It was Saturday, April 6 when we woke up in Rome, and my kind bride had scheduled the most fitting activity I could possibly engage in at that moment in that place: gladiator training followed by a trip to the Coliseum. Why? Because Monday, April 6, 2009 was the first […]
We arrived by train in Florence and navigated the throngs of tourists toward our AirBnb, a unit requiring climbing several flights of wooden stairs with steep rises. Its exterior doorway opened onto a sidewalk maybe 6” wide before a curbed one-way street where Italian men liked to exceed 40 mph, […]
We arrived at the Milan train station at 7am and arrived in Venice just before 10. I couldn’t wait to lead my family out of the train station and toward the Grand Canal where we could stand and look across the water at the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited. […]
The children’s Christmas present this year was our first international Spring Break; we landed on April Fools Day in Milan and dropped off our bags at our AirBnB by the Galleria del Corso before walking 500 feet to the beautiful Milan Cathedral. We’d pre-booked tickets to explore the inside of […]
A friend of mine turned 40 in late September, and late September is when millions of Germans celebrate Oktoberfest for 2 weeks, so I felt compelled to attend my 3rd such festival. And perhaps even more compelling was the chance to see a new country, Belgium, and to sample the […]
We loaded our Kia Carens, left our Paris apartment, and said “farewell” to the barista we’d seen every morning for a week by 9am on Tuesday, June 13. It was time to head west. Just over an hour later, we pulled up at Giverny to see Monet’s gardens. If this […]
On Monday, June 12, we arrived at the Palais Garnier, the original Paris opera house, at 10am and signed up for audio tours. The children had their own version, and the voice leading theirs was, most appropriately, the famous Phantom of the Opera. I’ve never seen live opera nor spent […]
On Sunday, June 11, we arrived 45 minutes early for our 10am time slot to visit 6 million dead people in the Parisian catacombs. We descended a spiral staircase into the underground–130 steps–leading to the darkness below. We walked 1.5km, stopping at visual markers that synced with our audio tours […]
After our 10am stop at Cafe Victor Hugo on Saturday, June 10, we took the metro to Puces de Vanves, which was a big ol’ flea market area. I got some vintage pipes with artwork on them; my bride got some coat rack thingy for the children’s backpacks that was […]
On Friday, June 9, we arrived at the Louvre at 10am. An hour or so later, our friends arrived, and then the 10 of us meandered about the museum, checking out artifacts and art among the roughly 5 million Chinese tourists who were also checking out the artifacts and art. […]