Draft-Travel Journal

Rough Draft/Overview of "The Great European Adventure"

You might be reading our holiday card. You might be thinking, I'll look at their pictures and read the travel journal we references. Yes we quickly made a blog address so we could send out the cards but (I sigh, I hang my head), it is still very much a work in progress.  As many of you know I write to my mom once a week. I am going to use that as the base for the journal. After my walk today I decided to post that. I've added a few pictures. And hopefully before the new year add more text (apparently I did not write much about the actual hike), pictures and links.

Our trip started by being graciously shuttled to the Van Nuys FlyAway by Darrell and Theresa’s friend and neighbor Lorraine. Her Honda Pilot was able to accommodate all of us with our packs etc. Everything went pretty smoothly. Our flight was a bit delayed but since we were the first set of couples to arrive it didn’t affect the group schedule. Our hotel, El Call was central, reasonable and clean. The desk clerk’s restaurant recommendation was excellent. The next morning Bette Dzamba and David arrived from the airport as planned. Despite our short stay in Barcelona and a bit of rain we did walk around and eat at the Mercat Boqueria and Jewish Quarter, enjoying the tour/talk of the medieval synagogue. We then went back to meet Mark and Celia at the airport and rent our nine-passenger van. Piling into the VW van with all eight of us felt quite miraculous! With a few wrong turns we headed to our hotel in Andorra. Thank goodness the van ended up having a navigation system. It wasn’t perfect but it helped tremendously over the course of the next ten days. Ski season is the high season, so we ended up in a very nice hotel with huge rooms and each couple was comped a bottle of champagne and a tin of Danish butter cookies. We had an excellent meal at the hotel restaurant and toasted our start of the trip. The next day we walked around a bit before our drive to Saint Giron. Upon our arrival we checked in at the visitor’s center, secured Jim a place to stay for his one night alone, visited the Chemin de la Liberté museum and found our way to the correct bridge that is the official start of the hike. That night we stayed at a hotel in St. Lizier a small town about a mile from Saint Giron. They had an excellent restaurant. The next day dawned and after we breakfast drove to the bridge and started the hike.

 This is a beautiful area of France. It would have been very difficult to visit without someone in the group having some ability to communicate in French. Over the next day’s Theresa’s French skills were used often. Navigating the hike was difficult. The first day we figure about 2 hours was spent on trying to find our way. It was a long, but in the end a successful day which ended with us meeting Jim at the stunning organic farm we stayed at.

Le Mas d’Azil

We spent our last day as a group of eight touring these pre-historic caves and visiting the nearby village. The next day we drove to Toulouse. The four of us flew to Milan via Brussels. Mark and Celia boarded a train to the Alsace Lorraine region and Bette and David took the van back to Barcelona via a visit to the Dahli Museum. Upon our landing in Milan, a bit late, we hired a car at the Milan airport to drive us to Monza. It was raining on and off during the drive and hope stringing eternal the reality was that by the time we arrived, checked-in and got taken to our campsite it was raining. Not ideal but we weathered the storm, set-up our tents and went to the campground eatery. It felt very frenetic and we questioned if we would last at Monza for four nights.

I think I left off the trip journal arriving in the rain at the Monza campground and wondering if we would last there four nights. It was a bit damp that night, but things calmed down. Monza, outside of Milan is a huge park. The racetrack is only a portion of it. On Friday (practice day at the track) we took a long walk and ended up at Ville Reale a large palace built around 178, when the region was part go the Austrian Empire. We toured the house and went to a very good Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit that was on loan from a museum in Athens. On our walk back the crowds were leaving the racetrack for the day. We were able to walk through the center of the arena grounds and see the center of all the action. Theresa and Darrell met friends for dinner in downtown Monza but after seeing the traffic we decided to stay put and had a relaxing (not quiet) dinner with a live band at the campground. Saturday was good weather, and we headed to Lake Como and the Motto Guzzi open house weekend in Mondello del Lario.

