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Today we took a tour to Orange and Chateauneuf-du-Pape which really just means we were driven to these places. That was great for us because we were given blocks of time to use as we wanted and were not herded by a guide every minute of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we set out from the hotel and stopped next door at a great brasserie for a nice 5 € / person petit-dejuner. This consisted of a hot beverage (coffee, tea, or hot chocolate), freshly baked bread, butter, jelly, a croissant, and a small (and I mean small) glass of orange juice. The cafe-au-lait they make there was fantastic. Seems like a good deal but Read the rest of this entry »

As we are waiting in the Oklahoma City airport terminal to get on the flight to Detroit, I met a nice guy who was also going to France to meet up with his wife who was in Germany. What a coincidence, we thought - he was a nice guy, full of advice since he goes to France often. The flight left OKC on time, no problems at all except these two other guys.
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Today we’re off to France! The we is Mom, Meghan, Susan, and I. We are about to leave for the Oklahoma City airport - whee!!! Sometime tomorrow morning we get to Paris, then, if all goes well, we’ll be in Avignon tomorrow night! I say that, because currently Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the good ol’ U.S. of A. today… and it is probably not surprising to our faithful readers (both of you) that I came home with one last dance with Montezuma. Yep. A souvenir I didn’t have to pay for. Wheeee!

Today we visited Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world), a monument built to recognize the location of the Equator in the country that bears its name (Ecuador). The bus ride out to the monument took a while to find (Lonely Planet says to look for pink buses - these do not exist) but we prevailed. The bus was also silly crowded (as usual).
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So we made it to Otavalo, the town with the supposedly largest market in South America. The night before market day (i.e. Friday night) we ate at a pizza place that, as do lots of touristy restaurants, has a menu with English on one side and Spanish on the other. We had to laugh when we were looking through the menu and saw that the toppings for the vegetarian pizza contained “clifford”. That sounds not only carnivorous but Read the rest of this entry »

For fans of the Motorcycle Diaries, you’ll love this story. Alberto and Ernesto set out aboard a 1939 Norton 500. Our bike was 66 years newer and its engine had only half the displacement (250cc), but how mighty it was. It hauled us up the hill north of town as fast as we wanted to go. A couple thousand vertical feet of windy dirt roads in just over 20 minutes. I was grinning from ear to ear, remembering the glory days of riding dirt bikes in Oklahoma while taking in the smoky views of the active Volcán Tungurahua.
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El Nariz del Diablo is a section of train tracks that descend a steep slope between the town of Alausi and the abandoned community of Sibambe by traversing back and forth along a hillside. There are exactly two switchbacks, meaning the train goes in reverse for only one section of track. Lonely Planet described it as, “hair-raising switchbacks”. I’m fairly certain the only thing that happened to my hair is that it got wet from the rain.

The “train” we rode Read the rest of this entry »

We tried to blend in. We bought a beautiful bag that looks like what the indigenous women carry as soon as we flew into Lima 4 months ago. We though for sure this bag would disguise us as locals. Read the rest of this entry »