Thursday September 2, 1999 -- Luxembourg

Ginger took us to the train station at 11 this morning and by 11:30 we were on a high-speed ICE train heading west. After two train transfers we arrived in Luxembourg at 4:30PM. We found a hotel across the street from the train station and then set out to explore the old town. This is another European city that has a lovely park around it, just outside the old wall of the medieval town. We walked along the wall that is now a wide park, walked into the lower town (the part of the old city outside the wall) and walked in the park that surrounds the city outside the wall on the other sides. Since it was evening, there were many other walkers and bicyclists in the parks too. We finished up the walk by passing back into the walled old city and finding a restaurant in the central plaza. We could easily have spent a few more days here.

Friday September 3, 1999 – Bayeux, France

After a long day on trains and much confusion with the transfers and the underground Metro in Paris, we ended up in Bayeux near the Normandy coast. We arrived early enough to get a cheap room in a quaint hotel right across the street form the train station. Then it was off to see the town. The town is not very large but is very old, as it was one of the few towns not destroyed in the 1944 Allied invasion. It was liberated the day after the D-day landing and thus avoided much of the fighting. There is a fabulous11^th century church here and we arrived early enough to get a look-see inside before it was closed up for the day. Although it is constructed of massive stone it appears much "lighter" than the old churches in Germany or Italy due to the fine decorative carving of the stone. We then spent some time just wandering the narrow twisty streets lined by rows of old two-story steep-roofed narrow buildings. We returned to the train station to discover that on Saturday and Sunday the trains are limited; we had hoped to travel south along the entire west coast of France, but that appears impossible to do in a timely fashion, especially on the weekend. Since we are running out of time on the EuRail pass, we may need to pass through Paris again when we leave on Sunday morning, not a happy thought.

Saturday September 4, 1999

Today we visited places and saw artifacts of the two major historical events attributed to Normandy. This morning was spent at the Tapestry museum viewing the tapestry and a description of it. The Tapestry is 75 meters long and depicts the conquest of England by William the Conqueror (in 1066) and the events that led up to the conquest. The Tapestry was embroidered in the late 11^th century and it is thought that it used to be hung in the Bayeux Cathedral for a special festival day each year.

In the afternoon we went on a tour of some of the D-Day beach sights. We visited the town of Arromanches, the site where the artificial harbor was constructed in 10 days from parts floated over from England and then sunk into place. They formed a breakwater and landing piers for the unloading of supplies. We then visited the US Cemetery and the Omaha beach landing sight before finishing the tour on the cliffs of Pointe De Hoc between the Omaha and Utah Beaches. What surprised us was the length of the beach at each of the landing sites, each were several miles long.

Tuesday September 7, 1999 – Lisbon, Portugal

We are in Lisbon after 2 ½ days of train travel. Sunday morning we left Bayeux for Paris, where we had a two hour wait and then boarded a train going south. We stopped in Bordeaux for the night and found a nice hotel right across the street from the train station. We walked some in Bordeaux but the city seemed to hold little of interest within walking distance of the train station. Yesterday we continued south to Irun (just inside the Spanish border) where we transferred from a French train to a Spanish train. The Spanish train was only 2^nd Class and we ended up sharing the 8-seat cabin with 6 other people including two heavily laden college-age kids. One girl was particularly interesting, as she seemed to be constantly fixing and eating food. Her pack literally contained all but the kitchen sink! Bill lifted her pack to the overhead for her one time and claims that it weighed more than all our stuff put together. We continued on to Salamanca where we again found nice room for the night right across the street from the train station. The lady that ran the pension was very helpful in pointing out great cheap restaurants and we had a wonderful dinner at one of them. This morning the train to Lisbon left Salamanca at 4:45AM so we were up early but slept the first three hours of the journey. This was one time where having first class seats paid off. We arrived in Lisbon about 11AM and found a room for two nights, they were booked for the third. After a nice lunch we spent the rest of the day walking around the town and checking out the sights of Lisbon. We visited some wonderful churches and they showed Moorish influence in their arches and tile work. The ceilings of most were wood all painted with great murals. Even though the ceilings were dark in these buildings, their interiors were much brighter than those that we had visited in Italy. The city has many beautiful buildings but most have not been restored and their age shows in the dark and dirty exteriors.

