Our Travel Blog

France finall day - Sept 25

2011-11-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

Our last day together in France was spent around the palace of Versailles. After a quiet week in western France, we were welcomed back into the hustle and bustle of Paris life! We attempted to visit Versailles in the morning, but found the lines to be so long that we elected to spend some time visiting one of the many sidewalk cafe's. We finally made it in in late afternoon, but still had a very long wait to get our tickets and get in. It was amazing and worth the wait, but man it was BUSY!!

The exterior of Versailles - Did I mention that it was crowded?

The famous hall of mirrors! Amazing!!

We had such an amazing week and can't thank Ted enough!!!

France - Sept 24 - What a great birthday

2011-11-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well, if you had asked me, how do you want to spend your 40th birthday, I probably would not have had many preferences, but what beats spending it in France visiting beautiful chateau's?

We would leave Tours today and drive back towards Paris into Versailles for the night. On the way, we would visit several more chateau's.

The first and easily the most breathtaking was Chateau de Chenonceau built over the River Cher. It was given to King Henry II's mistress Diane de Poitiers but of course after his death, it was repossessed by Catherine de Medici. Built in the 1400's, it would reach it most glorious condition in the 1560's under the control of Catherine de Medici.

The chateau spanning the River Cher.

The Marques tower.

Diane de Portiers would build the bridge connecting the original chateau and then Catherine de Medici would enclose the bridge area to make it into part of the chateau.

Our next stop was the town of Blois where we had a nice lunch in a sidewalk cafe. Matt and I wandered around the town until we found the chateau perched high on top of the hill. This chateau was quite unique as it seems that every french king who lived here, just decided to build another wing, therefore it was constructed from the 13th to the 17th century. The chateau boasts 564 rooms with fireplaces (of which 100 are bedrooms) and 75 staircases.

Fit for a queen!!

This is only one side of the 4 sided courtyard filled with the chateau.

France - Sept 23 - Tours Chateau's

2011-11-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

Tours is an excellent place to stay when visiting the many fabulous chateau's (castles) of the Loire Valley. You would think we had the best French speaking tour guide... oh wait.... we did!!! We still can't thank Annie enough for all the planning, translating and hard work that she put into this trip to make it so wonderful.

The first chateau on tour today is Langeais. It was a short drive from Tours. It was built in the middle of the 15th century and is the historic site of the secret marriage of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany in 1491.

The front gate of Langeais

The rear view of chateau Langeais is fantastic!

Look at all those happy grins as we get set to enter our first chateau of the day.

Gathering around to start the tour.

What a fantastic door - doesn't it look secure and so very french?

And yet another secure looking door - maybe you would think twice about attacking this castle?

Given how cold and damp it was in here in September, I can imagine these fireplaces were huge for a reason.

Our next chateau was Azay-le-Rideau with its beautiful central stairway. This chateau was built in the 16th century and you could tell that it was not built to be defended, but as a show of wealth and comfort.

Getting ready to start our tour.

Beautiful chateau with its foundation rising right out of the Indre River.

Our last chateau of the day was Amboise which is the location where King Charles VIII hit his head and died at the age of 27. It was home to several of the french monarchs including King Henri II and Catherine de' Medici who raised their childrenand with Mary Stuart, the child Queen of Scotland who will marry the future French King Francis II (sorry but my love of British history is showing through here).

The beautiful views of chateau d'Amboise perched high above the Loire River.

Ted, Annie and I enjoy the views from the castle walls overlooking the Loire River.

France - Sept 22 - Saint Malo & Tours

2011-11-27T18:42:00.001-07:00

We spent in a the very small town of Pontorson and set out on the morning of the 22nd to explore a bit more of coastal France. We started our drive northwest towards the port town of Saint-Malo along very small country coastal roads. The small villages that we drove through were amazing. The town of Saint-Malo is a beautiful walled port city located on the Brittany coast.

A map of old Saint-Malo

The old walled portion of Saint-Malo

The Saint-Malo Cathedral

Beautiful stained glass of the Saint-Malo cathedral

The view from the walls out over the English channel.

This beautiful boat was anchored in the harbor.

After spending the morning in Saint-Malo, we drove into the Loire Valley region and stopped in Tours for several nights. We arrived later in the afternoon, but just in time to catch a great sunset on the cathedral of Tours. We found a great restaurant and spend the evening enjoying great food and great company.

The Cathedral of St-Gatien in Tours. It was started in 1170 and construction continued into the 15th century.

