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Auvergne from above

Posted on 20 August, 2021 by pierreo

We are slowly starting to travel again, in small steps…

We decided that we did not want to go too far, and not across more than one border. Our first trip was to Auvergne, right in the center of France, a region that neither of us had visited before.

And in Auvergne, the first thing we did was an early morning flight in a hot air balloon! How early? See below!

This was the clock in our apartment as we were eating breakfast – cannot go out without some food and a cup of coffee. The real breakfast will be after the balloon trip.

We had to meet across the street from the apartment (fortunately) at 5:30 AM and discovered that there was quite a crowd already waiting. That photo is actually quite deceptive as at 5:30 AM, it is still dark! We finalized the formalities and were introduced to Stanislas, our “pilot” for the day and the gentleman on the right. After introductions with the rest of our crew (we were in a small balloon with only 4 passengers + pilot) we were off to a nearby field in order to prepare the balloon for flight. You can see our basket in the lower left photo.

Here you can see the various steps in the preparation of a balloon for flight. The passengers are actually doing quite a bit of the work, under the directions of the pilot and one or more helpers. On today’s flight, there will be four balloons, which could be quite interesting as we will not be the only ones up in the air. After unloading the basket, the balloon shell is stretched out and securely attached to the basket. The balloon is inflated initially with powerful fans and only once it is well inflated, it is heated up with the burners to get lift. That will be the next step for the crew of “Auvergne Montgolfière”, the red balloon here carrying the name of the company we are flying with.

This is our balloon being inflated with one fan – it is called “Volvic” after a local water. It is quite noisy actually as the fan is powered by a petrol engine! No power necessarily where you want to start your flight. The departure point is determined to give us the best possible flight, carried by the dominant wind. As we saw during the flight, there is a possibility to steer the balloon in flight by changing height, actually, a lot more than I thought but the general direction is still dictated by the wind.

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Culture, Travel

Greece – Naxos and Amorgos

Posted on 26 December, 2016 by pierreo

After a few days, it was time to leave Tynos and we moved to Naxos, a large island to the South.

We took another ferry to get there and had interesting views along the way. Travelling by ferry, at this time of year, is very relaxing. The ferries are not very crowded and therefore we just lounged around on the top deck, looking at the islands float by.

On the way we met this very interesting cruise ship which was making a stop at Mykonos – there are more and more sailing cruise ships and I think it would be a nice experience to try it, one of these days. However, I suspect that these are fully automated and therefore there is not much “sailing” involved.

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We ended up spending only one night in Naxos as the weather was getting worse and our guide feared that ferries may not be able to sail on our planned departure date. He gave us the choice of one extra day in Naxos, or one extra day in Amorgos and the group chose Amorgos (and I think we made the right choice).

One of the attractions is the Temple of Apollo with the “Portara” which is an almost intact door frame. It sits on a peninsula just outside of the main town.

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We saw ferries come in and out while we were walking around. There was a very strong side wind at the docks and we watched with interest as the “Cosmote” high speed ferry took 5-6 attempts to get its landing right. It made for good lunch time entertainment.

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I had to take a picture of the town viewed through the Portara.

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A better view of the town, with the castle up at the top and the docks on the right.

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As I said, we did not spend much time on Naxos and took our next ferry to Amorgos. This took several hours and was due to make three stops along the way. We were relaxing on the top deck and I just happened to be looking around when I saw this strange sight. Looks like a dozen high speed boats heading straight for us. The first thing that came my mind was: “I did not know they had pirates here in Greece! What do we do now?”

Why else would a formation of high speed boats come towards us like this?

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As they approached. I noticed they were actually going past us, and I started to feel better, then they slowly, still in formation, started to turn around and come after us again. There were 3-6 people on each boat but they did not look too menacing.

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Culture, Travel

Peru Episode 2: Cuzco and the Sacred Valley

Posted on 21 June, 201524 November, 2015 by pierreo

We arrived in Cuzco in mid-afternoon and by the time we settled into our hotel (right next to Plaza De Armas) and met our tour leader Holy for a quick orientation chat, it was already dark. We decided to go for a stroll and discover the immediate neighborhood around the hotel. We also wanted to scope out several restaurants in the area and decide where we would eat.