The EuRail Pass

Today was the last day for our EuRail pass and it has served us very well this summer. We had the pass that allowed unlimited 1^st class travel for two months. The pass was most useful in Germany, Italy and The Netherlands; countries where we could just hop on a train and not need to stand in line for tickets or reservations. Also in these countries, the train goes literally everywhere, so the whole country is accessible. Switzerland is still served by a conglomerate of independent train systems; the EuRail pass is only good on the national system (serving only the major cities) and a few others. We purchased a 5-day pass for the Interlaken area while we were there. In France and Spain we needed reservations, which cost very little with the EuRail pass, but we still had to stand in a line to get the reservations. France has great do-it-yourself machines to purchase the ticket and reservation from, but they would not issue just a reservation if you had the EuRail pass. The trains don’t appear to go to many of the smaller towns and it seems as if you have to go through Paris to go anywhere (and Paris has five train stations connected only by Metro, not by train). In Spain the train tickets are cheap and since you have to wait in line for the reservation anyway, the EuRail Pass was not worth having. The bus systems in Portugal and Spain are wonderful and cheap, a much better way to travel in these countries.

Thursday September 9, 1999

Yesterday we spent the entire day in the suburb of Belem. It is the next town down-river from Lisbon where there are many wonderful museums. Many of the museums are in a huge old monastery. The structure is very large and quite ornate showing the Moorish influences in its decorations. This imposing structure contained the archeological museum, maritime museum and a small church museum. We visited all three museums in the morning and then spent the afternoon enjoying the waterfront with a climb up the Tour de Belem, a Medieval Tower that once stood in the middle of the Rio Tejo guarding the entrance to the port. The tower is now close to the shore on the city side of the river and connected to land by a short pedestrian bridge.

The Maritime museum contained some history of Prince Henry the Navigator and the first plane to fly across the South Atlantic, but most of the rest of the displays were repeats of items that we had seen in Amsterdam and/or Venice. The archeological museum contained a very interesting temporary display showing the Arab influences on the area in art, architecture and language.

We returned to Lisbon very tired but quickly found an outside eatery where we enjoyed a small dinner before riding the subway to the bus station to purchase tickets to Faro for tomorrow.

Friday September 10, 1999 -- Faro

We traveled to Faro by bus yesterday arriving here shortly after 6:30PM. We soon found a nice room for the night where we left the luggage and took off to explore the nearby waterfront. There is a small boat harbor but it has a very low train bridge across the entrance so contains only small ski boats and small fishing boats. The larger boats and many sailboats are anchored out among the sandflats of the bay.

Today we slept in until almost 9AM and then ate a leisurely breakfast in the hotel before heading out to explore the old town. The old town is walled in and encompasses a rather small area, only about 5 blocks in each direction. The wall was built by the Moors in the 7^th century when they conquered this part of Europe. Within its bounds the streets are narrow and twisty, sided by narrow one- and two-story homes and small shops. There are several nice plazas that are fronted by public buildings. One is an interesting church where we climbed up into the bell tower for a good view over the entire city. We spent some time enjoying the courtyard in an ex-convent that now houses the archeological museum (the museum itself was closed) and then found an outdoor café where we enjoyed lunch.

Saturday September 11, 1999 – Sevilla, Spain

We left Portugal for Spain on the bus this morning and are in Sevilla. Bill, again, found a nice pension for the night right near to the bus station and across the street from the old train depot that is now a modern shopping mall. We enjoyed some beer, a dinner, a movie (Star Wars Episode 1, en Español) and after-movie coffees in the mall. We hope to spend a few days exploring this lovely city before we need to head off to Madrid and catch our flight home.

Sunday September 12, 1999

We started off today with a stop at the tourist information booth by the river and left there armed with a city map and lots of information. Our next stop was at the Torre del Oro which use to be one of the towers guarding the river entrance to the city but currently houses a small Maritime Museum. Since it was now beginning to warm up we headed off toward the large Parque de Maria Luisa. We spent some time exploring the many gardens and fountains of the park and ended up at the Plaza de España at the park’s NE corner. It is a lovely half circle plaza bounded by a semicircular building on its far side. The building shows much Moorish influence in its lovely tile work and decorative wooden ceilings. Along the plaza side of the building there are tile murals representing many of the major cities of Spain, each in its own little nook with a small ceramic map as the floor. The park and building were constructed for the 1929 Exhibition. We left there looking for a cervesaria and found one not far away under a big shade tree. We had a light lunch and a beer there while we enjoyed the shade for several hours.

It was then off to explore more of the old city on our way back to the air-conditioned mall near our hotel. We never made it to the mall as the cathedral, in all its massiveness, intervened. The cathedral is built on the site of a 12^th century mosque. Part of one wall, the lower 2/3 of the bell tower and the orange-garden plaza are all that remains of the mosque. The mosque became a Christian Church in the 14^th century and was, over time, added to and rebuilt until today it is a large stone Baroque structure.

We finally made it back to the hotel in time for a short nap and a clean-up before the sun set and it was time to go out and find a dinner.

