On Wednesday we managed the Metro system and headed to Montmartre.  Montmartre is highest point in the city with great views and historically has been the home of artists, writers and poets.  It remains a major tourist destination with its street artists, shops, restaurants and the beautiful Sacré-Coeur church.  Unfortunately Sacré-Coeur is among the growing list of institutions that now forbids pictures inside, even with no flash.

We roamed the streets, visited the church, shopped, had lunch and then headed back down the hill where Konnie and Isabelle explored more of the small unique shops of Paris.  We then headed to the Marais area for more exploring including the Pompidou Museum area.  Then we headed back to Alfio for dinner.  This is the place that seats twenty but should seat about fourteen.  But in spite of being table to table, the food is great, servers friendly and they fill the olive oil bottles with chili peppers.  If you like hot food, then add chili infused olive oil to your must try list.

Today we headed for the Musée ď Orsay which has always been one of my favorite spots here.  Not too big, great impressionist collection and a beautiful building (an old train station).  But holy mackerel.  I don’t know whether to skip spring break or Easter week travel in the future.  There were way too many people and that kept it from being an enjoyable experience.  While still a great collection for us amateurs, the line (which Konnie fortunately figured out how to skip with our multiple museum tickets) and their being part of a new trend to not allow pictures of the building put a damper on the day.  The crowd was especially disruptive to it being as enjoyable a day as it otherwise would have been.  Since one guard gave me permission to take some shots, I did manage a few before being shut down by another.

But our walk home was also interesting.  Isabelle found some good shopping for both herself and others.  Then we met a gentleman on the street who thought we needed help and turns out he used to work for a biking operation in Boulder.  He started rattling off names of people he worked with in biking, including Lance Armstrong.  I said I didn’t know you could still say “Lance Armstrong” in France.  He proceeded to tell us how there were three things you couldn’t talk about in France…what happened to the Jews and Armenians and Lance Armstrong.  So Lance Armstrong’s sins were so bad he manages to fit in with two massive ethnic cleansings.  Talk about a fall from grace.

Anyway, it was time for school to be out with many children being escorted home by their Moms (very old fashioned here).  What was fascinating about this was that ALL the bakeries along our route (and they were numerous) were full with lines of Moms and kids extending out of the front doors.  Then there were little children hanging out on the streets like gang gatherings while eating their pastries.  I assume they have this routine most school days but none were obese.  So I guess it is the sugary drinks after all.

About a week before we left Denver, i.e. mid-March, I attempted to purchase advance tickets to visit the Eiffel Tower.  There were no tickets for March and but a few for April.  I reviewed various tour company packages, finding no March tickets.  Finally I found tickets for Sunday afternoon for a three hour walking tour of Paris that included direct access (meaning skipping the two hour line) to the Tower.

Boy was it cold.  Brunch at Ribe again and a visit to Champs Elysses for warmer clothes for our Arizona girl.  Then it was a nice walking tour with Sandemans (http://www.neweuropetours.eu/).  Professional, knowledegable guide and we did skip the line at the Eiffel Tower.  But it was an ugly day making for mediocre pictures and a frigid trip to the top of the tower resulting in no attempts at scenic pictures and only a couple of fast attempts at pictures of ourselves.  It was quite unpleasant.

We did venture out after warming up and stopped at a tiny Italian place called Alfio for dinner.  Seated 20 but should have seated 10.  It was outstanding, especially the chili infused olive oil.  I was pouring it on everything.  Hopefully Konnie will be trying to duplicate it when we get home.

Monday saw much better weather and after our daily brunch at Ribe we hit the Orangerie Museum, which is a terrific small museum with mostly impressionist work, and then Notre Dame.  My favorite place, Sainte Chapelle, is still undergoing a long-term restoration so we skipped it for now.  A stop at a fascinating nut store called La Pistacherie then dinner at the so-so Donia, an Armenian place where the food turned out to be not particularly interesting.

If we can survive the Passover celebration going on upstairs tonight, we’ll be ready for more adventure tomorrow.

We’ve headed to Paris for the fourth annual Isabelle version of the “I Never Knew My Grandfathers So I’m Taking My Grandchildren Anywhere I Can While They’ll Still Go With Me” tour.  The first three years with Isabelle were to NYC, London and Madrid.

