Our new city, for the remainder of our European adventure, was Sanary Sur Mer. The decision to come back to the south did not disappoint. Once again we found a sizeable apartment overlooking the Sea and walkable distance to the daily marché and beach. This area was getting some unusual rain, so it looked like…
I didn’t know how much we would end up enjoying the south of France until we had to leave. It is a retirement dream destination after all, I should have known! We stayed in Hyères, a lively city just east of Toulon, which is east to Marseille (mar say), which is south to Paris by…
The Palace of Versailles. Versailles (verse-eye) used to be the hunting cottage to the king before it turned into the grandeur that it is. We are again grateful to an insider tip to purchase tickets online to avoid the lineup. And a lineup it was. We gratifyingly bypassed the glaring line once again and jaunted…
Like I mentioned before, we had purposefully left the big landmarks for weekdays, hoping to avoid huge crowds. We scored at the Eiffel Tower. There were plenty of tourists and even school kids on a nice field trip but we had no trouble getting our passes to start our 1,664 step workout. The weather had turned a…
Before heading out to go see Le Louvre, we listened to our audio history on the Impressionists Monet, Renoir, Degas and Cassatt. We needed to get our art straight before heading into the massive Louvre. Outside of the metro station we marvelled at the Opera Garnier. We ended up near Champs-Élysées (shahns ay lee zay)…
Today Paris was to be experienced in the beautiful, hilly area of Montemarte. This area may have already been famous, after all to get to Sacré Cour (sakray kurr) one must walk through the neighbourhood, but the movie, Amèlie, made it even more famous. It was even more special for Hakim and I as our…
We arrived in Paris We arrived in Paris ahead of schedule so we were able to avoid most of Paris’ evening traffic jam. We rented a picturesque home just outside of the arrondissement (air on deece uh mont; that big circle thing around the center of Paris maps), a bit east of Orly Airport. Driving…
The day finally arrived! We were on our way to Europe. I had to keep reminding myself that we were going to be living as Europeans for the next two months and there was a lot of pre planning to do, including bills due in October that still come by paper mail. Regardless, I had…