Near the hotel, we saw our first Inca Wall, down a narrow pedestrian street. Little did I know when I took this picture that somewhere down the wall on the right there is a 12-cornered stone – we found it later…

A little further, in the square in front of the Monasterio Hotel where we will be staying later, there were school children hard at work rehearsing a dance routine. We saw several such events in the next few days and were told that it is not unusual for classes to organize something special for “Mother’s Day” which would be celebrated on the second Sunday in May.

Plaza de Armas – the central square in today’s Cuzco (actually it was already the central square in Inca Times too).

Before dinner, we had a drink in a cafe overlooking the Plaza; Cuzco is surrounded by hills and one of these is visible on the left. In the distance, a statue of Christ (similar to, but smaller than the one in Rio) seemed to float above the city like a ghostly figure.

The next day, Bee and I explored the city on our own. We first stopped at an attraction that is not in any of our guides as it was only discovered and developed a few years ago. Right in the centre of Cuzco, the remains of several Inca houses have been discovered. The site is called Kusicancha and I was able to find very few references to it even on Google search! The church in the background is Santo Domingo, part of the Qorikancha Complex which we will visit later with our group.

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Travel

A wet week in Provence

Posted on 12 April, 2015 by pierreo

In November 2014, Bee and I took advantage of the 11 November holiday to spend a week in Provence.

Part of the reason was to spend some time with my parents who spend a lot of time there; part of the reason was also to get away from the bad weather in Belgium and discover a region of France that we did not know well.

Unfortunately, we hit the worst weather week in Provence for a long time. The weather had been generally bad all over Europe for most of the summer (see also my recent blog entry on the Dolomite in August 2014) but we were particularly unfortunate.

Our first “Road Trip” was to Moustier-Sainte-Marie, the Gorges du Verdon and finally Grasses. We skipped the Lac de Sainte-Croix as the weather just did not allow us to enjoy it.

Moustier is renown for fine pottery and ceramic. There are many workshops, some mostly with ‘tourist’ good, others with very nice ceramic. The town has also maintained its medieval atmosphere and is built on such a steep slope that a lot of streets are still impractical with a car. We walked around town until it started to rain a lot harder and ducked into a local restaurant to escape from getting really wet.

We ate at “Les Santons” (www.lessantons.com) and had a very nice lunch.

After lunch we drove through the top of the Gorges du Verdon, France’s Grand Canyon. There were very nice views, unfortunately not very photogenic, so I decided to experiment. I did not have my big camera, so I took my first panorama using my Samsung Phone. Here is the result.

It is not bad, and quick and easy, but not quite the same as the results I am used to when I use my big camera and I then assemble the photos using Photoshop. It is clear that the one shot facing the sun was more exposed than the others and the camera was not able to correct entirely for that.

I also took three photos of the mountain facing us and assembled those in Photoshop and here are the results.

Much better from a blending point of view. So I will have to be careful in the future if I want to use the ‘panorama’ feature of my phone.

From Les Gorges du Verdon, we went on to Grasse, the World Odor Capital. We stopped at the Fragonard Factory where we did a very nice tour of the facilities. Fragonard sells their own perfumes and Eau de Cologne in totally plain containers, as opposed to some of the other companies who sometimes spend more on the bottle than the perfume! Fragonard is also one of the few remaining “Nose Schools” in France. Students are trained to recognize some 300 different odors and the “Experienced” nose can tutor up to 12 students at a time. We saw the ‘school’ room, but class was not in session.

We had spotted a few potentially good restaurants on Trip Advisor, but all of them were closed when we were there. We stopped at La Voute for dinner and had a good meal there.

The next Road Trip took us to Les Baux-de-Provence, a small town in the Alpilles that has become an artist community. Just outside of town there are abandoned stone quarries which are now used for sound and light shows called “Carrières de Lumières” (www.carrieres-lumieres.com). Every year, they have a different show that runs roughly from March to December. The show last show in 2014 was on Klimt and Vienna. Images are projected around the whole quarries while beautiful music plays and it is definitely worth the visit.

We had lunch in Baux and then went to visit the Castle, which as per custom sits at the very top of the village.

The view is quite spectacular, but again, the weather was not really good enough for good photos. I likes better the view of the ancient town from the castle

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Travel

Napoli and Amalfi – Part 1

Posted on 15 September, 201413 February, 2015 by pierreo

If it is not obvious already from the amount of time that I spend there, I love Italy. I have been there many times and every time I do, I come back more enchanted and convinced that I should come again.

