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.

One of the reasons we are fond of London is the terrific transportation system that not only makes getting around the city so very easy, but that also gives great access to the rest of the country.  In the 45 days we have spent here recently, we just took our first taxi within the city the other evening.  And we have enjoyed a number of day trips outside of the city via the trains.  This trip our intended destination was Oxford.

So mid-week we headed to the Paddington Station to take off to Oxford for the day.  Oxford is home to one of the world’s most celebrated universities and is known as “the city of dreaming spires.”  You will be sick of spires and other historical buildings if you review all the pictures accompanying this post.  Anyway, educational institutions in Oxford (Ox-ford, the river crossing for the oxen back in the day) date to the 12^th century.  This is where you come to study when you are a Rhodes Scholar.

Most of Oxford’s great buildings feature the honey-colored limestone from the Cotswold Hills and they supposedly look familiar because of all the television and movie filming that takes place here including something called Harry Potter.

I will let you research Oxford to the extent you are interested and try to let the photos speak for it at least a little bit.  It deserves your visit and it deserves another visit from us.  It seems much larger than Cambridge, a city we have day tripped twice, and a single day did not allow us to cover it all.  We will try to return.

We had a lovely lunch inside St. Mary’s Church and an afternoon break at the purported “oldest established coffee house in Europe,” the Queen’s Lane Coffee House.  Dinner back in London at an inexpensive place called Thai Square.  Not bad…not great.

More on the rest of our London stay later.

We spent about 36 days here in 2010 and 2011 so we did not have grandiose plans for this part of our trip.  Rather, we planned to basically live here for a week.  Visit a few sites, enjoy the restaurants we have liked so much in the past and just hang out.

Since this blog is supposed to be helpful to other travelers and a way for us to remember all we are so fortunate to do, here is a review of the highlights of the first part of our week.

We started things off right upon our arrival on Saturday by dining at our favorite restaurant anywhere, Patara on Beauchamp (www.pataralondon.com).  We have now eaten here about a dozen times which is why we had to try the one in Vienna.  This location is much better.  More intimate, more selections, spicier food, less expensive than Vienna (especially the wine), all of the staff is Thai and all about service.  And, of course, they know and remember us from visit to visit which translates to a discount every time.  Wish we got treated that way at our regular haunts in Denver.

On Sunday I found an LA Fitness nearby where I purchased a week’s worth of passes.  They were nice enough to sell a week to me at about a 65% discount off the published daily price.  I thought that was a very nice thing to do.  Then it was laundry day but we still saw our first new discovery on this visit.  An “organic deli and patisserie” with what they term homemade food called L’Opera on Brompton Road near the big museums.  You select your food from the case (it changes each day) and they put it together.  Nice people (our server here is from the Phillipines), reasonable prices and excellent food.  Dinner at Daphnes (www.daphnes-restaurant.co.uk), a place on Draycott we found on our long Sunday afternoon walk that included Hyde Park, Knightsbridge and Kensington.  Another good pick as the food was excellent with a pleasant staff including our Hungarian server (by the end of this trip it will be very apparent the international nature of London).

After lunch again at L’Opera, on a rainy Monday we re-visited the Courtauld Institute Art Gallery at Somerset House.  It is a small gallery in a very cool old building but contains work by all the big guns.  Somerset House was built in 1770 and the courtyard is currently set up with a giant (much larger than Rockefeller Center) skating rink.  We had dinner at Ciros Pizza Pomodoro on Beauchamp (www.pomodoro.co.uk).  We had been there twice before with my granddaughter Isabelle.  I like it because they have cheeseless seafood pizzas.  Again, treated like regulars with free after dinner drinks and an invite to return for the live music on Saturday night (even though they were fully booked).  Our server here hails from Spain.

On Tuesday we spent the afternoon in the Covent Garden and Leicester Square area.  This popular area is already decked out for the year end holidays.  The great discovery this day was Stanfords (www.stanfords.co.uk), an unbelievable travel store with more travel books and maps than I have ever seen.  I estimate it is probably a 30,000ish square foot store devoted to travel.  I have been having so much trouble finding what I want in the way of travel books and maps at both our local and chain bookstores in Denver and am always reluctantly resorting to Amazon.  This place has everything.  Dinner at Tamarind (www.tamarindrestaurant.com), a wonderful Indian restaurant in Mayfair that we have been to before but not enough.  It deserves more visits.  Oh yes, the staff is Indian of course.

