We are writing this blog to keep our friends up to date on our travels, and perhaps to inspire and inform similar adventures. We are grateful to those who have chosen to join us along the way. Personally, I am taking a sabbatical from painting to find new inspiration....

The first leg of the trip commenced in Connecticut, with an early morning departure at 4:00 AM. With a packed Jeep Grand Cherokee, dog (Wes) and cat (Bonnie), Alex and I hit the road, Austin bound. It was an inauspicious start. Not far from Stanford heading to NYC in...

So, on we went through New Yok, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and finally Texas… Fortunately, we had a terrific overnight stop to see our dear family in Kentucky, cousins Anthony, Laura and little Thomas. We were welcomed with...

Spending 10 days with Alex was a joy. Despite her having to return to work, we explored the city, took walks, and saw friends. Margaritas and queso were a daily indulgence, and we did mange to take in some of the continuing “weirdness”. Alex’s friends Kaleen and Ernie...

Antigua, January 21-27, 2024 We left Austin for Houston on Saturday January 20 for an overnight at the airport Marriott to make a 07:45 Sunday flight to Miami for the final connection to Antigua.  By the end of the flight to Antigua, on the generally but not...

It was shocking to leave Antigua in the afternoon, and find ourselves in cold, dreary New York in the late evening. Our friend Marjorie too us to lunch at a fabulous restaurant on the water owned by a former famous model. Soon we are in an Uber heading into manhattan....

February 1-2, Chartres, John We landed at Charles De Gaulle, Paris on the first, picked up our leased car and headed for Chartres.  On the way we stopped at IKEA to pick up a few kitchen items and pillows and a fleece blanket.  Heidi sleeps a bit like the Princess and...

On our way from Chartres to Saint Emilion-Montagne we stopped for lunch in Poitiers.  It was a good choice.  We stretched our legs, had lunch at Bistro Regent, a chain with a good menu of basic roasted meats, fish, frites, and salads in a French country style at very...

As we moved from the level, Ohio like, unremarkable winter landscape of Chartres, we were greeted by rolling fields and vineyards lying fallow as we neared Bordeaux.  We had risen early  to get a jumpstart on the six hour drive to the renowned wine region.  We stopped...

We arrived in Arles just before sunset, checked into the Best Western and were keenly dissapointed in the quality of the lodging and that we were paying double due to some mystery of advanced booking as against the spot rate for the room.  This is the first time a...

On our way from Saint Emilion-Montagne to Arles we stopped for lunch in Carcassonne.  My plan because it is about half-way to our evening destination, Arle, and it is the home of Cassoulet, and I planned on seeing if the local production is as good as Heidi’s.  We...

We did not stop in Genoa on our way to Pisa, and in fact we saw little of the town as we raced by at 60-80 mph along with trucks and impatient Italian sedans.  This was the most challenging, hair raising, trully dangerous driving I have ever done.  The autostrada is 2...

This was another lunch stop to break up a long drive, 377 miles, from Arle to Pisa.  Pietra Ligure is directly on the Mediteranean and clearly a mostly modern resort town.  Almost all of the restaurants were seasonal and we were lucky to find a small bodega that had a...

Tarquinia, another lunch stop to break up a 200 mile drive to Ostia Antica.  This has been, to date, mid-March, our best lunch stop.  Tarquinia was just 2-3 miles off the highway and a delightfull walled medieval hill town, no visitor cars allowed.  We wandered the...

We stopped in Ostia Antica because it split the 380 mile distance from Pisa to Sorrento and it is a town with cultural significance.  Our lodgings were in the center of the old town and new and immaculately clean but with a somewhat flashy Las Vegas/Cat Lady feel to...

When we crossed into Italy, I was quietly briming with excitement. Two times, my half-Italian husband had planned to visit here, and both times it was not to be. The last was in 2008, two weeks after our wedding, when I came to Italy for the first time with my college...

Another lunch stop, and on the threshold of the Bay of Naples.  Gaeta, I learned is the home port of a US Navy ship USS Mount Whitney which is the flagship of the U.S. 6th Fleet and a command-and-control electronic platform.  I mention this because when I was 25, I...

Joanne and Brian had arrived on Monday, two days before our Pompeii trip on Valentines day.  We walked to the train station in Sorrento and took a 20 minute train to the Pompeii station.  The route took us through tunnels and high rise apartment block after block.  It...

Our friends Brian and Joanne joined us in Sorrento as an adjunct to their Italian Alps ski trip.  Brian and Joanne are neighbors from East Haven, Short Beach/Brown Roads neighborhood and avid racing sailors.  Brian has raced all the major Long Island Sound Races,...

Ahhh, Sorrento. Like many small cities in Italy, Sorrento is chuck full of churches and the accompanied pageantry. Every week has a saint’s day, but we hit the big one, the feast day of Saint Antinio. Parades galore with crucifixes and junk for sale in the streets....

February 17, Cusano Mutri, Italy, John We left Sorrento for the short drive to Cusano Mutri, population 4,025, just 73 miles, but into the center of Italy at the top of the Apennines a bit NE of Naples and close to a mile in altitude.  Mount Mutri is a bit over a mile...

February 18, Bari, Italy, John From Cusano Mutri, a one night stop and in retrospect not long enough, we drove southeast to Bari on the Adriatic coast.  This was a compromise stop as I had originally intended to go in search of a favorite wine and producer, Salice...

February 19, Vasto, Italy, John We left Bari with a short three-hour drive ahead of us.  I originally intended to drive through Gargano National Park.  A place of mountains, the sea, and narrow switchback roads.  After Amalfi, I had lost my taste for this level of...

