Assisi

We spent a day in Assisi, learning about the town and Santa Chiara (St Clare) and San Francisco (St Francis) from Rick Steves. (Our guests, J&L, introduced us to Rick’s free audio guides and we all gave him a listen as we wended our way through town.) We were surprised to learn that the Franciscan […]

Near Spello

The view was ever-changing from our terrace above Spello. Sometimes the clouds poured over the nearby the mountains, or drifted below us in the valley, or completely filled the valley… and a few times we were inside the clouds. Very cool! It was hard to tear ourselves away from the comfort and the views, but […]

Spello è bello

We’ve made it to Italy! We’ve been in Umbria, near the town of Spello, for two weeks. Unfortunately I had quite a bad cold (or covid?) for the first week plus, as well as for our one day in Milan, so not much has been happening. Our trip from Vienna to Milan was a thirteen-hour […]

Vienna: Art

Art is everywhere in Vienna, but we got our biggest doses (or perhaps just our most informed doses) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Albertina. As promised, here are some views of the inside of Kunsthistorisches Museum: It’s no surprise that the world’s largest collection of paintings by Bruegel are in this museum. They are […]

Vienna: Look Up!

As we first walked around Vienna, we noticed a few interesting details when we remembered to look up from the cobblestones, people dodging, and window shopping. So we started to remind each other, “Don’t forget to look up!” Good advice in any city, but especially here. And then there’s the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Historical Art Museum), […]

Vienna: Schönbrunn

The Hapsburgs’ summer palace, the Schloss Schönbrunn, is about 30 minutes from downtown by public transit. (That is, if you get off at the correct stop to transfer (oops!) and don’t have to wait a really long time for that transfer, once you finally get to the right spot.) We toured the outside first, and […]

Vienna

We spent ten days in Vienna. There’s no end of things to do and see, so I’ll break it up into a few blog posts. Our apartment was just a few blocks from the Hofburg, the enormous palace of the Hapsburg dynasty, and many of the other sights. We made the most of it…in our […]

Oberstdorf

As we got closer to Oberstdorf, the landscape got hillier and greener, the houses grew stouter with longer eaves and lots of flower boxes, and cows were everywhere. But it was still a surprise how quickly the Alps spring up, with Oberstdorf cradled among them. On our first visit, we arrived by car and felt […]

Weimar

We’ve fallen in love, and our love’s name is Weimar. M said several times he could imagine living here. We would, of course, have to study up on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to fit in, because it’s Goethe everywhere here. Goethe National Museum, Goethe’s garden house, Goethe’s family house, … Even things that at first […]

Peace and Quiet

We left Copenhagen on a night train to Berlin. It was M’s first time on an overnight train. I still remember a post-college night train from Italy to Switzerland, where they took all our blankets and pillows when we reached the Italian border, despite it being around 4 am. This time we had the compartment […]