Next, Off to Oxford.

Day two in Bratislava was brisk but we saw sunshine for the second straight day and that makes all the difference!  We began with a visit to the Primate’s Palace that our guidebook described as the most beautiful palace in Bratislava.  Hmm?  While a lovely building from the outside, the inside was a disappointment but then it did only cost two Euros to get in.  Very little of it is viewable and what is contains very little history to view.  I need to mention that visiting museum type venues (the castle, city museum and the palace) is a bit of an unusual experience here.  First, they are very inexpensive.  Second, there is not much in the castle and even less in the Palace, so at least they don’t overcharge, but the City Museum was extensive and contained many interesting items.  Third, and I’m blaming this on being under Soviet influence for over four decades, they each had these elderly ladies that followed us around.  There is nobody else there and they follow you from room to room.  And they speak no English but try to give you direction at times such as when you are apparently not following the prescribed flow even though we were alone.  Just be aware that it creates a bit of a weird environment.

Then on to the Franciscan Church.  A Baroque church from the 17^th century, it has a locked ironwork structure across the back preventing full access.  (And now you must forgive me as I know not of what I speak.)  It does have access to the customary water supply that is used for the Catholic ritual exercised upon entering the church and two places to kneel to pray whereas the Jesuit church yesterday, which was fully open, had about 30 people in the seats on a Thursday afternoon praying which actually made it uncomfortable to just be in there as a tourist onlooker (which is okay, I mean it is a functioning church).

Then we headed for Grassalkovich Palace which is the residence of the President and is a very beautiful structure with some very funky and not scary guards in historical garb.  It is another area that has only been refurbished since independence in 1993.  And there is much refurbishing going on around the city as well as many wonderful buildings in need of attention.  There is plenty to enjoy in the city for a few days but they have a ways to go to get more of their structures to the quality of other European cities that were not handicapped by Soviet domination.

Lunch at Roland, a little retail action, a cappuccino break at Cokoladovna Bon Bon and dinner at Primi.  Bratislava was an interesting adventure and we are glad we gave it a try.

Now off to London.

We rolled across the Austrian border into Slovakia after dark on Wednesday evening.  The Austrian highways that we experienced were in excellent condition and the fact that they only used the left two lanes to pass (including the large trucks!) greatly facilitated the flow.  Now that sure would make the trips to and from the Colorado mountains more pleasurable.

It is only a mile from the Austria/Slovakia border until you hit Bratislava, a city of about a half million residents that straddles the Danube.  As you know, this part of the world has a complicated history with Slovakia only being an independent state since 1993.  Bratislava, formerly known as Pressburg, has been everything from the capital of Hungary to being part of Czechoslovakia beginning with its creation after World War I.   Now with Slovakia an independent state, Bratislava is its capital.

Bratislava’s Old Town is pedestrian friendly and full of shops, restaurants and some fun street art.  Our hotel, Marrol’s Boutique Hotel, sits on the edge of Old Town so our access to historical sites has been very convenient.  Fortunately, English is not uncommon here among the younger crowd.  So the rule seems to be that we are fine in the shops and restaurants where young people work and unable to communicate with the older ladies manning the castle and museums.

In fact, the young man working the Suveniry shop at the castle asked us where we were from.  Konnie says the United States.  He asks what state.  She says Colorado.  He says, “so you are blue.”  Our lingo permeates the world.

We spent Thursday (our second day with sun out of 13 days) visiting St. Martin’s Cathedral, the site of the coronation of eleven Hungarian kings and eight queens dating to 1563 followed by Bratislava Castle, which sits on a large hill overlooking the Danube.  In addition we visited the Jesuit Church, built in 1636 for the Protestants, and the City Museum that is located in the Old Town Hall that was created beginning in the 15^th century.  And we spent some time enjoying cappuccinos in a lovely chocolate shop (Cokoladovna Bon Bon) in Old Town.  Small coffee shops here are much more common here than they were in Vienna or Salzburg where we saw none.