Our trip over went smoothly as in no missed connection and bags arrived with us.  Getting through immigration took about five seconds versus the up to two hours I have witnessed in the US.  That’s two hours for Americans to get back into their country and five seconds to get into France.  Also no customs check.

I found our apartment online as usual but have been wary of the claim that it had a front row view from all of the windows of the Eiffel Tower.  Well, our landlady did not lie.  This century plus old Paris apartment looks at it nose to nose.  Spectacular.  And at night…even more so.  A very lucky find.

We walked the general area for our time zone adjustment day, breakfast at a brasserie called Ribe, lunch at Bistrot de la Tour Eiffel and back to Ribe for a surprisingly good dinner.  Then our catch up night of sleep.  New activities tomorrow but for today, enchanted by our view of la Tour Eiffel.

We’ve finished our four week stay at Casa Playa Bonita in Playa Flamingo Costa Rica and are back in Denver for more winter. One thing we learned on this trip is that if you want to be assured hot weather in the winter, go way south where it is actually summer. In this case we were at about 10 degrees north latitude during their dry season. For all of our 28 days I imagine the daytime high was at least 95 degrees, if that low, and we could count the total clouds in the sky for the four weeks on one hand. In other words, the weather was perfect.In addition to the perfect weather and our wonderful rental house on the beach, we found the people helpful and friendly, good food, beautiful flowering trees and fun animals to observe in the jungle and at the beach. We hope to return to the area soon. Here are some photo highlights of our stay.

Our next adventure returned Benjamin and me along with our new adventurers, Dave and Lisa Wangsness, to Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja but to the Santa Maria station rather than the Las Pailas station where we hiked earlier.  Santa Maria is more remote taking nearly an hour to go the final 15 miles resulting in only four cars in the parking area all day.  Also, there was no English speaking ranger at this station as there was at Las Pailas.  The trail was less up and down, there were more streams to cross, a lovely waterfall and many thermal pools loudly bubbling away.  Our wildlife spottings found less cooperative monkeys than those we encountered at Las Pailas, a coral snake and probably a green vine snake.  At the end of our nearly seven hour hike we received a great show from a flock of Toucans, a truly gorgeous bird.

Benjamin and Fernanda finished their week with us on Saturday the 9th after Dave and Lisa had joined us on the 6th.  We continue to enjoy most of our evening meals at Angelina’s, Tubla, Marie’s, Pleamar, Copa Cabana in neighboring Tamarindo and an occasional excellent meal prepared by our housekeeper Blanca.

Still researching our next adventure but in the meantime enjoying the continuous streak of cloudless days as we overlook the thundering Pacific Ocean.

On February 5th we headed to Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja Las Pailas ranger station.  It is about a two hour drive from Flamingo Beach.  The jungle hike was gorgeous with wonderful vegatation, streams, falls, and a swinging bridge made of rebar, wire and fence material.  We saw a beautiful Toucan that did not hang around long enough for either Benjamin or I to catch in one of our lenses, turkeys, butterflies, an amazing dragon fly whose motion resembles a helicopter when it flies and the extremely cute and curious white faced monkeys.  These guys were incredibly entertaining and seemed to grow in number the longer we were clicking and flashing.  While always difficult to shoot straight up into the jungle canopy, included here are a few of the shots I managed.  Benjamin managed more and, of course, better ones but I’ll keep trying to learn his tricks.

Well, it has been nearly a week since my only post from Costa Rica.  That’s because our guests of this past week have not been able to pull themselves away from the pool or ocean which are equally accessible from this house.  It is a very special location so we understand.

Our new restaurant for the week that we found on our own is Tubla here in Playa Flamingo, which was good and reasonably priced although understaffed.  But service everywhere here is slow.  We had a mediocre dinner in Tamarindo, an excellent dinner on our patio prepared by our housekeeper Blanca and a fun dinner at sunset on the beach at Coco Loco, I mean literally a special table on the beach, at Coco Loco.  However, don’t go to Coco Loco without cash because the majority of the time the credit card machine is broken.

