Konnie, Isabelle and I left Denver the morning of March 21, 2014 as we headed off to Florence Italy for the fifth spring break trip with Isabelle.  Our first four trips took us to New York City, London, Madrid and Paris.

After an uneventful trip over that took us through Chicago and Frankfurt Germany, we’ve been experiencing less than desirable travel weather with our first full day consisting mostly of a pelting thunderstorm and chilly temperatures.  We have managed to see some of the city with the highlight being a visit to Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine.  There one can view The Life of St. Peter frescoes commissioned by the Florentine merchant Felice Brancacci around 1424.  The work by Masaccio and others is considered groundbreaking for the time and an important source of study for the great Renaissance artists to follow.  The work was finished in 1480.

Sunday lunch with locals at Ristorante Alla Griglia and an outstanding dinner at Osteria Pastella where the pasta is made in full view at the front of the restaurant.

Thanks to those who followed our 18 days in Europe this month.  This blog is mainly to help us remember where we’ve been and what we’ve done but hopefully it also might benefit anyone else wanting to travel to these places.

To recap our stay in London, we stayed at Flemings Mayfair.  Flemings is a conglomeration of six London townhomes that were tied together beginning in 1851 resulting in hotel rooms and apartments connected by a narrow maze of hallways.  Mayfair is a fine neighborhood with access to shopping, dining, Hyde Park, Green Park, Knightsbridge, Piccadilly, and the West End.  But with the public transportation here, most is easily accessible anyway.

Our dining during our short visit here was all repeat, Patara (Thai), Zayna (North Indian & Pakistani) and Tamarind (Indian).  And if you are ever here, I should mention not to miss Stanfords, the most amazing travel book store (the size of the old Tattered Cover for you Denverites).

A few shots, mostly of us,  on our final day around the town.

On Thursday we left Brussels’ Midi train station on the Eurorstar to head under the English Channel to London for the final four days of this trip.  It was a bit depressing zipping across the Belgian and French countrysides at 180 miles per hour, viewing the huge windmills and the many solar panels while reading an article about the political situation in the United States that has resulted in reduced funding for science and medical research.  Oh well, one of the costs of living in the greatest country in the world.

As previously reported on Facebook, we had dinner on Friday evening with our favorite Brits Gail Hammond Edwards, Jacquie Martinez and Robin Edwards at Patara on Beauchamp in Knightsbridge, a place we have now eaten over 15 times since 2010 and where they treat us like frequent dining locals even after a year’s absence.  In fact, we get treated better at this restaurant than ANY restaurant we frequent in Denver, one of which we have been to hundreds of times.  In addition to giving us a discount EVERY time we are there, they squeezed us in in our emergency of our original restaurant having to cancel on us due to a cut power line.

At Robin’s suggestion, we headed to the Borough Market on Saturday which is located in the London Bridge area of the city.  Great idea Robin.  Make us want to live here even more!  We inspected and we ate and we thought about how great it would be to have access to this breadth of food selections where we live.  Dream on.  I’ll let the foodie pictures show our day.

We ventured off for a day trip from Brussels to Brugge (Bruges) Belgium.  Brugge is a lovely medieval town with winding streets and lovely canals.  The city is well preserved with many roughly four centuries year old buildings for several reasons including that the city escaped major damage during both wars to end all wars.

We enjoyed a lovely lunch at De Gastro on Braambergstraat and would not hesitate to return here.  I’ll just let the pictures try to speak for the architectural beauty of the old city although the haziness of the day did interfere with my getting very good definition.

We headed to Brussels from Strasbourg and, as we did on the trip to Strasbourg, tried to find an interesting location to stop for lunch.  That time it was Hagnau Germany on the shore of Lake Constance.  This time it was Luxembourg City Luxembourg which ups this to a six country trip.

Brussels has some amazing buildings, especially those surrounding  the Grand Place, some of which date to at least the 15th century.  There are probably too many shots of them in this post.  It has a zillion chocolate shops, their waffles and lots of beer.  Now none of these things do we normally consume and we didn’t here either.  We had some very nice meals including Bocconi, Kasbah and a family Italian place called Gabbiani Reali.  We even stumbled upon a Turkish patisserie called gulluoglu where we were introduced to a pastry called borek and had the best cappuccinos of the trip.  And we stayed at the lovely Hotel Amigo which is just one block off of the Grand Place, so a great location.

But in the end, Brussels did not click with us.  Not a bad time but not motivated to return.  Whether is was the over the top aggressiveness of the restauranteurs in the Rue des Bouchers, that it seemed dirtier than other cities, was definitely much stinkier in numerous spots (we just kept getting hit by an unpleasant smell), their archeological ruin site only being open one morning a month, some unkempt gardens or their focus on the  their little urinating statue, the Manneken Pis, we just didn’t fall in love with Brussels.

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in Eastern France and sits right on the German border.  It has been the possession of both Germany and France over the centuries, is where Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and is home to Strasbourg Cathedral on which construction began in the twelfth century.  For awhile, it was the world’s tallest building.

They speak French here but the combination of German and French influence is most obvious in the food with many dishes in restaurants combining a part of each country’s historically significant cuisine.

We are fond of Strasbourg and hope to return, both for the city itself and as a jumping off point to beautiful and interesting areas of both France and Germany.  It is a medieval city with beautifully preserved Rhineland black and white timber-framed buildings and the intelligent use of its waterways, something I’ve wished they had done in Denver ever since I first visited San Antonio Texas.