We finished the day with dinner at Ristorante Kogo that is on the same garden and fountain plaza (Hviezdoslavovo Plaza) as our first night dining experience at the Slovakian restaurant Zylinder.

This is our third consecutive autumn trip to Europe.  In 2010 and 2011 we did the trips in September.  This year we decided to enjoy our glorious Colorado September at home with our departure then being further delayed by two functions in my home town the first half of October and an educational conference late in the month that I thought would be beneficial in doing my job.  That turned out to be a mistake because the conference was not worth the time and it pushed our trip into mostly November.  With the weather we’ve had, we’ll be coming in September again next year.  Not only is the weather significantly better, we enjoy visiting the European gardens which are obviously gone by this time and we also learned that several venues that we wanted to visit closed at the end of October.

With that background, the weather for the rest of our stay in Salzburg was unpleasant.  Intermittent rain (sometimes very hard) mixed with 30s or barely 40s on all days.  In fact, the Sunday pictured in my “Salzburg” post is the only sunny day we have had through the first twelve days.  But we did manage to visit a few more worthwhile Salzburg sites before heading out in spite of the rain and cold.

In our remaining time we enjoyed Stift St. Peter and the Residenzplatz.  The Schloss Hellbrunn was closed for the season and the beautiful Kollegienkirch was closed for an extended restoration.  And then we headed to Slovakia on Wednesday.

Because a very large abbey in Melk, Austria was also closed for the season, we decided to stop in Linz, Austria on our drive from Salzburg to Bratislava.  Good decision.  We really enjoyed our brief stay in Linz including our best meal of the trip at a little Italian place on a plaza by a parking garage called Mia Cara (www.miacara.at).  It wasn’t just a good meal, it was outstanding.  Then we hustled around the city fighting the wind and freezing rain visiting a few historical sites (they have two cathedrals here), again enjoying the active and varied retail offerings including two very nice downtown malls (i.e. escape from freezing rain) as well as just a generally attractive city.

The pictures accompanying this post again have a disproportionate number of shots of churches.  The obsession not only comes from how grand they are, but how many there are so close together.  I need to research why that is.  In Vienna, Salzburg and Linz, there could be mere feet between these facilities of what I thought is the same denomination.  So in Salzburg, the 10,000 seat cathedral is a few hundred feet from the spectacular Stift St. Peter.  In Linz, the two cathedrals, one seating 20,000, are a few blocks apart.  And in Vienna, it is the same scenario throughout the area of the city in which we spent our time.

This is the second time we have been in Europe during our presidential election.  And during both trips, the locals clearly take a great interest in our politics and are forward with their questions.

We loved Austria.  The countryside is beautiful, the cities we visited were lovely (and in the case of Vienna absolutely grand), and the people friendly and helpful.

Next, Bratislava Slovakia.  Our first former Iron Curtain country.

We successfully navigated our way out of Vienna in a rental car on Saturday and headed to Salzburg.  Vienna is a gorgeous city and we loved it.  We left plenty more to see if we ever get the opportunity to return.

The drive to Salzburg was also very beautiful with rolling countryside, lovely villages, and the vertical hillside plowing that looks so unusual to me.  There were also wind farms and many, many solar panels for those of us who just don’t get it (as our oil industry neighbor describes those of us who think renewable energy should be a part of the energy agenda) to be intrigued by.

We stopped in the city of St. Pölten, the capital of Lower Austria that originated in Roman times, to stroll the town center and enjoy lunch at Café Schubert where our server was very helpful in assisting us with the German menu.  Then it was back on the highway toward Salzburg.

We are staying at the service-obsessed Hotel Sacher (http://www.sacher.com/en-hotel-sacher-salzburg.htm) which is on the new town side of the River Salzach.  Waking up on Sunday to a view of the sun glistening on the Old Town as well as up and down the river was a treat with Sunday being our first nice weather day of the trip (we’ve mostly been in the 30s with rain).  We strolled the romantic medieval streets of Old Town that is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site.  We took advantage of the nice day to check out the apparent vibrant retail, visit the Cathedral with its fantastic Baroque ceilings, the vast Franziskanerkirche and Hohensalzburg Fortress including a ride on the funicular to scale the hill.