In all my previous trips, I had spent a grand total of 3 or 4 days in the area around Naples, and all of that when I was 11 and 13 years old. I had memories of Paestum, Monte Cassino, Heculaneum and Castel del’Ovo. But these were very vague, and I was not sure what was what any more.

Bee and I decided to spend the time between Easter and May Day in and around Naples so that we could take advantage of two holidays. We arrived in Naples on 19 April, rented a car and drove to our hotel right in the center of the city. The hotel was situated on a pedestrian street and so had left good instructions of where to park. We found the parking and walked to the Hotel Il Convento. We had booked a room with balcony, at the very top of the hotel and it was very nice.

We went for a walk in order to discover the neighborhood. On Piazza Plebiscito (Suffrage Square), we saw this sight of a cruise ship leaving harbor. Naples and, as we will see later, Sorrento are major stops on the cruising Italy scene.

There was not much going on in the low town around the square, so we decided to go up with one of the old cable cars (Funicolare Centrale) up to the Vomero Hill. The car runs underground all the way up to the top of the hill.

We first went to visit the Castel Sant’Elmo, located right at the top of the hill and built by the Spanish in 1538, with spectacular views of the city and Mount Vesuvius just behind it. At first, I was not sure that it was Mount Vesuvius, as I did not remember the second “hump” on the side of the mountain, and all the photos and paintings of the volcano showed it more with the typical conical shape. However, comparing with the location of Vesuvius on the map, and when we went there, I can confirm that the big mountain just outside the city is indeed Mount Vesuvius.

Here is a wider panorama of the Bay of Naples. Vesuvius is on the left and then you can see the low hills of the Amalfi Peninsula. The last two dark spots on the right of the photo are the two hills of Capri – we had excellent visibility that day as the sun started to come down.

After the castle, we went to the Certosa di San Martino, located only 100 m from the castle. It used to be a Monastery, build in the 14th century and rebuilt in the 17th. A constructed view (180 degrees) of the cloisters inside the monastery – this is Chiostro Grande.

There are ancient carriages used by the former occupants of the Certosa – I guess the chief abbot was used to travel in style!

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Culture, Travel

Andalusia 2013

Posted on 1 February, 2014 by pierreo

Our trip to Andalusia continued in Cordoba, another city that was heavily influenced by the Moors who occupied it until late in the 15th century.

Cordoba was ‘freed’ earlier than Granada and Ferdinand and Isabella established their royal seat here while they were fighting for Granada. They lived in a former Muslim palace which is now known as the “Alcazar de los Reyes Catolicos” or Palace of the Catholic Kings. It is clear, however, that the origin of the buildings and gardens has nothing to do with catholic kings.

One look at these gardens and you know immediately who designed them.

The palace itself is not very interesting, and there has not been a significant effort to make the interior look like it must have either during the Moors’ occupation, or the later royal affectation, which was not very long as the royal court eventually moved to Granada instead.

However, the gardens are the real attraction of this palace.

There are fountains everywhere and several different levels which are all just slightly different from each other.

This group was added later, I am sure. It is the representation of Christopher Columbus requesting funds from Ferdinand and Isabella for his trip to India via the Atlantic Ocean. We all know how that ended.

However, there were conflicts in what we heard from different guides. Granada was freed from the Moors in January 1492 and the court moved there soon thereafter. So in Granada, they claim that this discussion took place in the Alhambra. In Cordoba, they claim that this occurred before the court moved and therefore it happened in Cordoba. Looking at several sources of information (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia and Royal Greenwich Museum) there is consensus that the decision to go West was made in January 1492 but only Wikipedia mentions that this occurred in Cordoba while Britannica does not say where the final agreement took place. It could be that it is not documented and therefore both cities have a legitimate claim!

The other major attraction of Cordoba is the Mezquita, the most confused building in the world. It started life as a Mosque and is now the Cathedral of Cordoba. There are contrasting views throughout the building, with clearly Muslim architecture surrounding obviously catholic details.

When they established (and built) the cathedral inside the old mosque, a lot of the building was left unchanged. There are thousands of columns supporting the roof around the core which is now the cathedral. This is an “illegal” photo! I took it with the camera sitting on the floor so that I could have a longer exposure. Immediately after I took this photo while sitting on the floor, I was told to stand up as sitting is not allowed!

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Culture, Travel

Granada 2013

Posted on 17 January, 201426 January, 2014 by pierreo

I first came to Granada, in Andalusia, Spain, in 1999. I only spent 2 nights there on a tour of Andalusia.

