That's why we like them. A funicular is a type of self-contained cable railway in which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and down a very steep slope, the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalancing each other. We have ridden some that are counterbalanced by a weight, instead of another vehicle. Our first funicular was in Quebec City, Canada. On this trip we have ridden funiculars in: Haifa, Israel Kaunas, Lithuania Vilnius, Lithuania Paris, France Lyon, France Barcelona, Spain To learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular [View Full Entry]

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Here we will list the funny stuff that sometimes we do, or happens to us. We will update this entry occasionally when we have new funny stuff: *This happened in Estonia. The menu said lemonade, so I ordered one. The waitress opened a bottle of Sprite and poured it into a glass. The same happened in a couple other countries, including France. So, unless you want Sprite, don't order lemonade in Europe. *The toilet paper roll at our hotel in Dijon, France had a lock on it, with a key. What the hell???!!! Are they worried about someone breaking into the [View Full Entry]

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We have spent a little more than a month now in France, and today is our last day. (Except for 2 days in Paris en route to India in a month). We absolutely loved it here, and feel we got to know the country much better. Although, as foreigners traveling through, not speaking the language well, and with mostly superficial encounters with locals, we have no pretenses. We have taken trains, boats, subways, and funiculars, but most of the time we drove - 4000 km (about 2400 miles), and walked. We did the north, center, and south. France is, hands down, [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Torino at night, and checked into our 4 star hotel. Every hotel in Europe gets a star rating. We’ve stayed in many decent one and two star hotels, once in a while a three star, but this was our first, and to date only, 4 star hotel (we got a great deal on the internet). It was nice, but nothing to write home about it. Wait, I am writing home about it! Ha ha! Anyway, the next day we toured Torino, also known as Turin in English. We went to the old town and walked around the square [View Full Entry]

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After we dropped my Mom off at the Paris airport, we jumped on a train and headed down to Dijon. Dijon is a sweet little town, the capital of the Burgundy region, with a lot of pride in its regional gifts; selling all sorts of yummy flavors of mustard and gingerbread, French lavender, and those little aniseed candies my cousin and I ate when we were young. The town mascot/symbol is the owl and they sold little owls all the souvenir shops, the bakeries sold owl shaped cookies, and the sidewalks had doormat-sized owl plaques indicating important sites. Our next stop [View Full Entry]

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Today we went to the D-Day beaches at Normandy. This was where the U.S. finally entered the war in Europe; it was a day that changed the history of Europe, and the world. Some of the most decisive, and deadly, battles in World War 2 were fought here, and this is where the liberation of France, and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, began. First we visited the memorial battlefield at Ponte du Hoc. This was a critical German post due to its situation atop great cliffs with commanding views of the sea (where Allied ships were gathering) and the Omaha and [View Full Entry]

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We spent 11 days in Paris, far longer than we have spent, or are likely to spend, in any one city on this journey. We loved Paris (who doesn’t?), and got to do and see everything we wanted. We saw the Louvre, Musee D’Orsay, and the Rodin Museum. We had dinner at an outdoor bistro in Montmartre. We went down in the catacombs (well, Erin and her Mom did) and then to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We took a boat cruise along the Seine. We visited the antique market, the flower market, and the bird market. And we walked [View Full Entry]

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Ah, we've been here about five days now and I am loving it! Our studio is in a great neighborhood, on the Right Bank (correcting Asaf on his earlier email), walking distance from the Louvre and Rue Montorgueil (a cute pedestrian-only street with cafes, shops and the pastry shop Marie Antoniette bought her cakes from!). Our studio is very cozy, smaller than my studio in the Tenderloin, but it's perfect for us. We've been able to walk almost everywhere. It's been so wondeful to just take Paris in slowly, wandering the streets of different neighborhoods on different days. No real plans [View Full Entry]

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In Peterhof, a beautiful palace outside St. Petersburg, Russia, there are fountains that spray people when they step on stones. They appear to be random and automatic, but are in fact operated by a bored looking teenager, sitting on a bench, and pressing his foot down on a pedal. We've only seen one squirrel in the last month, in the gardens at Peterhof, St. Petersburg, and it was red! In Russia, the mullet hair cut is alive and well; I think we counted close to 25 in one day. The women in Russia are known for wearing high heeled shoes. They [View Full Entry]

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Kaunas, Lithuania: This is not the capital of Lithuania, nor a beautiful place or one with many attractions. I am here for sentimental reasons only. My grandfather was born here. My mother's father, who helped raise me and my brothers, and who was probably the best human being I ever knew. Fortunately, when he was 2 years old, his family moved to the U.S. I say fortunately, because during World War 2, when he was a young man, Kaunas, also known as Kovno, was occupied by the Nazis, who, together with the Lithuanians, proceeded to kill almost the entire Jewish population. [View Full Entry]

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