France - Sept 21 - Mont Saint Michel

2011-11-26T22:44:00.001-07:00

I have finally finished all the photos from our trip to France at the end of September. Just a few months behind!! We had a great time after leaving Caan and driving to the beautiful tidal island of Mont Saint Michel. It was quite the climb to the top but well worth it.

Mont Saint Michel.

Group portrait

Our turn!!

Matt in the entryway to Mont Saint Michel

Yeah... Matt and Ted on their way down.

The cathedral.

Cathedral

Matt enjoying one of the many halls inside the monastery.

Wow... that is a very tall fireplace.

Matt and Ted enjoying a break on our way down.

The museum that Matt and I visited.

Taking a break before climbing the rest of the stairs!!

France - Day 4 - Sept 20

2011-11-05T08:30:00.000-06:00

The next day of our France trip was the highlight of the trip for Ted. It was a visit to the beaches of Normandy. D-Day was June 6, 1944 and the US forces landed on Omaha beach which is where we visited. We also visited the American Cemetery. It is estimated that over 5,000 of 50,000 landed troops perished on Omaha beach.

D-Day invasion map.

Ted visiting the Memorial.

Ted enjoying the tour.

The American Cemetery

Ted visiting the American Cemetery

Map of military operations

Current update & Day 3 of our France trip (Sept 19)

2011-11-04T18:18:00.000-06:00

Well, we made it safely to Haines, Alaska and as usual, the weather has been a bit extreme. We arrived on Tuesday in very high winds and torrential rains and today it has snowed about 6 inches. Matt has been busy photographing the Bald Eagles and I've spent my time either studying or photographing as well.

Well, I thought I should probably finish posting photos of our Paris trip so hopefully over the next couple of days, I will have them all worked up and posted here. Our third day in France (September 19), we left Paris and Annie (Matt's sister) was a very brave soul to drive us out of Paris in the rental car. We did very good and didn't get lost in Paris. We drove a little over 2 hours to Caen where Annie attended college during her foreign study. Caen is located in northwestern France near the beaches of Normandy.

Once we finally figured out how to get to our hotel (ok, maybe there was at least two attempts on this one), we checked in, and then set out to explore the city on foot. Our first stop was to check out the many wonderful pastry shops along the main pedestrian area and of course we found some great ones.

YUMMMM.... that pastry was delicious!!! Matt enjoying his after snack rest on the main street of Caen.

We next headed off to explore the walled fortress area of the Chateau de Caen.

The gate of the Chateau de Caen. This fortress area was built by William the Conqueror around 1060.

St. George's Church located within the walls of the Chateau de Caen.

View of the walls of the Chateau de Caen.

Ted reading up on the Chateau de Caen.

This is now a museum within the fortress walls.


View of the St. Pierre church from within the Chateau de Caen's gate.

After exploring the Chateau, we then ventured out to explore several of the other sites around Caen. We walked to the Abbaye aux Hommes which is a beautiful old church that was completed in 1063.

The Abbaye aux Hommes and its many steeples are on the right of the beautiful Hotel de ville (town hall) of Caen.

This beautiful old church was nothing more than a facade as it was in ruins.

We had a great dinner although we kept Annie very busy translating the French menu into English!!

Sept 18 - Day 2 of France - Paris

2011-10-16T09:26:00.000-06:00

Day 2 (Sept 18) of our trip to France was our last day in Paris. Wewere all pleasantly surprised when we woke up after a full nights sleep and notmuch of a trace of jet lag.

Matt, Ted and I started our day off by taking a 2+ hour tour on the hop-on,hop-off red bus (Les Cars Rouges). I would highly recommend this toanyone who visits Paris. It passes by all the famous landmarks of Parisand allows you to hop-on and hop-off at about 5 different locations. We caughtthe bus right outside of our hotel at the Louvre stop and then enjoyed theviews of Notre Dame, Musee D'Orsay, Opera, Arc de Triomph, Grand Palais,Trocadero, Eiffel Tower and Hotel de Invalides.

We had lunch in the Latin Quarter near Notre Dame and then Matt and I setoff to explore Sainte Chapelle which is easily one of the most beautifulchurches we have ever seen. It is located near Notre Dame on the islandin the middle of the Seine River.

The fantastic Gothic exterior of Sainte Chapelle - Consecrated in 1248 and housing the Crown of Thorns

The upper chapel of Sainte Chapelle - Fantastically high and ornate stained glass windows - As you would your way up the spiral staircase from the lower chapel and emerged into the upper chapel, you could not help but say "WOW!!!"