The pictures I took back then can be seen on my other site: www.twimpg.net

Bee and I stopped in Granada for 4 nights before our Eclipse Cruise – more on that later. It was a great opportunity to see the Alhambra again, and discover more of this wonderful historical city.

We arrived just before lunch – lunch time in Spain that is, so got to the hotel around 1:30 PM. We stayed at the Alhambra Palace, just a stone throw away from the Alhambra itself. On the way to the restaurant for lunch, we saw our first glimpse of the outside wall of the complex and the imposing fortress.

In the afternoon, we went to visit the town and stopped at the main cathedral. It is a very impressive building that was designed and built after the moors were chased out of Andalusia and Granada was the seat of the Spanish Royal family.

We discovered that, on week-ends, the gardens of the Generalife are opened to the public in the evening, after sunset. We had therefore booked for going there on our first evening.

We tried to be early (I did not have to try very hard!) so that it would not be too crowded and we succeeded. The one palace on the Generalife was almost empty and very peaceful.

It is amazing that this was built in 1400 when the rest of Europe was in the “Dark Ages”! Granada was actually a place of great learning during that time, with scholars from all over the known world visiting and lecturing thousands of ‘students’ who came there to learn.

From the Generalife, we had a good view of the Alhambra complex, but could not go there. Actually, we probably could have walked around there too as most of the area around the Alhambra is public, but we only found that out on the next day, during our daytime visit of the palaces.

The detailed work of carving on the stone and the wood is always incredible in these buildings. It is amazing that this survived during the last 700 years. Notice how the patterns are different on top of each archway over the doors! Continue reading “Granada 2013” →

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Culture, Food, Travel

London 2013

Posted on 4 January, 2014 by pierreo

I do not want to be constantly late with new posts to my blog. And I have also decided to try and be more regular in the posts, so those following me are not disappointed week after week when nothing new comes along.

I am not going to post something every week, but will try to do something at least monthly at the start.

And here we go with a short trip to London. Since it was a short trip, I only took 4 cameras and not my big one! The pictures come from my little Casio Exilim and some have been “improved” in Photoshop with the treatment that I usually do with my regular photos.

Bee and I left work for the airport where we took a train to the Midi Station in Brussels and there caught the Eurostar to London. It was only my second trip on the train, and the first since the high speed rails had been opened in the UK. It took us the better part of 20 minutes to go through Checkin, security and emigration – glad we were early.

We arrived in St Pancras and took the tube to Green Park where our hotel was. Very nice location, but the hotel was a little dated for a Hilton. We still had a nice room and it had all the amenities we would have expected.

As it was already late, we went to dinner in the neighbourhood and found a good Turkish restaurant.

The next day, the weather was not great so we decided to do museums. We started with the Victoria and Albert Museum. On the way there, we saw the Christmas Windows at Harrod’s which were quite nice. V&A is a huge complex and it took us a while to get oriented. We wanted to see the modern glass exhibit, but had to go through several others, very interesting sights just to get there. We saw an exhibit of copies of famous statues and architectural pieces made in the 19th century. Some of these were used to restore the original. Also saw a great display of Chinese artefacts and clothing.

After a couple of hours we had enough so we went to China town for lunch. Had one of the best Chinese food in a long time!

We bought tickets to the Opera – Mozart’s Magic Flute, tried to get reservations at Jamie Italian (they do not take reservations) and did our share of shopping at Kathmandu. The opera was very nice, even though I was a little disappointed it was sung in English and not the original German. However, now I understand the story a lot better and will enjoy it even more when I listen to it at home. We tried Jamie Italian again – 45 minute wait at 9:40 PM so we went to another Italian Restaurant near Leicester Square

The weather on Sunday was great, so we went to Hampton Court. An adventure to get there as the normal trains from Waterloo were cancelled due to maintenance work. We took the Tube to Wimbledon then a replacement bus, which seemed to be taking forever. I knew we were in trouble when the driver looked back and asked if anybody knew how to get to the station! Fortunately, some one did and we got there in the end. This is not the first time we had problems with drivers of replacement busses.

Hampton Court is really majestic and a great day trip from London. The main entrance at sunset!

When we paid our entrance fee, we were told that re-enactments would be going on throughout the day and the next one started in the main court at 11:00. Since it was close to that time, we waited and sure enough a lady in period costume did show up and start telling us of her love story, not for the King but one of his aides. However, the king was in love with her etc, etc, etc…

We followed along, and in the main dining room, we got the meet the king!

