Wednesday, July 14 Today is Bastille Day, France’s grand holiday. The plan was to catch the parade in the morning and then the fireworks tonight. At about 9:00, we hopped on our Velodi bikes at the rental kiosk and headed for Cours du de Gaulle. Light holiday traffic made the trip a bit less nerve-jangling …
Sunday, July 11 Today was one of the more leisurely days of our trip. At grocery and sandwich shops in the metro station we grabbed a bottle of wine, some sandwiches and a bit of desert to serve as rations for our day of train travel. We arrived at the Berlin station with plenty of …
No Internet (it’s a series of tubes) for a few days. Today is 7 hours on the train. Time for some catch-up. Berlin has been great fun. I don’t want to know what my LDL number is.
Wednesday, July 7 Today the focus was on Danish history and her monarchy. After a quick breakfast from a pastry shop (Danish, of course), we walked to Rosenborg Castle. Rosenborg is a beautiful historic building and a fascinating museum of cultural history. It houses some of Denmark’s greatest cultural treasures, including the Crown Jewels and …
Tuesday – July 6 Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen! In my mind, I keep hearing Mario Lanza singing “Drink, drink, let your hearts fly…” First off, the art and the architecture of this city are stunning. 16th century stonework surrounded by some of the most amazing contemporary works I’ve ever seen. When we were trying to find …
I keep trying to get the blogging to a point where it is contemporary, but I don’t seem to be having much luck. Laurel’s off looking for her glasses again, so I’ll do a quick entry. We arrived in Copenhagen last night. Checked in to the hotel, oriented ourselves and hit the streets for a …
Monday, July 5 Our Euro Capital hotel in Brussels is the quintessence of our Euro lodging. Located across the street from the main train station—frequently an interesting part of town—it was 3-star, clean, comfortable and a compact and at €80 with breakfast, a screaming deal. The French-born Algerian desk clerk spoke at least 4 languages—pretty …
Sunday, July 4 Happy Independence Day! Dash, dash, dash… Breakfast was a bit quieter this morning because our French promotional buddies had all checked out and taken off for an early (10:00) TdF caravan. We didn’t make that event. It was a quick train ride into Rotterdam; stash our bags in a station locker …
Saturday, July 3 We’re sharing our hotel with support people from Cochonou, a French packaged lunch meat producer. They Couchonou folks will be participating in the Caravan that precedes every race and they brought with them about a dozen exotic vehicles including drop-top Citreon’s, panel trucks sporting enormous bakery goods, etc. The purpose for the …
Friday, July 2 While one major impetus for this trip was the Tour de France, today was largely about football. You know, the kind where the ball is round and the men wear short pants. Holland was playing Brazil in the World Cup quarter-finals and we had the great fortune to watch the game from under …