Our day in Athens began early in the morning at the Acropolis. The taxi dropped us off at the wrong entrance. Rebecca spent 15 minutes on the phone trying to find the correct entrance. We found it just in time for our tour. We made reservations in the morning to avoid the crowds. However, the …
Author Archives: Michael
Obidos, Portugal
We originally had a tour scheduled at 0845 to go to Obidos, Nazare, and somewhere else. But the tour company canceled about 45 minutes before we left because there weren’t enough tourists. What to do? Turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we decided to take a Obidos ourselves and save money. Rebecca, …
Lisbon, Portugal – Day 1
Rebecca, Paul, Michelle, and I took Uber to the center of Lisbon to catch a free walking tour with Ricardo. We were a few minutes late, but it didn’t matter since the four of us were the only tourists. The tour began in front of St. Dominic’s church near Rossio square. Church construction began in …
Sintra, Portugal
Rebecca, Paul, Michelle, and I were picked up at 0815 by a small shuttle bus for the 30-minute drive to Sintra west of Lisbon. We were on the bus with a Russian couple who recently emigrated to Israel, and two ladies from Haiti who live in Connecticut. Sintra sits up in the Sintra mountains on …
Fatima
Basilica of the Most Holy Rosary in the background.
Chartres
I had to write a separate post about the Chartres Cathedral. We read about the Chartres Light Show displayed every night on several buildings in the city of Chartres. So we left Paris a day early to spend one night in Chartres to see the illumination. I’ll get to that shortly. The train to Chartres …
Odds & Ends About Posting
I’m sitting here on the balcony of our hotel overlooking the beach in Portugal. Thinking about how to keep up with posting while I travel. Well I can’t. I now realize that I can keep up with narrative but adding pics and video is very time consuming. So, I’m going to put up the narrative …
Paris – Other Experiences Like Food
In our earlier travels to Europe we never spent much time in Paris. This time we had six free nights at a Holiday Inn Express. Not the high end in Paris, and not the low end either. We were grateful for the free nights. We walked or took the metro/subway everywhere. The public transportation around …
The Headless Saint
With our trip to Lisieux canceled, we decided to visit this thinking man at the Rodin Museum as a replacement. I didn’t know much about Auguste Rodin, but I have seen his sculpture of this man in the commode position. It’s his most famous work. I’m not much of a sculpture person unless we’re talking …
Long First Day
Our first day was too busy, we met in front of the St. Michael fountain and took a Free Paris Walking Tour with Thomas and his daughter. We walked across the Seine River and viewed the Notre Dame reconstruction. It is supposed to be open to the public by 2024. Very interesting that the French …