Matt and I then explored the Latin Quarter on foot and came across the Pantheon of Paris. It was a beautiful building.

The front facade of the Pantheon - Modeled after the Roman Pantheon of course.

The interior domes of the Pantheon - Magnificent murals and statues.

We really enjoyed Paris and it seemed that everywhere that you looked, it was a gorgeous site. Here is a view from the street on which the Pantheon was located - what a view!!

Is that the Eiffel Tower peaking out? I believe so - Not a bad view anywhere in the Latin Quarter.

We met everyone back at the hotel to take our Seinne River Cruise in the evening. We were all quite excited to be doing a cruise at sunset to marvel at the great views of Paris at night. We were a bit disappointed as the boat was huge and we were going to be one of the last ones to get on (and have to sit outside). We elected to take the next boat, but did not realize that in doing this, we would miss our bus transportation back to near our hotel. It started raining during the boat ride (thank goodness we were inside) so we had to find our way back from the Eiffel Tower area to our hotel. It involved lots of Metro stops and we even managed to get lost in the Metro. Not to mention that I became a criminal during one of our last transfers, my metro ticket stopped working so I had to jump the turnstile to get on the subway. It was quite the late night as we had dinner at 11pm and managed to make it back to the hotel by 1am.

We were rewarded with a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower at night.

I'm still working on photos for the next couple of days so look for more posts soon.

Angela

Update & Day 1 of France - Paris

2011-10-10T10:27:00.001-06:00

Hi Everyone - Sorry we have been MIA for about a month, but its been a busy one. We enjoyed our few final days in Maine, loved visiting France and Belgium and survived the 2,000+ mile drive to get back to Denver from Portland. We are now relaxing and resting after a very busy 3 weeks in Golden, CO. We will be in Colorado until we leave for Alaska on Oct 31 where we will be in Haines for the month of November. After Alaska, back home to Colorado for a bit.

I thought I would start to post some of our photos and adventures while we were in Europe. We left Portland Maine on Friday, Sept 16 for the long flight over to Paris, France. We arrived in Paris about 6:15am on Saturday the 17th. We waited at the airport for the rest of the Shetzer family to arrive.

Annie had planned a wonderful tour of France for us. We would visit Paris, Caen, Mt St Michel, Tours, & Versailles.

While we were quite sure that we would be really jet lagged because of flying through the night, time changes and very little sleep on the plane, we were all pleasantly surprised that we got in a full day of sightseeing on Saturday. Annie did a great job with finding the perfect location for our hotel near the Louvre so we were able to walk everywhere.

Our first stop was the cathedral of Notre Dame. This was an amazing church just a few blocks from our hotel.

The front facade of Notre Dame

The detailed carvings of the entryway arches

Beautiful stained glass

Opps.... Looks like someone lost their head - Are we sure we aren't in England during the reign of Henry VIII?

We then walked from Notre Dame to visit the crypts under it and then headed back to our hotel apartment for a very short rest. After our nap, we decided to walk to the Arc de Triomphe which was down the Champs-Elysees from our hotel.

We walked through the huge complex of the Louvre.

Matt and Ted outside the main entrance of the Louvre.

We walked down the Champs-Elysees with a beautiful view of the Arc de Triomphe all the way. The walk was a bit longer than we anticipated, but it was well worth it as when we arrived at the Arc, we were able to take the elevator to the top and have great views of Paris.

Arc de Triomphe

The Arc was huge, look at how little Ted and Matt are in this photo.

Ted and I posing from the top of the Arc in front of the Eiffel Tower.

View of the Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc de Triomphe

We were all a bit tired from our walk to the Arc so we decided to take advantage of our hop on and hop off bus tickets on the Les Cars Rouges to get back to our hotel.

Ted enjoying the view from the top deck of the double decker bus.

Matt enjoying the view from the Les Cars Rouges

My view of Matt and the Eiffel Tower from our bus tour.

The landmark of Paris... The Eiffel Tower

We then walked to have a wonderful fondue dinner at Pain, Vin, Fromages. We were quite surprised when we exited the basement caverns of the restaurant and found it raining hard outside. This is really the only bad weather we experienced on the whole trip. We found the nearest Metro (subway) station and proceeded to figure out how to get back to our hotel. This was the end of the first of two days in Paris. More to come later...

Our last week in Maine

2011-09-12T18:54:00.000-06:00

This is the last week that we will be in Maine although the trailer will behere for the next couple weeks while we are in France. We left theRockland and Camden area on the 7th and made the drive to Bar Harbor and AcadiaNational Park. We had visited here when we did the cruise several yearsago and had wanted to return to have some more time to explore.

