staff that were awake, sentient, could speak English and had a room.  At the fifth hotel in the rain - we found the "Golf Hotel" - which actually wasn't bad, but didn't have dial-up - but at 0530 when  you're cold & wet - you have priorities that are considerably more basic than whether or not you can send e-mail!.

Florence was interesting, in particular for it's all-marble-exterior & marble-floors - inside "Duomo" church.  This was built in/around the 1300s / 1400s and it is, from the exterior, one of the most striking buildings we'd
ever seen.  It's exterior is all marble, green & white - and that makes it really stand out.   Incredible cast bronze
doors with interesting figures.    Florence also had a nice view from the HILL - where MichaelAngelo's "David" is a key focus point in the parking lot (behind the camera in this picture).

Florence also had a neat "Golden Bridge" where there are some great little shops on the bridge, but most were not open while we were there, for some reason that we could never figure out...???  And - here's one more view.
 

Venice: - We've all heard about Venice - the city that is not only sinking into the sea, but the one where boats / canals are the mode of transport most followed, and there are NO CARS (Meaning no pollution, noise, parking problems - a REAL clutural impact I must say! - The city is definately sinking - it's apparently sunk almost 2 meters in the last 130 years or so - a lot of that up-to- 1970, but little since then.  There's a number of reasons but these seem to be the main ones:

  a city on the mainland to the northwest is sucking out a lot of well-water - that supports the ground on which Venice sits - so like a sponge - with the water sucked out - it can't support the weight (this is somewhat similar to parts of Florida that create "sink-holes" where the groundwater demand has been higher than rain & surface water can replinish the under-ground aquifer

 

 global warming is raising the level of the oceans

 

 combination of meteorological & atmospheric conditions create 'very high' tides in (mostly) November - when we were there.  The morning we arrived there was obvious evidence of the street having been flooded in many areas.  They also have some temporary boardwalks they put up & little maps that show routes of these temporary boardwalks and where you can get on-off them...

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Milan: Milan is the centre of commerce, industry and other such things in northern Italy.  It's where a lot of the 'management & administration' is done for Motorola GSD's Turin office (HR & Finance seem to be run out of Milan).  We will only 'pass through' to meet Emma, and go to Lecco - where she lives on Thursday afternoon, then a 'bit' of sightseeing on Friday morning - while Em's in Italian class - and then maybe more sightseeing Friday afternoon with her - before the train leaves on Friday night for the 10 hour trip back to Paris...

However - in our 'passing through' this train station (well should be called something besides a train station, - perhaps a monument to early 19th century construction techniques.  I've never, in my life, I don't think been inside something that was SO HUGEMONGOUS! - a picture inside (this is only 1/2 the area) the other 1/2 is behind the camera)

the car pick-up / drop-off area - this thing seems at least 100-150feet high (30-50 meters high),  and a second picture here.  This is a picture of the outside - but the camera's not big enough
to get it all in - what you see is the centre part - the 'wings' to the left & right of the camera are equally as big (but perhaps not as high!)

We also visited the "Duomo" (yes you've heard this name before (the cathedral in Florence).  The one in Milan is
just as grandiose as that in Florence, but it's not all marble exterior.  However, the inside is, I think even more stunning, and it had a WONDERFUL pipe organ (Bill has a thing for pipe organs) in it, that someone was playing or tuning when we went in...

AND _ Here's Ms. May posing (or bigger) in front of the bronze front-door with a lot of cast sculptures.

AND_ Here's Em & May & Bill in front of Duomo

or click for BIGger

Lecco: This town, about 40 minutes on the train to the north-north-east of Milan, is where:

Lake "Como" is - the deepest lake in Italy - and it's shaped like an inverted "Y", and it's supposedly REALLY GOOD windsurfing, on only 'some' mornings if you get-up about 4 or 5 am - the wind is "good" til about noonish.   They also have several sailing clubs and both dinghies & big-(keel) boats sail there quite a bit during the summer season.

Nearby (less than 15 minutes) snow-boarding / skiing SNOW

Nearby (less than 15 minutes) Rock Climbing ROCKx like you have never ever seen so CLOSE to town - they rise UP OUT OF the lake, almost and it is definately a rock-climbing hot-spot, so we're told

Emma lives, with her beau Lello (Yes - it's VERY confusing having a friend who's boyfriend's name is very VERY similar to the place they live.  Anyway, we spent a couple of afternoons with Em and had dinner with she and Lello one night.

Stuart-Florida house ookie: - We won't go into a LOT of detail here but you should know how DIFFICULT it has been for us attempting to purchase this house (at 8 Perriwinkle Circle) we so (think) we love in Stuart Florida.  Now there's been a few 'hiccups' in the purchasing process, amongst them are:
 

a.) apparently the existing owner illegally modified the 'downstairs' and so now it can't be insured agasint flood damage, and so my insurer wouldn't insure the downstairs

 

b.) the river-side (yes we are on the "Indian River") had been somewhat eroded during the last two hurricanes (Floyd & Irene, both in September-October), and we wanted to get the permit to allow us to both put in a seawall or some-variation thereof, to protect the yard from further erosion

 

c.) the seller hadn't had the septic tank pumped out so we had to get an inspection that said that was needed to get them to do that

 

d.) Fed-X (or UPS or whoever the title company chose) to send the documents here to Paris for me to sign & get 'Notarized' didn't work over the US Thanksgiving Day holiday - so when we arrived back in Paris on Saturday morning, 27th, there were no documents here for me to sign?!(UGH!)

 

ANYWAY _ one of the nights we were in Florence Italy (without e-mail / dial-up) Mr. Bill spent the better part of about 5 hours on the phone to various real-estate, title-company, insurance, mortgager, lawyer types in the USA. - THAT phone bill will be phenomenal...

 

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