The Beach!

D-Day Beaches: We rented a car in Caen and drove an hour north to the coast in Normandy. It was a beautiful day, and the ocean was so invigorating! Being on the D-Day beaches and seeing the memorials really made that amazing historical event more real .



We went for a run on Omaha beach. Jeff ran barefoot in the sand!



After the run, Jeff convinced his wife to at least go knee deep in the water, because that's how far he went. One word describes the ocean in Normandy in early April: burrrrr!



Jeff throwing a sand grenade in the hills by Omaha Beach.



The beach is fun!!!



Jeff in a bomb hole at Le Hoc, where Americans bombed the Germans like crazy- the whole area is still covered in huge bomb marks!



An old underground German bunker still standing at Le Hoc. It was really creepy inside there!



A view over Le Hoc onto the sea-the beach is over the cliff. Soldiers actually climbed these cliffs on rope ladders under German fire!



Rubble from a bombed bunker



The American Cemetary, overlooking Omaha Beach. What a powerful, reverent memorial to so many brave men!

Paris

April 5-11: Oh, Paris!!! It is glamorous and pretty and enormous! There is so much to do and see! We had 5 full days to enjoy it, and we could have easily spent another week there. We crammed as many sights and adventures into each day as we could, and even went to museums at night time-every minute was busy. As a result of climbing up the Eiffel Tower and up to Notre Dame's bell tower both on our first day (over 1100 steps UP, and of course we also walked back down!), along with long days of walking, we had sore tired legs the whole week! 100% worth it.



Hi Mona! She has a whole, huge blank wall to herself plus a bulletproof case! I don't think any woman has ever had as many pictures taken of her as Mona Lisa. A celebrity and she may not have been a real person!



Victor Hugo, on the other hand, was a very real person. In fact, this is Jeff in his house standing next to the desk that the master wrote Les Miserables-a stand up desk with no stool. Who writes a nearly 1500 page book standing up? Good ole Victor. His house inspired Shaina to embark on a long journey and read Les Miserables. Jeff has already read it in its original unabridged French. Shaina decided that unabridged English version would be enough. Jeff steals the book when Shaina is busy-one reading wasn't enough!



Shaina admiring our favorite art museum, the Musee d'Orsay, which is an old fancy train station full of impressionism and real art like that. None of that modern stuff for us!



At the Eiffel tower at night-this was a tough picture to take and get our faces visible and the tower too! Did you know that every hour, for 10 minutes, the E.T. has extra lights turned on that make it sparkle? It was So beautiful! We missed the sparkles in this picture, unfortunately



Harry Potter moment: fans, did anyone know that Nicholas Flamel was a real guy??? He actually was an alchemist back in the 1300s! Look at that street sign! We were so surprised to see it!



Shaina and the huge Arc de Triomph, built by Napoleon to celebrate all his victories. Our poor legs couldn't have managed the climb, so we enjoyed it from the ground... one reason to revisit Paris in the future!



Jeff on the stairs in the Eiffel Tower. There were 700 stairs to the 2nd level, and then an hour long line to the required elevator to the top! It was a freeeeezing, cloudy day, and up that high, the wind was Arctic! we were Chilly Willies up there in that line!



Us at the tip top of the E.T. BURRRR!!!



More E.T. time!



One of Notre Dame's famous gargoyles up top near the bell. That's the next Victor Hugo book to read: The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Le Massif Centrale

April 4th: We took another excursion into the wild, and climbed Le Puy de Dome, an extinct volcano in Le Massif Centrale, which is in between France's Pyrenees and the Alps. We rented a car and enjoyed the beautiful scenic drive in the mountainous region. Remembering our last warm hike on Greece's Peleponesse, we dressed in our new neon mesh shirts and shorts, which worked for the valley, but the temperature dropped sreadily the higher up we drove! With the wind, the sun had a hard time doing its job of keeping us warm!


While driving to le Dome, we saw a viewpoint and pulled over. There were a few trails there, and they led to two huge rocks! What does a Jeff do when he sees a rock? He climbs it! Do note that the angle of this picture does suggest that Shaina is standing at the top already! Actually, Jeff climbed both rocks, but Shaina stayed behind on his second venture for solidarity reasons... she was solidly frozen!



There's that handsome fellow aftr his successful scaling of the more difficult of the two rocks. Nice view!



We quickly stripped off our jackets for this buff shot on top of the bigger rock. Like our shirts? Shaina has beenmourning the loss of her well-muscled arms, courtesy of 3 afternoons a week in the SVU weight room. Yes, she IS flexing...



Where's Waldo? I mean, where's Shaina? This was a huge bowl we found on our way up to the top of Le Puy de Dome. See tthat neon blur? that's Shaina running down into the bowl!



Stairs. We have a runnung joke about stairs. They are everywhere. We've decided that our day isn't fulfilled if we don'tget to climb at least a couple flights. Well, erosion control on the trail up did not dissappoint us!