Siena, February 20, Heidi I visited Siena for one day in 2008 while teaching the art class. Luisa, our tour guide, educated us on the history of the city. There was a competition with Florence for the most powerful city of the Renaissance. The Black Plague caused the...

February 20, Assisi, Italy, John We left Vasto by 9am with a 260-mile drive ahead of us as we were due in Siena by evening.  It happened that Assisi was well placed for a late lunch stop and about 2/3 of the way to our destination.  Assisi is the site of the Basilica...

I deliberately chose a day trip to Florence by train. I had been there one day on the last trip to Italy and came away dazzled by the art and underwhelmed by the city. Once again, it seemed quite uninviting. But it is one giant museum and must be visited. Knowing that...

I remembered Cortona with the exaggerated fervor of a small town girl seeing Italy for the first time. Teaching with my dear friend Deb Mckew back in 2008, I arrived in the small village perched on a steep hillside looking down on the heart of Tuscany. That theater...

Leaving the peaceful environs of Cortona was not easy. We knew that driving into Rome was going to be fraught with crazy drivers, little or no parking, and narrow streets, so we opted to leave the car at a carpark outside of the city and take public transport in. This...

We left Pisa at 9am and within less than an hour, on our way to Nice, we again entered the coastal mountains. However, on this transit we elected to take the ancient Roman coastal route and enjoyed spectacular scenery of the snow-covered Alps looking down at the...

We left Rome via taxi to our safe parking near the airport and took the coastal road to Pisa for a reprise of our earlier stay.  The weather was clear, the day warm, and the sun brilliant. Originally, we were going to drive from Rome to Nice, a distance of 433 miles,...

Our next destination was a beautiful village in Province, Lumarin, where we arrived Saturday afternoon, just in time to grab a pizza up the street from our  destination before they closed for their  afternoon break.  This region called the Luberon is in south-eastern...

A stunning mixture of old and new, Lyon is the capital city in France’s Auvergne – Rhône – Alps region. Sitting high above the old part of the city is the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourvière. The architecture includes both medieval and Renaissance styles with the...

The ride from Lyon to Dijon was brief and uneventful, aside from a pleasant lunch in Chalon-Sur-Saône, after which John napped in the car, and I walked around and bought some really cheap clothes for warmer days to come. Given the fact that we were back in a new car...

Dijon is also a place to go because of its proximity to the Grand Cru villages of Burgundy, Pommard and Puligny Montrachet for example. This is ground zero for fine wines, not that the wines are any finer, but the French were the first to raise the bar with...

We drove from Dijon to Colmar by way of lunch in Rougemont and passed by the bleak, chilly sights of the tiny, medieval Alsatian villages directly into Colmar on the Sunday before Easter. The half-timber buildings in pastel colors, flower boxes, and adorned shop...

Rougemont is one of many tiny medieval villages along the roads that wind through the fields of the Alsace Lorraine. The architecture is different – half timber and stucco, and the stony mountainsides of Italy and southern France give way to rolling hills with cottony...

Koblenz was a place chosen to shorten our drive from Colmar to Den Haag, but on the way we stopped for lunch in Heidelberg.  We had last been in Heidelberg during our trip to celebrate Heidi’s 50th birthday.  It was as charming as ever and we had a passable lunch at...

Our arrival was a bit rocky because our host did not explain the nature of the community in which our rental house was located.  We could not find a way to drive to the unit and indeed did not really understand how to find it.  We were blocked by two barricades on the...

Lubeck was one of the principal Hanseatic League cities and as such was wealthy and should have had beautiful architecture, but we were not sure what to expect after the bombing campaign during WWII. Den Haag to Lubeck was a long ride, 350 miles, but on new wide...

The idea of going to Denmark after our ambitious travel agenda so far seemed a bit like a trip too far when I considered the upcoming days. Parts of this journey included a few brief overnight stops to shorten long distances, and this was a destination after one of...

Bremen, another Hanseatic League city, surprised us.  I knew Bremerhaven, the port city for Bremen, had been heavily bombed during WWII, but Bremen had an even larger intact old city than Lubeck and a section called the Schnuur with winding streets and medieval...

As aforementioned, I packed poorly. I did not take the advice of Elaine, and brought 2 suitcases and a carry-on bag, thinking that this was reasonable for 4 months, 7 counties, and two seasons. WRONG. One third of my clothes was stolen with the car, and the remainder...

Lille is only 47 miles from Bruges, but we decided to drive West to the coast, to Dunkirk on the way, a dogleg route. This was a happy choice and we had lunch at a well-regarded fish market on the harbor, La Halle. Oysters, giant prawns, smoked fish and a delightful...

I am adding a few observations to Heidi’s.  We did the following things of note: The first was the happy chance discovery of one of Paris’ few surviving 19th century Brasseries, Bofinger, specializing in Alsatian cuisine.  We had spent the morning wandering from our...

John and I had been to Paris before. Paris has a vibe like no other city, I believe. There is something about its hum, its sparkle, and the light and life in each corner of every block. One just feels like they are walking in the shoes of someone special or famous. It...

We departed Paris on the Eurostar Tunnel Train out of Gare du Nord, which was not far from our lodgings.  We passed through immigration at the train station, much like getting on an international flight, and a by-product of Brexit.  This was day 89 in the E.U. and a...

We left the Royal Scots Club the morning of the second of May and in a little over four hours of train travel we arrived at Kings Cross Station London. Again, the countryside was lovely with glowing yellow rape seed fields in spring bloom and the rugged coastline of...

We left Blackfriars Station bound for Havant Station, a short ten-minute drive from Littlemead House on Hayling Island, the home of our dear friends Nick and Patsy Danby.  Nick and Patsy stayed with us for a week in Den Hague earlier in our wanderings. The train to...