Dinner at St. Peter Stiftskeller (“since 803”) (http://www.stpeter-stiftskeller.at/en/the-restaurant.html) that bills itself as the oldest restaurant in Europe and it was excellent as had been the hotel restaurant the night before.  It is game season here in western Austria so there are many wild animal specials on the menus.

Another day in Salzburg tomorrow but, as of now, it is a wet and cold forecast.

November 1 was All Saints Day, the country’s second national holiday in six days.  And they close almost everything.  Tourists aimlessly wandering the streets just dying to spend money.  So what better way to spend the special day for all of the saints than to visit Karlskirche, a fabulous church that was dedicated to the patron saint of the Plague, St. Charles Borromeo, the once Archbishop of Milan.

This baroque church begins to impress from blocks away because of its 236 feet high dome and dual columns towering over the plaza with scenes celebrating the Plague Saint’s life.  Entering the interior is at first equally impressive with its grandiose High Altar and beautifully decorated mini-domes.  But what a bummer.  The otherwise impressive dome is significantly obstructed by scaffolding.  But when I started to try to photograph the sections of the dome that I could see from the floor, I realized it wasn’t scaffolding at all.  They have installed an elevator and stairs right in the center of the church so that visitors, for a price of course, can get all the way up to the top of the cupola.  Talk about detracting from the elegance of a structure over 250 years old to make a couple of bucks.  We have enjoyed the smaller old churches here so much and to see them willing to compromise the elegance as well as the structure of this building that took 25 years to build was disappointing.

After visiting Karlskirche, we continued on to spend the afternoon at the Belvedere Palaces and Gardens.  The larger palace is now the art museum with the main collection of Gustav Klimt that Konnie was yearning to see.  On our last full day we walked more of the city taking in more of the fabulous buildings and the people.  The beauty of the buildings and plazas here remind me in some ways of the much younger Washington, D.C.

Dinner at Weibels Wirtshaus (http://www.weibel.at/wirtshaus01.html) and Griechenbeisl (http://www.griechenbeisl.at/lang_en/page.asp/index.htm) to wrap up the week in Vienna before heading to Salzburg for four nights.

Tuesday had us trying the subway for the first time and finding our way to Schonbrunn Palace and Gardens.  Schonbrunn was the summer residence of the imperial family dating to the early 18^th century.  It was the typical royal residence with very large rooms, elaborate décor and grandiose gardens.  It reminded us of Versailles but it was still interesting to learn the Austrian history surrounding it and with the Habsburgs ruling this area for over six centuries, there is plenty of history.

Wednesday started off with a bit of disappointment as we had purchased tickets for what we thought was a two hour practice session of the Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School here.  So we thought we would see them working on some routines but it actually was a two hour portion of the daily exercise routine for the horses with nothing particular of interest.  They mostly just rode them around with only a few horse dancing moves.

Lunch at a new find called Ess & Tisch was the first step in making up for the Lipzzaner disappointment.  Our Spanish Riding School ticket included a tour in the afternoon and that, when combined with our limited exposure in the morning, made the horsey part of our day finish much better than it started.

From there we did a bit more exploring of this gorgeous city that already ranks among one of our favorites.  It would be very easy to return here to see more.  It was too late in the day to see the inside of the National Library building (but we will before we leave) but we managed to slip into two more fabulous churches.  The more impressive of the two was the obscure Michaelerkirche.  Portions of the church date to the early 14^th century and it contains several beautiful frescoes including one from 1519.  The fabulous altar piece is from the mid 18^th century.

We chose an Austrian restaurant called Griechenbeisl.  The food was great, the wine even better and the interior charming to say the least.  In asking a server about the meaning of a word in a document I was trying to read, he told us the restaurant began in 1447 and that many famous people had dined there.  I tried to spin a little humor with my suggestions of famous people.  He straightened me out by answering Mozart, Beethoven, Twain and Strauss.  Oh.  Those famous people.

And to end our day, we were surprised by three cute Viennese trick or treaters at our apartment door when we arrived home.  Hope they liked the granola bars.

We really like Vienna and highly recommend it.