Of course, the story is full of intrigues and misunderstandings and political moves.

We stopped following it as the Royal Chapel was about to open. In the chapel is a recreation of Henry’s own crown (the original was destroyed by Cromwell). We had good audio guides so we continued the visit on our own. We did the kitchen and we also did an exhibit on the life of Henry as a young man, up to his divorce from his first wife Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella who had reunited the crown of Spain and sponsored Columbus to look for an alternate way to India. It was very well done as this also included the break-up of the Church of England when the English Cardinal who supported Henry could not convince the Pope to grant him a divorce.

We had lunch then spent some time in the gardens which are gorgeous as always in England

This swan came quite fast when he saw us – if he expected food, he was disappointed!

As I said, it was a beautiful day and the views of the palace were magnificent. I was surprised to see palm tress in the garden! I wonder if they resist to the winter or have to be replaced every year? Continue reading “London 2013” →

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Culture, Travel

Garmisch and Munich

Posted on 16 December, 201316 December, 2013 by pierreo

It has been a tradition for the last three years that Bee and I celebrate her birthday somewhere other than Brussels! This time, I did not tell her where, just that there was the castle of a princess, the nest of an eagle, a place where there is lots of beer and a place that should never be forgotten.

We flew to Munich and immediately drove south with the intention to visit Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein, two castles who belonged to Ludwig II (the mad) of Bavaria. Hohenschwangau is not very famous and therefore not familiar to people. However, that is where the visit starts and I had nothing to do while waiting in a long line of cars – so I took a picture of the castle behind the trees.

We were only 300-400 m away from the parking lot, but the road was completely blocked and we moved a few meters every several minutes. Bee went ahead to see what was going on; when she came back 15 minutes later, I had moved two car lengths and she explained that the parking lot being full, one car could get in every time another one got out! She also mentioned that the line to buy tickets has several 100 people in it.

So we decided that visiting Neuschwanstein was not that important. We stopped and took a few pictures, because that one is recognised all over the world!

It was the inspiration for Disney’s original Castle at Disney World and was the Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the movie. It was also featured in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, another Disney movie, but not animated this time.

The castle was actually never finished and Ludwig II never lived there. Only 1 or 2 rooms were decorated, including one with a fake grotto as an homage to Richard Wagner, who was a close friend (very close friend?) of Ludwig.

The location for the castle is great – At the edge of the mountains and on the side of a large plain.

So, we decided to move on ahead and go to Garmisch Partenkirche, where we would be spending the first night. This is one of the first winter resorts in Germany and it hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1936, the same year the summer games were in Berlin. In summer, like right now when we were there, it is a sleepy little town, with typical Bavarian architecture such as this Bier Garten with very nice frescoes.

The local church has the onion dome that is also typical of this region.

We were early for dinner so we kept walking around town and heard music in the distance. We were intrigued and saw that there was a trio of young musicians setting up. Two violins and a clarinet. They were very good and played classical music adapted for their instruments. The movie below is taken with my still camera and reduced so that it can fit into my blog, but the music quality is not bad. Continue reading “Garmisch and Munich” →

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Culture, Travel

Portugal – Part 2

Posted on 18 November, 201326 January, 2014 by pierreo

After Coimbra, we spent a few more days in the area and went to the Natural Park da Serra da Estrela which includes the highest mountains in Portugal. We stopped at the highest peak where there is a weather station and what looks like army radar installations. The weather was good, but cold and very windy – you can still see that there is a lot of snow left on the ground and this was at the end of May.

We did some walking in the park too but no great pictures. We stopped for lunch in Manteigas, right at the center of the Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela where we saw an old car rally but no pictures of that either. I was not in the right mood for photos that day!

We then had to head towards Lisbon, but first we made a stop on the way in an old Roman town called Conimbriga which has some of the best preserved Roman ruins in the Iberian Peninsula. We were very pleasantly surprised.

There is a house with exquisite floor mosaics (above) and an incredible atrium with really nice fountains (below)

We discovered that by putting a 1 euro coin in a slot, we could get the fountains to actually work. You can see the water spays (white arcs) against the red bricks, if you look carefully. The sound was actually better than the sight! I wonder if they still use the original plumbing?

Continue reading “Portugal – Part 2” →

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