After our hikes, we really should have put in a week or two of downtime to rest up and slowly get back into our regular tourist mode. Instead we spent 3 nights in Strasbourg and then 4 nights in Beaune. In Beaune, we actually spent 1 day renting a car to look for some family…
Tag: Europe
Do we like “thru-hiking” in Europe?
We just finished our trial thru-hikes to see if are ready for doing a Camino de Santiago. I’m sure everyone is on the edge of their seat to see what we are now thinking :>) First, we need to try to define the terms. In America, I have done a lot of “backpacking” in Washington…
Hiking the Alsace Wine Route
Yep, another long hike… but this time on the other side of France in the Alsatian region. Alsace is a very German part of France because this area has been part of Germany in the past. Many people still speak German and the regional food also is a bit similar with a lot of pretzels,…
Hiking Cancale to Mont Saint Michel, Days 3 and 4
After eating enough oysters in Cancale to cure our sickness, we were ready to go and finish our hike. If you haven’t read about Day 1 and 2 of our hike you should probably do that first. We were now feeling fresh and determined to walk the rest of the way to our final destination…
Hiking Saint Malo to Cancale- Day 1 and 2
Our first step in the morning was to find a taxi to take our bags ahead to our final destination 5 days from now. We were able to negotiate a fair price with a driver who was willing to take our carry-on rolly bags to our Airbnb in Mont Saint Michel. Our Airbnb had agreed…
European Snowbirds?
We are currently in Costa Rica in an Airbnb in a condo development that is filled with North Americans. Some are only here for a week or so but most are staying the whole winter. We have seen this many times now… it is usually 25-75 units surrounding a pool which becomes the meeting place…
I don’t want to wear pants!
Or socks for that matter. I have dreamed that our retirement would be traveling with the good weather and spend my life in shorts and sandals. I hate socks. I hate having to wear jeans to stay warm. But I wasn’t always this way. I remember when I was younger getting upset when people complained…
Alicante, Spain
The last stop on the European leg of our fall trip. We have spent September in France, and October in Spain, and we knew we would be a bit weary from all that European culture travel so we had planned 9 days at the Spanish beach town of Alicante. We were envisioning a quiet week…
Altea and Elche day trips
We stayed 9 days in Alicante, Spain and we anticipated doing a lot of day trips along the coast. Alicante has a light rail (tram) that goes a long ways North and hits several different beach towns. On our first day in town, we walked a few miles along the beach to Playa de Albufereta…
Valencia, Spain
We did not do too much travel planning for Valencia. We just spend 2 weeks in 4 different Spanish cities with P & K, which were thoroughly researched and planned.. Now P & K have left, and we are again left to our own planning (or lack thereof). So… the first thing to do in…
Barcelona, Spain
We were in Barcelona in 2007 and remember being blown away by the number of tourists from all over the world. Walking down the Ramblas, you can here many different languages while trying to stay in the flow of the mob of people. It seems like there are now twice as many people and we…
Sevilla and Granada, Spain
We know how to see cities in just a few days. We have been doing in most of our lives, because we had jobs that only allowed us to travel 2 or 3 weeks a year. We learned to see as much as possible while stopping in to a city in 2 or 3 days….
Madrid, Spain
We were in Madrid just 5 years ago and enjoyed it a lot and we really wanted to come back. It has 3 fantastic art museums, excellent tapas scene and lots of squares to sit and drink while watching the hordes of people. This trip there were hordes and hordes of people. I can’t remember…
San Sebastian, Spain
The Spanish Basque country has always been near the top of our destination list but we never got there on our previous trips to Spain. We never had enough time to get make it work because it is far from the other Spain “go to” cities. But we have enough time now :>) and Spanish…
Montpellier, France
During my last few years of working when I was dreaming of retirement, I was picturing a nomadic life, staying for 2-3 months in European towns that weren’t too touristy. I wanted to live in Europe, not be a tourist. Montpellier is the type of town that I had pictured. It has 300k people but…