Monday September 13, 1999

It was tough to wake up this morning so we did not get an early start. It was almost noon before we were out exploring but we made up for it in the miles that we walked. We first visited the Plaza de Toros and took an interesting tour of the bullring and a small museum associated with it. We then crossed to the west side of the river and walked along the waterfront as much as possible. There is a large area on the west side of the river left over from the Expo in 1992 (and being prepared for the Olympic games in 2004) and it is all blocked off so we had to walk around it. We crossed the river again and walked through very narrow streets of the old city ending up at the one remaining section of ancient city wall. Totally exhausted, we found an ice cream store for some badly needed "fuel" before we continued the walk back to the hotel area.

We are back in Mazatlán after a very long flight from Madrid yesterday on a full plane packed in like sardines. We arrived in Mexico City at about 5PM local time and had a layover of almost 5 hours before continuing on to Mazatlán. Since we arrived in Mazatlán in the middle of the night we had a taxi take us to the Marina where we spent the rest of the night on Lanikai. She was like a sauna when we arrived, but we opened up the side curtains covering the cockpit, opened the hatches and turned on a few fans. It did not take long for it to cool down enough below for us to be able to sleep, especially since it was over 25 hours since we had woken up in Madrid in the morning.

To back track a little: Tuesday we traveled by bus from Sevilla to Madrid. It was a 6-hour trip through countryside that reminded us of central Mexico. In Madrid we used the metro system to get all the way to the airport. There, Bill wandered off to confirm our Thursday flight to Mexico City and to try to find a nearby hotel. He succeeded at both and we were soon at a hotel nearby with shuttle service to the airport.

Wednesday, after sleeping in, we took the shuttle back to the airport and the metro into the old city. We did a little exploring but neither of us were excited about playing tourist and other than a few museums Madrid had little new to see. We found a nice outdoor café near the national palace where we spend a few hours enjoying a beer. We walked around the palace and decided that we were not interested in the tour so continued on down the hill and into the palace gardens. There we found a shady bench to sit on for a time and to just enjoy the beautiful garden. A peacock even wandered by while we were sitting. We continued on to the train station where we hopped on the metro for a ride back up the hill. Dinner and back to the hotel rounded out our one dayin Madrid.

A few thoughts on the summer’s travels

As I commented earlier, the EuRail Pass was a great deal in those countries where the train system is great and tracks run everywhere. In both Spain and Portugal the bus system was both cheap and efficient.

For us the 2 ½ month time in Europe was just a little too long as our bodies and minds were tired of traveling by the time we flew home. I do not think that we would have lasted even that long or enjoyed as much, if we had not had our daughter and son-in-law’s place in Würzburg Germany to stay at and rest up. We ended up spending just over three weeks of the summer with them, in three one-week chunks.

Our initial three weeks in Europe were spent in Italy and by the time we met Ginger and Chris in Garmish we were worn out!!! After recovering for a week at their home we were ready to travel again and very much enjoyed the museums of Amsterdam and Berlin. We were not quite so worn out when we returned to Chris and Ginger’s home this time but we wanted to be in Munich for the solar eclipse and their place is only a 2-hour train ride away. Our next excursion was to the Swiss Alps where we explored the country side both by train and foot. We did not do any more museums until almost the end of the trip when we stopped in the Normandy area of France and again in Lisbon, Portugal. I expect that we would have visited more museums in Spain and Portugal (and possibly Paris) if we had visited those areas earlier in the trip, but by the time we arrived in those countries, just walking the streets and sitting in outdoor cafés was much more enjoyable for us.

We had no trouble communicating with the locals anywhere except in Paris. There, following the stereotype, they refused to answer in anything but French even though they understood our English questions. In Italy they seemed to understand our Spanish and used a combination of Italian and English for their responses; most interesting, but it worked well. In the rest of Europe almost everyone has at least some command of English. Bill’s college-German was useful for reading signs and instructions in Germany and Switzerland. Everybody in The Netherlands speaks perfect English and most signs are either in English or have English subtitles. The Portuguese could understand our Spanish, but for some reason we could never understand spoken Portuguese; English worked well enough. It was great to get to Spain where we could even pick up conversations around us and could watch local TV. In most of the hotels, if we had TV at all, it was all in the local language with an occasional French or German station added on. The BBC or CNN Europe was a real treat. Bill also carried a small 5-language electronic translator that was great (but was missing Dutch and Portuguese). It was convenient to carry and easy to use; it helped a lot in museums and with menus and signs.

 Back to the beginning of this Lanikai Home Page :: Covering our travels 1995 thru 2006

 Visit the continuing LanikaiUnderway web log :: mid-December 2006 to currents

BillGord(at)7MileSys(dot)com

This web site (including all layout, text, graphics, photographs and errors) is Copyright © 1995-2008, Seven Mile Systems, All Rights Reserved