We have explored the park and several of its hiking trails since we havebeen here. We will leave to drive back to Portland, Maine on Wednesdayfor a couple of days before our flight out to Paris on Friday, the 16th. We will be in France for 2 weeks and will return on the 29th. We aregoing to store the RV in Portland for the 2 weeks we will be gone and then willstart the long 40+ hour drive back to Denver on Sept 30. We are notlooking forward to that!!

Here are a couple of highlights from this last week.

Can you think of a more beautiful place to relax and read a book? This is Acadia National Park near thunder hole.

Matt on our easy hike around Jordan Pond.

Me scrambling down the rocky face of Bubble Mountain on the way back to Jordan Pond below.

Maine - Week in Review

2011-09-05T06:54:00.000-06:00

Well, I am hoping that this post actually goes out to everyone as it seems my last one did not. There are times when Blogger and I really don't get along.

As you might have guessed, we came through Hurricane Irene just fine. The rain started for us on Saturday night and continued most of Sunday. We only ended up getting about 2 inches of rain and about 37 mph winds. We had a couple branches hit the top of the RV, but nothing too serious (or at least we hope not as Matt hasn't been up there yet).

The weather here has been spectacular!!! Since the hurricane moved out, it has been sunny and in the 70's all week. We are so spoiled!!! We spent this week exploring around the Camden and Rockland area.

On Monday we visited the town of Bath and its Maine Marine Museum. It was a great museum and we also toured the Bath Iron Works with its huge ship bays for building destroyers for the US Navy. They were currently building the Zumwalt class of destroyers in multiple pieces to be put together to form the ship.

We were not allowed to have cameras on the tour but this is a view of what the Iron Works is.

This is a model of what the Zumwalt class is - Very different!

On Tuesday, we visited Camden Hills State Park and drove to the top of the Mt. Battie. We were less than impressed when the park ranger told us that the drive to the top would take us up 780 feet, however, when we reached the top, we were very impressed with the views of Penobscot Bay and Camden harbor.

Camden Harbor from the top of Mt. Battie.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we visited Matt's cousin Tim and Lili out on the beautiful island of Vinal Haven. It took us a little over an hour via ferry to reach the island from Rockland and we enjoyed relaxing on the deck of "the Shack" with its beautiful views of the ocean. We could not have asked for better company, better weather or a more fantastic lobster dinner!

Matt, Lili & Tim enjoying the views from the deck of "the Shack"

On Friday, we sailed on the Schooner Yacht Heron from Rockport harbor over to Camden harbor. It was the start of the Labor Day festivities so we were a part of the "parade" of windjammers that were sailing from all over into the Camden harbor. Another beautiful day coupled with gorgeous old tall ships!!

This is the Heron that we sailed on.

Several of the windjammers at sail.

Ahhh... this is the life!!!

Several more windjammers at sail in the parade with us.

On Saturday, we were actually able to tour on board a couple of the windjammers in Camden harbor. Beautiful boats!!

Hurricane Irene and Updates

2011-08-26T19:56:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone - Sorry the blog has been so silent but its been a hectic couple of weeks with Matt and I in very different parts of the US.

I spent the last three weeks in Missouri with my family and welcomed the newest member of the family, Madelyn Rose, into the family. She was eagerly greeted by my sister, her husband, and her sister, Katelyn. Matt has been enjoying Maine for the last couple of weeks and has spent time at Baxter State Park and Acadia.

We started watching Hurricane Irene on Sunday, and on Tuesday we decided that I needed to change my travel plans to return back to Maine from Missouri. My original travel plans were to fly back on Saturday, however, Irene's anticipated arrival changed all that as I had to fly from DC into Portland, Maine. I was thankfully able to fly out in a last minute flight on Tuesday and made it home after several delayed flights and a nice run through Dulles airport in DC.

We are currently in Maine and watching all the news we can get on Hurricane Irene. We are watching the storm track closely to see if we can stay where we are in between Rockport and Camden (North of Portland) or if we need to head inland further. Below is a map showing our approximate location and as you can see, there are no easy places for us to go to totally escape the storm. We are only under a tropical storm watch so our hopes are that we will be able to ride out the storm. The RV park that we are in is very heavily treed so we will be protected from the full force of the wind.

We will keep you updated on our status as the storm draws nearer!!

