Overnight, the River Baroness docked in the commune of Les Andelys, about 100km from Paris. In the morning, the passengers came ashore for a short hike to the ruins of Château Gaillard, a medieval castle (built by Richard the Lionheart) that overlooks the River Seine. Les Andelys, with our ship on the river I was …
We slept late because we didn’t have much planned for this Sunday. After breakfast, we packed our bags and boarded the metro to move to the boat for our river cruise. In the process of packing, I discovered I’d lost my wireless keyboard (which I brought for my iPad). I’d used it in Rome, and …
After yesterday’s long walk, Kris and I slept late. We ate a quick breakfast of croissant and coffee (or hot chocolate, in my case) on Rue Cler, then tried to buy tickets to Versailles. Tried to buy tickets. Before we could get to Versailles, we had to buy tickets on the RER, the commuter line …
I had ambitious plans for today — too ambitious, as it turns out. In retrospect, I tried to do too much, and in the end, Kris and I both paid for it! We got an early start, stopping at a nearby patisserie to pick up a breakfast of pastries: The little patisserie near our hotel. …
Though Kris slept soundly on the train from Rome to Paris, I did not. I woke at 21:00 in Florence, around midnight in another Italian city, at 06:00 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and again permanently at 07:30 on the outskirts of France. None of my sleep was restful. A foggy morning outside Paris as our train …
At breakfast, we said good-bye to the other members of the Rick Steves tour group that we’d been traveling with for the past ten days and set out on our own. We left our bags at the hotel while we headed out for a day trip — with no guide! We took the Metro A …
This morning, our group took the subway to the Ottaviano station before walking the rest of the way to the Vatican museum. I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing more religious art, but the Vatican was actually pretty neat — the Catholic church has stolen a lot of great art in its …
After a standard breakfast, our tour group caught the Metro, riding from the Repubblica station (near our hotel) to the Cavour station. Some folks — including me — were a little on edge because the U.S. State Department had issued a travel alert warning of possible terrorist attacks on mass transit in major European cities. …
We woke a bit early to catch our bus from Florence to Rome. The bus climbed out of Florence into Umbria, the region south of Tuscany (which contains Florence) and north of Lazio (which contains Rome). I was eager to reach Rome because I wanted to attend a calcio (soccer) match at 15:00 between Lazio …
Our final full day in Florence was fun. After breakfast, we marched down past the Uffizi Gallery to Piazza della Repubblica, where we met our local guide Luka again. He started the day by taking us to a typical Florentine palazzo (or palace), where he told us about some of the city’s history and described …