My daughter Kristin and her husband Rob left us today, Dale and Debbie Cummins leave us on Wednesday and Konnie and I will head to the jungle on Thursday.  Benjamin and Fernanda arrive on Saturday.

So for now, here are a few pictures from the week.

We began to get away about this time of year in 2007 with a one week stint on the Big Island of Hawaii.  In 2008 and 2009 we spent two weeks in St. John USVI followed by two weeks in Akumal, Mexico, then three weeks in Tortola BVI and four weeks in Tortola last year.

So our seventh escape from wintertime so far is our greatest escape from cold temperatures as the upper 90s to low 100s each day have been the rule here at 10 degrees north latitude.  Konnie and I arrived here on the northwest coast of Costa Rica on Saturday January 19.  We spent the next several days settling into the rental house, checking out restaurants and shopping for various items.

On Tuesday evening my daughter Kristin and her husband Rob, who live in Phoenix, joined us for the first time on this adventure followed on Wednesday by Dale and Debbie Cummins of Liberty, Indiana (my hometown) who are joining us for the fifth time.  More visitors arrive later during our four week escape.

Our rental house, Casa Playa Bonita on Flamingo Beach (http://casaplayabonitacr.com/CasaPlayaBonita/Welcome.html),is great, the setting spectacular, the weather not winter, and the shopping frustrating.  The locals have been very friendly and helpful.  So far all of our restaurants have been good with Angelina’s head and shoulders above the others, not only for the food but our server Irene has, in addition to her serving skills, been both vivacious as well as a good Spanish tutor.  Our other eateries so far have been Marie’s for breakfast, Coco Loco on the beach for lunch, Pleamar, Carlos & Carlos and Mar y Sol.

We will be leaving the comfort of the beach environment soon to explore what the interior has to offer.

After our return from Oxford we slipped even deeper into our pretend residents mode.  On Thursday after lunch at L’Opera, we headed to the National Gallery (free admission) to spend the whole afternoon.  We thought it to be outstanding and are unsure why we did not get there on an earlier visit.  Dinner at an Asian place near our flat.  It was not bad but not worthy of being mentioned.

On Friday we visited the Victoria & Albert Museum (free admission) where we had not been since 2010.  In addition to catching up on some regular medieval and renaissance exhibits, we visited two special photography exhibitions called “Light from the Middle East:  New Photography” and an exhibition called “Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock Photographs by Harry Hammond.”  The Rock Photo exhibition was great fun except that it was a reminder of the fact that I am racking up the years.  Yes, it was lunch at L’Opera again and dinner at one of our favorites here, Zayna (www.zaynarestaurant.co.uk), Pakistani and North Indian Cuisine, with Gail and Robin Edwards and Jacquie Martinez, great friends from my time working with the Maya Research Program in Belize.  I am scratching my head at how I failed to get pictures of our great evening.

Saturday saw lunch at a new favorite lunch and cappuccino place, Cocomaya (“Fine Chocolatier & Artisan Baker”) (www.cocomaya.co.uk) on Brompton Road followed by an all afternoon walk covering Green Park, St. James’s Park, Buckingham Palace and the other sites in the Westminster section of the city.  The evening saw us return to Ciros to enjoy an evening of music as well as the (cheeseless in my case) pizza and complementary stuff they like to throw our way.  Tonight’s server was from Serbia and had worked at Lake Tahoe.

Sunday was the most beautiful day of our 23 and we did more walking, enjoying the sun in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.  Breakfast at Cocomaya, lunch at Noura where they stuffed us with complementary baklava after we opted for a light lunch and dinner at Patara with Gail and Robin Edwards.

We stopped into Muffinskis for an afternoon break one day, a muffin and coffee shop in Covent Garden that we have visited before.  The music in the shop was all early Beatles.  Perfect for an old codger who lived through the British Invasion of the 60s.  As we were preparing to leave I said to one of young lady servers, “I really love the music you play.  Is that a new group from around here?”  Her jaw dropped and eyes opened wide and she clearly was reaching for the right words to not offend a customer.  She finally mustered in amazement (and you must add the accent) “It’s the Baytles.”  She was born 30 years after their rise to fame.  But they are in institution to even her.

We love London.