Lubec, Maine

2011-07-29T15:47:00.000-06:00

Well, we have made it back into the US (technically) but we are still so close to Canada that our phones continue to run on Canadian cell networks. :-(

We are in Lubec, Maine which is the Eastern most town in the US. Its a beautiful little area and we are camping right on the coast.

We had a nice couple of days on the island of Cape Breton which is in Nova Scotia, Canada. The weather was nice enough for us to do a fantastic day trip to the Louisbourg National Historic Site. This was an original French settlement that has been rebuilt by Parks Canada to represent life in 1744. Even though only 1/5 of the town has been reconstructed, it was huge and amazing!

We watched as the costumed staff fired two of the cannons - We could feel it when it went off! Wow!!

Isn't the size of the building incredible - Great attention to detail! The reconstruction even contained live animals such as sheep, turkeys & chickens.

Mr. Foley - Matt only has one pair of sunglasses on in this photo

One of the main streets along the Quay.

The gate into the city.

So in a couple of days, Matt and I will be on separate trips. He will stay with the RV in Maine while I fly to Missouri to visit with my family and await the much anticipate arrival of my newest niece, Madelyn. She can't quite make up her mind as to when she wants to arrive so I am leaving on Tuesday and will be flying back after spending some time in Missouri.

I will try to keep everyone updated on both of our travels!!

Take care,
Angela

West coast of Newfoundland

2011-07-21T14:35:00.001-06:00

We have had a great week of exploring the western coast of Newfoundland. We stayed for 6 days in Gros Morne National Park and then did a quick trip to the very northern most tip of the island to St. Anthony to view some spectacular icebergs. We are now in the central area of western Newfoundland in the second largest city in the province, Corner Brook. You can tell its not a populous island when the largest city has a population just over 100,000 and the second largest's population is just over 20,000. We will be here two nights before heading a bit further south for 2 nights then its back on the ferry to Nova Scotia and our Newfoundland trip will be all over.

Here are some photos from our recent excursions:

Here is a map of Newfoundland and all the places we have visited or will visit before out trip ends next Monday. I think we have covered the island tip to tip.

July 14 - Our boat trip into the fiord of Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne National Park - Absolutely stunning fiord.

The large ice sheets and icebergs floating down iceberg alley in St. Anthony. Yes, that is a fishing boat in the middle and yes, the ice sheets are huge (over 1 mile long). These are remants of a 64 sq km ice sheet that broke off Greenland and is now breaking up all along the coast of Newfoundland.

This is a "bergie bit" (Angela's favorite new words). This is a smaller piece of an iceberg that has fractured off and is now grounded against the shore. We watched this little guy break up just as we sat on the shore.

And of course Matt has to sample a piece of the bergie bit - Actually pretty good and no salty taste whatsoever.

This floating chunk is known as a Growler. It is a medium sized chunk that has broken off a larger iceberg. This was taken from our boat ride out onto the Atlantic Ocean. This growler was still much much larger than our boat and was estimated to be about 120 feet tall.

Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland

2011-07-17T13:07:00.002-06:00

Just a quick update as we have WIFI here in our campground in Gros Morne National Park. It's been a wet and chilly week, but hey, whats new about that. We would actually trade for some of that really warm weather down in the states.

We are here tonight and then we'll leave the trailer here for a couple of days and drive up to the very northern tip of Newfoundland to Iceberg Alley. At one point there was a 62 sq km iceberg floating in the north Atlantic ocean just off land. It has since broken up, but there are lots of icebergs floating past the coast. We will take a boat ride to see some on Tuesday.

Here is a map of where the icebergs currently are, we will be staying in the town of Saint Anthony for a couple days. Pretty cool website of Iceberg Finder.

I wanted to post a couple of photos from our time photographing the Puffins on the Bonavista peninsula over the past 2 weeks.

Here Matt enjoys the scenic views of "Bird Island" in Elliston where we spent the majority of our time photographing the Atlantic Puffin. If you look on the island (where the camera is facing), you can see lots of white dots that are puffins.

Me in Elliston getting ready to get setup to photograph the Puffins. In the evening we found that the puffins would actually come over to the mainland and get to within about 10 feet of us. Pretty tame.

My Puffin Chair!!!!

We spent a day at a place called Spillars Cove and waited for the puffins to come ashore. They never did, but we had great views of the Atlantic Ocean and lots of whales.

This was actually on our trip to Gull Island that I mentioned in my last post. This was high up on the cliff from which my camera bag took a tumble.

Me and our guide, Paul, on Gull Island. Pretty fantastic place, but very mucky - Every piece of clothing that we had on had to be washed due to Puffin pooh.