We ended last week at the Motto Guzzi motorcycle factory, started after WW1. They were the first company to test a motorcycle for aerodynamics, building their own wind tunnel in 1950. It was a beautiful day and we had a lovely lunch outdoors before exploring the factory and its grounds. The whole town is part of the open house festivities with various booths supporting local sports teams etc. We happened upon a bagpipe band getting ready (who knew?) to march in full Scottish regalia. We made it back to Monza after getting on the wrong train. It was only a two-stop mistake. We went to bed and were awoken by a huge thunderstorm. I think per inch it was the biggest rainstorm I’ve experienced while camping. We all stayed dry but at least one RV awning collapsed from water accumulation and many RV’s had big puddles outside their front doors. It was Sunday the big F1 final race day. We thought we’d head to an internet café for breakfast just up the road. We were wrong. The street was blocked by a sea of people coming into the park. Breakfast happened at the campground eatery.

So, I left off at Sunday Breakfast in Monza. We decided to see if we could find a place to watch the F1 Italian Grand Prix. The campground abuts the racetrack right before Turn One, with expensive grandstand seats directly across from its fence. We found a good spot, but we really needed something to stand on for a better view, especially for those of us who are more height challenged. Just after making a less than perfect make-shift step stool the campground staff arrived with milk crates to stand on. They invited us to use them, so we ended up with a perfect view of the race. Ferrari won (ending a nine-year dry spell) so the crowd was extra upbeat after the race. It was fun to watch them flood onto the track, helping themselves to all the temporary track signage and advertisement boards, while rushing toward the site of the trophy presentation. We decided to head out to experience the excited fans exiting the area and see if we could find the Jackie Stewart exhibit I had seen a flyer for at the town hall of Biassono, basically up the street. We found it! A member of the local car club had scoured the Monza archives, making a rather impressive exhibit of Jackie Stewart historical photos. The race was run in complete sunshine, but showers had returned. On the upside we did get to see a rainbow. For our last dinner in Italy we happened upon Osteria 1927 Enoteca. It was an excellent meal. Monday dawned early to get to the Monza train station for a 9:30 train back into France.

It was a very pretty train ride. We got to see the other side of Lake Como. In Zurich we switched trains to Dijon, France and then to our final stop, Beaune. 

Beaune is a very pretty walled city. After four nights of camping we had reserved a swanky looking two- bedroom, two-bath apartment. It did not disappoint. We hadn’t thought about doing laundry, but it had it, so we took full advantage. We hit the town cheese shop etc. and returned to our place for the evening. It was like being in a Restoration Hardware catalogue. The next morning, we walked around a bit before heading to the train station. Beaune is in the Burgundy region and full of tourists. It was the first time we heard American accents since leaving Barcelona. Next stop Vierzon, France.

Why Vierzon? Vierzon is where Nicole, owner of the French grocery/café that Theresa has worked at for many years is from. Arriving in Vierzon Tuesday afternoon, we were picked up by Nicole’s brother Jean Claude and nephew, Charles. They arranged for us to stay at Moulin Neuf. It had been a working water mill from 1892-1962 and had been beautifully remodeled into a bed and breakfast. We had a delicious dinner there that night joined by the former owner of the mill, Jean Claude and his girlfriend, Maria. Vierzon is in the Central Loire Valley and in the Territory of Berry. We visited some multi-generational family run businesses, including a goat cheese production facility and a winery. We toured Château de Chenonceau, a famous 16^th Century castle on the Cher River outside of Tours. Vierzon was having its yearly trade expo. Besides food and wine purveyors there were booths featuring home improvement products and car dealers. We made ourselves at home at the table in the booth selling septic tanks, enjoying wine and foie gras before having our last dinner in France at an Asian buffet restaurant. Jean Claude and Maria were very gracious hosts. After a side trip to a winery, we took the train to Paris and the Airport. We arrived in Newark Airport late Thursday evening and arrived for our visit with you Friday morning. Our flight home Friday night was uneventful.