We stayed at the Regent Petite France Hotel in the Petite France district of the city.  We dined outside at Lohkas Winstub on Rue Du Bain Aux Plantes and twice indoors at La Petite Alsace on the same street.  Unfortunately, they still allow smoking in the outdoor areas of restaurants on the continent and that generally kept us indoors to dine.

Lots of pictures as it is a beautiful town with a beautiful cathedral.  Off to Brussels.

This will be a long post with a lot of pictures.

We have a travel book of backroads tours in the various European countries.  We have been in Strasbourg France the past few days and decided to take one of the road trips nearby called the Alsace Wine Route.  There are 16 places to visit on this trip and the first one is Obernai France.

We arrived in Obernai shortly after 10 on Sunday morning and found the streets into the city centre blocked.  As we approached a full close-in parking lot we spotted a man walking into the lot so we followed him.  Fortunately he was leaving and six hours later so were we.  Needless to say, we made but this one of the 16 stopping places on this trip and had one of the finest travel days we’ve had the pleasure to experience as we by chance had shown up at the Fete d’ Automne in previously unheard of Obernai France on a perfect fall day.  Or should I say perfect automne day.

Obernai is about 11,000 people, it is surrounded by a medieval wall, has a gorgeous cathedral (Cathedral of Saints Peter, Paul and Mary) and is just a darn beautiful little town.  Wonderful shops, a large variety of restaurants and in true European style, flowers everywhere.  And man, do they know how to put on a festival.

Music, food, processions, children and adults in historical garb, music, lovely shops, food stands, fantastic bakeries and chocolate shops and music.  Did I mention music?  Yes, there were four bandstands spread around the town with traditional local music from local bands, American pop and American big band, also from local artists.  Music…one of America’s great contributions to the world.  Hearing our music played with French conversation from the stage in between songs reminded me of at least this one contribution we have made that seems to be well accepted.

It also made me think about what we have done to our small towns, an issue I have had for the past nearly forty years.  We have destroyed our small rural town histories by tearing down old structures that had historical meaning rather than investing to preserve them and then connecting our economies to that history.  Here, it is not uncommon to see them add on or re-do interiors and many times they do it in a style not consistent with the external appearance.  But in any case, they do not destroy the original structures and their history.  There is no way a Wal-Mart would move into the fringe of one of these towns and destroy their downtown.

If you ever get the chance, the Fete d’ Automne in Obernai France is not to be missed.  But perhaps it is true of other small towns in Europe also.  We hope to explore this more.

A lot of pictures with this post but I just couldn’t resist showing it all.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria is the man who created what has become known as “the fairy tale castle.”  You know what it looks like.  Think Cinderella.  His placement in the Alps high above Schwansee (Swan Lake)  is just up the hill from his boyhood home of Schloss Hohenschwangau, a palace his father purchased when he was king.  There are plenty of places to check out the story of Neuschwanstein and the eccentric King Ludwig II with his passion for castles and palaces.  But at 1.4 million visitors a year to Neuschwanstein alone and probably half of them coming in with Asian money, perhaps he wasn’t so crazy after all…

There’s nothing like a King Ludwig II palace or castle.  They had to kill him to get him to stop building these puppies.  But I think he was actually an early adopter of the “build it and they will come” theory.  Because he built them and boy do the people come today and dump the tourist dollars here.  The number of Asians touring Germany is astounding.  And their behavior is so adolescent as they cannot contain their excitement for the landmarks they visit here.  I’ll bet they spend like crazy.

Linderhof Palace was inspired by Versailles althoughLu dwig clearly had a smaller budget.  Located in Bavaria in Southwest Germany near the Ettal Abbey, Linderhof is a particular gem when you consider it was built for one occupant…King Ludwig II.  But in addition to the splendor of the structure, this location is magnificent.  The Alps are absolutely gorgeous.  The fact that the Rockies in southwest Colorado resemble them makes that part of our state the most beautiful.

After concluding our time in Salzburg, we headed for Schwangau Germany, home of King Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles where we were booked to stay at the das Rubezahl Hotel (http://www.hotelruebezahl.de/en/).  The hotel is quite nice and has unobstructed views of the castles and the Alps.  Breakfast and dinner were included in our room rate so no reports on restaurants in the area.

We made two stops on the 126 mile drive.  The first was in the village of Bichl.  I was curious if there might be anyone there named Bichlmueller, the name of my maternal great grandfather who emigrated to the USA from Germany in 1884.  There were none in the phone book for the area though Bichlmaier was common.  As “bichl” means hill, the Mueller’s from probably “the bichl” could have been from anywhere in Germany but I am glad I made the visit just in case there was some interesting discovery to be made.

After a wonderful lunch at the Gasthof zue Post (where fortunately the chef spoke enough English to describe the menu to us) in Benediktbeuern, which is adjacent to Bichl,  it was off to Ettal to see the Baroque Benedictine Abbey there.  Very lovely of course.  From there we headed on to Schwangau.

As mentioned above we have no restaurant reports from this stay.  But we did spend some time on two afternoons at a market in Fussen called Feuerhaus which had a bakery, wine bar, beer bar, cheese shop, meat counter and a place to buy Mediterranean snacks and dishes.  A pleasant conclusion to our days and a style of “relaxing” it would be nice to have more of in the States.