Conqerors of the "massif" staircase!!!!



Jeff on the stairs... good thing this avalanche or snowstorm or both came before we did!



Burrrrrrrr! I need my underarmor and my long johns annd my hat, scarf, and gloves for this!!!

Once we were at the top, the wind got too piercing cold for us to linger, so we turned and ran down the mountain. That's our tradition when we climb every mountain, following rainbows (pardon that Sound of Music moment): we hike up nice and fast, and run back down! It's quite fun and invigorating, and we get back in half the time! weeehawww!

Les Chateaux

April!!!! While staying in Tours, where Jeff spent 4 months of his mission, we visited 8 chateaux of the Loire river valley in a few short days (we rented a car to accomplish this feat). They were just like fairy tales in real life! Thank you for having all these castles built, Francois I!



Le religieuse, or however it's spelled, from Jeff's all time favorite bakery in Tours. Shaina has the top piece, and Jeff has the bottom one.


Aftermath of a huge relegiouse (or however you spell it)




At Leonardo da Vinci's house in Amboise.


Le chateau d'Amboise


The little church where Leonardo is buried, right in the chateau's courtyard in Amboise


Le chateau de Villandry: we missed the flowers blooming by a few weeks!

Us in Villandry's gardens, minus the famous fleurs


Shaina in front of le chateau de Chaumont


Jeff up in the balcony of Chambord

Us at Azay-le-Rideau

At the chateau d'Usse, which inspired the story of Sleeping Beauty! They even had mannicans depicting scenes from the story inside, including the witch's tower!


Us at le chateau de Chenonceau-yes, it crosses the whole river!!

Salzburg

March 24-26: living the music! We saw lovely, quaint Salzburg in springtime-a dream! haha, Even though it hardly stopped snowing once while we were there, Salzburg was awesome! We both read Maria Trapp's book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, before we got to Salzburg, so we were prepared to see both the REAL Trapp family sites as well as The Sound of Music sites. Both "flavors" of Salzburg were equally exciting! The cold temperatures and constant snowfall prevented us from see everything on our long list, but the snow did provide Jeff with plenty of ammo to pelt Shaina with snowballs.



Right here I had a in the picture of Nonnberg Abbey, where the real life Maria was first planning to be a nun and later where she married Captain von Trapp, but the dumb blog deleted it. so, imagine a catholic church, and it looked like that! In the movie, the nuns sing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" at Nonnberg, but the wedding is in a bigger church.


The back of Schloss Hellbrunn, which they used for the back of the Trapps' house in the movie. Can you spot Shaina on the steps? The real Trapp home is in Aigen, a nearby suburb of Salzburg. We couldn't make it out there because we didn't quite know where the house was in the town!



Dancing at Rolf and Liesel's Gazebo . The Gazebo was given to Salzburg after The Sound of Music was finished, and they reconstructed it in a different part of Hellbrunn's park/yard. (that's why that yellow wall behind it isn't in the movie). Oh, one other detail: the real Trapp children had completely different names than the movie kids! Two of them were Rupert and Hedwig... we decided that we like the movie names better. So there was never a Liesel in real life. But we can pretend!!!



Re-enacting the Rolf-Liesel kiss by the Gazebo.



Jeff's snowman and "snow sumo" on a balcony wall at Hohensalzburg Fortress. We organized our visit around 2 things: the Sound of Music sights and the list of "Salzburg's must-sees," according to Maria's autobiography, and the fortress was on the list in that book. It's also in the background in part of the movie.



Shaina's snow horse...he's laying down. Can you tell where his legs are? It's very hard to sculpt a horse out of snow. This is the only white horse in Austria that we got a picture of, because there were no pictures allowed of the Lippizans in Vienna!



There was a mini Salzburg marrionette museum inside the fortress. Jeff liked playing with the sample on display. They are hard to manouver, those puppets! Too bad there were no puppet shows playing while we were in Salzburg. The arrionettes are so detailed and life-like, and the theater is world famous!



A view of Leopoldskron Castle, the house they used for the front of the Trapp home in the movie. This picture is taken from the top of the Fortress's tower, with all 12x zoom that our camera has to offer. It got dark before we could actually visit this house.



Fa, a long long way to run!!!!! This is that same canopy that they run through in the movie singing Do Re Mi. (it's in the Mirabell Gardens) The snow sort of changes its appearance, doesn't it? That didn't stop Shaina from becoming Julie Andrews for a quick run through!



The Pegasus fountain in Mirabell Gardens. In the movie, they run around it while singing Do Re Mi. The snow looked too slippery to act out that scene!




Shaina by the Residenz Fountain-the one that Julie Andrews splashes, while siinging I Have Confidence, in the movie.



Jeff chucking a snowball left handed at Shaina on the way up to Hohensalzburg Fortress. Why left handed? Since Shaina was only wearing thin gloves, Jeff gave her his right glove so she could fight back. How...... gallant!